COVID-19 pandemic has played a huge role in the remarkable increase in the popularity of online eCommerce marketplace apps across the world. The leading eCommerce marketplace apps including Amazon, Flipkart, etc. have done an amazing job in the last years in terms of sales and revenue generation. It has been seen that top online marketplace apps got a huge profit by selling goods of different varieties in 2021 in comparison with previous years.
All this became possible with the digitization of businesses during the pandemic. All the wholesalers, retailers, & producers were obliged to adopt digitized business procedures to grab the attention of audiences. Hence, most of them went for eCommerce marketplace apps. Along with the popularity, there are various other reasons why businesses are planning to develop an eCommerce marketplace app like Amazon. Though, it can be tricky to have Flipkart or Amazon-like online marketplace development solutions without any technical knowledge. Don’t worry, that’s why we are here!
This article contains all information related to how much does it cost to develop an app like Amazon, Flipkart, etc. including its development process, must-included features, technology stack, applied monetization model, and its benefits. But before diving into it, let’s get an overview of the marketplace app and how it works?
Table of Contents
What is a Marketplace App?
Online marketplace apps like Amazon, Flipkart, etc. are considered a wide platform to buy different kinds of goods by customers. Basically, a marketplace app is an autonomous platform used to connect sellers and buyers without the interference of any third party. We can say that the marketplace app is just not an online store, it is more than that.
At present, marketplace apps are used to provide augmented and smoother shopping experiences than before. These eCommerce apps offer a wide range of products with different prices, quality, and sizes. All the marketplace applications work differently from each other, they differ in the products they offer and the way they advertise.
Working Model of a Marketplace App
The main motive of these marketplace apps is to bring sellers and buyers to one place with utmost ease while providing them all the possible benefits. A marketplace app is the easiest way through which sellers can offer a broad range of different products and services to buyers at affordable rates. Buyers also get a next-level user experience via these marketplace apps while browsing and shopping for the required products by sitting at home.
Due to the huge discount deals, offers, and convenience offered by these eCommerce marketplace apps, the eCommerce marketplace app development is in huge demand by businesses. Here are how these online marketplace apps work-
- Firstly, users must sign-up to the marketplace app to create their profile. After that, they can log into the app to purchase the desired products.
- They can browse through the different categories of products to find out the suitable services.
- Users can also create a wish list if they want, they can add various products to it that they want to buy later.
- Users can purchase multiple products at a time and can pay for them in different ways.
- After confirming the order, they will get an approval message from the marketplace app and will get a continuous status update on the order.
- After receiving, if the buyer doesn’t like the product’s quality, they can return it within up to 30 days and get a refund as well.
- Talking about vendors, they can list their products according to the different categories after creating the profile.
- They must provide the product description with the price to list them on the eCommerce marketplace app.
- After getting an order, they dispatch the product to a given address.
Read Also: How to Develop Food Delivery App like UberEats or Zomato?
Why are Marketplace Apps Getting So Much Popularity?
While obtaining eCommerce app development services, businesses must know that well-developed eCommerce apps with a lot of attractive features are only halfway to success. The other part is to implement the ways of getting the attention of both buyers and sellers that spike up the transaction turnover.
The below representation shows stats about the eCommerce app revenue that reached $3.56 trillion recorded in 2021. It holds over half of the complete eCommerce app sales.
In the total eCommerce app revenue, the US accounts for around 10% of the revenue ($350 billion) in 2021.
This Below graph includes the increase in eCommerce app downloads from 2017 to 2021 which was about 11% while the eCommerce app sessions increased by 92%.
Various Benefits to Get from Amazon-like eCommerce Marketplace Apps
If you are going to get Amazon-like app development solutions, then you must have a look at these below-mentioned benefits provided by eCommerce apps. These are as follows:
- Online marketplace apps are helpful to augment customer loyalty by offering them great deals, discounts, and offers. These things help to connect users with the sellers for a longer time and target them according to their choices.
- Marketplace apps store users’ data that helps them to sign into the app without filling in details again and again. It also enables them to save their bank account details within the app.
