Steps to Build an Online Auction App like eBay
To build your own online auction app, you should choose the best Mobile App Development Company which can transform your dream into reality. The business of online auctioning is flourishing like never before and one of the largest player in this space, eBay has right now 171 million active users which spend so much of their time each month on using the eBay app. Also the number of products on eBay has surpassed 1 billion mark. These figures say that this kind of online auctioning business is very successful. More than half of the business on eBay comes from out of the US means other countries are also opening up. Due to eBay’s huge success, many companies want to develop a similar online auctioning app like eBay which can generate lots of business and profit for these organizations.
Even though the large on line platforms like eBay and Poshmark are generating huge business still it is note wise to just compete with them. Rather you have to introduce some unique ideas into your online auctioning app if you really want to succeed in the long term.
In this article, we will discuss about how to build an online Auction app like eBay or Poshmark and start earning money.
Do Thorough Analysis of the Competitors, Market and Users Preferences
A good Mobile Application Development Company will always help your company to always do thorough research and proper analysis about the competitors, market and the users preferences before starting building the mobile app. It is not very wise to enter into a market where there are many giants. Hence it is better to find a new market which has good demand and lesser competition and where you can create your own market. You can offer something unique, target a specific country or region or specific type of goods.
After you have selected the market then think about the audience and create the business policies accordingly. You can also consult the professionals, marketers, business analysts and project managers and come out with a winning strategy.
DO SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis) is a framework for identifying and analyzing the internal and external factors that can have an impact on the viability of a project or product. You should also do proper SWOT Analysis for your online auctioning app. You must have thought about your strength and opportunities till now but you should also think about the threats and weaknesses. We are telling you about some of the issues you will be dealing with:-
Delivery issues
Security Challenges
Competition from Similar apps
Tax issues
Slow initial success
Fake products
Once you have done the thorough SWOT analysis of your Auction mobile app development and business, you should create document carrying all the required features into your app which can make it win or loose.
Required Features for Buyers part of online Auctioning App
Buyers account
Placing Bids
Custom Search
Listing of products
Trending and similar items
Shopping cart
Required features for Seller’s part of the Auctioning app
Seller’s account
Adding new items
Dashboard
Editing the attributes of the products like price
Adding product images
General Features of the auctioning app
Maximum bidding algorithm
Push notifications
Payment gateway
Shipping
Customer Support
Ratings and reviews
In-app chat
After finalizing these features you should handover these to your iPhone Developers or Android developers. Also it will be the time for writing user stories which describe each of the functionalities alongwith their priorities. This is necessary as it will divide the full project into small modules which will be implemented into the end product and will help in finding the actual cost to develop the app which is similar to eBay.
How Much it Will Cost You to Build an Online Auctioning App?
To find out the appropriate cost of developing online auctioning app for Android and iOS platform, first you need a full list of features to be implemented which we have just given. After that estimate each piece of functionality in man-hours and then multiply that by the hourly rate of your mobile app development service provider. Shopping cart, payment and shipping integration are the most time consuming features and require a team of specialists of different fields to develop these parts of your app.
A possible team for developing an app similar to eBay requires:-
A Project Manager
A Designer
2 Android developers
2 iOS developers
1 Backend developer
1 Tester
Also, make sure that you develop two different apps for an e-commerce platform: one for the user and one for the seller. Hence if you take all of the above assumptions into account, it will take around 1400–2000 man hours to develop such a online auctioning mobile app. Now you can easily find out the approximate cost of developing your online auctioning app by multiplying these man hours with your per hour development cost.
Conclusion
As you need your app for both platforms hence you need to hire both iPhone App Developers as well as Android app developers. Developing an online auctioning app similar to eBay is not an impossible task. This article shows that you need to do thorough analysis about the competitors, market, user preferences and also about the required features into your auctioning app and the need to create a separate space for your ideas some of which should be unique. If you will do thorough research and implement it carefully, this will not be a wonder if your app will also become as successful as eBay or many similar ones.
