Note: This article was created to support the integration phase for Marketplace Vendors. If you're ready to get started as a vendor, we'd love to hear from you. Apply to join the Marketplace!
About this Guide
This is a comprehensive guide designed to equip integrating vendors with everything they need to complete their Marketplace integration.
Table of Contents
- About this Guide
- Getting Started
- A Vendor's Place in the Vendasta Ecosystem
- Partner Center
- Vendor Center
- Task Manager
- Business App
- Reseller Communication
- Glossary
Getting Started
Congratulations on beginning your integration into the Vendasta Marketplace! The Vendasta Marketplace is a powerful platform for getting your app in front of Resellers worldwide.
A Vendor's Place in the Vendasta Ecosystem
What is Vendasta?
Vendasta is a white-label platform that includes a Marketplace of over 200 digital solutions. Resellers sign up under a subscription model allowing them to resell these products and services to their clients.
How does a Vendor fit in?
Vendors play a massive role in the Vendasta ecosystem. Vendors are the building blocks of the Vendasta distribution channel of products and services for Resellers and their SMBs.
Who will be buying my product?
Your products and service will be purchased by the Reseller through the Vendasta Marketplace and then sold to the Reseller’s client. Note, it may also be the case that the Reseller purchases the product or service for their own use.
Does the buying experience differ if the Reseller's client is a multi-location/brand?
No, each location of a multi-location group will need to have its own instance of the product activated on their own account. For example, if the business has 5 locations, the Reseller will need to pay 5 x the Wholesale price and activate the product on each of the five locations separately.
What Does a Marketplace Integration Entail?
There are two different integration paths that you could go down based on whether your offering is a product or a service. For both a product and a service integration, there will be three projects. Regardless of whether you are offering a product or a service, all three projects will need to be completed before your product is released into the Marketplace. Click on the below links to view an interactive flow chart outlining a Marketplace Integration for Product Vendors and Service Vendors.
Product: Operations, Technical, and Marketing projects
Service: Operations, Fulfillment, and Marketing projects
The upcoming sections of this guide will go through each project in detail, outlining the exact steps you need to complete.
Communication and Updates
Before you begin, it is important to understand how our team will communicate with you and your team throughout your Marketplace integration.
Step by Step Instructions:
Step 1: Access your Business App through your Partner Center by first logging into Partner Center > Businesses > Accounts > Vendor X Marketplace Integration > Open in Business App.
Step 2: Once you’ve signed in, you will be able to access your project checklists through the Projects tab.
These are shared checklists that are updated by the Vendasta team as tasks within your integration are completed. Please note. For the status of the task to change you will need to reach out to the Vendor team for review via email. You can request a review of a specific task or the project in its entirety.
When you complete a task and have notified the Vendasta team you would like a review, you will notice that the status of the task will change to completed if no further revisions need to be made.
Watch the below video walkthrough on accessing your task lists.
We ask that you work through each integration to the best of your ability and follow the project guides closely.
Vendasta Platform
In order to complete your integration, you will need to access the Vendasta platform. If you do not have credentials to access partners.vendasta.com, please reach out to your Vendor Coordinator to set up your account.
The Vendasta Platform consists of five different centers:
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Partner Center: For Resellers (Channel Partners)
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Sales and Success Center: For Salespeople
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Vendor Center: For Vendors
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Task Manager: For Fulfillment
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Business App: For Clients (end-user dashboard)
You will complete your integration within the Vendasta platform, so it is important that you understand the basic ins and outs. There are two primary areas where a Vendor will live both during your integration and after your integration is complete: Partner Center and Vendor Center. If you are a Vendor offering a service, you will also need to understand and be proficient in Task Manager. You will have received a login to partners.vendasta.com which is your login URL for Partner Center, the gateway to the entire Vendasta platform.
The next few sections will outline the basic need-to-know functionalities of both Partner Center, Task Manager, and Vendor Center. We will also touch on Business App, the end-user portal where clients will access your app.
