The ongoing digital transformation of our daily lives, the COVID-19 pandemic, transition to cashless payments — these and other factors make more and more people prefer shopping online instead of visiting brick-and-mortar stores. In 2021, top online marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay, and Taobao, sold $3.23 trillion worth of goods, and the figure is forecasted to reach $27.15 trillion by 2027. Even in the face of fierce competition, such market size opens tremendous opportunities for new marketplace platforms to fill a niche and build a loyal customer base.
Checklist
1 Why build an online marketplace platform
Online marketplaces can be grouped into two primary categories: horizontal ones, such as Amazon or Alibaba, that offer a wide range of goods from multiple vendors, and vertical ones, such as Airbnb or Etsy, focused on specific products or services. The concept of an online marketplace — connecting customers with various sellers — is surely beneficial for buyers who can pick the best offer, and sellers who increase the exposure of their goods and attract new buyers, but it also can be very profitable for the platform’ s owner.
No need to store your own stock
The marketplace owner needs to monitor content, work on attracting users, make sure the platform runs smoothly and that products meet quality requirements, but they don’ t have to do inventory management, rent warehouses, and hire couriers (unless it is a hybrid marketplace). All of this greatly reduces financial risks and improves business flexibility.
Various monetization models
There are plenty of revenue streams that can be tapped into by a marketplace owner. Just to name a few, there can be a fixed commission on every sold item, subscription fees, various advertising services, premium features for regular buyers, access to advanced analytics, or extensive customization of product cards for sellers. By combining several of these monetization models, a marketplace owner can effectively increase the platform’s revenue and achieve their business goals.
2 Marketplace app development process
In general, the building of every marketplace consists of four main stages: research and business analysis; choosing suitable technologies; designing UI and prototypes; development itself; post-release maintenance. Let’ s take a close look at each of them.
Research & ideation
First of all, every business idea requires validation. This step involves business analysts and a product manager who thoroughly research the current market situation and competitors, define their product’ s value proposition, and establish target audience and use case scenarios. As a result of this preliminary stage, your team should be able to clearly identify the future marketplace’ s purpose, the size of the potential market, and the audience.
For example, when we at Vide Infra took up developing Follow.Art marketplace, the client’ s concept was clear: create a platform for direct interaction between the buyer and the seller. The goal of Follow.Art was to give freedom to artists by becoming a digital intermediary that attracts potential buyers, artists, and galleries for direct business — when
Today, there are plenty of technologies to choose from for building an online marketplace. It is always a good practice to base your choice of technologies on several factors, including:
- Project size
A relatively small marketplace catering to the needs of niche customers can successfully work on basic technologies like Magento, while a platform aimed for future scaling on a global level should be built with more advanced technologies and custom solutions right from the start. - Supported platforms
Whether the customers would be able to shop your marketplace via a browser, a mobile app, or both defines what technologies should be used for its development. While a website and mobile apps can be built using different frameworks, it is also possible to use a cross-platform approach with such technologies as Flutter to create a marketplace for several platforms from a single codebase. - Customization
By using open-source software you get the ability to modify and enhance every aspect of the marketplace architecture, logic, and appearance. However, such freedom comes at the cost of a lengthier and pricier development process, so if a paid ready-made solution satisfies your business goals it can be an optimal choice.
In the world of web-hosting there are plenty of solutions, from shared and virtual private hosting suitable for small websites to dedicated hosting that comes at a significantly higher price. These days, cloud hosting, which allows your online store to be located on multiple servers linked together, can arguably be named the best choice for an eCommerce platform. Thanks to its stability and flexibility in terms of scale and price, cloud hosting is suitable for online shops with special promotions and discounts, where the number of visitors can increase sharply, and it is important to ensure there is no server overload.
- Server failure or breakdown doesn’t affect the operation of the website
- You pay only for the resources you use
- Additional resources and services can be added to increase the platform’s security and performance
- You can customize the platform’s configuration according to your business needs
- Multiple servers ensure stability, distributing server load — each server performs a specific function
Aim at creating an elegant impression that communicates the product value. Don’t oversell. Placing a prominent phone number or a giant and aggressive CTA right on the first screen won’t result in receiving more leads. It impedes prospects from getting the desired impression of value and uniqueness. When thinking about crafting your message, mentally put money aside and strive to tell the most compelling story about the project and how your prospects would feel living there.
3 Sylius vs Magento: differences to consider
Depending on your GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), Magento’s commercial version can cost you in the range between €18,100 and even €155,000 per, with the cloud version costing twice as much.
Meanwhile, Sylius pricing, also based on the GMV, ranges from €14,900 to €72,900. Together with the Sylius Store that has more than 80 plug-ins, most of which are free, the Sylius platform defineky looks more appealing in terms of price.
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Loading speed is a factor that severely affects an online store's popularity. Studies show that loading for more than 6 seconds makes half of the visitors leave the page. That's why it's important to choose a platform that offers high performance out-of-the-box. |
Both Magento and Sylius platforms offer high-grade performance. However, in most case scenarios, Sylius shows slightly better performance thanks to its performant PHP Symfony-based framework. All in all, achieving top performance requires some manual optimization of both frameworks by enabling caching, prioritizing asset loading and reducing their weight. |
Loading speed is a factor that severely affects an online store's popularity. Studies show that loading for more than 6 seconds makes half of the visitors leave the page. That's why it's important to choose a platform that offers high performance out-of-the-box. |
Both Magento and Sylius platforms offer high-grade performance. However, in most case scenarios, Sylius shows slightly better performance thanks to its performant PHP Symfony-based framework. All in all, achieving top performance requires some manual optimization of both frameworks by enabling caching, prioritizing asset loading and reducing their weight. |
Because of its monolithic approach, Magento provides limited customization capabilities to implement big-scale modifications. Writing custom solutions within the framework requires specialized knowledge to optimize its performance. |
Sylius, which was initially developed as a customizable platform, allows developers to implement even complex architectural changes relatively easily. It also supports quick plugging-in of numerous third-party features. |
Magento’s legacy monolithic architecture, which is typical for out-of-the-box solutions, comes with a lot of features, which is obviously good. |
To achieve a high level of scalability with Magento, additional coding might be required, which increases the final price of the development. |
Core Services |
BASIC BDT 4,950 |
STANDARD BDT 7,950 |
ADVANCE BDT 14,950 |
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Any Issues/CR Will Be Assigned To Team |
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Google Analytics Reports |
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Security |
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Site Health Monitoring:
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Technical Consultation (1 Monthly Report With Suggestions) |
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Bug Solving (Max 5 Time/Month & 10hr/Month) |
Magento or Adobe Commerce is an out-of-the-box eCommerce platform that offers a complete set of ready-made features for launching an online shop. The initial version released in 2007 ran on Zend Framework, which was later substituted by its own PHP implementation to provide robust functionality and reduce the development effort for modules related to business logic.
The website’s technical implementation quality is an essential part of the creative solution. No matter how elaborate the design, it would never impress the prospect if it feels static and plain, like a PowerPoint presentation. Especially relevant for a project where the sense of modernity, technology and innovation are crucial but essential for all, the high-end technical implementation will make the website stand out from the competition. A subtle and elegant solution would suffice to achieve the effect, so look for ways to incorporate it into the design.
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