Product Manger should know — Online Marketplace
Look around ! So many of us are buying products online everyday. With the technology reaching more hands (yes, we are buying on phones) the online marketplaces are growing exponentially. You can see local marketplaces (Flipkart in India), global marketplaces (Amazon, Wish) and specialized marketplaces( More like eCommerce Websites). These online marketplaces sell products and services. Because the nature of these marketplaces in virtual, they have a wide array of products from new products to old products and forget buying, you can now rent almost everything from a car to a private plane.
These marketplaces can be categorized in multiple ways. For me, these fall into two major categories as third-party seller market (Amazon, Wish, Walmart etc) and peer-to-peer market (Uber, Lyft, AirBnb) . The user experience on both of these a differentiating factor between the marketplaces which flourish vs those which get forgotten by the users.
Here are five important things every product manager should know to work on a third party marketplace -
- Customers First or Sellers First — This is a classic chicken-egg problem.Well, there is only one answer to the classic chicken and egg question and that is whatever Users want, that should come first !!! A lot of peer-to-peer service portals like Uber, Lyft and AirnBNB also face this problem. Talking exclusively about third party marketplace, get the sellers first. Any such marketplace gets a competitive advantage with a variety of product offering (a wide choice in products, prices, brads etc). Making the seller side strong will always help to not only to attract but also retain the Users. There are ways to get sellers on the platform. Acquiring existing sellers (may be they are selling on other platform already), getting first time sellers from market, and creating robotic sellers are few options to make the seller side strong and ready before Users get hooked onto your platform.
- Bring Your Own Cookie — Cookies are used to track web activity of the User. Some Sellers can use their own cookies to target the User and increase the sale. Even though most marketplace portals will have their own cookie tracking systems, some Sellers (depending on how the sale takes place ) can also have their own cookies, giving them an advantage over Sellers who are not technically advanced to manage their own cookies. This will create an unfair platform for all Sellers (unless the platform itself enables Sellers to make targeted sale). As a Product Manager, it is important to provide a neutral marketplace for all it’s Actors. I also mean that if any of the capabilities become paid capabilities, Users should have transparency about the cost and benefit associated.
- Make The Buying Experience Real — Traditionally, Users see the product first and then pay for it but in a virtual marketplace, Users have to trust the platform and the Sellers before making the purchase. Technology has certainly changed the behavior of the Users resulting in increasing revenues for online shopping. Try to make it this online buying process as real as possible. Depending on the product, let User see all the details on it easily. Add photos, reviews, videos, credibility of the Seller, reviews of the Users with photo/video. Goal should be to create trust in the product User is buying online. It is important to educate your Sellers on how to input the information on the product correctly. Also, crucial to design your platform to present this information to Users accurately (More on this in a separate blog).
- Stand Out — In today’s cut throat online shopping market, the domestic markets are expanding and all Sellers are competing globally. You have to conduct a detailed Competitive Analysis to understand what are you competing against. Understand what strengths your platform has and how it can be used to close the gap between Users unmet needs. Amazon provides an amazing Prime Membership and 2-day Delivery service to it’s Users, where as China based Wish provides cost effective products (takes 3–4 weeks to deliver but the products are really cheap) as a way to stand out in the online shopping marketplace.
- Count the Stars — The market place has to become a community of Sellers and Users benefiting from each other. Rewarding the good actors in the system will improve the overall experience of Users on the marketplace. A Product Manager will tie this “Good Behavior’ to the goal of the product. For example, reward Sellers who verify their identity, have no (less than acceptance percentage) of product returns, Sellers who answer questions by Users etc. If the sales are more than average with accepted percentage of returns then reward the Seller or the Product on the portal. Encourage and reward the good actors and weed out the bad ones to create a brand value around the portal.
Lastly, every product is different so as a Product Manager, learn what is relevant to your product and your Sellers. The marketplace needs to keep evolving with it’s Users and technology. Keep up with the changing User needs and technology trends !
Theses videos i found useful for this topic -
