After the pandemic, many professionals moved their businesses online. As a result, product and service marketplaces emerged.
Essentially, marketplaces are online platforms that facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers. They work by connecting people who want to sell products or services with those who are looking to buy them.
The success of a marketplace depends on a number of factors, including the size of its user base, the variety of services offered, the quality of its customer service, and the ease of use of its platform.
Overall, a well-designed and well-run marketplace can bring significant benefits to both buyers and sellers by providing a convenient, efficient, and cost-effective way to exchange services.
In this article, we’ll focus on what exactly are professional service marketplaces and how you can create one.
What is a professional services marketplace?
A professional services marketplace is a platform that connects service providers with customers who are in need of specific services. It acts as an intermediary between service providers and customers, offering an all-in-one way for people to find and purchase services, as well as for service providers to promote and sell their services.
Some examples of service marketplaces include freelancer websites, home services platforms, and appointment booking sites. The services offered on these platforms can range from manual labor, such as cleaning or landscaping, to digital services, such as web development or graphic design.
There are typically two main types of professional services marketplace models: B2C (business-to-consumer) and C2C (consumer-to-consumer).
In B2C professional marketplaces, businesses sell products directly to consumers, while in C2C marketplaces, individuals can sell goods and services to each other.
Professional marketplaces generally make money by charging fees to sellers, such as listing fees, transaction fees, or advertising fees. Some marketplaces also generate revenue through advertising or by offering premium services to buyers and sellers.
What are the benefits of professional marketplaces?
Marketplaces for professional services offer several benefits, including:
- Convenience: They provide an all-in-one platform for customers to browse and compare various service providers and book appointments.
- Increased competition: Marketplaces for services often feature a large number of service providers, which can lead to increased competition and lower prices for consumers.
- Improved accessibility: Service marketplaces can make it easier for customers to find and book services, particularly in areas where service providers may be in short supply. Those are considered niche marketplaces.
- Enhanced visibility: Service providers can reach a larger audience and increase their visibility by listing their services on a marketplace.
- Ease of payment: Service marketplaces often provide secure payment systems, which make it easier for customers to pay for services and for service providers to receive payments.
- Increased trust: Professional marketplaces often provide rating and review systems, which can increase trust and transparency between service providers and customers.
What features should you include in your online services marketplace?
3veta offers a marketplace checklist full of modules and features that you can choose from.
According to your business purpose and goals, you can customize your marketplace in a way that’ll serve both sellers and clients best.
Some of the most essential features that your service marketplace should possess are:
- Video conferencing and scheduling: This proves to be essential for every marketplace for services as it supports seamless communication between service providers and seekers.
- Secure payment processing: Handles payments and makes sure that (1) sellers get paid for the completion of their services, (2) clients avoid scammers and are happy with their purchase.
- Service listing: Facilitates service providers by allowing them to easily list their offerings and manage them.
- Advanced search options: Eliminates the hassle of going through all listings and allows users to easily search for what they are looking for.
- Notifications and messaging: Improves the interaction between sellers and clients and is excellent for arranging the details surrounding the completion of a task.
- User profiles: Serves to verify every user/seller and ensures that there are no fraudsters on both sides.
- Analytics: Helps business owners follow the success of their marketplace by providing data visualizations and additional performance-related information.
💡 Pro tip
If you’re not sure what else you may need, we can help. Let’s get in touch and discuss how we can help you build a profitable service marketplace.
How to build a services marketplace platform with 3veta?
The founder and CEO of Fiverr.com – Micha Kaufman, states in one of his articles for Forbes the following:
“Assuming your product or service has value to a substantial audience, create inventory first or take time to hone your skills in order to entice customers.”
But in order to have time to do so, you’ll have to give the task of building your website to someone else in the meantime.
Even if you’re a person with substantial programming skills, you’ll need help, time, and resources to build a marketplace by yourself.
And you won’t have much time for networking and recruiting enough service providers for your professional marketplace.
That’s why we say, leave it to us!
We can build a fully functional service marketplace tailored to your business needs in just 5 business days.
Let’s get in touch and see how 3veta can be applied to your unique use case.
💡 Pro tip
Wondering what your professional service marketplace will look like? Play with 3veta and find out!
Get your professional service marketplace up and running
Professional services marketplaces are booming and with the development of technology, more and more service providers find a way to start offering their services in the virtual world as well.
After finding the right business niche to focus on, the question of how to build a marketplace emerges. And no-code solutions for marketplaces turn out to be extremely convenient, as we highlighted.
Not only do they enable entrepreneurs with no coding skills to build their own platforms, but also hugely facilitate programmers who would like to invest their time in something else.
Should you have more questions, feel free to reach out.