- These online apps are more responsive and fast-performing when compared to websites, that’s why businesses are acquiring mobile app development services. Apps are a convenient and efficient way to manage new customers and retain the old ones.
- Businesses can enhance the reach of their local ventures by turning them into global enterprises with the help of eCommerce mobile applications.
- eCommerce marketplace apps are beneficial to provide a smooth, consistent, and augmented user experience via their interactive UI that can be accessed both online and offline.
- There is a 24*7 chat support that can be advantageous to solve many users’ queries.
- Online marketplace apps help businesses to manage their inventories with real-time data.
- These eCommerce mobile apps enhance the potential customers’ trust by creating brand awareness.
Different Types of eCommerce Marketplace Apps
Before getting knowledge about how to create an online store like Amazon, it is essential to know the different types of online marketplace apps. Have a look at below-
1) Based on Core Focus
Below, we have mentioned diverse kinds of eCommerce marketplace apps that are based upon the core focus of businesses. These are-
Horizontal Marketplace App
In this type of eCommerce marketplace app, there are varied categories of products, but they all share some common characteristics. Some suitable examples of these kinds of popular apps are eBay, Amazon, AliExpress, etc. These apps accomplish all the wishes of customers in one place.
Vertical Marketplace App
Vertical eCommerce marketplace apps incorporate several vendors with the same niche. Though these apps offer a wide range of products, but they all have the same type. Customization is the only option these marketplace apps can go for. Here are some famous instances- Zillow, Chegg, and Stock.
Global Marketplace App
The global marketplace apps sell every kind of product to everyone. These eCommerce marketplace apps have a broad range of products and multiple vendors as well. Some of the popular examples of global marketplace apps are eBay, Amazon, and more.
2) Based on Audiences
Above you have gained knowledge about different kinds of eCommerce marketplace based on their core focus. Here we have penned down different marketplaces based on the audiences. Let’s check them out-
Business-to-Customer Marketplace
B2C or business-to-customer eCommerce marketplace provides a wide platform for vendors to sell different varieties of goods to customers at a fine price. They can also offer them deals and discounts. Examples of B2C apps are Amazon and Flipkart.
Business-to-Business Marketplace
Marketplaces that enable wholesalers to sell their products to the businesses at a wholesale price are known as business-to-business or B2B marketplaces. It includes apps like Alibaba, Walmart, etc.
Customer-to-Customer Marketplace
Customer-to-customer or C2C marketplaces facilitate the customers to sell different products to other customers. Apps like Etsy, Craigslist, etc. can be the best examples of this. It depicts a relationship in which both sellers’ and buyers’ roles are played by customers, not by businesses.
Read Also: A Complete Guide to Ecommerce App Development Cost
Impressive Features to include in Amazon-like eCommerce Marketplace App
Integration of features is the most important step while getting to know about eCommerce app development. Businesses should hire a leading eCommerce app development company that has a great knowledge of the required features for an online marketplace app. Here are the features for two different modules- consumers and vendors.
Consumer Panel
Deciding on features for the consumer panel of your eCommerce marketplace app is a crucial task. Businesses must include interactive features for their target audiences to maintain them for a longer period.
Sign-up & Authorization
The registration process or sign-up enables users to avail of the app services conveniently. People can register with the app by providing data like name, email, contact no., etc. They can also add their other social media accounts with the app. Users can have a two-factor authentication process to secure their profile and get authorized.
Creating Profile
Users must create an interactive profile comprising all the necessary details such as personal information, banking details, etc. While ordering, the marketplace app will fill in the details directly by fetching them from the account.
Product Catalog
This feature is essential to include as it lets the users view all the available products on the app parted by different categories. The home page will include product listings, pictures, prices, and descriptions that can be viewed by the users.
Search Bar
The search bar enables users to find out the products they desire. When it is about how to build a marketplace app, adding features like this becomes significant to attract audiences. The search bar helps to improve customer satisfaction by providing improved search results even if they have made a typing mistake.
Shopping Cart or Wishlist
It helps users to add all their required products in one place that they want to purchase but can’t. It can be due to anything such as being out of stock, lack of money, or others. They can view or buy these added products anytime to make a purchase.
