How To Build A Marketplace Website

Let’s delve into how to create a marketplace site, how to estimate your budget and what you can do right now to make your service prosperous.

How to start an online marketplace

The process of building a compelling marketplace business consists of a number of stages that can’t be omitted.

Stages to start an online marketplace

1. Research that includes diving into basics of building a marketplace startup: separating the types of marketplaces, your idea validation, choosing the right business model.
2. Planning. Project manager of the chosen team helps you elaborate the specification document with all requirements, wireframes and estimated budget.
3. MVP marketplace development. Based on the project plan, developers implement the product’s functionality.
4. A marketing strategy creation which is grounded in building supply and demand models.
5. Launch and performance tracking

Development: How to build a marketplace website

There are usually two options for how to make a marketplace website:

• Development from scratch
• Development using one of the existing marketplace platforms

Each of these strategies has its pros and cons. If you are limited with a budget of $5,000, you surely don’t want to spend money on design and development from scratch. So, the platform-based development is for you.

However, if you want to build a marketplace website that responds to all your business needs, focus on development from scratch.

Features for an MVP

User accounts, profiles, and settings

The two-sided marketplace website development implies the creation of two kinds of website users: Buyer and Seller (or Service provider and Service recipient) with their specific needs. Among the features that are important for Buyers are simple registration, well-designed navigation, search and filtering, and access to information about Sellers. In their turn, Sellers would appreciate features that let them manage their private and public information, create new offers of products or services.

Search and filters

It should be convenient for buyers to search for goods or services on your marketplace website. So, think over a system of filters (location, price range, etc.) and relevant suggestions.

Real-time chats

Choosing the product or service, buyers usually have some questions to sellers. It’s very important to let them get answers immediately and the best way is instant messaging.

Payment systems integration

Our main task as developers is to ensure complete security for both buyers and sellers, especially regarding payments. That’s why it’s important to implement transparent and trustful payment system like PayPal or Stripe.

Reviews and ratings

After the deal is over, buyers should be able to leave their feedback about it and rate the seller.