Many of us have thought that it would be great if their nearby grocery store, restaurant or food court could start selling the product online and deliver it at their doorsteps. This will not only make our lives easier but will help small businesses to boon their way up in the online marketplace.

According to the Google search, the “Near-me” searches have become immensely popular in recent years. Data recorded from Google indicated that “Near-me” searches grew in volume by 130% year-over-year between 2014 and 2015 alone, and since then, Google users are using near-me searches to find everything from grocery to restaurant.

In recent years, many of the new business startups based on the Hyperlocal Concept has emerged as e-commerce giants like Zomato, and Deliveroo.

In this post, we will be digging deep into the Hyperlocal Marketplace, and how you can convert your Opencart Marketplace Website into a hyperlocal marketplace.

Let us first understand the term Hyperlocal Marketplace. In simple words, it is an eCommerce platform-based extension built to serve nearby target audiences for their varied and instant needs within stipulated time duration by local offline businesses and services.

With the elevated growth of the online marketplace business, people are bending towards having their own online store to increase their range and faster growth.

Faster Delivery Management

Most of the online retailers aim for faster delivery so that they can have more customers with fulfilled needs in a shorter time span.

As we know logistics has been one of the most pressure points of the e-commerce business that can sell or sink your eCommerce business. Infrastructure plays a significant role in smoothing the logistic process.

With the unsatisfied infrastructure in most of the countries, logistics has been a significant game-changer in the e-commerce business in which the person is delivering faster and in some cases, products with a shorter shelf life (like cooked food) will have a major chance to flourish.

So what’s better than reducing the distance between the seller and the buyer. This will boon the eCommerce business to a whole new level. This can only be accomplished with the help of the hyperlocal marketplace, there can be guaranteed faster delivery which is quite a benefit in many businesses in various sectors like food, medicine, and grocery.

Within Localized Range

The fundamental concept behind this marketplace is to provide the customers with products within their specified accessible range. This will benefit both the customer and the merchant as being a part the customer will buy the items and products from the store that are known to them which will ensure right and correct product delivery.

On the other hand, the small merchant connected through this network will be able to increase their sales and grow further. Also will have a recognizable approach in their localized area.

Growth of Local Business

With the marketplace, many of the sellers are now able to sell their products online. Hyperlocal Marketplace is no exception to this. The local business has boomed with the hyperlocal model to a whole new level. Many unknown businesses have grown over time with this model.

Let understand this with an example. Consider you have opened a new shop in a market. For the customer to know about your store will require time and the right amount of advertisement which can be a costly affair. But with the help of this model, your business can be recognized by many local potential customers with just a few clicks.

Easy Order Tracking

Most people think that the role of eCommerce ends after the order is being placed. But as per me, the real game starts after that. If the order is not delivered( in the desired time frame or with care or with proper information) then the chances are that you might not get another order from that same customer.

But with the hyperlocal model, order tracking can be an easy affair and use of some extensions(like order tracking). It becomes really easy for the customer to track where the ordered product has reached and its current status. Mobile apps ( like DeliveryBoy App) can even allow its customer to chat with the store owner and get the live feeds of the delivery boy’s current status.

If talking in particular, these order tracking mechanisms can be a real success in the food industry where product delivery (fresh and fast) is a major concern.

There have been many players in the market that have been working over the hyperlocal concept like Foodpanda Group, Delivery Hero, and Just-Eat. Other prominent players of this industry are GrubHub, Grofers (Locodel Solutions Pvt. Ltd), Swiggy (Bundl Technologies Pvt. Ltd), TinyOwl (TinyOwl Technology Pvt. Ltd), Takeaway.com, Delivery Club, and Yemeksepeti / Foodonclick.

Food Industry 

Deliveroo started as the idea of providing food from a high-end restaurant that does not offer delivery or takeaway to the customers who are at home or work. This started as a small later turned out to be a business worth billions with customers serving over 60 cities and more across the globe.

Let’s take an example of Zomato for instance, a startup from Gurugram in 2008 later turn out to be a food delivery giant in a few years with the command over the delivery system with their app market. The idea that worked behind the success was simple to deliver fast, and fresh food to the customer from those restaurants that do not offer food services.

