Sell on Rakuten’s UK marketplace

Founded in 1997, Rakuten is the largest online retail operators in Japan and offers businesses and services worldwide. In 2011 the Japanese internet giant acquired Play.com, one of the UK’s leading marketplaces, for £25mil. This was the company’s third European acquisition following French site PriceMinister and German shopping platform Tradoria, and a further step towards borderless global ecommerce. In October 2014 the marketplace rakuten.co.uk was officially launched and as of March 2015 the transition from Play.com to Rakuten.co.uk was complete.

The new marketplace offers shoppers products across multiple categories including clothing, health and beauty, computing, groceries and more! Furthermore, visitors can access digital services offered by Rakuten, such as Kono and Wuaki.

Selling on the marketplace

Opening an online store on rakuten.co.uk is quick and easy, simply head to the home page and click “open your online store”. To get started merchants need to provide the following information:

• Name
• Telephone number
• E-mail address
• Company Name
• Company Website

You can add additional users to the account and attribute different permission levels to each user. Check out the Rakuten Academy for more information on selling on the platform.

Customise your Raktuten store

Merchants are able to customise their store as much as they like. Rakuten’s store design tools enable merchants to design an appealing store front to attract customers and reflect their brand’s personality. Pages are created using a standardised layout, however, merchants can add images and videos, and pages can be edited and customised via HTML. Find out more about designing your Rakuten store with their Page Design Guide.

Rakuten’s loyalty scheme

With Rakuten Super Points customers collect 1 point for every £1 spent on the marketplace, and 100 points are worth £1. Points can be used to purchase products, in part or in full, from the marketplace.

Sell on Rakuten.co.uk with Lengow

Lengow has integrated the Rakuten marketplace meaning that its clients can quickly and easily sell their products on the shopping platform. If you are an existing Lengow client add the channel with a simple click from your back office. As soon as you add the channel you can manage orders, increase visibility and track performance from the solution’s dashboard.

Not yet a Lengow client, interested in a free demo? Send us an email: contact@lengow.co.uk or call: +44 203 318 2631.