Partner Center
Partner Center is your gateway to the Vendasta Platform.
There are several key actions that you will need to execute in Partner Center in order to get set up properly and have continued success with the partnership.
Partner Center is primarily designed as an area for Resellers to manage their accounts and prospects, create email marketing campaigns and automations, visit Marketplace and build out their store, manage and send invoices, and activate and deactivate products on accounts. For a Vendor, the following features of Partner Center will be essential to understand:
Adding your Team Members
To give team members access to the Vendasta Platform, follow these steps.
- Navigate to Administration in the side menu bar
2. Select My team
3. Click Invite team member in the top right corner
4. Enter in their information and provide them with Admin access. If you are a vendor offering a service, you will also want to provide them with Digital Agent access, which will allow them to log in to Task Manager.
Create Accounts
As you progress in your integration, and when you are complete, you will need to create an account to test out your product in the Vendasta platform. Accounts represent a single business or business location. To create an account, follow these steps:
1. Navigate to Businesses on the left-hand menu bar and select Accounts
2. Click Create account
3. You have two options:
a) Option 1: If your business can be found on Google, you can type it into the search bar and pull up the account you want to add. All the business information will be populated automatically based on what is available on Google.
b) Option 2: If your business cannot be found on Google, you can create the account manually by selecting Skip to Account Creation. You will fill in all the business details manually.
Activate Products
Products are purchased in Partner Center. Once you’ve created an account, you can begin to activate or test your own products on it. Follow these steps to activate a product:
1. Navigate to the Marketplace tab in the left menu bar in Partner Center and Click Discover Products.
2. Select the product you are interested in and make sure to click Start Selling which will make it available to activate on accounts. This step also adds the product to the store.
3. Select the Accounts tab under Businesses on the left-hand menu bar.
4. Click into the account you want to activate the product on.
5. Click Activate Products.
6. You can either activate Packages (bundles of products) or individual products. To activate an individual product, make sure you select the Products tab. Find the product you “started selling” and select it. Click Proceed to Next Step.
7. Fill out the order form (if applicable)
8. Click Purchase.
Access Marketplace
Partner Center is your portal for accessing Vendasta’s Marketplace where your product will soon live. As a Vendor, you have full access to the Marketplace. We suggest spending some time browsing through the Marketplace products to see what other Vendors have done. Look for complimentary products and competitor products. Gain an understanding of how your product fits within the larger Vendasta Marketplace and think about how it is adding value or filling a void.
When searching your own product, you will not find it under Discover Products.
Instead, you will want to navigate to Marketplace > Products > My Products.
Your product will always show as $0 / Free in your own Partner Center.
Manage Users and Access to Business App
Manage/Add Users
1. Navigate to the Business tab and select Users
2. Click Create User
3. Add in the User’s name and email address. You can send a welcome email to the user which will provide them with their login link to Business App and give them the option to set a password.
4. Once you’ve created your user, you will be able to see them in your Manage Users list and provide them with access to an account. To provide account access, select Edit Permissions
5. Click Add Account
6. Select the Account you would like to provide access to and click Add Accounts
7. Once you’ve added a user to an account, you can further edit the account access permissions
Access Business App
1. Impersonate a User: Businesses > Accounts > Users > Impersonate
Vendor Center
For a Vendor, Vendor Center serves two primary purposes:
1. Vendor Center is where you will build out your Marketplace offering. It is also where you will go to make any changes or revisions to your product after it has been released into the Marketplace.
2. Vendor Center is where you will go to access the list of Resellers selling your product. You will also be able to access a list of the Reseller’s clients who have purchased the product. Through Vendor Center, you will be able to directly communicate with the Resellers once they start selling your offering.
