Cost of Developing an E-Commerce Marketplace App like Amazon? | Xicom

Rise of Ecommerce

In last decade or so technology landscape has changed rapidly. With the advent of internet and smartphones this trend has become even more intense. One major effect of this development is that now so many people don’t want to go to the market and physical stores to buy their goods and essential things as now they prefer to buy things online from leading ecommerce stores like Amazon.

Amazon and other ecommerce stores were quick to adapt to this new trend and provided customers a highly user-friendly and amazing user experience when they buy things from their ecommerce stores.

This new trend resulted in the huge demand for online app development or ecommerce store development as various retailers and start-up companies are considering developing their own ecommerce store like Amazon. USA, India, UAE and Eastern Europe are the hot destinations for best app development companies and if you are living in UAE then obviously you can find a list of suitable App Development Companies in Dubai from which you can choose the best company for you after doing proper research.

But before we proceed further, let’s check some statistics.

This graph shows that global retail e-commerce sales will reach $4.9 Trillion by 2021 which was about $2.9 Trillion in 2018. With this huge opportunity in ecommerce business, no business wants to miss the bus. Ecommerce Companies in Dubai are especially ready to leverage from this boom of ecommerce business by providing app development services to the businesses looking to develop online eStores.

It is clear that people now more and more want to buy things from ecommerce stores by sitting at the comfort of their homes or offices and they can even order while on the move using their smartphones.

Now let’s come to the next thing which is online marketplace app.

Rising Demand for Online Ecommerce Marketplace App

Actually an online marketplace is a website or an app that facilitates shopping from many different sources. The owner of the marketplace need not to manage inventory as their online marketplace app or website will present other people’s or vendors inventory and these will be visible to the users who can do transactions on them. Amazon and eBay are the best example of an online marketplace and they sell almost everything to all of their customers.

In order to guide you in building your Ecommerce marketplace app, I am going to discuss here the essential features of an ecommerce marketplace app like Amazon or eBay and tell you about the total cost of developing such apps. Obviously you need to Hire Ecommerce Developer of high quality to do this job for you.

First you have to understand that Ecommerce app and Ecommerce Marketplace app are both different things. The ecommerce app is a single-seller online shopping store whereas the Ecommerce marketplace app is a platform for retailers and multi-vendors. Hence, the cost of Ecommerce app development and Ecommerce marketplace app development are also different as they have different features and functionalities.

In this article, let’s find out how much it will cost to develop a marketplace app like Amazon or eBay? As we said, the cost of developing a marketplace app depends on the features and functionalities you require in the app.

Let’s now discuss about the essential features of a Marketplace App Like Amazon or eBay

Smooth and Easy Registration Process

Filling registration form is a hindrance and so many potential customers leave the app just because they don’t want to fill the form. Hence, there must be an integration of social media into your marketplace app so that there is little or no need to enter lots of personal data into the app registration form. Customers should be able to log in through any of their social media account and all of their details should be collected from that account.

Research says that about 77% of the total customers prefer to log in through social media and 60% happily uses social login options in their mobiles. The most popular platforms for signing using social media are Facebook and Google. The main purpose here it to create a marketplace app where the registration process is very simple and quick.

Push Notifications

This is one of the most important features to be added into a marketplace app. Push Notifications are best way to send reminders and notifications to your customers about so many things like offers, discounts, sales, promotions etc. If the app owner sends the right notification at the right time, it will definitely bring more customers and higher sales to the ecommerce marketplace business.

Research says that the click rate by push notification is 7 times more than that by email marketing and the retention rate of the customers is also 93% in case of push notifications.

Android has more than 80% of the marketshare of smartphones. The users of Android phones are quite used to these kinds of push notifications in their smartphones and they like it. For more information, you can discuss your Android App Development Company about how to add this feature into your app.

Multiple Payment Options

When you decide to build a marketplace like Amazon or Ebay then you should be ready to get visits by customers from different parts of the world. Hence, you should provide multiple payment gateways integrated into your marketplace app to facilitate your potential customers to make purchases from your app.

