How to Build Marketplace Website? [Ecommerce Web Development]

The post-COVID world is fast, rapid, and adaptive and as more customers are coming online to buy stuff, it has become pivotal for companies to have a marketplace website. To gain a competitive edge in the market and drive more sales, you need to have a robust and high-performance website that converts more.

With the eCommerce industry booming and on the verge of disruption, it’s obvious that the future of retail is here and it will continue to grow. If you are planning to launch your business and need to know more about E-commerce web development, we have you covered. In this article, we will have a complete overview of how to build a marketplace website and also check out its features, steps, prices, and more.

Before we dive into it, let’s first check out the potential of marketplace websites in 2021-22 and how much scalability you can get.

The eCommerce industry will touch the mark of $355 billion by the year 2025 and it’s a huge number. To make yourself stand apart from the rest, you have to be unique, more efficient, and accessible to your potential customers.

Potential of your idea in the marketplace

ECommerce is one of the most significant and widespread online marketplaces globally. The entire retail e-commerce business is projected to increase to 5.4 trillion US dollars in 2022, with marketplaces taking a bit of these extra sales, let’s take a look at the growing stats that will surely impress you:

The worldwide ECommerce market size was estimated at $3.67 trillion in 2020. In addition to this, it is projected to grow at a compound annual growth of around 9.8% from 2021 to 2028. The largest online marketplaces have made sales of around $2.67 trillion in 2020. Sales on P2P marketplace platforms like had a 62% share of the overall online sales in 2020.

With such promising and impressive results, there is no second thought that it’s the right time to enter the marketplace and thrive online with more sales.

On this note, let’s have a look at how to get started with E-commerce web development in 2021 and beyond so that you can stand apart from the competitors:

Start research on your idea & validate it

Before you dive into launching your business, it’s important that you test and validate your idea and first decide the technologies, platforms, and other important details. You need to take spare time to do research about how much demand is there in the market for the software that you are going to build.

That is the core aspect that you should keep in mind and in the first step, it’s important that you define the value proposition for your potential users. It’s a real problem to solve for all the marketplaces that will take them ahead of others. The biggest example of this would be Airbnb as it eases the difficulty of finding an alternative to pricey hotel bookings for travelers. In addition to this, BlaBlaCar is also solving the problem of inflexible routes and schedules, and so on.

When you find and draft a problem that is worth solving, have a closer look at competitors and market dominators about what they are doing. In a much broader sense, all potential marketplaces are already covered and you have to do something innovative to stand apart. We can take the example of Amazon as it began by only selling books and later on started selling other products. In any scenario, your idea seems excellent for you as you have the right experience and industry-developing purposes.

However, the competition is stiffer, and narrowing your focus demographically and in terms of the proposed products or services will help.

After this, the next step is to identify your target audience that will pay you for what you are offering to them. You have to be very careful and make sure the research is worth the effort and time as in the end you get a potential and segmented audience. The list of their expectations can be quickly turned into features, and prove of interest in the market.

Ways to validate your marketplace idea

Validating an idea is not an easy task and it’s a fact that most people fail to pick the right idea that will attract the right audience. Once you have an idea to develop an on-demand marketplace platform development for a niche, it’s time to verify and validate it to assure that you are going towards your goal by the right means. This kind of research takes a significant amount of time, but it is all worth it and lets you dodge some serious mistakes. So, here is a list of questions you should answer before moving to a planning stage.

1. Would you make use of this product and for how long and how often?

2. What is the size of the total market?

3. How reliant are you on third-party resources?

4. How well do they learn the purpose of your product?

5. What is the feedback from the surveyed potential customers?

Planning

The planning stage is the main framework and the foundation of your eCommerce web development’s flourishing delivery and overall performance. The more effort you put into planning, the higher the chances will be of success to you. While planning, take multiple parameters into considerations like requirements gathering, wireframes, documents you need, detailed estimates, and more.

Try to go as deep and detailed as possible so that you can collect more information about the marketplace. Regardless of whether you have experience or you are just starting out, make sure you do it right and with full planning. That’s the reason you should spare more time in planning.

Development: Build a Marketplace Website

There are majorly two ways you can choose to build a marketplace website and start selling your product or services. The first way is to develop things from scratch and the other way is to develop them using existing marketplace platforms. Similar to any other thing, both ways have their pros and cons that you should be aware of.