The following points are essential for a Vendor to understand:
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Accessing Vendor Center
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Adding and building out your product
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Resellers and Accounts Tab
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Revising your product post-release
Accessing Vendor Center
Vendor Center URL: vendors.vendasta.com
There are two ways to access Vendor Center - directly through vendors.vendasta.com or through Partner Center. To access Vendor Center, either directly or via Partner Center, you will need to be added as a Partner Center Admin.
Adding Your Product
Watch the video below for instructions on how to add your product to Vendor Center.
Building Your Product
Watch the video below for instructions on how to begin building out your product in Vendor Center. In-depth information and guidelines will be in the respective onboarding guides for technical project or fulfillment project, operations project, and marketing project.
Resellers and Accounts
Resellers
The Resellers Tab in Vendor Center provides you with a list of Resellers who are selling your product. A Reseller will show up in your Resellers tab once they have enabled your product by clicking Start Selling (unlocked it from the Marketplace and made it available to add to their store and activate on accounts). The Resellers tab will reveal when a Reseller enabled your product and if they are selling it in their store. This tab will also show information about the number of times a product has been activated, active accounts, and their Vendasta sales representative.
The Resellers tab is also where you will be able to contact the Vendasta Reseller. If you click the speech cloud, you will be taken to Inbox where you can send the Reseller a message.
Accounts
There are 4 tabs under “Accounts” in Vendor Center: Active Accounts, Pending Accounts, Deactivated Accounts, Deactivation Reasons
Active Accounts
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A list of all accounts your product is currently active on.
Pending Account
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If your product requires approval before it can be activated on an account, any account pending activation will show up here for you to approve or not approve.
Deactivated Accounts
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A list of all accounts your product has been deactivated on.
Deactivation Reasons
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When a product is deactivated, the Reseller is asked to provide a reason why. Their answer will show up in this tab.
Making Changes to a Released Product
After your product is released into the Marketplace, you may want to make changes to your offering. You are able to do this in Vendor Center. It is important to note, however, that when you make a change to your product after it has been released, any change will need to be approved by Vendasta before the new version is published in the Marketplace.
To request approval on a change, navigate to the “Compare Products” tab and click the Request Approval button.
Task Manager
Task Manager is important to understand for Vendors integrating a service.
Task Manager is Vendasta’s in-platform project management tool. Tracking the fulfillment of your service through Task Manager is a requirement for all service vendors.
More information on Task Manager can be found in your Fulfillment Integration documentation [insert link].
The following Task Manager features are essential for a Service Vendor to understand:
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Accessing Task Manager
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Adding your team to Task Manager
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Creating templates (See Fulfillment Project documentation)
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Communicating with clients (Seel Fulfillment Project documentation)
Accessing Task Manager
There are two ways that you can access Task Manager
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Through Partner Center
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Directly through https://task-manager.biz/
To access Task Manager through Partner Center, locate the “Tasks” tab on your left-hand side menu bar and click “Open Task Manager.”
Providing Team Members with Access to Task Manager
To provide your team member with Task Manager, you will need to add them as a “Digital Agent” under Administration > My Team > Invite team member.
Business App
Business App is the area of the platform designed for clients. Business App was built specifically for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to provide them with a single portal where they can access products and services purchased through the Reseller’s Store, maintain their business profile, view proof of performance reporting, and maintain their list of customers.
The following points are essential for a Vendor to understand:
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The value of Business App
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Viewing a product or service
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The Executive Report
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Activity Stream
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Product Trials
Watch this video for a high-level overview of the value Business App provides to the SMB client.
Viewing a Product or Service in Business App
Product
When your product is purchased, it can be directly accessed through the client’s Business App under the “My Products” tab. Clients also have the choice to pin products to the side menu bar for easy access.
By allowing clients to access all their solutions through one centralized portal, managing their online presence is made easy.
Service
When a client activates your service, they will be able to track the progress of their order through their Business App dashboard under the “Projects” tab.
By clicking the drop-down icon, SMBs are able to stay up to date on the progress of their order, see what steps have been completed, and what steps are remaining. Allowing full transparency into the fulfillment process will keep both Resellers and their clients informed on progress.
