How to build a service marketplace (fast and no-code)

4 Challenges of building a service marketplace

While a service marketplace can be extremely beneficial to its creators and users, the process isn’t without its challenges. Here are some of the challenges and how you can address them.

1. Ensuring data security

Data security is probably one of the biggest challenges of creating a marketplace. Before taking action, make sure to check the compliance requirements for your service.

Pro tip: when choosing a no-code marketplace builder, it’s important to pick a tool that ensures backend-level security as well as client-side security, like Softr.

2. Attracting users

Another challenge to getting your marketplace off the ground is knowing how to attract users.

Suppliers and sellers are more likely than customers to want to join the marketplace first, even during its early phases, since it can be a major source of revenue for them. 

Attract sellers by incentivizing them to list on your marketplace in exchange for rewards and perks. Promote your perks on social media to get traction fast.

Once there are a few sellers listed on your platform, it’ll be much easier to attract buyers. You can also offer rewards, perks, coupons, and discounts to buyers who register early. 

But remember, after your first few sellers sign up, it’s important to focus your efforts equally on attracting both buyers and sellers. If the scales aren’t balanced, you could risk losing customers.

3. Retaining users 

Once sellers and buyers have connected through your platform, what’s keeping them from leaving it to bypass commissions and other fees?

One of the most useful things you can do to prevent platform leakage is offer features and functionalities to make your users disregard the commission and listing fees and stick around.

You can retain your users by:

• Creating a good user and customer experience: You can do this by collecting user feedback and constantly iterating and improving the marketplace.
• Fostering trust by providing secure payment methods: On Softr, you can make transactions securely with the help of the Stripe native payment integration.
• Building an engaged community between users: Users are much more likely to be retained if they feel the support of a community on your platform. Implementing a robust and efficient business phone system can further enhance communication within the community, providing users with reliable and seamless connectivity.

4. Solving a real problem

Before investing resources, make sure that your service marketplace solves a real problem.

To do that:

• Conduct in-depth market research
• Develop an MVP to validate the market demand
• Test the success of your MVP in solving the market’s problems

With solutions like Softr, you can build a no-code MVP in minutes and, within a matter of days, start testing your idea.

When building your MVP, make sure to include the features you believe are going to address the key pain points of your end-users so you can receive early feedback and start iterating.