There are so many ways to start a business online. These businesses need a platform to display and sell the products to the customers. But it will be so difficult to run an online business on a website only through back-end settings. Every time the admin needs to visit the dashboard and edit the product and then again return to front to look at the changes. To solve this problem of repeated reloading and fetching on the shop page, WCFM has provided front-end panels to completely manage your products, shop, vendors, and apply necessary settings.
It has provided a very high quality of UI to the elements of the plugin. Every option looks premium and works so smoothly on the site. It integrates properly with Woocommerce elements.
For using this plugin, WooCommerce must be installed on your site.
Settings after Activation Process
After activating the plugin, it will ask to set up the other front end options.
These set up options will include:
Dashboard Setup: The theme and other effects of the front end shop can be edited from here and most interestingly, these could also be modified later on too. When these settings are enabled, your marketplace will look great from the front end.
Marketplace Set up: This will let you enable some of the approval settings along with the cover image of the market. Everything will look like premium market editing options. This will let you edit the banners and logo of the store directly from the front page. These options also highlight options such as store labels, product limits, banner dimensions, and many more moderation options.
Commission Setup: In this option, you can create commission rules for both Vendors and Admin. The commission can be charged either in percentage form or direct cash. Who will take the shipping charge and coupon deductions can also be decided here. Some taxes can also be applied on products.
Withdrawal Setup: The source and method of withdrawal is set in the beginning.
Registration Setup: Store registration is set in the beginning of the installation. You can also modify the settings further.
How to apply the settings of the WCFM Marketplace plugin?
On the WordPress dashboard, there is a small setting option for the WCFM plugin. Just go to the Dashboard >> WCFM options.
You will find the page setup option in the WCFM dashboard on the front-end.
Another option for reaching directly to the front end Dashboard of the WCFM is the Marketplace option on the WordPress dashboard.
Features in WCFM Plugin
Let’s take a look at the features of WCFM marketplace plugin:
1. Commission Moderation
Any vendor or admin can be given a commission from the front end. Commissions can be decided on each product individually and every vendor/admin will get a different commission. These commissions can be decided either by the vendor or by the admin who is managing the store.
2. Withdrawal & Reverse Withdrawal mechanism
When there is a need to pay the vendor, then this withdrawal mechanism is followed and reversing the money-back to the admin is reverse withdrawal.
3. Refund Option
When any fault or any type of miss-delivery happens then this refund option is very useful to the client. These refunds are initiated through auto-approval or manual approval by the store owner or the admin.
4. Vendor Ledger Book
It gives vendors and admin the easiest way to check all their store transactions – commission, withdrawal, refund, partial-refund and charges, from your frontend.
5. Inquiry Management System
Every Product has its own inquiry management system that will ensure the demands of the customer and the modification needed in the product. These inquiries are necessary to improve the demand for the product.
When this Ask a Question button is clicked, a popup will be displayed on the screen.
6. Terms and Policies of the Store and Products
Admin can define every term and policy from the front end now. So, there will be no rush for the wrong services by these vendors.
These Policies are seen on the product page.
7. Time Limits
The time limit option will tell the customer whether the store is open or close. These time limits can be applied from the store setting option.
8. Review to the store
Review settings can be configured from the settings option of the store. Direct review can be submitted from the product page.
Review Options available from the product page.
9. Shipping Options
This feature allows you to set up the shipping management system for the store. You can configure the shipping options by Country, Zone, or Weight.
Before setting the shipping option for the WCFM plugin ensure that the shipping options are set in WooCommerce.
When every option is set in WooCommerce, come back to the Marketplace dashboard >> settings >> Shipping settings and set these settings here.
10. Map integration
Map integration is really challenging for the plugin but this plugin provides an extended option to Woocommerce that will let the customer use map location during purchase.
11. Multiple vendors for one product
Using this option, more than one vendor can be assigned for a single product from the front end.
12. SEO
Vendors can perform the SEO of their stores by providing a good description title and image attributes.
13. Additional Store Articles
When there are articles available for any product, then it is very easy to manage the store and promote it worldwide. These articles can be published by users as well as vendors from the front end.
14. Discount Coupons
Vendors can configure and generate coupons for their store from the frontend directly.
15. Media File Manager
Vendors will be able to manage the media files from frontend and thus can easily configure them as per requirement.
16. Catalog option
Vendors can configure to list their products in catalog mode directly from the front-end of the site.
17. Extended Product Fields
Vendors have the feasibility to add custom fields for their products so as to make it more viable to their customers.
18. Import and export
WCFM provides an inbuilt product importer/exporter for your multi-vendor store. Vendors will be allowed to export their products and import products to their stores directly from the frontend.
19. Activity Notifications
Vendors as well as the admin will get notifications of the activities in the store.
