New! Build A Marketplace with Frontend Submissions 2.7

Grow sales by letting other creators sell their products in your store. With our Frontend Submissions extension we make it easy!

With Frontend Submissions (FES) you create an easy way for other people to submit products to your store. These ‘other people’ are called vendors. Once you have vendors, your site has become a marketplace.

In the past building a marketplace site was hard. But Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) makes it simple. No custom coding required!

🎉 Today we are excited to announce Frontend Submissions version 2.7. Running a marketplace website is easier than ever.

Here are the highlights of this release:

• An all-new experience for email management
• More intuitive menus and settings
• Accessibility enhancements that make FES better for everyone
• Behind-the-scenes improvements and fixes that make FES faster and more reliable

What Is A Marketplace? Why Would I Want to Build One?

You may be wondering what exactly a marketplace is. You may be thinking that it sounds hard to do, or there may be no reason for you to try building one. But there are many reasons to consider it.

📈 Building a marketplace = adding value for your current and potential customers

More products in your store make more sales possible. That’s one nice benefit for you if you build a marketplace.

But let’s think about your customer. There they are, busy running their business and looking for solutions to their problems. 🥺

And you save the day, providing valuable solutions to their problems with your products. You have found a niche. A little segment of the market where your skills and experience can really help others.

Once you have a store set up that is serving a niche, you’re in business! The next step is to continually add more value for your current and potential customers.

One way to add value is to offer other related products (solutions) to their other problems. The fastest way to add more products to your store is often to sell other creator’s products. You don’t have time to build everything. So sell what’s already out there.

Curate a group of products for your customers. Now your store is becoming a one-stop shop. A marketplace.

How An FES Marketplace Works

1. First use EDD + FES to set up a way for other creators to submit products to sell in your store
2. Review vendor products as they come in
3. Approve those you want to sell
4. When these items are sold, you make money, and you pay a commission to the vendor. You get to decide the terms of the revenue split, and control the entire customer experience!

The first thing you’ll notice when setting up a marketplace is that there is a lot of emailing involved.

The good news is that we have thought through all the emails for you! 🙌

Not only that, with Frontend Submissions 2.7 we have rebuilt the entire email experience to make it easier than ever. Let’s take a look.

All-new Email Experience

The FES emails are now located under Downloads > Settings > Emails > Frontend Submissions.

Here we have a redesigned view of all the emails needed to manage the frontend submission process. It’s easy to see each email’s status and click through to edit.

You can quickly enable or disable each email with just a click. The individual emails are ready to send, with sensible default text.

Or, edit their content with the rich text editor. Make use of a wide array of Template Tags that automatically insert things like first names, last names, post title (the name of the product) and so on. Click here for a full Template Tag guide.

Redesigned Menu Structure

We’ve made Frontend Submissions more tightly integrated with Easy DIgital Downloads. FES has its own menu item for general settings under FES. The email settings have been moved under Emails as shown above.

Vendor Forms

Another big component of building a marketplace are the forms. You’ll need a form for vendors to register on your site, submit products, and create a profile. FES has all this built and ready for you.

FES includes a powerful form builder for customizing each form just as you need it for your business.

🔍 Learn more about FES basic setup

Version 2.7 has a lot of behind-the-scenes improvements. The form editing interface has been updated with better accessibility, validation, and HTML 5 markup.

Other Improvements

There are also more than 15 subtle behind-the-scenes improvements and bug fixes to the plugin. We’ve even consolidated the base code to streamline it and make it more secure.

Mark(etplace) It Up

Turn your digital product store into a marketplace with Frontend Submissions. Make more money and help more people!

Commissions

When you sell outside vendor products in your store, you’ll need to pay them. This is called paying a commission. FES works perfectly with our Commissions extension.

Most people who use FES also use our Commissions extension. Don’t worry, you don’t have to buy both extensions! Both are included in a Professional Pass.

• Click here to upgrade an existing Pass to Professional
• Click here for 50%-off introductory pricing on a Professional Pass

If you already have a Professional Pass, log in to your account now and get started!

Thanks for using and supporting EDD. We are working every day to make EDD better, as fast as we can type.

Cheers to your growth,

Joe Wells
Product Educator, Easy Digital Downloads

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