Cost To Build An Online Marketplace: How To Create Successful Website!

5 min readApr 23, 2020

Let’s imagine that you decide to build an online marketplace. As a technical partner of many firms, we are always asked with the following questions — How to turn a web-based marketplace app like Amazon, Etsy or Airbnb into reality?

Next, How much does it cost to create a successful marketplace website? How to choose the right technology stack for your own marketplace? Or, what features exactly does your online marketplaces need?

The digital marketplace platforms has grown rapidly. In 2018, online sales of goods in the US totaled $504.6 billion, and predicted to exceed $735 billion in 2023.

The achievements of P2P marketplace are indisputable. Thus, more and more people consider starting their own e-commerce website.

In fact, the average cost to of building an online marketplace depends on the option you choose. In this article, we’ll give you full estimated marketplace web development cost, which is most likely to bring you revenue.

If you want to develop web-based marketplace, firstly you need to know what is the tech stack for building a marketplace website!

Technology stack for building an online marketplace

Building a marketplace MVP with must-have features? Most likely, you’d want to add in-app search(technology: Elastic Search), payments (Braintree, Stripe), and instant messaging(Firebase).

The technology stack we use to create a marketplace website depends on a marketplace’s specifications. But we typically use the technologies listed below for marketplaces:

Frontend

Angular
JavaScript
WebStorm

Backend

Node.js
EC2
MySQL
Swagger
Express 4
Sequelize

Integrations

S3
PayPal
Stripe
Amazon SES
Twilio

Keep in mind that we listed only core frameworks and preprocessors, and the stack usually includes more technologies. The technology stack may also change should we consider other frontend frameworks.

Core features for MVP marketplace

No matter what kind of online marketplace you want to set up, there are two main components you’ll need — user platform and admin panel.

The Administration board controls the inventory of products, customers, orders, payments, etc,…

At the same time, the user panel includes item listing, search engine, shopping cart, reviews and testimonials as well as payment features and shipping function.

Obviously, without these main features, your P2P marketplace may be hard to give an experience of safety and comfort for customers.

The sooner you make your online website marketplace, the sooner you define what to approach.

You should also remember that the first impression is very important. In order to help you build a successful marketplace, we present you 9 essential marketplace characteristics.

1. Easy registration process

If you want to create a fully online marketplace, each should sign up and provide personal details such as name, gender, date of birth, email, phone number and so on.

Moreover, letting users sign up via social platforms is a simple way of registering. Privacy settings like not to share their activity on Facebook is also important.

Consequently, an e-commerce marketplace website should have:

Email address, first name and password
Or sign up via Google, Facebook
Term of use and Privacy policy

As a matter of fact that not every marketplaces provide an easy registration process to customers. Then, this is one of the main reason why your marketplace app has counted many uninstall.

So, in order to keep visitors into potential customers, you should create the registration as easy as possible!

2. User profile

Every P2P Marketplace MVP has 2 roles: customers and publishers. So, making an account as detailed as possible is must-have feature. For instance, visitors can easy signup and see the provider’s information. Sellers should manage clearly all the inventory data and change settings for public information.

In summary, an online marketplace for visitors will be able to:

See detailed information about customers and sellers

Customers can:

Update profile including delivery address, payment method, change password, etc,
See order history or order in process

And, publishers can:

Change account settings like company name, phone number, address
Add link to social media, ratings/ reviews

3. Homepage

It’s always worth to customize your homepage! One thing all customers want to see is a clear navigation system (from price range to location, etc.). Don’t forget about user experience UX/UI design. Without further ado, check these tips and make your online marketplace MVP look awesome:

Simple navigation, personalized search box and beautiful image on web
Add last watched products to help customers buy faster
Another, add list of popular products
Or, testimonial section telling to develop trust among the visitor

4. Manage listings (for sellers)

In addition, adding list is essential function for supplier. Once customers visit your website, the managed listing of products or services will give them better experience. Online marketplace site visitors will need:

Filter listings of products
Listing search
Detailed information about listing

While sellers site will need:

Add a new listing
View, remove, manage product listings
Publish or draft a listing

5. Flexible payment system

The payment system automatically calculates the quantity of charges. Additionally, seeing payment history is necessary for customers.

Providing multiple payment options is also beneficial to your futures buyers. Your online marketplace should require users pay with credit cards, PayPal, some other payment method, or even with cash.

Plus, let them manage:

Payment details: transaction history, the quantity of services and normal payment
Manage payment technique: add, remove, update payment method

The list goes on. Let’s take a look at full article to know more!