Online Marketplace Design & Development Services

Key features of the marketplace

Items statistics

Gain a competitive edge with the stats feature. Stats are especially useful when it comes to expensive purchases. With this feature enabled, buyers can see:

How much has the price changed since the product went on sale
What vendors are selling the item, and who offers the best price
How many purchases of this product were made

You can show any kind of stats. It all depends on your marketplace’s niche and the goal you pursue.

Items uploading options

API. Ideally, you should enable SDKs for all the most popular programming languages. This will make a connection to the marketplace easy for the clients.
Import of goods from customers’ XML feeds (plus, detailed documentation).
Import of items via CSV file (you’ll need detailed documentation, plus templates of import files).
Development of modules/plugins for the import of items from popular CMSs.
Parsing the client's online store/catalog, in case all the previous options don't suit the client.
Manual upload from personal accounts.

User-friendly catalog search

In addition to well-arranged filters, you should pay attention to other important search features, namely:

Sorting products by price or popularity;
“Add to favorites” option.
Comparison. This feature helps customers to make well-informed decisions. Your users would be able to compare two or more products of the same type side-by-side in a table.

Filters with custom logic

Customers shouldn’t get "Sorry, but nothing was found for your query" in the search results. Search filters should always show available items to users.

Wide range of attributes

Extra attributes help buyers form their request precisely, so the search result would better satisfy their intent. And as we all know, a satisfied customer is the first step to building your audience.

Fast and easy communication

To fulfill the order in time, the seller has to find out about the orders fast. In turn, buyers should be notified about the order in a convenient way (e-mail, WhatsApp, or other channels of their choice). A swift notification system is a big plus when dealing with big clients.

Online marketplace “Perprice”

The website allows to easily search across millions of goods and services.

Goals

To build a simple and intuitive user interface.
To develop a chat module
To connect global payment systems.

Check out the website

Online marketplace “Emozzi”

Gifts and experiences marketplace Emozzi.

Goal

To develop a user-friendly online platform for interaction between customers, dealers, and suppliers. For this purpose, we added 3 types of personal accounts and the application processing functionality.

Read the case study

Building an eCommerce Marketplace

If you have a small niched marketplace targeted to one country, chances are you will do fine with any set of technologies. But in case you’re going to scale your business, you need to lay down the following elements in the app architecture.

1. Large number of items

Marketplace applications process huge amounts of data via APIs, XML, CSV, and other formats. So you need to have a system that will import, store, and backup these data. Even a thirty-minute outage will undermine your website's credibility. So make sure you have a backup server set up.

2. High load

Marketplaces deal with lots of visitors. And many of those visitors will actively use your website’s features. To prepare your website for high loads, make sure you have the following functions in place:

request optimization
autoscaling
target audience monitoring
clear frontend-backend delineation
third-party caching services
tested search engine (Sphinx, Elastic search, etc.)

3. Scalability

The initial choice of technologies will define how scalable your project would be. To make your marketplace scalable and fault-tolerant, we recommend using only proven tools and technologies.

We use
cutting-edge technologies

When building Marketplaces we use Python - a secure, robust, and effective programming language. It powers Google, Instagram, YouTube, and other major platforms.

We started to use Python and its framework Django long before they became the most popular programming techs. Since then, we wrote and launched 100+ complex Python/Django projects. And it made us adepts of these technologies. Our clients might not know what concise source code is, but they do appreciate when we save their time and money building IT-solutions for them.

Python - #1 in the world according to PYPL rating.

Ecommerce Marketplace Development Essentials

Clean design

Marketplaces don’t need any super fancy visuals. Buyers go to marketplaces to search for goods they need. The main UI requirements for this type of web apps are simplicity and conciseness. Users should be able to do any task in the fewest clicks possible. Things like clever search forms or complicated ad placement would hurt the user experience greatly.

Seller rating

Your users expect to receive quality products that match descriptions. That's why you should have the vendor control mechanism in place. It must include key markers, like ratings from users, control purchases, dispute solving speed, verifications, etc.

Delivery and payment

There will be a lot of sellers on your platform, each with its specific requirements for shipping and payment methods. Analyze your potential customers and integrate with all popular delivery services and payment systems. Don't forget about options like installment, credit, free shipping, etc. All these features can give you that competitive edge you need.

How to build an online marketplace

1. Idea discovery

Discussion about your idea, working through the use cases.

2. Market research

We dive into your business, research the competitors, and draw up a specification document.

3. Time & costs estimation

We write down the backlog items and estimate time costs for each module.

4. Legal guarantees

Singing the contract that includes fixed price, time, and work volume. Attaching the specs.

5. Step-by-step development

Breaking the projects down into sprints. We’ll also send you the results of each sprint for approval.

6. Test & launch

Setting up a server, training your staff, and final testing.

Online Marketplace Development

Key features of the marketplace