11 Best E-Commerce Marketplaces

A comparison of the best solutions for creating your online marketplace

The development of marketplaces has been a turning point for the e-commerce industry. More and more online merchants, especially smaller ones, are deciding to publish all or part of their catalogs on e-commerce marketplaces like Rue du commerce, Priceminister and Amazon, in a bid to gain more visibility for their merchandise and boost sales.

But we’re now also witnessing the opposite phenomenon: more and more online merchants want to evolve their business models by creating marketplaces of their own.

Inviting other merchants to sell their products on your e-commerce site allows you to offer your visitors and clients a more diverse product range, and to earn extra revenue in marketplace commissions. Unfortunately, though, some hosted e-commerce solutions, like Shopify and Squarespace, don’t allow you to build your own marketplace.

For that reason, Roobykon Software wants to introduce you 11 highly efficient and well-constructed solutions that can transform your e-commerce site into a real marketplace.

#1 Marketify theme for WordPress

Most of the marketplace solutions we’re going to talk about are extensions (‘plugins’) to install within your e-commerce theme. In contrast, Marketify, designed for the WordPress environment, is a theme in itself. Made by Astoundify, the Marketify theme costs $63 and is intended for a single purpose: building marketplaces in WordPress.

It is both very elegant from a design standpoint and very rich in terms of functionality, with the ability to sell all kinds of digital downloadable products – themes, plugins, audio, video, eBooks, and so on.

Marketify allows partner vendors to easily set up their subscriptions via a registration form. After that, it’s a breeze for them to add their own products.

It’s worth noting that Marketify perfectly integrates with the free plugin Easy Digital Downloads for the implementation of e-commerce functionality. Particularly useful is this plugin’s automated sharing system for revenues from partner sales, and its powerful calculation and configuration tools for determining what commissions to charge for different vendors and products.

Marketify is a versatile theme that can also be used to create an ordinary, single-vendors e-commerce site.

Advantages of the Marketify theme:

• + Operates within WordPress, one of the best Content Management Systems.

• + Its automated payment management system enables very easy management of partner sales.

• + Very professional design.

• + Affordable price.

Disadvantages of the Marketify theme:

• – Only designed for sale of digital products

• – Only available on WordPress 

#2 Magento, and its Marketplace plugin

Magento’s marketplace plugin (or ‘module’), offered at the price of $349, lets you create a marketplace inside the Magento environment.

Remember that like WordPress, Magento is open source – so it’s free and very modular, but also dedicated to the creation of e-commerce sites. There are many plugins in existence to create an online marketplace within Magento, but this one is undoubtedly the best.

The Marketplace plugin for Magento lets you turn your site into a marketplace platform at any time. You just need to buy, download, install and configure the plugin.

It gives you the ability to create different vendor accounts, letting your partners manage for themselves the products they sell on your site. Vendors can customize their presence on your site with their own logo, images, multimedia, client reviews, and so on. Plus, you can set custom commission levels for each vendor.

Advantages of the Magento Marketplace plugin:

• + Very easy installation (compared to competitor solutions).

• + Ability to set individual commission levels for each vendor.

• + Separate profiles for each vendor.

• + Great quality HTML markup.

• + Easily reachable and pretty responsive support.

Disadvantages of the Magento Marketplace plugin:

• – Relatively high price

• – By design, the plugin cannot be installed on sites not based on Magento

#3 Prestashop with Agile Multiple Seller

Prestashop hails from France and is the main competitor to Magento – these two are the main free, open source solutions entirely dedicated to the creation of e-commerce sites.

Agile Multiple Seller is one of the best Prestashop plugins for building a marketplace, thanks to the flexibility of its functionality. Costing $144, it provides all the features expected from a marketplace solution – both for vendor profile management and commission configuration.

This plugin allows vendors to customize and manage their online store interfaces independently, setting a logo, choosing a URL, and even putting in place a totally custom theme.

As for payment management, the plugin offers three different possibilities: you can authorize vendors to collect payments themselves, manage payments yourself, or make use of the co-management interface.

Advantages of Agile Multiple Seller:

• + Ability for each vendor to manage the whole of his shop configuration on your marketplace, from catalog and design, to payments.

• + Option to manage vendors’ access and payments if you prefer to keep more tightly in control.

