In a scenario where digitalization is increasingly necessary, many businesses struggle to compete with large e-commerce platforms. To overcome these difficulties, digital marketplaces emerge as a strategic solution to boost local commerce.
Digital marketplaces represent a strategic opportunity for municipalities and local businesses that want to strengthen their online presence and support the region’s economy.
What Are Digital Marketplaces?
A digital marketplace is an online platform that brings together several stores and retailers in a single virtual space. Unlike a traditional e-commerce site, where a single company offers products, the marketplace is an “online shopping mall” where several retailers can sell their products or services, facilitating interaction between local suppliers and consumers.
In the context of municipalities and local commerce, a digital marketplace works as an aggregator, where local businesses can connect directly with consumers, promoting the sale of products and services without the need for a physical store.
These platforms centralize commercial operations in a single online location, offering benefits for both traders and the public, since, being available in an online space, the offer covers a greater number of potential customers.
Benefits for Municipalities and Local Commerce
Implementing a digital marketplace offers a series of direct benefits for municipalities and smaller retailers:
- Strengthening Local Commerce: By bringing together several stores and merchants on a single platform, the municipality strengthens the visibility of local commerce, increasing the reach of small businesses and generating more sales.
- Digital Recognition: Many small businesses do not have the resources to develop e-commerce platforms. With a municipal digital marketplace, these companies gain an online presence in a practical and accessible way, increasing brand recognition beyond the physical and local space.
- Greater Competitiveness: Integration with logistics, shipping and payment systems and APIs allows local merchants to offer a high-quality service, similar to the big players in the market, making local commerce competitive in the digital scenario.
- Incentive to the Local Economy: In addition to attracting consumers from within the municipality, digital marketplaces can also expand reach to customers outside the region, bringing new revenue streams.
Complete Digital Marketplace Solution
PARTTEAM & OEMKIOSKS’ YCommerce solution offers a complete and robust solution for municipalities that want to create a digital marketplace to support local commerce. This digital marketplace platform allows:
- Complete Customization: Each marketplace is developed according to the specific needs of the municipality, ensuring that the local identity is respected and promoted.
- Scalability: Scalable solution, allowing new merchants and services to be added as the marketplace grows and the number of users increases.
- Integration with Logistics and Shipping Platforms: The marketplace can be integrated with delivery systems, ensuring that products reach consumers quickly and efficiently.
- Payment Systems and Split Payments: The platform facilitates payment with different methods (card, MB Way, transfer, etc.) and allows payments to be automatically divided between different merchants, simplifying financial management.
- Simplified Management: With a complete backoffice, both marketplace administrators and merchants have full control over operations. Each retailer can manage their store individually, offering a personalized experience for users.
Digital transformation is one of the fundamental pillars for the future of municipalities. By adopting a digital marketplace, municipalities not only modernize their commerce infrastructure, but also create new opportunities for economic development.
The development of digital marketplaces, on the PARTTEAM & OEMKIOSKS YCommerce platform, involves a process of creating an online platform where multiple local sellers can offer products and services to buyers.
YCommerce allows companies, stores and service providers to expand their business to the digital environment, with individualized management, integrated into a global city brand.
- Product and store management;
- Management of payment methods;
- Simple and advanced search system;
- Area reserved for customers;
- Integration with Smart Lockers and logistics;
- Fully responsive design;
- Intuitive CMS backoffice.
Local commerce, when integrated into a digital platform, can:
- Increase operations efficiency: By automating sales, delivery and invoicing processes, merchants can focus more on their products and less on operational issues.
- Promoting Digital Inclusion: Many small businesses still do not have an online presence. With a municipal marketplace, they enter the digital environment easily, quickly and economically.
With a complete and personalized solution from PARTTEAM & OEMKIOSKS, municipalities can integrate all their merchants into a single digital space, increasing the visibility and competitiveness of local commerce. Investing in the future of municipal commerce promotes digital transformation with a platform that connects consumers and companies in an efficient and sustainable way.