Do you know that eBay and Amazon have 600+ million active users worldwide? With that, the development of marketplace apps has become a major revolution in today's digital age. We can see that the popularity of online marketplace apps is increasing with each passing year.
Nowadays, many businesses have their apps — in fact, according to a mobile app stat, 42% of millennial-owned companies use their apps to increase sales or provide an alternative platform for their customers to use their tools or services.
Like e-commerce, online marketplace mobile apps serve to provide the right services and products to consumers. Also, there are plenty of applications in the same category, such as business application markets, investment markets, and more.
Wondering how you can build a marketplace app? You need not worry at all as through this piece of article, I will describe the features, business models, and estimates of the mobile app marketplace. Let's get started!
What exactly is Marketplace Application?
An app marketplace is an online store where customers can find and purchase applications. One of the significant differences between the online store and the marketplace is its independent sellers' ability to list their products or services.
People usually prefer to buy products from marketplace apps to save time and money. You can generate high revenues through the online marketplace application.
Marketplaces are currently the most effective form of online retail business. According to research by Statista, the retail type that had the highest average spending annually by US online shoppers was marketplaces with an average recorded value of 488 US dollars in annual spending per shopper.
A wide variety of digital products can be sold through the application marketplace. These include Business to Business (B2B) software, such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google G Suite; Solution add-ons, including products developed for Salesforce.com, and sold in its AppExchange; Consumer applications such as games for iOS and Android devices; even more.
Types of online marketplace
- Supplier-oriented e-marketplace
- Buyer-oriented e-marketplace
- Independent e-marketplace
- Vertical and Horizontal e-marketplaces
Why should you build a mobile app marketplace?
Marketplaces have become a significant place for millennials to buy products. Marketplace apps are the hottest trends nowadays, especially with the dominance of market leaders such as Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Airbnb, Uber, and Groupon.
All these companies have become multi-billion dollar businesses that have achieved unparalleled growth. It throws light on various marketing concepts like B2B, B2C, and C2C. A thriving market will be based on scalability, performance, and design.
One of the significant reasons why marketplace apps should be built is that the Marketplace Mobile App addresses all the various concerns that marketers face. Here are some matters of marketers that a market app solves:
Source: Statista
Must-have features for a perfect mobile app marketplace
Each marketplace includes multiple user roles, so you should keep this in mind when building a marketplace app. These user roles are:
- Merchant
- Buyer
- Administrator
You can either merge seller and buyer roles into one application or create two separate apps. For administrators, you'll need a different web application, preferably for desktop.
You can either combine the roles of seller and buyer in one application or create two different apps. For administrators, you will need a separate web application, preferably for desktop.
Onboarding
You must keep the onboarding process simple and clear by letting people sign up with emails or through social media profiles. The onboarding logic will depend on the structure of your app. If you have an app with two different user roles, allow users to create a seller or buyer profile.
Augmented Reality
Nowadays, most mobile marketplace apps are integrated with AR technology: this technology helps the app provide its visitors the opportunity to evaluate goods and services visually before final payment.
Photo Shopping
By using this feature, buyers can easily find the product without knowing the name of the product or its brand. All they have to do is to click on that product and search for this picture using this image.
Social Media Integration
It is one of the best ways to enable customers to use marketplace mobile apps. This is not a one-touch login only. In addition, you should offer easy input into your online marketplace application.
Customers should be given access to their mobile apps through Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, or various other social media sites with just a few clicks.
Personal profile
Users in both roles require a personal profile. A buyer's profile must contain information about the user, their preferred items, current and previous orders, payment methods, and settings.
Sellers should be able to see their listings, the number of product views, and the number of people who have favored their products. All customers should see incoming messages and chat history.
Listings
Listings are a major part of any application. They should showcase the products, including their name, picture, and rating. Pagination is essential for listings: it allows the app to load notifications faster as it separates the data into smaller chunks and loads it slowly.
Recommendations
If your motive is to drive sales in your application, you should showcase what's available and make suggestions to customers. You can have these suggestions for two things:
- A big data analysis to determine what might be attractive to the individual user based on their previous searches and the items they have added to favorites.
- Products that were paid to be promoted in the Recommended section on the main page of your app.
Search and filters
Search, and advanced filters are important for marketplace apps. The best practice is to forecast the search. For example, Aliexpress shows the number of results for a specific query, allowing the user to select a query that will give them more options.
Filters like price, distribution type, rating, and so on are also essential parts of an application that has anything to do with selecting products.
Deployment and optimization
The final step to create a marketplace app is to deploy it on the App Store. To tell people about it, you have to optimize your profile for the App Store's search engine.
Product profiles
In the product profile, a buyer should be able to find all the necessary information to make a purchase, including an item name, photo, description, average rating, review, and features.
Favorites
You should let users add favorites, so they don't lose a product they like and consider purchasing. It allows users to add favorites so that they do not lose a product they like the most and are conjuring purchasing.
Ratings and reviews
Ratings and reviews are a must for any app marketplace. If there is no review, most people will not even buy a product, so it should be a must-have feature.
Ratings can come in many forms, but a five-star rating system is now the most popular. You can also come up with something more original, but make sure ratings are still transparent for users.
Required Team Structure
If you want to make your online marketplace idea a reality, you need a skilled and expert team. Also, building an online marketplace mobile application from scratch requires a plethora of individuals with different niches.
So let's take a glance over the required team structure:
- Project Manager
- Business Analysis Team
- iOS & Android Developers/Cross-platform- flutter developer
- Front-End Developers (AngularJS Developers, UI/UX Developers)
- QA Experts
- Backend Developers (.Net Developers, PHP Developers, NodeJs Developers)
It has also been recommended to hire mobile app developers in India who has a good track record of building online marketplace apps. An experienced and skilled app developer who has rich expertise in this specific domain can incorporate more functionalities into your app market.
How much does it cost to create a mobile app marketplace?
Online mobile app marketplace development is a complex process. It is challenging to find out the exact cost of developing this type of app. The estimate of marketplace app development depends on the following factors:
- Platforms such as Android/iOS/Cross-platform
- Technologies and Utilities
- Third-party Services
- Hourly rates of the development companies
The hourly rate is based on the country where the marketplace app development company is located. For example, an application costing more than $ 150,000 in the US may cost only $ 25,000 in Ukraine.
After analyzing the overhead costs, custom marketplace mobile app development will cost approx $ 5,000- $ 25,000 for a single app development platform.
Summing up
I hope you got a clear idea about the online marketplace mobile apps. You must follow the above-mentioned feature to make your marketplace app out of the box. If you already have a marketplace website, do not only recreate it on mobile.
Make sure to add mobile-specific features and create a marketplace mobile app that will bring value to your mobile users. So, keeping all these pointers in mind you can consult a mobile app development company in India; they will help you follow the correct path and will lead your business way ahead of your competitors.