Caribbean marketplace with seller sub-domain stores and Stripe payouts
Over several years we built out a Caribbean multi-vendor marketplace: seller stores on their own sub-domains or domains, Stripe Connect payouts, subscription plans, a platform upgrade and a load-time cut from 23 to under 7 seconds.
Results
- Each seller gets an automatically created sub-domain store, or a private domain
- Store upgraded to OpenCart 3 with Journal 3; client could add products from mid-November 2019
- Stripe Connect seller onboarding delivered (Apr 2020) and recurring seller plans completed (Jun 2020)
- Page load time reduced from about 23 seconds to 6.7 seconds (Aug 2020), later measured at about 4.7 seconds (Oct 2020)
- Repeat work across more than three years
The challenge
A Caribbean entrepreneur wanted a regional online marketplace where each vendor runs what feels like an independent shop: its own sub-domain or domain, branding, menus and promotions, while the platform takes a commission on every sale and charges sellers for plans.
The marketplace grew over several years, and so did its requirements. The original payout method, PayPal Adaptive Payments, was deprecated by PayPal, so vendor payouts needed a new route. The store also had to move to a newer platform version and theme, sellers needed region-specific selling and flexible commission, and by 2020 pages were taking more than 20 seconds to load.
What we did
- Marketplace foundation. We installed our own multi-vendor and seller-shipping extensions on OpenCart, customised them to the client's theme on our demo server first, then deployed to the client's hosting. We initially configured PayPal Adaptive Payments for vendor-direct payouts.
- Seller storefronts. Every seller gets an automatically created sub-domain, or can register with a private domain that we configured at DNS level. Sellers choose from 12 store layouts and manage their own logo, footer contact details, slideshow and menu. We added a paid front-page placement option, forced HTTPS on seller stores and set Jamaica as the default shipping country.
- Upgrade and new rules. We moved the store to OpenCart 3 with Journal 3, carrying over seller shipping, then added per-product region availability and per-product commission rates.
- Payments. Stripe Connect replaced the deprecated PayPal flow: sellers connect from their dashboard as sub-accounts, and commission is deducted per vendor automatically. We then built Stripe recurring subscriptions so seller plans are created in the admin and registration starts a subscription.
- Shipping and fixes. We upgraded the UPS shipping method to work for sellers and fixed registration, product save, sub-domain and search-extension errors.
- Speed optimisation. CSS sprites, deferred JavaScript, server-side image optimisation, browser caching and fewer requests.
- Documentation. User guides for store creation and subscription plans.
Tech stack
PHP, MySQL, OpenCart 3, Journal 3, vQmod, Stripe Connect, Stripe Billing, UPS, cPanel, optipng, jpegoptim
Project facts
- Industry
- Multi-vendor e-commerce marketplace
- Client
- a Caribbean multi-vendor marketplace
- Country
- Jamaica
- Year
- 2017–2020
- Engagement
- Direct client
Services
Technologies
Integrations
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