Gifting marketplace with single-seller carts and pincode delivery

The challenge

An Indian online gifting business wanted to open its store to independent sellers. It already had a polished storefront on OpenCart with the Journal 2 theme, and it used a third-party extension to set delivery charges by pincode, which mattered for gifts sent to different cities.

Turning this into a marketplace came with specific requirements. The client wanted each order to contain products from a single seller, commission to be set for each seller individually, and seller contact details kept off the storefront. The new seller pages also had to fit the existing design, and the marketplace had to work alongside the pincode delivery rules rather than replace them.

What we did

• Multi-seller platform. We supplied and installed our multi-seller extension on the client's server, with installation included.
• Single-seller carts. We restricted the cart so each order contains products from one seller only, as the client required.
• Seller-wise commission. Commission can be set individually for each seller.
• Marketplace-first contact. Seller phone numbers and the "contact seller" button were hidden from buyers.
• Custom seller sign-up. We built seller login and registration pages to the client's own design, matching the Journal 2 storefront.
• Pincode delivery compatibility. We adapted the seller panel so sellers' products work with the third-party pincode delivery extension. When saving products began to fail, we worked with that extension's developer to trace the cause to a server form-field limit.
• Fixes. We resolved an admin error when adding sellers and restored product options that had stopped showing on product pages.

Tech stack

PHP, MySQL, OpenCart, vQmod, Journal 2 theme, multi-seller extension, pincode delivery extension