Push Notifications
The push notifications will allow users to get instant updates about products, ongoing deals and offers, product delivery, and others. It keeps reminding the users to buy the things that are helpful for businesses.
Payment Gateways
Different customers have different payment methods. In our developed solutions, we integrate multiple payment methods so that they can pay easily with whatever option they have. Though it can impact the Amazon-like app development cost but will augment the user experience.
Order Tracking and History
This feature is very beneficial for users, they can track the status of their past and current orders. Users will also be able to track the path of their order and when it will get delivered to their home.
Reviews and Ratings
After receiving an order, if the user doesn’t find it suitable to their expectations in terms of quality or anything they can leave a review or can give a poor rating for the product on the official site. It will make the service providers improve their quality and services.
Vendor Panel
Sellers or vendors are also provided some of the essential features that facilitate them to control and view some of the app functions to improve their services.
Sign-up & Authorization
Similar to customers, sellers or vendors must create a profile including their personal and banking information. Their profile must be verified by the authorities to ensure integrity. Without creating a profile, sellers won’t be able to add products to the app, manage orders, accept payments, and others.
Managing Orders
Adding this type of feature is an essential part of Amazon-like eCommerce app development. It will help vendors to keep an eye on the dispatched and in-stock products. They can track & process the product delivery while having complete control over the order procedure.
Managing Inventories
Inventory management helps vendors to record the details of each product that is coming or leaving the inventory stock. It will be advantageous for them to control the stock availability and get the products that are soon going to be out of stock. This feature will also be useful to track inventory history, listing, and stock management, and automatically updating the products’ prices.
Creating Reports & Data Analytics
Data analytics is important to analyse or measure the performance of services and businesses. These allow marketers to have every detail about the consumer behaviour and sales report that helps customize the functions as per the particular requirements. Later, these valuable insights are used to generate reports beneficial for key metrics specification to improve the user purchasing decision.
Order & Return Management
This feature includes management of the entire cycle of an order comprising tracking the order from its initial delivery to a point when the customer requests to return it. It will help in providing a seamless product return experience to users while easily managing returns.
Offer & Discount Management
It is advantageous to manage the offers and discounts provided to customers to improve sales and business revenue. Sellers use these discounts on products and services, specifically those that are in demand to get the attention of audiences.
Rating and Reviews
There are both positive as well as negative reviews provided by the customers. Positive reviews help sellers to gain customers’ trust. And the negative reviews are useful as they help sellers in improving their services.
Admin Panel
Getting an understanding of the features to add to the admin panel is essential while knowing how to create a platform like Amazon. Here are those features-
User Management
The user management feature helps the admin to manage the access of a large number of users and their accounts. Admin provides users access to different IT resources such as system, storage, and more after profile verification.
Vendor management
Admin can handle activities like selecting vendors, verifying their profiles, controlling costs, alleviating the vendor-related risks, making sure the product are delivered, and more. Integration of features like vendor management can surely affect the overall cost to build an online marketplace but it will be beneficial for the app.
Product management
Product management describes an essential feature that enables the admin to go with the process of listing, adding, checking the availability, and delivery of products to the customer. Admin can also remove a product or service if it is not performing well.
Reports and Analytics
Analytics helps admin to collect the data that can hinder the eCommerce app’s performance in the market. These data insights and generated reports include users’ behaviour analysis that is helpful in decision-making to boost online sales.
Feedback and Support
This feature helps the admin to know about the customers’ thoughts regarding their offered services and products. If there are negative reviews and ratings by customers about any product, the admin can take necessary action on it.
Offers and Discount Management
Discounts and offers provided to eCommerce app users are managed by the admin. Details about all the overall deals that are offered to customers based on a specific percentage can be viewed through the admin panel.
Advanced Features
The addition of advanced features plays an important role to ensure the success of an online marketplace app. Businesses must hire expert app developers in order to get an Amazon-like online marketplace app with these below-mentioned advanced features-
Augmented Reality View
This feature allows users to visually check any product or service with the help of AR technology before making a purchase. It will improve the customers’ shopping experience and will earn their loyalty to the app.
Photo Shopping
This feature is effective when a user wants to find out a product without knowing its name or the brand it belongs to. They can upload its picture and can get details about it.
