Green Pebble, a popular greetings cards and stationery retailer based in Suffolk, had an established, successful Shopify website. They sought to expand their site into a marketplace for the artists whose works they already sold, to allow for the sale of original art pieces directly to customers.
Objective
The primary goal was to create a Shopify marketplace that would be easy to use for both artists and customers, leveraging the existing traffic and customer loyalty to provide a new platform for artists to sell their original artwork.
Challenges
The main challenges included integrating the new marketplace with existing internal processes, information architecture, and product libraries without causing disruption. It was also crucial to ensure accurate sales data for site and artist reports.
The Solution
By using a third-party Shopify app, we were able to create the marketplace without needing extensive API development. We tested the new features and user experience with a dummy artist account and guinea pigs from our community before launching the marketplace with over 10 official artists.
The user experience was fine-tuned in three stages, starting with an internal test, followed by community testing and then the final roll-out. An in-depth guide was created to assist in onboarding sellers to the platform, with additional one-on-one consultancy provided as necessary.
Result
The marketplace has entered a soft launch phase, with sales already being generated through the platform. The project has also influenced my approach to similar projects in the future, highlighting the potential of creating marketplaces that allow smaller retailers to sell products on behalf of makers without upfront costs.
Future Plans
The SEO optimisation will be an ongoing process, with emphasis on guiding artists to structure their product descriptions and metadata for SEO-friendliness. The aim is to ensure the marketplace remains well-optimised for search engines and that the structure of the website keeps the end-users in mind.
Conclusion
Building a marketplace for Green Pebble has proven successful in providing a platform for artists and generating new sales. It’s been an enriching journey into the art scene and a rewarding networking experience with artists, paving the way for further innovation and creativity within the e-commerce sphere.
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