Marketplace Website Development in 2023: Core Features, Steps, and Cost

The pandemic has drastically changed many spheres of our lives.

It’s a proven fact that more and more people nowadays prefer to visit online marketplaces rather than going shopping physically.

This tendency is visible in successful statistics of the sharing economy market, which is expected to reach $355 billion by 2025.

Want to know why it may be so advantageous for your business?

This article will help to find out more about a marketplace development, its benefits, cost, and points to make your project outstanding.

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The Potential of a Marketplace Idea

Making purchases on the net is now a sought-after field due to the global situation. A vast list of online purchasing benefits has attracted many customers and increased marketplaces revenue. As a result, the global retail e-commerce sales will predictably increase to 5.4 trillion by 2023, comprising the tender part of marketplaces sales. Here is the evidence:

• The global marketplace market was assessed for $3.67 trillion at the end of 2020. The total yearly rise is predictably 9.7% starting from 2021 till 2028.
• The major marketplaces have sold goods worth $2.67 trillion in 2020.
• P2P world-famous platforms like eBay or Amazon embrace 62% of total online 2020 sales. Furthermore, they will predictably surmount $7 trillion within 2024 and taking over 90% of the Internet sales.

Such striving statistics are conditioned by the following vital points which have evolved the marketplace market:

• The constantly growing number of online shoppers 
• “Two clicks” easy accessibility of shopping in mobile apps
• Changed consumer behavior pattern due to the pandemic
• Efficient AI integration

Significant Advantages of an Online Marketplace Development

The success and potential of this niche are profitable for both startups and long ago established businesses. Entrepreneurs apply to the marketplace creation aiming at sales optimization, logistics enhancement, goods variety widening, operations automation, and outgoings decreasing.

Let’s overview each benefit in detail to understand how they may be adapted to your business:

Income growth.The marketplace is a great way to attract more customers and expand your business. By releasing an easy-to-use platform with efficient original features, you attract a broader audience to your product. As a result, your revenue keeps rising while you continue to rejoice your clients with product updates and various platform enhancements.

Convenience and adaptiveness. P2P marketplaces help clients to find relevant goods. Why may it be beneficial? Such platforms allow businesses to offer goods to find potential clients. In addition, the marketplace may be adapted to various fields to achieve business goals successfully.

Development quality. The marketplace platform building is not an extraordinary request for development teams. There are lots of competent and experienced specialists engaged in building a unique website for you. Therefore, to have a guaranteed quality and deadlines, you should choose a highly qualified web development company with a compelling portfolio.

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Things to Consider Before Building a Marketplace

To adapt the marketplace for your business objectives and take maximum advantage of it, you should be aware of the primary steps as well as the development flow. Let’s discuss them.

How to Start an Online Marketplace Website

Qualitative preparation is the key to a successful project. Here are efficient points which will help you to boost the marketplace website creation:

• Market analysis which comprises exploring more information concerning peculiarities and challenges of the marketplace website creation
• Idea assessment, which helps to evaluate the originality and competitiveness of your startup to make it more in-demand
• Defined plan incorporating your precise requirements serves as a guide on the development flow
• Gathering a team of specialists to build a marketplace website.
• MVP building with integral features kit
• Estimating the total website development cost
• Marketing strategy for the platform promotion and advancing

Research Comes First

Conducting research is extremely helpful to define both your requirements, and customer needs to find a common solution, and study your competitors.

Solution relevance.You should evaluate the relevance of the software by defining the pains and needs of the consumers to offer efficient solutions and understand how large-scale market players overcame it.

Target audience.The next step of assessing the software relevance is defining your target audience. You may conduct surveys to gather the customer requirements.

Planning

This step is indispensable for website development. High-qualified web development companies have a thoughtful approach to this stage to bring clients’ ideas to reality successfully. The actions which allow doing that are listed below:

• Market analysis
• Specification comprising functionality and technical requirements
• Wireframes formed on specification
• An estimate made by the whole team of the functionality creation cost and deadlines

As one of the stages is cost estimate, let’s find out what factors impact the total price.

Development Process of a Marketplace Website

There are two building options:

1. From scratch
2. Using readymade marketplace toolkit

Custom platform building will meet all your requirements and satisfy needs, have the interface, design, and functionality adapted to achieve exactly your business goals.

The second option is beneficial due to decreased outgoings and time economy.

The development flow is as follows:

Prototype Development

The primary step is a platform’s prototype drawing and implementation in an HTML mockup. As a result, you can claim your startup, engage the investors, and create advertising campaigns. However, you can’t run the prototype; a solid product may be tested after the development of the MVP (minimum viable product).

Project Specification

Moving on, you’ll need a project specification covering all the features in detail, interface design, list of 3rd party services, etc.

This stage helps to find proper solutions to customers’ requests in the most efficient way. In addition, each expert involved in the creation process makes out the assignment and the final result perspective.

MVP Development

MVP creation successfully helps to declare the concept, decrease the expenditures and time to market. Its main aim is to develop the platform with essential features sufficient to be used by the first clients for feedback.