Grocery and Medical Industry

Grocery shopping is one of the most necessary but sometimes turns out to be a little irritable. Nobody wants to waste their weekend’s grocery shopping, but you can’t ignore the task also. Just imagine a day when you started a day without your morning tea/coffee because there is no milk in the fridge. In such a scenario, you don’t want to wait for 2 or 3 days for the product to deliver to your doorstep. You need the milk at your doorstep in minimal time.

Here the Hyperlocal Grocery Marketplace comes into play. Many of the online grocery delivery like Groffers, Bigbasket is making profits out of this.

What if you got ill need medication but you are not in a condition to go pick your own medication. You don’t need to worry about that scenario. With the Hyperlocal Mobile app, you can easily get your medications at your doorsteps with minimal effort. Apps like Practo, Netmeds are the only things which you always want in such kinds of situations.

Service Industry 

We all know the hyperlocal is not only limited to delivering meals and groceries on-demand at the customer’s doorstep, but the Hyperlocal service industry is also now connecting households with electricians, plumbers, and other service providers. Whether it is beauty service, home tutors, financial advisor, microfinance service provider, car mechanic, real estate agent, insurance agent, plumber, electrician, carpenter, yoga instructor, gym trainer, every service is at our doorstep.

All those days went by when people have to search for a serviceman to do our daily work( like doing laundry, car wash, etc) for this now. You just need to browse apps on a smartphone like Urbanclap you can there find some nearby sanitary stores take the timeslot and done, Plumber will show up in that time-repair your shower and do simple!

Transport Industry

Many car modes of transport/rental car eCommerce work on Hyperlocal model. As they fetch the data of your required location and accordingly provide you the results. Many apps like Uber, access your current location show you the available drivers, you just have to enter your drop location and done. The nearest driver will come to your location at a particular specific time.

In today’s world where hyperlocal has placed its foot strongly in the eCommerce world. You can establish your own hyperlocal marketplace for various platforms like Opencart, Magento, Magento 2, Odoo, and many more.

In this, we will be talking more about the Opencart hyperlocal and its Hyperlocal Marketplace which will enable you to add the local vendor to connect to the e-commerce stream and transform the experience of the customer.

The basic concept is to reduce the time(delivery time) and the cost (shipping/logistics) which will help in increasing the efficiency of the e-commerce system thus attracting a more significant number of potential customers to your site.

The Marketplace Hyperlocal module offers delivery of seamless services on time. Sellers and the owner can add their location according to which their products are displayed to the customer. The seller and owner can also add the shipping rate according to the location range.

Reasons for choosing Hyperlocal Marketplace

• Allows delivering seamless services on time.
• The customer can check the product’s or seller’s availability based on the location.
• Allows you to add custom shipping rates based on the location and price.
• Custom search radius for the customer set by the store owner.
• Mass shipping rates upload through CSV file.

Now you have got the point of how Hyperlocal benefits your website but what about the Importance of Mobile apps, as discussed in many examples the hyperlocal app plays a major role.

With the rise of the new era where everything is coming to your finger reach, our online shopping experience has also changed from desktop/laptops to smartphones. We all know about shopping apps and their advantages as to how it reduces the hassle and makes our shopping experience better.

So it has become essential for all Store owners to have an app for providing a more convenient way to shop from their online store and now Webkul has launched its app Opencart Marketplace Hyperlocal Mobile App.

It converts your Opencart marketplace store into a mobile app. Your customers can easily purchase products on the go. They don’t need to have a laptop or desktop, they can easily explore your store through their smartphones. It will not only benefit the store owner and customer it will benefit the sellers too. 

Reason for choosing Hyperlocal App

• Offers location-based search for products.
• Offers Push Notifications to provide the facility of sending information to customers from time to time.
• The App offers location search in multiple ways(Manual Search, GPS, and Google Maps).
• The seller can manage the orders, sales, and buyers.
• More User-Friendly and customer-attractive layout.
• Fingerprint authentication on customer/seller login.

Note

The Hyperlocal Marketplace is an add-on for the Multi-Vendor Marketplace module. For the Hyperlocal Mobile App, you first need to install the Hyperlocal Marketplace module on your website.

Support

That’s all for How to start local nearby marketplace still have any issues feel free to add a ticket and let us know your views to make the module better contact us.