You should provide the payments options like credit/debit card, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and other mobile payment apps. This will help you to retain your customers as they will be satisfied with your multiple payment options service within your app.

Feature of Add to Cart

Generally, people buy many items or things from the marketplace app like Amazon or eBay at the same time. But sometimes they need to stop the searching process as they had to do some other work and after sometime they want to again proceed from where they left sometime back.

Hence, the feature or ‘Add to Cart’ is very important as this gives relief and convenience to the users and enable them to save the items they wish to purchase in the cart and do the final process of purchasing later in near future.

Ratings and Reviews

Most of the people or customers before buying anything, any item or any product from the online marketplace app like Amazon or eBay, check the ratings and reviews of the products given by the customers about their first-hand experience of using the product after purchasing.

Hence, nowadays it is almost mandatory to have ratings and reviews of all the products listed for the sale on the online marketplace app. This will build the trust of your online marketplace website or app and will make your customers make an informed decision while choosing their choice of products. As per an estimate about 95% of the customers read the reviews before buying any product from the online marketplace app.

Support for Multiple Languages

If your goal is to make your online marketplace app popular like Amazon or eBay, you have to launch your app worldwide so that it can get customers from all over the world. But this will require you to build your app in such a way so that it has support for many languages as there are many countries or regions in the world, the people from where prefer to do shopping through the app using their own language only.

Therefore, if you really want to reach worldwide customers then it is critical for you to add support for multiple languages into your online marketplace app.

Search Box for Searching the Products

If your online marketplace app is a big one and has thousands of products and items (remember many online marketplaces have millions of products in the eStore) then it is almost compulsory to have a search box option in your app that helps customers find their desired items in very less time.

That means, customers who like your store and looking for some specific product, should be able to find that on your eStore without any need to navigate large part of your eStore, by using just few letters of that product’s name in the search box.

Best Offers and Deals of the Day

There are many festivals on which more number of buyers want to buy products and place more orders online. Hence, you have to take care of that. Also, many buyers are looking for best offers, discounted products and deals of the day products hence when buyers enter your app, they must be shown these offers immediately so that they don’t have to do extra efforts in searching for these best deals and offers on your online marketplace app.

You can also add latest attractions, trending products and the personalized recommended products right at the home page your marketplace app for the buyers.

Final Cost of Developing an Ecommerce Marketplace App like Amazon & eBay

As we have just discussed with you, the cost of developing your online marketplace app will depend upon the features and functions you choose to incorporate into your app. The development of the online marketplace requires well-coordinated efforts of so many people, experts and specialists like business analyst, project manager, UI/UX designer, Front-end and back-end developers, layout experts, testers and quality assurance engineers.

Normally, it will take about 1000–1200 hours to develop a website with the basic set of features and functions which we have discussed above and it may take about 3 months to develop such a website. Assuming the average per hour development rate of $25/hr, the cost of the development of a basic functional online marketplace web app would be around $25,000 — $30,000.

If you decide to add more complex features or functionalities to the basis site, then you need to spend some more money and the cost of app development may reach around $50,000.

The cost of development of an ecommerce marketplace app for one platform either Android or iOS will be around $10,000 assuming it will take about 400 hours to develop an app for each platform. This cost will vary depending upon the features and complexity of the app.

Conclusion

We have just discussed what is an Ecommerce marketplace app, what are its main features and the approximate cost of developing an Ecommerce marketplace websites and mobile apps. If you set your sight on the target, you will reach surely. Remember you can find good app developers in UAE easily. Hence, if you really want to take the plunge and want to launch your own ecommerce marketplace app then first you have to search for Mobile App Development Companies in Dubai which offers best quality services.

For example, if you want to develop only Android based mobile app then you should contact and hire top company offering Android App Development Dubai. Other than Dubai, India is also the best place to look for the required app development company, whether you want to build Android app or iOS app or cross-platform app.

Ultimate thing is that, with the easy availability of expert app developers in many parts of the world, not it is not much difficult to dream about your own app. We have just given you all the ingredients of creating an online ecommerce marketplace app. Take your bold decision, build your own app and become successful entrepreneur.

Originally published at https://www.xicom.ae on October 29, 2019.