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How MVP helps in building online market place

How MVP Helps in Building a Successful Online Market Place in 2022 and Beyond

Introduction

12th August, 2022

Ever wondered how to develop an online marketplace MVP? Before that, have you thought about having an online marketplace? If not, it’s time you did because that’s how the world works now, and not having an online portal to sell your business is only going to make things worse. Supplementing your business with an online marketplace would only help in the long run since it helps acquire new clients and expand the already existing customer base.

Here is a quick run-through of all the benefits you can enjoy with having an online marketplace:

Why do you need to build a marketplace MVP?

Minimum Viable Product or MVP makes it possible for businesses to validate their ideas, and their feasibility. There are already thousands of marketplaces globally, and visitors have access to almost anything they want. So when you come up with an idea, it must be something that catches their eye.  

In short, it is the mini version of your marketplace business. So it will contain all the basic main features of your business that users can analyze and respond to. Based on their responses and feedback, you can either change the strategy of your marketplace or come up with a whole new idea.

It is a well known story that Airbnb started as a small networking application for conference attendees. The site was known as airbedandbreakfast.com, and eventually, the demand and boom led to the birth of Airbnb, and they had one of the most successful marketplaces in the history of marketplaces. Much of their successes can also be attributed to the fact that they refined their idea from providing beds with air mattresses which was their initial concept.

Now here is another story:

The story of how the MVP idea was born.

It all happened when Nick Swinmurn discovered an opportunity in the market, and decided to test it out. He realized that there was no platform for buying shoes online, which he realized from his own experience. So he went from store to store, took pictures of shoes and built a website where he posted pictures of the shoes and shipped them to people who wanted to buy them. Initially, it was just a friends and family shop, and with funding they received from major investors. Zappos was born. The MVP at this stage was “Are people willing to buy shoes online”? And this was a huge success as was later proved. The MVP was decidedly low-tech, but it definitely answered the question. 

The process of having an online marketplace

There are two options with MVP Development. 

     1. Build it yourself Or Hire Third Party Agency, Or

     2. Choose no-code marketplace website builder\

Different kinds of marketplaces to consider

  • Goods and products marketplaces
  • Freelance marketplaces
  • Recruitment marketplaces
  • Investment and crowdfunding
  • Education marketplaces
  • Real estate marketplaces
  • Travel marketplaces
  • NFT marketplaces

So once you decide what kind of marketplace you need, you can plan the online marketplace MVP.

Most Important Features to Consider For Online MVP Marketplace

The MVP marketplace is a digital platform that customers visit, browse, purchase and make payments. The demand of online marketplaces will always be rising, so if you are thinking about validating your idea with a marketplace now would be the time.  Contrary to popular belief, MVP is not a raw product and so a lot of effort must be taken to create a perfect product. The app should contain the most important features of the product.  And outsourcing your app development has been quite successful for MVP projects.

1. Idea Validation

Love your idea? You need to validate your idea to know whether your audience would love it too. If users love the idea, they would become early adopters, and become loyal fans. No matter what people think about how successful your business is, the idea should be validated in a real-life setup. 

2. Contain Only a Few Structural Components

The MVP is released just to test the requirement volatility, so include only a few structural components, mainly where users can sign in, see whether the application solves the problem, whether they can buy from it, is it safe, and so on. 

3. Solving One Core Problem Really Well

The MVP should solve one core problem, that’s all and every part of the program should lead to solving it. This way, there would be nothing to distract from the main purpose of creating the product. 

4. Simple Design Flow

The MVP should have a simple design process, because that’s an important MVP stage.   User flow is an important feature in the MVP because it ensures the look and feel of the future product. Hence the primary focus should be more on the basic format of browsing, buying and checking out rather than fancy features. That’s all the end user wants, and that should be the goal of this online marketplace MVP that you are developing. 

5. The Must-Have Basic Features For the MVP Online Marketplace

It is a critical decision knowing what to add, and what not to add with the MVP because the MVP is not a prototype at all, and neither is it a full featured product. All you need to know are:

Would it address the core problem, and satisfy the needs of the audience? Some Basic Features to Consider:

Homepage

This is the first thing that your customers see when they open the web application.  It will greet visitors, introduce the marketplace and other key functions.

Registration

If the homepage is the place where you impress the visitors, the registration page is the place where you make the comfortable. Yes, the sign up process should be as simple as possible, without invading on their privacy. 

Create a user profile page

The user profile section is important for websites like Airbnb if they want to know a little about the buyer. This would be a good idea if you are going to have a community of suppliers and vendors. 

Booking a Service

A feature to include if you are developing a travel, flight or restaurant app or a similar thing. An in-built calendar adds to the punch. 

Notifications

Notifying users through push notifications cannot be avoided at all costs. It can also come as text messages and emails too. 

The cost of Building Successful MVP

The cost of the marketplace MVP would reduce when you have the basic features. The MVP will then be tested, tried and then launched for the real people out there. You can hire a software development company with experience in developing kickers MVPs and they would help you plan a budget for the same. The price range would of course change with your requirements, but you need to bring in the right MVP developer for the agile MVP development process. 

The MVP marketplace cost would also be dependent on the complexity of design as well. After all, you need an engaging UX and UI. The cost of MVP would depend on the features and their complexity 

Set up a meeting with the software development partner and go through the process of Building Successful MVP marketplace development because there are several stages involved in determining the cost; it would also be dependent on the technology stack of choice too. You will also need to have a team of software engineers, testers, analysts, QA engineers and so on. The cost would also depend on the algorithms resumed to collect the feedback and response of the users. 

Your Benefits of having online Marketplace MVP

Here is a quick run-through of all the benefits you can enjoy with having an online marketplace:

1. List Out Offers

It is obvious that with an online marketplace, the company would be able to list their products, services, features, and benefits in a way that would reach the target segment in a punctuated way. 

2. Customer Acquisition

As explained earlier, acquiring new clients and expanding the customer base is the biggest advantage of having an online marketplace. It is very easy to reach out to people who have not even heard of your product otherwise, this way.

3. Bank on the Trust Factor

When your business has an online marketplace, your customers do not have to depend on third-party web stores to buy your product. They would be pleased to buy from your store, so cash in on the trust built up over the years. 

4. Specialty services

Having your own marketplace helps you personalize the shopping experience quite unlike the service offered by Amazon. It would also help when you have specific landing pages to target your customers, so they will get exactly what they were looking for. In Amazon, you can do only broad keyword based promotions, so it is not easy to get the upper hand with the customers. 

Buying habits changed drastically with Covid 19. People are afraid to step out of their homes, and are relying on online marketplaces to get what they want. They feel safer to wander virtually. It is wise to launch an online marketplace with the help of an MVP as an answer to what you both need. For you, is your product idea feasible?, and for the customers, if the product idea answers their pain problem. 

That’s what all the big names do, and they know better than to take risks. Almost all the companies that are already making it big have been involved in Building Successful MVP development because they know that’s the only way to improve and fine-tune their products. You can read up multiple stories about small companies (almost like the rags-to-riches kind of story) and how an online MVP has helped them if you Google about it. 

Hire experts to build marketplace MVP development because they have already tried and tested different methods, and they will have the expertise to do this. 

Conclusion

Having an online marketplace is thus an important strategy in retaining customers and bringing in new ones. With an MVP, you will know how to go about the process, and make no mistakes, waste no time. Get in touch with the right team, and set the ball rolling!

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