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Evercode Lab
Evercode Lab

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MVP for a marketplace

Many entrepreneurs wish to establish an outstanding business but only a few of them appeared on the market and created a successful company. Even a great startup idea, development and promotion of your business do not guarantee making money right away.
Launching an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) helps to validate your idea with the potential customers taking minimum efforts. Release of a fully-developed product requires a huge amount of time and money. MVP is the first version of your product with only basic features, however, it can be offered to attract your target audience.

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Implementing an MVP will provide you with:

  • the base of potential clients
  • defining the possible pros and cons
  • understanding if your product attracts the audience
  • finding out which features you need to focus on

What’s the key difference between an MVP and a fully-developed product?

Many people think that an MVP it’s just a poorly made product but actually, it consists of the most necessary features (UI/UX and standard design) and can effectively solve basic customers’ problems. Apart from the lower price, the biggest advantage of an MVP is that it allows saving time and money for a fully-featured product. And it demonstrates the entire idea and helps to get feedback from the target audience.

How to create an online marketplace MVP?

Make market research whether you are starting a local business or want to move forward on the national market, you should find out your competitors and examine their offer.
Focus on the following questions:

  • how many companies are on the market, their size etc.
  • who represents their audience (gender, age, income, preferences)
  • how to meet customers and vendors expectations Therefore, you need to create a unique offer and keep in mind that new competitors will constantly appear on the market.

What would an MVP look like for an ecommerce startup?

Pay attention to integral elements: Search, Email, Payments, Web Hosting, Mobile-friendly website, etc. Choose the most essential tools among them to build into the MVP. Identify the uniqueness of your offer and keep it in mind all the time. In order to launch an MVP, make your target audience as narrow as possible, create your niche market. After the success of an MVP, add more features and expand your product to other markets.
Though, a marketplace consists of two sides - for buyers and for sellers, during the creation of your MVP you can concentrate just on one side and create a single-player mode to approve the idea of your business.
An MVP is one of the most significant steps to get a full-fledged marketplace.

Key points while creating your online marketplace MVP:

  • Don’t spend too much, wait to get some feedback from customers.
  • Tighten the focus since you have a limited set of features and resources.
  • Interact with your customers, think about how you can make their lives better.

MVP or in case of marketplaces, Minimum Viable Platform doesn’t provide multiple solutions but it should solve the biggest problem of your clients. If you are not an expert, you can simply create landing pages or try available marketplace software.

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