Planning
After seeing how Airbnb and Uber can turn any house into a hotel and any car into a cab, many entrepreneurs are discovering the next peer-to-peer market — one they can leverage to enable their community to monetize not just their possessions, but also their resources, talents, and passions.
Once you have chosen and validate your idea, it is very important to choose the right target market and the revenue model.
Understand the demand “market” and how your product is going to be different from its competitors. There’s a different mentality there — less consumerism, less materialism, and more of a community-building approach. So, put on your collaborative glasses and look at the world around you.
Commission-based
Transaction-Based
Subscription-Based
Lead-Based
Creating and Validating
Coming up with ideas for a marketplace is just the beginning. While you don’t need to have your inventory in the peer-to-peer market.
Now that you have validated the business idea and model, start building the platform. There are essentially three different ways of building an online marketplace:
Code it from scratch
To code a marketplace from scratch, you require knowledge of coding languages and other technical details. With this approach, you can make the platform look exactly as you wish.
As tempting, it may sound but building a marketplace platform with a flawless transaction flow from scratch will take time — a lot of it. Whereas, the easiest way to start and succeed in your business would be to launch your marketplace as soon as possible.
Standalone Self-Hosted Multi-Vendor Solution
Self-hosted marketplace software provides more customization and complete control over the platform with the help of different kinds of extensions.
For example, the woo-commerce plugin with WordPress helps to build an eCommerce store. If you know one of these tools and its plugins like the back of your hand, you can use them to build a marketplace.
This approach means you need to design your marketplace user experience and then find the right plugins, install them, and test and optimize every stage. To provide the seamless, today’s users expect, this solution might take a lot of time.
Using a Marketplace Software
Marketplace owners can choose software, according to their business needs and revenue model. You will rarely need to read or write code but still get to be in full control over your own business.
Using marketplace software is the fastest way to launch an online marketplace platform. Launching fast helps in validating how your business idea works in reality and which features are important for your customers. The marketplace software provider ensures data accuracy, privacy, and security that is required to run your business.
Scaling
Choose the right features to match your business idea. With marketplace software like IdyaFlow, there is Core Package, consisting of all basic features like Supplier, Admin portal, Custom Homepage, Reporting Dashboard, etc, you need to kick start your marketplace.
Now its time to launch the marketplace and get suppliers on board. Launch your Marketplace before its ready, Listen, and engage with your consumers to improve. Based on the feedback improvise your marketplace to add more features. Personalize to meet the specific needs and create your online marketplace accordingly.
Monitoring
Marketplace owners can track their sales with accurate metrics. For example, by incorporating the Ratings and Review feature marketplace owner can see which products and services are in demand and know which vendors are most preferred. As a result, the owner can promote goods and services that truly matter to its users.
With IdyaFlow Add On Features, Marketplace owners get the ability to perform customize on-page search engine fields for products — Title, Description, and Keywords. They can also integrate the marketplace with Google Analytics and Facebook pixels to track and report analytics on marketing and ad campaigns. Thus, empowering the Marketplace Owners to learn and improvise their strategies.