After doing your research, you ought to have a solid grasp of the challenges faced by your prospective users and how your marketplace platform aims to address them. This encompasses the problem and solution, but your job doesn’t end there. The next step involves determining the product/market fit — essentially, how to cater to a sizeable market. This is where the need to build a marketplace MVP, or Minimum Viable Product, comes in.
How to build a marketplace MVP
The first step is to identify your potential early adopters – those eager to embrace your multi-vendor marketplace and provide invaluable feedback. Your objective is to offer them essential features that address their needs effectively. It’s only when these users start engaging with your marketplace that you gain the invaluable insights necessary to refine your product to its peak potential.
Skipping this phase is not an option; it’s crucial to build your own MVP marketplace. The worst-case scenario for your marketplace is lack of usage due to the absence of a desired product. Initial validation of your marketplace is essential, and this is one of the benefits of an MVP. If you start without this step, your marketplace is likely to falter.
While this is all part of the process and somewhat of a ‘prototype,’ you still want it to appear as polished and complete as possible. It won’t be perfect at this stage due to lack of feedback, but it must fulfill what you’re promising so that the feedback is pertinent to your actual marketplace. Releasing it with bugs or an unprofessional appearance will automatically deter users.
Poor feedback could result, which may not even relate to your core concept, but rather how it’s been portrayed. Your aim should be to delight your early adopters, so keep that in mind from the outset. Invest the necessary time and effort to deliver an incredible product that people will want to use, take their feedback into account, and perfect it.
When you consider building a minimum viable product for marketplaces, MVP translates to ‘Minimum Viable Platform’ rather than ‘product’. You’ll only ascertain the viability of your marketplace once your platform is launched and people begin to use it.
So, how do you build a minimum viable product marketplace? If you’re not a developer – which is the case for most people, it’s advisable to work with a specialist marketplace team like markko, that will be as committed to your product as you are.
By partnering with a company like us, we can ensure your idea is given the justice it deserves. Your marketplace will be professional and functional from day one, enabling vendors and customers to start using it promptly, resulting in accurate and actionable feedback.
The marketplace platform will be user-friendly, and we’ll handle everything so you can focus on your concept and research. We’ll manage the coding, hosting, and payment system… and your marketplace MVP will be ready to launch.
Before the launch, have clarity on what you seek to learn from it and what information will help you verify if your assumptions about your marketplace hold true. To achieve this, you’ll need to define your marketplace’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to ensure they are met.
Conclusion
When it comes to your marketplace business, the MVP is the fundamental solution that addresses your vendors’ and customers’ problems in a unique way that other marketplaces haven’t managed to do yet. So strive to make it an excellent experience for all!