After receiving the first income, you may implement extra features into the website. As for core features, you can find their list below:

• Account, personal info, settings: A two-sided marketplace model requires building two diverse profiles: for customers and retailers. Both of them should be able to edit personal info, edit payment or withdrawal methods, etc.
• Filters and categories: To find the most relevant offers, users should be allowed to apply filters and categories (price, conditions, region) while searching.
• Messaging: The website should comprise a chat to clarify the info about the goods, payment, or delivery method.
• Payment gateway integration: Here, maximal protection and privacy should be prioritized for clients. So apply exceptionally to reliable payment systems like PayPal or Braintree.
• Reviews: Add a section for the customers’ feedback about the purchasing experience.

The additional features of your website may incorporate the suggested points:

For shoppers

• Comparing characteristics
• Advanced filtering
• Wishlist
• Sharing via other apps
• Gift certificates
• Push notifications

For sellers

• Users behavior pattern
• Advanced goods management

Scaling the Customer Base

Before the product deployment, you should attract your first audience by claiming the release date.

Key Points to Build a Marketplace

These are the main website creation steps:

Domain Name

It’s the website address which can be found by the link. A brief guide on naming your platform:

• Brand association
• Easy to remember
• No numbers/ hyphens
• SEO-friendliness (keywords)

Hosting

The entire platform data is located here. When requesting to visit your site, the users’ request is converted to the provider’s IP address and is passed again to the browser.

The most popular providers are Bluehost, Hostgator, and Hostinger, and the price varies from $2.95 to $9.99 monthly.

SSL Certificate

SSL Certificates endure the higher protection and privacy of the users’ personal info. Besides, SSL asserted websites are graded higher by Google.

Content Management System

This toolbar is necessary for entrepreneurs to edit the interface, the goods layout, promotion banners add or delete various sections. It also may convert the website interface. Great solutions for this are Shopify and WordPress.

Payment Solutions

The main three transaction processing methods from purchasers to sellers are:

• Direct payments. The website doesn’t participate in this kind of payment. Nonetheless, the amount of fees is fewer and there’s no opportunity for the united checkout for several vendors.
• Aggregated payments. The website charges the customer money for multiple sellers at once for further distribution among retailers via payouts.
• Parallel payments. This option involves payment services that are responsible for security. It may be PayPal, Stripe, or Braintree.

Team to Create a Marketplace Website

The essential members for P2P platform development comprise:

• Project manager;
• UI/UX designers;
• Web developers;
• Quality Assurance engineers, etc.

Considering the discovery phase, development flow, and the list of experts, let’s estimate the price of the marketplace web development.

Price of Building a Marketplace Website

The main factor which impacts the price is the features complexity. Due to this fact, the price varies from $30,000 to $20,000.

The price is based on both development and non-development time needed to create all the features including frontend, backend. After that, the time spent has to be multiplied by the company’s hourly rate.

You can overview the minimum and maximum time and money required below:

Feature	A minimum time (h)	Maximum time (h)	Average time (h)
Building	900	1600	1300
Design	180	220	200
Total	1080	1820	1500
Hourly rate	Cost at $30	Cost at $50	Cost at $150
Building	$27,000	$80,000	$195,000
Design	$5,400	$11,000	$30,000
Total	$32,400	$91,000	$225,000

Tips on Leading Your Website to Success

The website launching goes side by side with promoting and attracting new users. It would be a great idea to obtain more retailers who will eagerly offer their products there to attract the audience.

Here’s a small guide on how to reach out to them:

• Search for engaged sellers on rivals’ websites
• Find partners using Google search
• Use Facebook to find retail groups

To gain customer credibility towards your software and attract clients you should, you may accomplish the following steps:

• Use a pre-released landing page
• Mention your solution while discussing thematic topics on various forums
• Reach out to famous influencers and offer them to become ambassadors
• Create a small blog of your brand
• You may also turn to usage, transaction, and business metrics to track the customer behavior pattern to determine which points should be enhanced.

Top 3 Marketplace Platforms

Lastly, let’s observe successful illustrations of marketplace websites:

Amazon

The global market share of this marketplace giant is 9.4%. The availability of a 100 million prime base makes the users spend $1,400 annually. Active and competent sellers are charged $39.99 monthly, plus $0.99 fees for every sold product.

eBay

eBay is an enormous marketplace, with a market share (3.3% globally) and 168 million buyers who spend $95 billion yearly. This platform has two fees options:

• For posting
• For sold products

Taobao

This globally-known website allows sellers to post products free of charge. Nevertheless, the promotion of the goods requires paying fees. The strategy helps to enlarge the retailers’ base and increase the competition level. Consequently, sellers will strive for buyers’ attention through advancing their products.

Summarizing

A marketplace web development is a sought-after niche nowadays. There is a great diversity of fields, but the marketplace flexibility allows you to increase your income efficiently and scale your business.

But to adapt the marketplace format to your startup, you should choose the strategy of money generation. The best way to succeed is applying to reliable software development companies with brilliant rates and reviews to realize all your ideas successfully.

Competent specialists will consult you to find the most profitable option and the final product will meet all your expenses very soon.