Executive Report
The Executive Report is a proof of performance reporting tool that is available for clients in their Business App. The Executive Report gives clients a roundup of recent activity and any changes in their digital marketing presence. It generates automatically on either a monthly or weekly basis. The Executive Report is a great way to build trust in a product and growth through time. A more in depth look at the Exective report can be found in the Executive Report Overview.
It is a requirement for all product vendors to integrate into the Executive Report.
Reseller Communication (Inbox Messages)
Resellers will want to communicate with you through the Platform via Inbox Messaging. To access your messages, navigate to the top left corner of Partner Center, and within the navigation bar, click Messages.
Notifications
Partner Center Admins will only receive notifications for Inbox messages, so you may want to add multiple Team Members or add a group email address monitored by any member of your team who is responsible for responding to these inbound messages. Please refer to the Adding your Team Members section of this guide.
Notification preferences are also set per Team Member within Partner Center. For additional information about Reseller Notifications, please refer to this guide.
Glossary
Vendor
A Vendor is someone who has a product listed in the Vendasta Marketplace. There are two types of Vendors: Product Vendor and Service Vendor. Product Vendors are typically independent software vendors offering a product with deep technical integrations whereas Service Vendors provide a fulfilled service such as web design or blog posts.
Vendasta Marketplace
An online Marketplace of products and services that are available for Resellers to purchase and resell to their clients.
Reseller
A Reseller is someone who has signed up under Vendasta’s subscription model and will resell Marketplace products to their clients. In the Vendasta ecosystem, reseller, Channel partner, and Agency are used interchangeably.
Client
The client is the customer of the Reseller. In the Vendasta ecosystem, client, end user, and SMB are used interchangeably.
SMB
An SMB is a small-to-medium-sized business. Most of Vendasta’s Resellers sell to SMBs.
Product
A product is an app that this listed in the Vendasta Marketplace. Products are usually defined by the fact that they have a deep technical integration into the Vendasta Platform.
Service
A listing in the Marketplace that refers to fulfillment work that is completed for or on behalf of a client.
Partner Center
Partner Center is the central hub for Resellers. In Partner Center, Resellers are able to manage their accounts, create email marketing campaigns and automation, visit Marketplace and build out their store, manage and send invoice, and activate products on accounts.
Sales and Success Center
Sales and Success Center is Vendasta’s CRM and is designed for salespeople. In Sales and Success Center, salespeople can manage prospects and clients, create and track opportunities in a pipeline, and manage customer interactions.
Vendor Center
Vendor Center is the area of the platform where Vendors can go to build out their marketplace offering and connect with Resellers.
Task Manager
Task Manager is Vendasta’s project management tool.
Business App
Business App is the end user dashboard and is the portal where end users will go to access the products and services that they have purchased. Business App is also home to end user reporting in the form of the Executive Report where they can see how the products and services that they have purchased have improved their online presence.
Store
The Reseller’s online store where they can add the products and services from the Marketplace. that they are wanting to resell. Depending on each Reseller’s configurations, the store can be accessed through Business App, embedded on their website, or shared via a link.
Activate
To activate a product means to make it available to use on an account.
Deactivate
To deactivate a product is to make a product no longer active on an account. When a product is deactivated, it can no longer be accessed by the user.
Account
An account refers to a single business location. The clients (business locations) that a Reseller works with are added into Partner Center as accounts.
Pending Activation
An activation is in a pending state if your purchase workflow required Vendor Approval before the product can be active on an account. Activations in a pending state can be approved in Vendor Center.
Executive Report
The Executive Report is an auto-generated weekly or monthly proof of performance reporting tool that gives Resellers and their clients a rundown of how the products and services they are utilizing are working to improve their online presence. The Executive Report is available as a tab in their Business App and is also sent to clients via email on either a weekly or monthly basis.