SevenFifty has launched the next generation of marketplace features to help distributors expand their ecommerce offerings—at no additional cost. Now, all SevenFifty distributor partners can elevate their ecommerce strategy by building their own customizable Storefront right on the SevenFifty Marketplace. With their personalized Storefront URL, they can drive buyers directly to their branded web page.
We’ll be expanding Storefronts over time with even more features. For now, here’s everything you need to know about Marketplace Storefronts, from creating your own homepage to using your SevenFifty Lists to showcase your products.
What is a Marketplace Storefront?
A SevenFifty Marketplace Storefront is essentially a mini website exclusive to your distributor company, housed within the SevenFifty Marketplace. Consider it your “home” within SevenFifty. It’s a place where you can direct buyers to browse and explore your portfolio along with related content and promotions that you control. You even get your own SevenFifty weblink branded to your company that looks like this: sevenfifty.com/distributor-name. So you can easily update your homepage content, and immediately share it alongside your active webpage with your existing and potential customers.
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The advantage for distributors is that visitors to your Storefront will not only see the promotions and content that is most important to you, but they can then easily view your portfolio. For logged in SevenFifty buyers, they’ll see market-specific wholesale pricing and can submit orders directly to your reps—something that is not possible on a standard, public webpage.
See Storefronts in action! Check out these fantastic examples of Marketplace Storefronts from Empire Merchants, M.S. Walker, and Royal Wine Corp.
What You Need to Know to Get Started
What used to be called your “Company Profile” page has been upgraded into your Marketplace Storefront. This upgrade is a free feature for our distributor partners. Access your company’s Marketplace Storefront in the Account Features section of your dashboard or in the top right dropdown menu.
1. Learn About The New Storefront Navigation
The main components of your Storefront navigation are:
Home
This is where your brand can really stand out! Once you add and publish your Homepage, it appears as an additional tab and the default landing page on your Storefront. Before publishing, you will want to add a mix of promotional content sections, featured products, headlines, calls to action, and featured lists. Learn more about these promotional sections below.
About
Until you add your Homepage, this is your default landing page for your Storefront. The information here is populated from the company profile you provided when your company first launched on SevenFifty. Just like your Homepage, you can add promotional sections here as well.
Portfolio
This links directly to a filtered view of your portfolio on the SevenFifty Marketplace.
Order History
Customers that order on SevenFifty will see their individual order history with your company on this page.
2. Leverage Various Promotional Sections
These are the promotional sections that you can use to customize your Homepage:
Product List
This is possibly the most exciting promotional section for your Storefront. Create a list on SevenFifty, generate a link, and paste it into your homepage. The products display exactly as they appear on your list with custom price quotes and an add to cart widget.
Featured Lists
This is the most customizable section available to you. Add multiple lists, links to filtered search results, or any other location. Add your own thumbnail image and text.
Call To Action
This is a banner that includes an image, a header, description, and call to action button (CTA) that you can direct to your portfolio, a supplier partner, an event listing, or any other initiative you’re currently promoting.
Text and Image
Use this section to tell buyers more about your company with an accompanying image. Choose either Text and Left Image or Text and Right Image in a two-column display.
Header and Text
This is a simple content section for plain header and description text that you can use to welcome buyers to your Homepage or make general announcements.
3. Customize Your Brand Presence on Your Storefront
Your Storefront is already live with a default design, but you’ll want to spend some time adding in your company branding and fine tuning your design. Our interface makes it very easy to bring your brand to life on the SevenFifty Marketplace with these five steps:
- Upload a banner image to replace the default banner. Only admins can change banner images.
- Design and publish your Homepage with promotional sections. You can add your homepage, create your promotions, and fine tune your page before publishing! We recommend three to four promotional sections, but that’s up to you and it’s editable at any time.
- Rearrange the order of your promotions. Each new section is added to the top of your Homepage but you can move each up and down from the Edit drawer.
- Create promotions on your About page. Promotions are not just for your Homepage. Customize content sections on your About page as well.
4. Add Product and Portfolio Promotions to Your Homepage
Once you’ve added your Homepage you are ready to start adding product promotions, and you can do that using the SevenFifty Lists feature you’re already familiar with. There are two ways you can leverage SevenFifty Lists on the Homepage: “Product List” and “Featured Lists.”
Product Lists
Use Product Lists to showcase specific products within a List that you create and control. Add as many products to your List as you would like and buyers can use the carousel to scroll through your selection.
Featured Lists
Use Featured Lists to highlight multiple lists such as “Rosés,” “Large formats,” “Holiday Specials,” “Team Favorites,” and more. You can highlight product collections in several ways: by linking to Lists, filtered search results, or directly to your products on SevenFifty.
5. Using Your Homepage for Content and Promotions
With options including Header and Text, Text and Image, or a Call to Action, you can choose the right template and layout for your needs and add your own text and images.
Use this page as part of your marketing strategy to:
- Tell buyers more about your company
- Promote your core brands and suppliers
- Announce new releases
- Post events and tasting details
- Share company and product news
- List contact information
6. Add Compelling, High Quality Images
Whether you’re thinking about your banner, content sections, or featured lists, high quality images that are properly sized will really help your Homepage shine. Below are the recommended dimensions and specifications for each section:
- Banner image: 1440px x 200px | 10 MB | PNG, JPG, TIFF, or GIF
- Featured Lists: 525px x 400px | 2 MB | PNG, JPG, or GIF
- Text and image: 570px x 240px(min) | 2 MB | PNG, JPG, or GIF
- Call to action: 1140px x 215px(min) | 2 MB | PNG, JPG, or GIF
If you need assistance formatting your images, here are some free tools that can help you resize, crop, and edit images before uploading them to your Storefront.
- Canva: https://www.canva.com/
- Pixlr: https://pixlr.com/
7. How to Use Your Custom URL Link
Your custom URL is a unique weblink for your Storefront and is something similar to sevenfifty.com/distributor-name. Find yours here on your account dashboard (login required). Use this link as your ecommerce landing page in email signatures, company website hyperlinks, external ads, and more. Remember: Your Storefront link is already live. It’s up to you to leverage the easy-to-use tools to further customize it with your brand, product collections, and promotions—and to widely share the link with existing and potential customers.
Trade members will see their local wholesale pricing when logged in to SevenFifty. Consumers and non-SevenFifty users who access the url will only see product information without wholesale pricing.
Now that you’ve learned all about SevenFifty Marketplace Storefronts for distributors, you’re ready for business! Once you’ve an amazing landing page for your portfolio, be sure to share it with our team so we can give you a high five and offer you even more tips for promoting it to trade buyers.
Interested in your very own Custom Storefront that lives independently and outside of the SevenFifty marketplace? Learn more about our white-label ecommerce sites for distributors.