A platform-dependent E-commerce web development is an excellent way if you have a limited budget of around $5,000. Using the already built platforms let launch the website in your competitive business domain with a faster turnaround time. On the other hand, if you go for fully custom-built software, you can customize each and every aspect of the website and everything remains in your control. The full-fledged custom development starts from $8,000 and it can go up to $50,000 depending upon what you need.

Easy steps to create your marketplace website

Now, it’s time to build your cutting-edge and innovative marketplace website and let customers start interacting with your brand.

Prepare a prototype

First thing first, you need to design and create a prototype and it can be a basic visual representation of your upcoming marketplace website. You can begin with a hand-made sketch and then prepare it on wireframing software or prepare it using HTML.

But, one thing you need to know and keep in mind is that prototyping is a time-exhausting method that needs experience and particular skills to get things right. So, it’s always a good move to work with a leading and Best Marketplace software development company like Auxano Global Services. We offer complete on-demand marketplace platform development solutions so you don’t have to worry about anything.

A prototype is a comprehensive way to verify your idea, bring initial users, and attract initial investments. However, you need to keep in mind that the marketplace website model isn’t functional and for this, you need to build an MVP.

Prepare documentation

Now it’s the right time to get started with drafting all the important details and prepare a comprehensive project specification that covers a detailed report about your product consisting of the number of special features and their core complexity, design, and information about third-party integration.

Your clients, or audience, and software developers might have different thoughts about the needed features and how they should be completed from their side. For solving this issue and avoiding misunderstandings, documentation is important. This step of the project helps you throughout the software development lifecycle and it aims to assure that every developer and team member understands and is on the same page the project’s requirements and expectations.

Start building marketplace website MVP

Start with building your first impactful minimum valuable product (MVP) version of your full-fledged software. It lets you verify your competitive idea and decrease time to the market with minimum expenses. The main idea of the MVP is to create a marketplace website with the essential functionality to bring early users and collect their feedback.

While developing MVP, focus on user profiles, accounts, settings, and other basic details. The two-sided marketplace website development indicates the development of two kinds of website users. The first is the buyer and the second one is the seller & both have their specific needs. Among the significant features for buyers are simple registration, easy navigation, search and filter options, and access to relevant information about Sellers. On the other hand, sellers will prefer features like running offers, giving discounts, tracking sales, products, and more.

Expand your client base

The next thing you need to focus on is growing your customer and client base so that more people can know about what you offer and use it. After you make the product open to all, you will need several users, including both the sellers and buyers. But, it needs more effort and time to convert your marketplace into a lead generation magnet. It’s the reason it’s important to improve the user base before your fully functional website is developed.

One thing you need to ensure is that on launch day, your website won’t be an empty platform without any users. This makes it tough for you to attract and retain new users and reduces trust in your marketplace. So, put some work into building a loyal community before completing your website.

Marketplace Website Development Cost

ECommerce app development cost varies by multiple factors including the functionality, size, platform, and many other important factors. However, if you are planning to get the app developed from scratch, it will cost around $10,000 to $50,000. On the other hand, the website development will cost around $8,000 to $10,000.

One should go for hybrid marketplace development to reduce the overall cost of developing an online marketplace website. You can hire a dedicated software development team from top online marketplace software development companies for cost-effective solutions.

Other important details

In addition to the above details, you need to sort other things to make the development process much smoother and easier for all. From domain name to buying hosting, buying SSL, or adding a CDN, you need to ensure that everything is in place and you have bought them in advance. When it comes to the domain name, do your research and pick an attractive and short domain name for your product. The name should not be difficult to remember or spell. Keep it simple, attractive, and quick for users to remember.

Along with this, go for a good hosting plan, and don’t try to save your money here because no one likes a slower website. Get a good cloud-based hosting with sufficient space that is ideal as your customer base will increase in the upcoming time. You will find web hosting as low as $2 per month, but avoid them and go for a premium and high-performance that can drive performance.

To kickstart your journey, contact us. Auxano Global Services is a leading online marketplace platform development company and gains a competitive advantage in your industry. Our E-commerce marketplace platform development services are fully customized. We help you build your marketplace website with a shorter turnaround time to grow your business. Hire offshore marketplace software developers from our team and enjoy hassle-free on-demand marketplace platform development.