20. Public Announcements
You will have a full feature notice/announcement board wherein one can see all the activities performed. This can be even used as a store forum and the vendor can reply to the topics.
21. Knowledgebase option
It’s very difficult to inform everything to all vendors over mail or chat. WCFM will give admin in-built knowledge base for their vendors. Admin can set their instructions and it will be available to all vendors. To add new questions to the KnowledgeBase, click on the book icon on the right side.
22. Capability Management
You can easily manage the capabilities of different users such as vendors, staff, and managers. This allows the store owner to have complete authority over the store and filter the access as required to the users.
23. Easy Menu Management
It allows you to configure the menu of your store easily with better flexibility directly from the frontend. There is an option on the Top-bar menu to directly reach the front-end options.
24. Email Moderation
You can now configure your preferred email address for different email notifications via email settings provided by WCFM, it gives you powerful options to configure your mail settings directly from the frontend.
25. Product Listing Options
You can enjoy the most powerful listings integration. Vendors will have their own listings dashboard and can create products for listing at the time of creating their listings.
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26. Members & Staffs Grouping
Managers and staff could be assigned to their tasks on site over every store.
27. Bulk Product
Bulk products are sold in this front end store that will bring a large no. of sellers who can sell wholesale products. This will attract more customers to the site.
28. COMPOSITE PRODUCTS
Related products and chained products are needed when any product is sold in parts. This feature enables multi-vendor to sell different parts of a single product.
30. Analytics
Strategy planning is the key part of a business and here you will get it already integrated on the dashboard of WCFM. No such settings and extra plugins are needed to do add-ons.
Extra Features
Other than these features WCFM provides more options to display a cool front shop. It has so many options to make the store more attractive and user friendly.
Shipping Options
- Shipping Rate By Zone
- Shipping Rate By Country
- Shipping Rate By Distance (Distance rate shipping)
- Shipping Rate By Weight (Rule and by per unit cost)
- Shipping Class Support
- Restriction by Country
- Restriction by Zip Code
Payment options
- Stripe
- Stripe Split Pay
- PayPal
- PayPal Direct Pay
- Wirecard (Moip)
- Skrill
- Bank Transfer
- Cash Pay
Shortcodes included in WCFM
wcfm_stores
List all stores – Map and Radius Filter
wcfm_stores_map
Stores in Map
wcfm_store_info
Display any store info by ID
wcfm_stores_carousel
Stores as slider
wcfm_store_hours
Store opening-closing hours
wcfm_shipping_time
Product estimated shipping time display
wcfm_more_offers
Other vendors pricing offer for a product
wcfm_store_fb_feed
Store Facebook page feed
wcfm_store_twitter_feed
Store Twitter feed
wcfm_inquiry
Inquiry button for any store, add store=”store_id” parameter
wcfm_follow
Follow button for any store, add store=”store_id” parameter
Every order made by the customers can be seen in the order option of the dashboard.
How To Add a New vendor?
To add a new vendor, there are no such long procedures as it were earlier when the admin has to rush towards the WordPress dashboard and add the vendor then assign products.
Now, the admin can perform everything from the front-end of the website.
Just go to the “your host/Store-manager/” page then point to the store vendor option and click on Add New that’s it you are done.
Now fill in the attributes of the store and bring the store live with a list of its products.
When the Store is created then it will be directly visible on the store list and shop page also.
Store visible on the product page.
The store name is also visible on the product checkout details.
Stores can be moderated easily with additional options on the list.
There are options to edit, analyze, and remove the store directly from the list.
How To Create a New Product from Front End?
For creating a product from the front end you need to follow simple steps:
- Login to the WordPress site and go to the Front-end manager page.
- “yourhost/store-manager/”
- On the dashboard of WCFM there is an option of Products >> New Product >> Fill attributes of the product and submit.
During the Product adding process there is an option available to assign the product to the store. Here the store could be assigned to which the product belongs. This option is located at the bottom of the product page.
The product is live and you can also modify it from front-end using the edit option of each product on the left-hand side.
There Is one more way to add a product is by clicking on the floating button on the dashboard.
When this floating button is clicked, it will show a popup to add a product.
Products are kept in a proper table for bulk moderation from the front end.
How To Apply Coupon During Checkout?
To apply the coupon, you need to create a new coupon from the Coupons option in the dashboard.
Here, the coupon is created and directly applied without any further settings.
Coupon applied during checkout. Price deduction is clearly seen.
Price: FREE
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Conclusion
For the complicated method of creating products and adding products to the store. We have found the easiest way to create and publish products to the live site with the best UI and map API integrations.
In this Front-end market place, there are so many options to modify the products from the front end. These will be further modified from the product page itself.
Now we don’t have to fetch to the dashboard again and again for any minor updates to the product.
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