Due to the increasing dominance of smartphones, it is not surprising that marketplace mobile apps have become very important for selling new brands or second-hand devices. In this crowded market, if you are going to run a successful online business by developing a marketplace mobile app, you need some unique and innovative ideas to overcome your competitors. So, I decided to provide an ultimate guide to help you reach this goal.
Before creating your mobile application, you should clarify your purpose and vision of developing the app. My suggestion for this part is to create a roadmap and implement it on paper. If you have a solid plan for your project, the chances of achieving goals and success in it are very high.
It means before ordering or creating a marketplace mobile app, the first step is conducting thorough market research and examining how similar programs are working in the same field. In the second step, you need to identify market gaps and come up with some innovative ideas to make your marketplace unique and attractive. The third step is to fully describe your path and purpose to an app developer and make it work in the real world.
As I mentioned above, to start your journey for creating a successful marketplace mobile app you need to conduct a comprehensive research about the competitors you have in this era, then you need to list the advantages and disadvantages of their apps and try to find a way to develop your app with better options than others.
It is also very important to find the most famous marketplaces in the local region where you want to publish your application and implement marketing strategies and advertisements to grab the attention of users.
Here are the top 3 mobile applications developed to sell mobile phones to the customers
Cashify
Cashify is known as the best marketplace for mobile phones allowing users to sell and buy old and used mobile phones online. It developed the app with a user-friendly interface to make an impressive experience for users to connect sellers and buyers of mobile phones in a cloud-based environment.
In this app, ordinary people can put their second-hand mobile phones in the marketplace and let the buyers choose them and make a contact for purchasing them directly from the sellers.
Creating posts to sell the mobile phone has no cost for the sellers at first, they just need to pay a commission to the Cashify when a buyer decides to purchase their phones.
Although it seems very attractive for the sellers to download Cashify and start selling their old mobile phones in this marketplace. There is no guarantee that all of the advertisements in this app are real as sellers are not obligated to pay any cash at first. A lot of fake posts about selling mobile phones have been published in this application.
Mobile shop
The mobile shop is another marketplace mobile phone which is specifically developed to sell Apple phones, iPods, Apple watches, and all products supplied by Apple in the US.
Although the mobile shop is one of the most famous applications for selling mobile phones in the US, the lack of providing services to other countries restricts its usage to Americans only.
Cell phones
Cell phones are another marketplace for selling and buying new brands of mobile phones developed by the IDAFN team. Working with the interface of this application is easy for sellers and buyers. There is also no need to pay any commission to this application for the advertisement of mobile phones. However, to create a post for selling your phones or to search for the mobile phones you need to buy, you have to watch long video advertisements that most of which are not related to what you are looking for.
As displaying these advertisements is the only way that this application is making money, there is no way to eliminate watching them unless you pay for the pro version of this app.
It seems the subscription model used in this application for making money hurts their user experiences.
Who are the customers of the marketplace mobile app?
Mobile apps are everywhere. If you think about it, you will find that everyone, including yourself, uses hundreds of mobile apps in their daily lives. This proves enough that everyone needs to use a smartphone somewhere in their life cycle to fulfill his/her requirements.
Statistics of mobile phone usage suggested that 18 to 35 years old people are more willing to use mobile apps in their daily life. It is also interesting to note that women have more tendency to purchase their requirements like a mobile phone from online marketplaces.
These insights must be considered when you are deciding about the UI/UX design of your marketplace mobile app.
Learn more about our E-commerce software development services
How much does it cost realistically to start a marketplace mobile app business?
The purpose of creating a marketplace mobile app is to connect buyers and sellers on a Cloud basis. So, you don't need to pay extra money for purchasing goods to sell them to the customers. You just need to invest in the following for running a marketplace mobile app from scratch:
Hire a developer to build your app
If you want to run a successful marketplace mobile app business, it's very important to hire a professional developer to build your app with all features needed to grab the attention of users to start downloading and working with your app.
There are also some no-code application makers like appypie enabling you to create your app for free and run your marketplace with the minimum cost possible.
If you just want to introduce your Marketplace in a local market, for example, in a small City using these free application makers makes sense. However, if you aim to publish your application globally, for instance, in the App Store or Google Play store you have to hire a reputable developer to create your app exactly according to the standards approved by those marketplaces to publish your app.
Implementing marketing strategies and advertisements
As a rule of thumb, the more money you invest on marketing strategies and advertisements, the more traffic you can make for your app by increasing the traffic of visitors downloading and working with it. This is the only way you can earn more money and make more profit so there is no doubt that investing in marketing and advertising is the most important part of running a marketplace mobile app and you need to evaluate this cost from the beginning.
The cost of advertising and marketing depends on the way you decide to introduce your app to the users.
The most popular marketing strategies include:
- Working with influencers on Instagram and TikTok for promoting your app
- Show yourself in the press and implement a PR strategy
- Paid channels for reaching to new audiences and try ads practically
- Improve the conversion rate of your app by incentives, offers, discounts, and promotions
- Run email marketing campaigns
Innovative ideas to make your business Unique
Coming up with innovative ideas to make your business unique in the crowded market is not an overwhelming task if you pay attention to the gaps in similar apps and try to find out what are the expectations of your target audiences.
Reviewing the feedback of users of those marketplaces can help you to recognize their needs and support them in your app.
For example, one of the biggest problems the buyers of mobile phones complained about is the lack of control over the fake sale posts in the marketplace mobile apps. So, it may be a great idea if you find a way to avoid the fake sellers posting their sale advertisements on your app and offer a guarantee to the buyers that purchasing mobile phones over your app is just limited to the reputable and trustable sellers.
It is also possible to add an option to enable buyers to contact professionals in the mobile app industry and consult with them to know which smartphone is the best regarding their budgets.
You can bring more innovative ideas by searching in the local market or even conduct an online survey to see what makes the users of marketplace mobile apps satisfied.
Read Also How do I build a multi-vendor marketplace app and start making money?
How to introduce your marketplace mobile app to the real world?
Introducing a marketplace mobile app to the real world has a great influence on increasing the traffic of visitors downloading and working with it.
The best way to deliver your app to the users is to publish it on the App Store and Google store. To take advantage of this option, you need to:
- Consult with a professional app developer to make sure your app is under the approved standards
- Test your app with suitable programs which is, for example, the latest version of Xcode 12 for the app store
- Create an account in those marketplaces and pay the subscription fee which is $99/yearly for the App Store and $25/one-time for Google play.
- Submit your request and wait to receive the approval
How much money can I make from the marketplace mobile app?
Of course, creating a program is not easy and will be very time-consuming and costly. You may wonder if it is possible to make money from a marketplace mobile app. The statistics of this online business revealed that running the business of selling mobile phones over the internet is worth the huge investment because of its very high performance.
App design is also a business solution for start-ups or even very large brands. These programs provide effective and reliable ways to allow you to sell mobile phones to customers because it is much easier to interact with the customer through a program or application.
Although there are many ecommerce websites created exclusively for selling smartphone businesses, developing a marketplace as a mobile application has a better and more accessible position than those websites. Such popularity makes a lot of online businesses such as Alibaba, Amazon, Samsung, etc. turn their site into an app for boosting sales.
It seems by developing a unique marketplace mobile app and starting marketing and increasing brand reputation, you can easily make money from this business.
Conclusion
Running a successful business always needs the best and unique ideas to make it grow in the market. If you need help in building and developing marketplace mobile apps, our professional developers are ready to offer on-demand solutions for taking your eCommerce business app to the next level with innovative app development solutions.
Contact us to make your own unique multi-vendor marketplace.
