How to create a b2b marketplace from scratch ?

If you want to create a marketplace, read carefully the following steps about marketplace creation. Most of them are useful and fully recommended.

Understand your market

Amazon, Google, Facebook marketplace make us dream because of their success. But launching a marketplace need to be well prepared :

• Ask yourself which products or services you want to sell on the platform and analyze the related market

• Identify clearly your futur buyers & sellers. The best would be to get connexion with some of them before starting.

At the beginning focus on one market. Even Amazon at the beginning only sold media like books, musics, softwares,…!

Draw your business model

The business model can be made only if you well know your market. Your objective is to create a profitable business. This can only be done if vendors agree with your business model and are ready to pay wether it is commissions of sales or subscription fees.

Set-up the platform

There are plenty of markeplace solutions on the web. After choosing the one that fits the best for your marketplace idea (refer to our previous article about how to choose your marketplace solution), you would have to define how it should operate through its different workflows :

• • Products presentations

• • Order management

• • Payments & invoices

• • Shipping methods

• • Customer services

• • Statistics

• • Promotions

The platform, at least if you choose an all-in-one-solution, could be set-up very quickly. Time for marketplace creation can be lengthened if you need some special and additional development.

Onboard your first vendors & buyers

The best way to create a marketplace that pleases its future users is to onboard them as quickly as possible. They feel involved in the project and are more willing to use it.

Once onboard it could be interesting for you to gather comments from both vendors and buyers and ask for some adjustments on the platform according to their mentioned needs.

Announce its definitive launch and communicate about it

The last step once launched is to communicate about your recent marketplace creation and to attract more and more vendors. If you need some tips on how to attract them, you can refer to this article.

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