We are at a pivotal point, as the legacy IT systems, and software is changing, blurring, and growing with competition and options with cloud and on-demand web and mobile app development. Creating marketplace applications for the sharing economy is complex, profitable, and uniquely designed to give individuals the opportunity to be service providers. It is the future. Think of the success of Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy. So what should you be looking for in a mobile app development partner if you are interested in building a marketplace platform that wants to disrupt the market within your industry?
We at BitCot have been fortunate to work with a number of companies that are creating applications for the two-sided marketplace. In the spirit of sharing, here are eight functional suggestions for handling the complexities of a marketplace application.
- Booking Engine\Availability\Calendar\Scheduling are essential components in most marketplace applications. These are also some of the most complex functionalities that need to be robust and always evolving for a marketplace to be successful. Scheduling and pricing along with managing the availability and calendar on both sides could make or break the system.
- Payments. It is important to have a goal to incrementally build a seamless payment processing and tracking system integrated into the marketplace with features such as simple pricing\dynamic pricing, payment integration for both sides, and the ability to track and reconcile in the admin dashboard for the platform.
- Communication\Notifications is another key component that would allow the platform to work without manual intervention and would require integration with chat\SMS and notifications to make the platform self-sustainable.
- Analytics and data are key to user insights and driving growth for any software platform.
- Service Provider Flow. An admin dashboard is necessary to track services, management tools to help with day to day operations, communicate with the consumer, payment information, profile, reviews.
- Consumer Flow. Build on the ability to have a simple flow to quickly lookup service providers based on distance, service type, availability, cost and easily book a service, communicate with the service provider, and pay for the service. An absolute necessity for both flows is to have Login\Signup flow, Profile, History, Notification settings.
- Management Dashboard. Create a dashboard for super admins to have an approval process, managing different service types, service transactions, payments, blocking users or service providers, monitoring chat.
- Third-party integrations will include social media login –FB\Google, Chat\SMS –Twilio, Payments –Stripe\Braintree\PayPal, Google Maps –Maps\Address validation, Deep Linking — Firebase\Branch, Analytics –Firebase\MixPanel, Payroll management –Qwil/Gusto, Email –AWS SES\SendGrid.
As predicted by PwC, the sharing economy industry will reach $335 billion by 2025, up from $18 billion in 2017. While the sharing economy has been tremendously beneficial for society by enabling individuals to supplement their incomes and lowering costs for consumers, the industry is run by centralized platforms.
Technical considerations to consider when developing a marketplace solution are:
- Finalizing software stack for growth
- Choosing cloud services for scale
- Building an analytics-driven platform
From the developers’ perspective, it is important to first decide if the idea is best suited for mobile or web platforms or both and work towards maturing the platform in building and scaling up the platform. One of the most important things to consider when building the platform is the ability to iterate fast and speed to market with changes for growth.
Here are some examples of on-demand web and mobile applications, we at BitCot have developed that are two-sided marketplaces.
Poured
The platform provides premium opportunities for freelancers in various industries by providing an on-demand staffing platform. It allows talent to work whenever they need to or where ever they need to. It is an innovative app platform for individuals to find premium work at competitive pay rates at the ease of their schedule. Through the use of our app, individuals set their own availability and become POURED members.
Paxxie
Paxxie is an amazing platform for freelance photographers and a marketplace that connects photographers, videographers, phoneographers, liveographers, and even drone-flyers of all experience levels, with consumers. The free app allows clients to search for talent by portfolio, price, availability, and location. The platform makes it really easy to book a photographer and also for the talented providers to quickly create a professional profile and get themselves approved. Paxxie makes it really easy to choose a talent based on different criteria, pick availability and pay for the event.
Stomp Sessions
Stomp provides a two-sided marketplace platform to connect with local pros and experts for various sports. It makes it really easy to book action sports lessons, camps, track progress, watch quick tip videos, manage the complete experience from the app.
Stomp Sessions is driven to create lifetime users in outdoor sports with a simple mobile platform, matching learners with local experts and pros, to explore more and get better faster. For learners, we provide quality lessons and guide at your fingertips. For pros and local experts, they provide a platform to get paid sharing your unique skills on your own schedule.
The most iconic XGames medalist and Olympians have joined Stomp as athlete advisors to build the Stomp Skills Matrix and share the Stomp story including Chris Cole, Ryan Sheckler, Jamie Anderson, Jeremy Jones, Chas Guldemond, Cam Zink, JT Holmes, Julia Mancuso, Daron Rahlves, and Chuck Patterson.
