For a period of time, the online marketplace idea has been an effective option to consider. People get benefit from it by making online purchases, a convenient option in their busy lives. Through the internet, everyone’s life is subject to easiness, and the best marketplace apps enable users to discover their favorite products and get them at their doorstep in few simple clicks. Without much hassle, you confront the best-discounted deals and offers on your favorite items and receive them at your home straight away. Entrepreneurs and startups who aim to sell their products online know how important it is to have a digital presence to grab the audience at your side via marketplace applications. However, it needs knowledge and considerable resources to build an efficient marketplace mobile app. And if you require information regarding its process, then you have landed on the right page.
What is a Marketplace?
Independent sellers with the online marketplace platform avail themselves of the opportunity to title their services and items. This phenomenon is contrary to the typical online stores.
Marketplace platforms come in various sizes, offering numerous options. These choices allow sellers to provide products best suited for their marketing strategy. The cost factor also fluctuates depending on the marketplace purpose and location.
Reason to Develop a Marketplace Application
Why you require a marketplace app is a question that comes before how to build it. Chronology matters here. In today’s digital era, marketplace mobile app are in trend. The prominent players of this digital territory are eBay, Amazon, AliExpress, and Airbnb. From a small startup idea to billion-dollar companies, they faced exponential growth. C2C, B2B, and B2C are some marketing concepts that received the spotlight from it. Design, scalability, performance, and execution also count for a successful marketplace.
Marketplaces Types
The marketplace is divided into five common categories that are:
- Managed: To ensure the proper marketplace functioning, intervenes act as an intermediary in the managed marketplace. They offer logistical analysis and support along with maintenance.
- On-demand: Services that one wants on an immediate basis comes under the on-demand category. Grocery delivery, ride-hailing, and food ordering are some examples of on-demand services.
- Decentralized: Seller enjoys all the power in the decentralized marketplace. No operator is present here for controlling the platform. Anyone can make a purchase or sell something as it is a P2P system.
- SaaS: With SaaS, user can develop their page under the marketplace network. Generally, it contains sales commissions.
- Community-driven: Independent brands and sellers gathers at community-driven marketplaces platform.
Steps for Developing a Marketplace Mobile App
Identify Marketplace Type for Your Business Requirement
Presently, several people have awareness regarding the marketplace mobile app concept. These apps provide a convenient shopping experience via a smartphone device. Opposed to the typical internet stores where only one seller offers services, the marketplace simultaneously accommodates many sellers and shoppers. There are three categories in which marketplace falls:
- Customer to Customer (C2C): The type of platform where product exchange happens among consumers. Both sides here are even. Individuals reach on good terms with its help. One purchases goods and markets them on next day.
- Business to Business (B2B): In B2B, companies exchange the product with each other on good terms.
- Business to Consumer (B2C): Another type of marketplace where businesses deliver products to the consumer. The wide choice of commercial proposals at one place is the real benefit of it. B2C is like the universe where you can find almost anything according to your wish.
Define Buyer Key App Component
You require to provide an intuitive and easy-to-use interface for the buyers’ side application. You have to develop trust, so a buyer becomes willing to spend their money on your solution. Provide robust security and assurance to gain more customers.
Compared to the sellers’ features, the features of buyers are very distinct. Many times, the situation occurs when an application becomes separate into different apps. Some features that are convenient to provide for the buyer are:
Search engine consisting of multiple features—for instance, ratings, location, price, category, and alphabetical order.
- Reviewing system
- Shopping cart
- System for order tracking
- Wishlist
- Easy return policy
- Multiple payment channels
These are few mandatory features in the buyer app to make their shopping experience smooth, convenient, and enhance user experience.
State Essential Seller Features
You have to take care of both buyers and sellers while developing a marketplace mobile app. Both parties will use your developed application. Thus, before marketplace application developer start creating your marketplace app, you have to analyze and decide feature set that you will provide to your users.
Coming to the seller side, some features that you cannot neglect and are essential to include in an app are:
Inbuilt chat system for communication
Management of order and stock
Ways to offer deals, promotions, and discounts
Transaction monitor and control
Social platform integration
Select Model for Monetization
Understanding the way to avail profit from marketplace applications is crucial. It’s a service that deserves to be imbursed. However, there are multiple ways to earn a profit, and some prominent models that are proven to give you efficient income are:
Subscription Model
In this model, users pay a flat monthly fee to use the platform and services. A marketplace that does not promote transactions and allows payment direct to the seller’s card. Explaining to users the benefits of a subscription is challenging, and many are unwilling to put money in advance before trying the service and avail its benefits.
Commission Model
Commission model play on each transaction. It could be a fixed fee or some percentage of the total. Users get benefit from it as they do not pay anything before, eventually attracting more users. However, it is challenging to keep the platform up with a scarcity of transactions to bear the maintenance.
Listing Fee Model
It is an inexpensive option as payment for ad posting done by a client. Therefore, people attract this model more because it is cheaper but has an adverse effect on a marketplace owner. Generally, it is used as a secondary stream of income.
State your Listing with SWOT Analysis
If a user places an order for your product, your item only brings an advantage to them. For getting the value proposition in place, think of the following questions:
What benefit will the user avail from the product ultimately?
Which services need more marketing efforts?
Where the target audience resides?
What to do to make the product stand out in the crowd?
Having a uniqueness in M-Commerce (mobile commerce) is difficult to get as products all primary functions are nearly identical in the app. So you probably achieve success by providing specific customers another value. The value can be in the form of the next purchase discount, voucher, free delivery, exchange, return, freebies, bonus points, etc. Customer always feels valued when they receive such offers and spend more on your platform. Besides, they also spread the word for the brand and recommend it in their circle.
Create Marketplace App MVP
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is always the best option to testify the idea. In this approach, you develop a product containing only essential features to experiment with and see how it performs in the market. Then, you analyze customer response and reaction to it. If the feedback is positive and overwhelming, you put more into the product and expand its scope.
Besides enhancing the MVP, you can always exclude or add the features that your audience demands to improve efficiency and experience.
Fix Errors and Run the Test
After designing the MVP and evaluating things are working fine and performing as per the expectations, it becomes necessary to test it from all the technical aspects. Prepare all possible test cases from best to worst and run them on your marketplace application to validate its performance in different scenarios and fix issues found in the process. However, it is apparent that not all problems will be discovered at once, but you need to do your best to minimize their occurrence.
Release Your Marketplace Application
When everything looks good, and things are in their place, it’s time to release the marketplace application.
Final Notes
The economy is changing globally with the arrival of online marketplaces. It is happening because many industries are consuming by these platforms. Moreover, these business models can drastically change the existing market affairs.
Alternative to the traditional business practice, several modern marketplaces engage with autonomous marketers. Consequently, startup companies and entrepreneurs can avail themselves of this chance to develop a marketplace app.
Hopefully, now you have factual information on the marketplace applications—how they work and their types. We tried to cover all the aspects in the easiest manner. However, you will need a marketplace application development company to help you build a concept, business plan, and strategy.
For achieving project objectives effectively and smartly, working with industry professionals is highly recommended. They know the market trends and have experience with various kinds of projects. With their assistance, you can build a robust smartphone marketplace app and make it reliable.
Also read about: What to Consider Before Developing a Mobile App
