Marketplace mobile app development from our company – fast, thoughtful, inexpensive

Marketplace app is a platform that connects sellers with buyers. Such a service acts as an intermediary between those who have a product or service and those who want it. There are B2B, B2C, C2C platforms. Before starting marketplace mobile app development, we recommend that you determine which category your marketplace belongs to. Your business model and marketing strategy will depend on this. For example, will you only work with individuals or companies? How can corporate customers find out about your application? Obviously, a hot sale platform and a plumbing wholesale store need different solutions, and it is better to determine this at the start. Therefore, the choice is yours, and we are ready to help with the development of both options (b2c portal development and b2c website development).

Many people dream of a marketplace, but app development is a complex multistage process in which various factors must be taken into account. Here is an example of the challenges you might face while working on such a service:

• Development timeline;
• Development costs;
• Search for a contractor;
• Selection of key features for the application;
• Search for investors;
• Market competition.

If you want an application with a complex architecture and a super-custom interface, be sure that the work will take longer than it usually takes. If you want to get a quality product and yet in the shortest possible time – leave a request to us. We know what you need and know all about the online marketplace app development.

Where to begin?

The first thing for marketplace startup development is to analyze your competitors and identify your strengths and weaknesses. We recommend having a few brainstorming sessions with the team and discussing what helps you stand out from the marketplaces already on the market. Here is a list of questions that might help in mobile app development marketplace:

• What services do you offer? Be concise, focus on what’s important, and formulate your answer in 2-3 words. For example, “rental”, “freelance services”, or even “anything”.
• What is your company’s unique selling proposition? Describe in 3-4 sentences what sets you apart from all other competitors. It doesn’t have to be related to the product. Maybe you have the friendliest support team available 24/7?
• Who is your target audience? Where are these people? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you develop your marketing strategy.
• What pains do your potential buyers have? How will your service help solve them? The answer to this question will even help in building a communication strategy and maintaining social networks. If you know what worries your users, you can immediately offer them ready-made solutions, without many words.

Next, create a user journey map for the marketplace website development. In order for you to decide on the necessary functions, we recommend using the user journey map – with a step-by-step description of everything that happens in the application. From the first opening to the completion of the target action. In each case, it will be different. Our experts are ready to tell you about all the details of its creation specifically for your business (b2c ecommerce development or b2b ecommerce website development – it does not matter for our team). Let’s take a look at the most basic functions below.

The main functions of the marketplace application

The functionality of the application depends on the direction of the marketplace, budget and timing. Regardless of the option chosen, the following launch functions can be implemented in the marketplace application:

Registration and authorization.

The user should be able to create a personal account where all information about his orders will be stored. Usually you can register using mail, phone number and social networks. For security, a two-factor authentication function is introduced for authorization. There should also be a password recovery screen.

Managing seller and buyer profiles.

The buyer can edit personal data, change the password, upload a profile photo. Seller – add information about the company, upload product images and descriptions of cards for them, create administrator, owner and manager roles, restrict access rights to certain functions. You can also monitor transactions, delivery status, dispute resolution in real time, upload statistics and analytics for each product.

Search.

The system of convenient filters and product comparisons is the main advantage of marketplaces. In the basic version, you can add a regular search, and later implement additional options: autocomplete, issuing hints, correcting errors and typos in the user’s text, saving query history, etc.

Communication between buyers and suppliers.

It is implemented in the form of joint chats, the ability to put likes, a module with reviews, ratings.

Notifications.

Push notifications are a part of marketing tools: they will help you tell about new products and promotions, track the status of an order, or remind you of yourself if the user has not logged into the application for a long time.

Payment.

Entering bank card data, viewing and managing purchases, canceling payments, payment history. There is another important nuance here, the security of each payment on the platform is one of the important requirements for the marketplace. For uninterrupted financial settlements between the buyer and the seller in the application, you need to use a reliable payment gateway – a service that processes bank card transactions by encrypting user confidential data. The more securely you protect the personal information of buyers and the more often you talk about it, the more people begin to trust the new application. Add information about the security of personal and banking data to the shopping cart and checkout screen to motivate a person to make a purchase. b2b website development implies additional opportunities for concluding online contracts, etc.

Is design really that important for an app?

The design when we talk about marketplace and development enterprises should always be done at the highest level – with cool visualization and well-thought-out logic. No “I’ll pump out some, and then we’ll see.” A raw, undeveloped interface will only alienate users – and this is clearly not what you need at the MVP stage (although this is relevant not only at this stage), right?

If you have done a good job with the user journey map, you will notice that the marketplace includes many different features. How to implement everything without confusing anyone? Invest in quality UI/UX design right from the start. There are 2 compelling reasons for this.

• First, the designer will think over the navigation through the application from the user’s point of view. Nobody forgives mistakes, so the interface should be as convenient as possible. Imagine that you want to go to the country for the weekend with your friends. To book a car, you open the car sharing app and instead of a map with available cars, you see an endless list of locations to scroll through. Or you want to get an SUV, and there are no filters in the search functionality, and you again have to manually scroll through the pages. Will you give this app a second chance? That is why the application interface needs to be thought out and polished at the MVP stage. A user-friendly and easy-to-use interface will increase the engagement and CRR (Customer Retention Rate) of your marketplace.
• The second reason why you need to invest in design is creating a corporate identity. An experienced UI/UX designer will develop a memorable logo, select fonts and a color palette that will be associated with your product and make it stand out from similar solutions that are already on the market.

When designing a design, it is important for us to isolate the most important thing already at the start. To do this, we thoroughly examine the solutions of competitors, their style, answer the questions “How do users use marketplaces?”, “What steps are taken to achieve the main goal? Is it b2b web portal development or not?” Based on this data, a design concept is created (1-2 screens from the key flow), which subsequently forms the basis of the future UI / UX design of the marketplace.

Our team of specialists will be happy to take on the marketplace development; and create a unique product that will quickly gain trust among sellers, buyers and other “actors”. We will help you take into account all the nuances and create a high-quality application at an affordable price in the shortest possible time. Goal of our marketplace web development company is to make cooperation as pleasant and productive as possible.