Marketplace development starts with project discovery, during which you determine functionality and make key decisions on the project’s technical implementation. Then, your team starts building the initial version of your marketplace. This stage involves design, coding, testing, and deployment. The cost to build a marketplace starts at $150,000. With this budget, you can create sufficient functionality to cover all key needs of marketplace users. Development will take 5–6 months.
Today, we want to share our insights into marketplace development. In this article, you’ll find:
- Stages of online marketplace development
- Best practices for smooth and cost-effective development
- Approximate estimates of development time and cost, and factors that impact them
- Features to add to different product phases and the real impact they can have on your product
Let’s start with step-by-step guidance on how to create a marketplace website.
How to build an online marketplace website: Key stages & steps
To create an online marketplace, we go through three stages:
- Project discovery stage, when we define marketplace functionality and make technical decisions on how to implement your idea
- Development stage, when our development team works on creating the initial version of your marketplace, from design and coding to testing and deployment
- Maintenance and growth stage, when our team maintains the marketplace to ensure its smooth performance and implements new functionality
Project discovery: Determining functionality and planning development
The goal of the project discovery stage is to make key decisions on your product’s technical implementation and plan the development process so you can build a robust marketplace in a time- and cost-effective way.
This stage is a collective effort of our:
Project manager who tracks the progress of the project discovery stage, manages specialists involved in the process, and estimates the project’s budget and timeline
Business analyst who works closely with you to understand business requirements and defines marketplace functionality and requirements
UI/UX designer who develops a design concept and user journey
Technical specialists (such as a software architect and QA engineer) who ensure optimal technical decisions