Voice Search
Voice search enables users to search for a product without typing its name in the search bar. They can just search for it by speaking but they have to pronounce it properly.
Real-time Order Tracking
This feature allows users to track their orders in real-time consistently. They can get to know the exact location along with the time it is dispatched.
Live Chat Support
Live chat support helps users to get the instant solution to the issue they are having with the product they ordered. This advanced feature will have a direct impact on the cost of building an eCommerce app.
Google Map Integration
Google Map integration facilitates delivery people to get the exact address of the customers and find out the route easily. Customers can also know the exact location of their ordered product through this.
Multi-Currency & Multilingual
Multi-currency support allows eCommerce marketplace apps to sell their product in different regions so that customers can pay for the product in their own currency. The multilingual feature helps online eCommerce apps to have a large customer base as people with different languages can also use the app.
Money-Making Strategies Applied by Amazon & Flipkart
The key to the success of online eCommerce marketplace apps is to choose the right kind of monetization strategy. Here we have described some of the amazing money-making ways that you must know while gathering knowledge about how to create an app like Amazon. These will surely help eCommerce apps to boost their revenue.
1. Selling Fees
In this model, vendors or sellers are charged a particular fee whenever they make a sale. Sometimes, it can be in both the ways, they can charge both sellers and buyers for each product. This strategy is applied by platforms like Amazon and Etsy.
2. Product Listing Fees
All the vendors on the eCommerce app must pay a flat or variable amount for listing their products on the app. Online eCommerce app owners can easily go through the cost to develop an app like Amazon by implementing this strategy.
3. Shipping Charges
Shipping charges are applied to both customers and sellers. The shipping fee is collected according to the item category. For example- Amazon charges it for the media products and goods sold by the individual vendors.
4. Subscription and Membership
eCommerce app users must pay a significant amount to get the app membership. They get access to some of the special features after getting the subscription.
5. Advertisement Fees
If any other businesses want to show the advertisement of their services or products on the online eCommerce app, they will be charged a fee. It is a great way to generate revenue.
6. Sponsorship
Some eCommerce marketplaces want to collaborate or tie up with other marketplaces that are already famous as they want to get recognition as well. They pay some fee for this.
Step-by-Step Development Process to Build an eCommerce Marketplace App
The question “how much does an eCommerce app cost” largely depends upon the development process of the eCommerce marketplace app. The way an app is developed also plays a huge role in its market success.
You can adhere to these below steps if you are looking to develop an Amazon-like eCommerce marketplace app with the help of a leading online marketplace app development company.
Step 1: Market Research & Planning
Market research and planning are the most important step when it comes to developing an eCommerce app. You need to get a proper understanding of your target audiences, their likes, and dislikes, their requirements, competitors’ drawbacks that can be advantageous for your business, features, etc. All these things will help you to decide the final cost to build a marketplace app.
Step 2: UI/UX Design of the App
The first thing to which your target customers will get attracted is app design. Ask your chosen eCommerce app designers to keep the app design simple, easy to use, and interactive. Make sure to include appealing UI elements, soothing visuals, vibrant colours, and more to provide users with a next-level experience.
Step 3: Back-end Development
It is the most crucial step where your ideas will turn into reality. Your chosen mobile app development team will include the features you require in your solution with the help of the right technologies. This phase can directly affect the overall eCommerce app development cost. Fluctuation in the cost will depend upon the experience of the development team, time consumed in the app development, and others.
Step 4: Testing of the App
After the development phase, the eCommerce marketplace app has to go through several unit tests to ensure it is working smoothly and flawlessly. When the question arises of how much it costs to develop a marketplace app, the app testing phase is also considered due to the consumed time and different testing cycles.
Step 5: App Deployment
The app deployment phase can be called a procedure of installing, constructing, and supporting a mobile app. In this step, the marketplace app will be deployed to the chosen platform. After that, the app will be available to download and use by the audience.
