Multi-vendor book marketplace where many sellers list the same title

The challenge

A Turkish entrepreneur was building an online marketplace where independent sellers offer books to buyers. Books are a special case for a marketplace: the same title is often available from many sellers at once, and buyers want to see who has it in stock rather than browse duplicate product pages.

The client also wanted a simpler account model. Instead of separate buyer and seller registrations, anyone with an account should be able to buy and sell from the same login. The store already used a premium theme, so the marketplace features had to fit into its existing look rather than replace it.

What we did

• Marketplace foundation. We installed our multi-seller marketplace extension on the client's store and set it up alongside the existing theme.
• Combined buyer and seller accounts. We merged customer and seller accounts, so a single login can be used both to shop and to sell.
• Many sellers, one product. Sellers can list a book that already exists in the catalogue, so a single product page carries offers from several sellers instead of each seller creating a duplicate.
• In-stock seller display. Product pages list the sellers who currently have the item in stock, with the first seller shown by default and add-to-cart available for the other sellers too.
• Seller page fixes. We resolved a display issue on seller pages and implemented the further changes set out in the client's written specification.

Tech stack

PHP, MySQL, OpenCart