E-commerce sales are expected to reach $1.065 trillion by 2023.
However, to get your share of this estimated revenue as an eCommerce platform, you’ll need to onboard enough vendors to drive demand and keep your customers satisfied.
A seamless vendor onboarding process will help you achieve this faster.
Keep reading this article to understand the importance of a seamless onboarding process and five things you can do to improve.
Ready? Let’s get into it.
What is Vendor Onboarding, and why is it important?
Vendor (or merchant) onboarding involves collecting necessary information from small business owners to set them up as approved sellers with your company or on your eCommerce platform.
By following vendor onboarding best practices, such as a detailed vetting process for new vendors, you are protecting your company from potential pitfalls.
Next, we'll discuss the various way you can improve your onboarding process.
Five ways to improve your onboarding process
Douglas Kendyson, The CEO at Selar, a fast-growing eCommerce platform for digital creators, comments on how businesses can simplify their onboarding process without discouraging vendors:
“Start with the least amount of barrier to achieve some action with your platform. And when they’ve done that, you can now introduce more technical steps like KYC.
What this does is that it offers the path of least resistance and encourages more vendors to complete their setup process.’’
Whether you have already established your company’s vendor onboarding process or are yet to set them in place, the following points can give you insights on how to make it smoother.
- Show them how to sign up with tutorials
Even though the world is increasingly becoming digital, you can't assume all your vendors are completely tech-savvy.
One way to improve the onboarding process is by creating tutorials teaching vendors on how to go about all the steps.
Do not expect the vendors to understand it all at first glance completely. Create tutorials in a way that five-year-olds can understand.
Explain what every button stands for, what every stage requires etc.
See this tutorial from Lazerpay on how vendors can create accounts.
2. Install Global Payment Methods:
It is crucial to consider the payment options available and if they can help your vendors sell globally.
Few payment options consider cross-border payments. The ones that do, charge commission fees as high as 3.5%.
This friction in payment affects the economy and takes us far away from the interoperability we are looking for.
One of the most accessible online cross-border payments today is crypto stablecoins.
Accepting stablecoins allows vendors to get paid from anywhere in the world. The best part is that the fees are pegged at a flat 1% rate.
Click here to read how Lazerpay allows you to receive stablecoin payments from any client in the world in little time.
You can also install the Lazerpay API to your eCommerce platform for vendors to be able to pay in stablecoins on your platform.
Low payment processing fees give your business more leverage as it:
a. Increases Your Sales: your customers are comfortable buying more from you because of the low transaction fee.
b. Maximises Your Profit: the extra percentage you would have lost to the transaction fee in a fiat transaction can go to your profit.
3. Avoid Complications
It is essential to try and automate the vendor onboarding process as much as possible.
However, if it will be more efficient to leave some steps to save time, please consider it.
In trying to be digitised, most companies make things more complicated. They end up discouraging vendors from continuing on their platform.
4. Provide Online Support:
You must make online support available for prospective vendors.
They would have questions along the way as they reach different stages, and having online human support will be a helpful feature to install for the vendors in that process.
This is where an effective customer experience team comes in. Ensure requests in your social media DMs are checked and addressed promptly.
You can also take advantage of 24/7 customer support platforms like Live chat to attend to requests while you’re away.
5. Implement an email drip campaign
During any online signup protocol, there will be times when the user abandons the process.
Most times, this abandonment is not caused by your platform but by external factors.
Create an automated email workflow to call your vendor's attention back to the onboarding process.
You can do this with an email drip campaign targeted at abandoned onboarding like the one shown in the image below.
Also, assigning a team member to each vendor is an excellent way to put them first and for them to trust your platform for their products. While this might not be a scalable solution, it is ideal for upcoming merchant aggregator platforms.
Conclusion
Onboarding helps determine whether a prospective vendor complies with relevant laws, regulations, and corporate standards.
Its also a good opportunity to use a stressless and global payment solution to enable your vendors get paid from anywhere.
A thorough vendor onboarding process can help avoid expensive mistakes, including those that may put your business at risk.
