Selling professional services on cloud platforms has become a recent trend. Service providers provide packaged offerings to their clients. Clients will compare pricing with other sellers and will select the one that suits their demand and also their budget.
On-Demand marketplaces are seeing tremendous growth and the acceptance level among the audience is unbelievable. 5.4% of market growth has been registered in 2021. Tax filing, payroll processing and auditing alone has grown 6% between 2016 to 2021.
Building a professional on demand marketplace platform has become the need of the hour. Many budding entrepreneurs are finding ways to build a platform and plan to earn well.
Before you start to build an On-Demand marketplace, you need to know the key features that are to be mandatory in your on-demand marketplace.
Key Features Of On-demand Marketplace
1. Search and Compare
Clients prefer to get their required services through online service marketplace platform and the main reason for their preference is, they can find thousands of service providers and they will get a wide range of options to select one among the best. They can with their prices and can choose the one that is most affordable for them.
This clearly shows that any on-demand service platform should have a search and compare feature that will facilitate users to get the best out of your platform.
Have advanced search options that will support users to easily find their products and also integrate comparison tools that can be used to compare among service providers.
2. Make it Device Friendly
Around 89% of customers access any online marketplace through their smartphones. Having a device responsive design has become a must, else you may lose your major audience crowd.
That will have a major impact on your business. Make it more user-friendly and let the platform fit into any screen size. This will reduce the bounce rate of your service platform.
If your business is going on the right track and when you start getting better profit then you can think about developing a dedicated mobile application for your users for easy and comfortable access.
3. Offer Online Booking
The main purpose of users visiting a service marketplace platform is they can instantly pay and book their service without any delay. So it is mandatory to have an online booking facility integrated with your on-demand service marketplace platform that will facilitate users to easily book their service.
Your service marketplace should be well-integrated with Google calendar that will support in booking appointments and will avoid hassles.
Service providers should be able to view, manage, change or cancel booking. Customers should receive instant notification either through SMS or through email, when their booking is confirmed.
4. Check Personnel Profiles
Allow your clients to analyze more about the service provider they have decided to get their service. Their profiles should be visible to clients so that they can take a look and can get more details about their experience, their manpower strength and also their customers’ feedback.
All these will provide detailed information about the service provider and this will help them to decide either to proceed with them or not.
The profile page of the service provider should contain an image column where the service provider can have his image or his brand image.
All contact information should be listed and should be visible to clients so that they can directly take a call to service providers and can get more ideas about them.
5. Multiple Payment Option
An order is considered to be completed only when the service platform receives the payment. Your service marketplace should be integrated with the secured payment gateways that are quite familiar in the market.
This will make customers pay online without hesitation. They can feel more secure as they are familiar with the payment gateway.
Your service platform should also support other modes of payment like, paying through credit and debit cards, net banking and other UPIs. This will support your online service marketplace to get better conversion and you can instantly increase your revenue.
6. Organize the Quotation Process
Services that are delivered through any online service platform can have either fixed price or will give an estimation initially. In this case, your service platform should offer users a request for a quote.
The platform should frame the quote request form with all essential questionnaires that will collect all related information from clients.
Clients will fill the quote request form. The platform should streamline all quotes and should collect the estimation from several service providers and should produce them to the client.
Client will decide on the quote and will communicate with the corresponding seller and will negotiate and confirm the order. This process should be effectively carried out by the service platform.
7. Review and Ratings
Proper service delivery is the essential aspect that will increase the credibility of the service platform. Customers will get services through the platform but the admin may not know what sort of service has been delivered and whether the customer is satisfied with the service provided through our service marketplace.
To find out the real situation it is good to have a review and rating system in your service marketplace.
Customers will find it as the best way to share their feedback about the service they have received through your on-demand service platform. Through their feedback you can easily analyze the quality of service provided by the service provider.
8. Customer Loyalty
Your on-demand service marketplace platform should have enough aspects to make your customers stay with your platform and give orders again and again.
For this you need to have attractive customer loyalty programs that will grab the attention of your customers. You can offer them better pricing discounts, better referral points that will earn them money and many more. This will help you not only in retaining existing customers but also in acquiring new customers.
Conclusion
In this competitive market, one needs to have extraordinary market understanding and should build his service marketplace platform that can stand alone in the industry.
Analyze your competitors’ service platforms and get to know what strategy they are applying to gain the attention of the audience. You need to come up with a unique marketing strategy and should gain control of your audience.
