Thank you so much for doing this, the Multi Vendor platform is really important to us, and the more we can progress it the better it will become.
However I do have a request for further development, I would love to see the following items included as I believe they are essential for anyone running such a site.
1) Vendor Ratings. 2) Vendor Contact and Address details. 3) Vendor Policies (Terms, Privacy etc) 4) Shipping Locations (Where the vendor would ship too, to avoid disappointing potential customers) 5) The ability to display Vendors and Products based on the clients location.
I am sure there are more, but these would certainly satisfy most developers needs.
for an excellent example of vendors functionality, see http://www.notonthehighstreet.com
vendor information page - see below for an example : http://www.notonthehighstreet.com/mariaallenjewellery
and a product page : http://www.notonthehighstreet.com/tribe/product/wood-sunglasses-red-rosewood
--------------------- vendor information page notice that the vendor information page has links on the left for specific information
storefront - link to the vendors main informaton page products - link to all the specific vendors products customer comments - usefull way of highlighting this (without the complexity of abay or amazon style feedback) terms & conditions - vendor conditions returns - vendors returns policy delivery - vendors delivery policy
~~~ vendor product page the main thing about the product page is that it has a 'more items from this seller' slider
(it also has a 'you may also like' slider that shows other sellers products' - good idea but could be be an optional feature )
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I think Vendor contact details should be taken in a controlled way (like customer registration) so that it can be displayed uniformly in the public store (which i think is best practice) - otherwise, every vendor could have their contact details displayed differently and a customer has to search for the the details
vendor business name : vendor name :
vendor description : ( text editor )
vendor street address 1 : vendor street address 2 : vendor town : vendor country : vendor postcode : ( maybe as a link to google maps target="_blank" ) vendor telephone number : vendor mobile telephone number : vendor email address : ( :mailto ) vendor website : ( target="_blank" )
Storeowner should be able to decide whether the 'vendor website' should be displayed - storeowner might not want outgoing links
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it might be prudent to include a 'report' button on all vendors pages whereby a user could report to the site admin if a vendor (or product) is inappropriate.
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storeowner should be able to limit the quantity of products a vendor can have uploaded.
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storeowner should be able to limit the amount of pictures that vendors can upload per product.