In recent times B2B marketplace has seen massive growth. With online marketplaces like Amazon, many businesses are moving towards this platform to sell their products to a huge customer base.
According to the reports released by Statista B2B sales will touch a whopping figure of $1.2 trillion.
According to Forrester, US B2B business would touch $1.8 trillion by 2023. This shows that this is the right time to invest in a B2B marketplace.
Not sure where to begin your journey from? This guide will help you know about the important stages of online B2B marketplace development.
What Is A B2B Marketplace?
It can be best described as a website where the service providers and sellers connect under one roof. The marketplace helps service providers offer different products to other firms.
These platforms are known for particular payment modes which differ from B2C e-commerce websites' payment options. The payment options available here are paper checks, bank transfers, wire transfers, etc
How B2B Marketplaces Can Be Classified?
Talking about the online marketplace like ebay, it can be classified into 4 different categories and they are
1. Horizontal B2B Marketplaces
These marketplaces offer a range of products to different firms
2. Vertical B2B Marketplaces
These marketplaces are limited to a particular domain or target audience
3. Product-based B2B Multi-vendor Marketplaces
They sell physical goods for example Alibaba or Global Source
4. Service-based Business-to-business Websites
Here you can get multiple services from event management to content creation. For example Upwork and Toptal
Primary Challenges Associated With Core B2B Marketplaces
The main challenge associated with online B2B marketplace development is to offer a user-friendly, customer-focused, and impressive site that can manage complex business tasks for example
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Payment on credit terms or other business-related payments.
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Contract pricing and custom catalogs based on specific customer
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Purchasing approvals
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Simple re-ordering, pickup, and delivery methods
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Digitization of conventional operations
Creating a scalable B2B marketplace app development is not easy as it has its set of challenges. Well, with the right approach businesses can beat the challenges and attain success. Let us have a look at the challenges faced with B2B marketplace development
Competitor Analysis
It is a huge marketplace and your B2B firm is not the only one here in the race selling a particular product to the buyers. There will be more similar services/products offered by your competitors. Hence you need to carry out a thorough competitive analysis to know how the big players are performing, what are strategies used by them. Try to analyze their strengths and weaknesses to plan your strategy.
Budget and Resources
You need to plan your budget well and stick to it to be successful. You need to introduce things in the market with a precise budget plan.
Know The Latest Trends In Products
You need to know your customers well and to do so you need to perform detailed market research for your product. You need to understand customer buying behavior like why they are purchasing products. It will help you identify the standards involved like investment costs. The analysis will also help you dive into the market needs for a specific product or service.
Target Audience
Identify your potential audience. To meet the multiple challenges of your B2B marketplace development you need to know your target audience.
Best Practices To Follow For Online B2B Marketplace Development
Here are some key steps to be included to build a successful B2B marketplace.
1. Identify Your Marketplace
Certainly, you need to research a lot to pick the doable marketplace. If you are thinking of niche markets, the competition is very high and you will not find plenty of buyers. This is because they purchase from the suppliers directly. So, you would want to skip being a middleman that no one wants to deal with. Hence, select your marketplace smartly.
For this, you need to know your buyers or clients. You need to look into every single aspect to ensure your business turns out to be successful. Now, try to find out the pain points associated with the services or products you wish to offer.
2. Selling Proposition
Try to look into your selling proposition. It means you need to have a product/service that attracts the customers and they stick to it. Certainly, you want to be unique and get recognition. Hence, present things in a precise, transparent and unique way.
Try to think about how many times the customer would buy the service/ product you wish to offer. It will help you get a clear picture of your selling proposition. If you are into high volume sales, then the lower volume for every sale becomes easy for you.
In case you want to go with your market, give a competitive price and check the convenience.
3. Check Distribution Option
You will want to check on your distribution options. check if you can use Google Ads? You can also hire YouTubers to promote your products for which you need to offer some free samples. So, create strong distribution plans that work.
4. UX Design
In the B2B marketplace what matters the most is principles related to UX design. You need to follow keep it simple policy. Do not use bold colors as they may not be pleasing to the viewer. The users should get a soothing experience while searching for the products and proceeding to the checkout.
Hence, do not overlook automatic returning purchases as they are the best option to help your clients save ample time. Keep the sign-in process simple. Make sure the products are displayed under different categories for the users to find them easily. You can offer social proofs, white papers, and demo.
5. Referrals
Marketplaces are relying on referral programs these days to increase their buyers and users. So, do not overlook referral programs.
Cost of B2B Marketplace Development
Want to know the cost of creating a B2B marketplace app or website? You need to consider two main factors here and they are
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Development approach
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Required functionality
Looking at the average hourly development costs, it can be $45/hour and the approx cost of a B2B marketplace platform would be around $48,510 in case your development partner hails from Eastern Europe.
When compared with simple e-commerce platforms, an online marketplace mobile app or website can be a complex process. You need to identify your potential audience and details of customer behavior to be successful.
In case you are hunting for a professional software partner to assist you with B2B multi-vendor marketplace development then feel free to get in touch with Apps on Demand. We would offer a fast-loading and scalable online B2B marketplace within your budget.
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