Marketplaces are good at attracting organic traffic from search engines due to their wide range of products. They also have good scaling potential, which makes this business model interesting even for existing large online stores.
If you build such a site on top of a successful online store, it will obviously be easier than starting from scratch. But you can use custom marketplace development services and delegate the technical work to an experienced contractor, which increases the chances of success and saves time.
Typically, marketplace development outsourcing is used by companies that want to build a large platform with advanced functionality and assortment. But it can also be a small site if the customer simply wants to get a product that best meets their individual needs.
Prototyping and MVP for the marketplace
Choosing a development company is one of the most difficult moments because customers can’t always properly assess the skill level of IT specialists. Get information about developers from reviews, ratings, professional publications, etc.
But let’s assume that you have already solved this task and let’s move on to the next stage. Realization of the project to create a marketplace is better divided into several stages.
The first step is to create a prototype of the marketplace. This is actually a sketch of the future platform that can be demonstrated to potential partners during development.
The second step is to launch the MVP (Minimal Viable Product). This is a test version of the marketplace with a small set of options. The MVP allows you to identify the pros and cons of the product in the early stages based on feedback from end users and partners.
All comments on design, functionality, etc. are taken into account. As a result of repeated testing, a version is created that best serves the interests of the owner and the needs of the marketplace users for a given period of time.
What to pay attention to at the MVP stage of your marketplace:
- Focus on a small group of customers. This will allow you to work more efficiently with the budget, maximize the satisfaction of CA needs and thus earn positive feedback. Your product should solve customer pains.
- You shouldn’t sell everything at once. In a retail chain, about 20% of the total number of products bring 80% profit. Remember this when forming the catalog of an online store. At the stage of formation, it is better to narrow the assortment to 1-2 categories.
- Focus on improving the basic functionality: easy navigation, working buttons, the resource does not hang, in general, in technical terms nothing should not annoy customers and partners.
The third step is the full launch of the project. Technical, content, and point adjustments are inevitable as the project progresses. Product improvement is a cyclical process, and it will happen all the time if you strive to be the best in your field.
