How Applications Work

A vendor is somebody else selling through your shop. Applications are how they ask, and how you decide.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Commercial:

• Carts — the cart itself and its options
• Shop Insights — what buyers looked for
• Vendor Approvals — applications waiting on a decision

Architect Panel → Data:

• Datastores — then View Data on a cart table, where most shop administration lives

You design the form

The application form is not fixed. Each field is defined with a name, a type, a description, validation, whether it is required, its position, and whether the value is encrypted.

So you ask for what your business actually needs to decide — company number, VAT registration, insurance, bank details, product categories — rather than a generic set.

Encrypt the sensitive fields

Applications collect bank details and identity documents from people who are not yet your vendors and may never be. Anything of that kind should be marked encrypted, and the retention of declined applications should be deliberate rather than forever.

Ask only what decides the outcome

Every field is a reason for a genuine applicant to give up, and a piece of personal data you now hold. If a field would not change your decision, leave it out and ask later.

What approving means

More than adding a record. An approved vendor can list products on your shop, and your customers will experience their products, their descriptions and their fulfilment as part of your business.

So the decision is commercial rather than administrative, and the person making it should be somebody who can make that judgement.

Vendors get their own pages

A vendor has a name, logo and description, and can have store pages of its own. Whether you offer that is a positioning decision — it makes the marketplace visible, which some businesses want and others do not.

Products can require approval

Separately from the vendor. Approving a vendor need not mean approving everything they subsequently list, and for most marketplaces it should not.

Decide the response time and meet it

Applications go stale. A vendor waiting three weeks has usually gone elsewhere, and the application sitting in a queue is personal data you are holding for nothing.

Worked example

A marketplace asks for company number, VAT number, product categories, public liability insurance and bank details, with the last two encrypted. Applications are reviewed within five working days by the category manager. Approved vendors get a store page; every product they list still needs approval.

Recommendations

• Ask only what decides the outcome.
• Encrypt bank and identity fields.
• Approve products separately from vendors.
• Set a response time and hold to it.