Vendors are the center of your marketplace and as such it is a good idea that you become familiar with all features of the marketplace. This is a general overview of the features available to your vendors. By allowing your vendors to take control of managing their stores, you can spend more time working to support your vendors and customers.
Registration
Vendors can register in a number of ways. The entire vendor registration process is available in our vendor registration article. Vendors can register themselves from the My Account page of WooCommerce if you have it enabled.
After the user clicks on the Register button, they are redirected to the registration form that is available below. This is where you can have the vendor enter the information you require for them such as their store information, payment information, shipping, social media, policies, and SEO. This way, you can make a better-informed decision if you are ready to accept this vendor to your marketplace.
Dashboard
The vendor dashboard is the control center for the vendor. This is where they get an up-to-date view of everything that is happening in their particular store. They can see their order totals, commissions due and paid, product, and order management. Update their settings, view ratings, create coupons, and more.
Vendor Store
Each vendor has their own corner of the marketplace known as the vendor store. This is a modification of the standard WooCommerce Product archive. The vendors are able to upload their own banner and store icon. This will allow them to add some level of personalisation to their stores without impacting the over all design of the marketplace. They are able to customise these options from their dashboard on the settings page.
Store URL
Each vendor gets their own store URL. The URL slug is determined by the global settings in the marketplace settings in WordPress admin. You can change the ‘vendors’ part of the URL to a term that better represents your marketplace. For instance, you can change this to ‘makers’ if your marketplace is a maker marketplace.
Products
Vendors can manage their own products so that you don’t have to. They can import, export, add, edit, and delete their own products. You as the marketplace admin can set required fields, hide fields you don’t require, and more. We also provide templates and filters to highly customize the product edit forms, including custom product edit forms.
Orders
Vendors are able to view and manage their orders. The orders screen allows the vendors to mark the order shipped, add tracking information, print out shipping labels, and add order notes.
Coupons
Vendors can manage their own coupons that will only apply to their products. This gives them opportunities to increase traffic and use coupons in their own marketing. They can advertise their coupons via their store notices or via their own email newsletters or social media channels.
Shipping
Vendors can manage their own shipping with the built-in Flat Rate and Table Rate shipping systems. You can configure the marketplace to use a single shipping system, or allow the vendors to select which shipping system they want to use. This provides a large amount of flexibility for controlling shipping without having to pay for a 3rd party shipping plugin.
SEO
WC Vendors includes built-in SEO features for vendors. This includes SEO options for their stores and individual products. The Store’s SEO provides options for social media sharing and standard SEO features.
Google Analytics
Vendors can add their Google Analytics tracking code and this adds tracking analytics to all of their store and product pages. This is the best way to provide analytics to your vendors.
Vacation Mode
Vendors are able to put their store into vacation mode. This will add a store notice that the vendor can customize to their requirements. They can also disable the ability for customers to purchase their products while they are on vacation.
Emails
There are several emails that the system can send the vendor. Vendors will receive an email every time an order is placed. You can enable stock notification emails. They will receive an email during their application. Vendors can also trigger emails to customers and to the marketplace admin. When a vendor marks an order shipped, and adds a tracking number or an order note, the customer will be notified. If you have product submission approval turned on, the marketplace admin will be notified for every product submitted.