Tech Stack Required to Develop an eCommerce Shopping App
Implementing the right technology stack is an essential step to make sure the success of an eCommerce app. Enterprises should go for an experienced eCommerce marketplace app development company that has skilled developers with proper knowledge of the latest technologies. Here are the suitable technologies for an eCommerce marketplace app:
- Front-end Technologies: ReactJS, AngularJS, HTML5, VueJS, CSS
- Back-end Technologies: PHP, Golang, Node.js, Ruby, Python
- Android Technologies: Kotlin, Java
- iOS Technologies: Swift
- Cross-Platform Technologies: React Native, Java
- Infrastructure: Amazon Web Series (AWS)
- Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB
- Payment Gateways: Stripe, PayPal, Braintree
Things to Keep in Mind While Building an eCommerce Marketplace App
While thinking about how much it costs to develop a marketplace app, there are some things that you must keep in the mind. These things are accountable to make your app successful and maintaining the cost of the eCommerce marketplace app as well. Have a look-
1. Go with the Proper Planning
Going to develop an online marketplace without any planning is equal to investing in something risky. There are lots of things such as competitor analysis, market research, knowing about things to add or not, and many more. Considering these will help you to give tough competition to existing market giants and control the overall pricing.
2. Choose the Right Platform
Picking up a suitable platform to deploy your mobile app is one of the essential things that you should consider. It is significant to analyse your targeted audiences to know which platform they prefer? Based on this, it would be easy for businesses to decide on the platform. They can also go for both Android and iOS if they have a high budget.
3. Appropriate Business Model
First enterprises must decide whether they want to be a B2B marketplace or a B2C marketplace. It will help them to choose the working model as well as how they want to develop their eCommerce app. They can also study the users’ behaviour to know what they like to buy and how they buy. Knowing your audiences will be beneficial to plan a strategy for product marketing.
4. Attractive Features
Features you integrate while developing a platform like Amazon play a huge role in deciding the overall cost. Consult with your chosen software development company to get ideas about the interactive features to grab the attention of audiences. The more useful features you provide to platform users, the more will be the chances to gain their loyalty.
5. Flexible Customer Services
There are so many problems customers face while using an online marketplace, hence they must be provided with 24*7 customer support by the authorities. Ensure your customer support team is well trained and available whenever needed. Businesses also go for the retailers who sell good-quality products only as they can affect the reputation of the marketplace.
Read Also: How Much Does An E-Commerce Website Cost?
How Much Does It Cost to Develop an App like Amazon?
There are various aspects to consider while evaluating the cost of developing an online marketplace app. Some of them are-
i) App Wireframing
App wireframe refers to a sample design of the screen’s interface that depicts the working of the app. It provides the development team an idea about how to build the app and clients will get to know about how the app will look & function. The app wireframing would cost you around $800-$1200.
ii) App Designing
After getting approval on the wireframe, app designing will get started. The more appealing and responsive app you will design, the more audiences you will get. The app design should be simple with soothing visuals, vibrant colours, etc. The app design would range from $5000 to $10,000.
iii) App Development
This is the phase where all planning will be executed, and ideas will be turned into reality. The stage will include the strategic planning of defining, designing, and crafting the final solution by writing the code. App development cost will be mostly based on the factors like development time, team structure, added functionality, and location of the developers. Based on these, the cost to develop an eCommerce app for a single platform, be it iOS or Android, would be around $20,000 to $30,000. On the other hand, the cost to build an eCommerce app for cross-platform would range from $30,000 to $50,000.
Keeping all these above-mentioned points into consideration, we can estimate the general cost. Apart from these, factors such as mobile app platform, technology integration, testing types, and many more also affect the complete cost of an online marketplace app. Based on these, the cost to develop an eCommerce app like Amazon would range from $50,000 to $100,000. Though, it is just an estimation as it can be increased or decreased depending upon your choices.
Final Verdict
In the above guide, you can get a complete understanding of the entire development process and the involved cost of developing an eCommerce marketplace app like Amazon and Flipkart. As we all know, eCommerce marketplace apps have a bright future ahead and various established businesses and retailers are willing to invest in this lucrative sector. They believe that it is the best time to capitalize due to the increasing interest of people in online shopping.
SemiDot Infotech is one of the eCommerce app development companies that is offering a wide range of mobile app development services over years. We have a skilled and professional development team to deliver result-driven solutions.