• + A very agile solution, both in terms of shop management and management of payments.

Disadvantages of Agile Multiple Seller:

• – Each vendor can only manage one shop configuration.

• – Available only to Prestashop-based sites.

• #4 Mirakl

Mirakl was created in 2012 by a French tech startup, and represents a ‘top-of-the-range’ marketplace solution – notable users include Darty, Boulanger and Auchan.

After raising 18 millions euros last year, its parent startup has recently launched a vast internationalization strategy, with particular focus on the US market.

Mirakl offers the richest functionality of the solutions looked at here – but it comes at a price. Mirakl is one of the most expensive solutions on the market.

Advantages of Mirakl:

• + Overall quality is well above most of of its competitors.

• + Track record: Mirakl is the platform of choice for Darty, Galeries LaFayette, Auchan, Boulanger, and Rue du Commerce.

• + Feature-rich functionality.

• + Automation of customer-related communications (with automated responses), simplifying the management process for vendors.

• + Vendor management tools (the ability to suspend accounts, for example).

• + Can be integrated with any e-commerce ecosystem – Miralk is not a plugin, but a freestanding SaaS application.

Disadvantages of Mirakl:

• – High price (set individually for each user) – this is the only big disadvantage of Mirakl.

• – Mainly targets large e-merchants, though Mirakl aims to expand its coverage.

#5 Drupal with Ubercart Marketplace

Ubercart is a free module which allows you to transform a Drupal e-commerce site into a marketplace. It offers a full range of functionality, but does require coding skills and web development experience.

Ubercart is very flexible, allowing each vendor to manage their shop independently; vendors can track orders and access activity reports for their shops. Payments are handled by PayPal Mass, which allows semi-automated distribution of payments to vendors.

Advantages of Ubercart Marketplace:

• + Feature rich functionality.

• + It’s free.

• + Very flexible management of vendor profiles.

Disadvantages of Ubercart Marketplace:

• – Requires development skills, and so not suitable for novices.

• – Only available for sites based on Drupal.

#6 CS.Cart Multi-Vendor

CS.Cart is an open source software package for building e-commerce sites. Out of the box, it doesn’t offer the option of creating a marketplace, but the company behind this software has now launched a version of CS.Cart that does support this goal: CS.Cart Multi-Vendor.

It’s not a plugin, and the price is on the high side: $1450 for a lifetime license, or an annual subscription of $590. But the software offers a very flexible platform in terms of usability, with an interface that can be customized by each vendor. In short, CS.Cart Multi-vendor is both functional and ergonomic.

Advantages of CS.Cart Multi-Vendor:

• + Marketplace features out of the box, so no need to install and configure a plugin.

• + Feature-rich functionality.

• + A unique interface for each vendor.

Disadvantages of CS.Cart Multi-Vendor:

• – Rather high price.

#7 Yo!Kart

o!Kart is a relatively little-known solution, despite its strengths. It’s not a plugin but rather an independent piece of software dedicated to building marketplaces. Its intuitive and fully-customizable interface is really rather remarkable.

The principle is simple: vendors manage their shops and catalogs themselves, but you are in charge of moderation. You are informed about each modification by a vendor before the change becomes publicly visible. This gives vendors a feeling of autonomy while leaving you in ultimate control.

It’s worth noting that, should platform-owners want to keep their own brand front and center, Yo!Kart also allows you to make some vendors anonymous – the name of the vendor is not displayed to people visiting the site.

Yo!Kart offers three prices: $250, $999 and $5999, depending on the size of your marketplace.

Advantages of Yo!Kart:

• + It’s a platform entirely dedicated to building marketplaces.

• + The interface is very pleasant to use.

• + Good balance between freedom for you and security for your site, most notably thanks to the moderation subsystem.

• + Option not to display vendor names on the front end.

Disadvantages of Yo!Kart:

• – Rather high price (for the most expensive ‘Go Custom’ plan).

• – Yo!Kart cannot be integrated into existing e-commerce sites based on other platforms.

#8 Sharetribe

Sharetribe is an e-commerce software package designed exclusively for the creation of marketplaces. This specialization explains its very rich set of supported features. Sharetribe lets you choose from several plans, depending on the size of your marketplace: you can manage anything from 300 to 100,000 vendors.

The monthly subscription fee varies from $39 to $239.

A little bonus is that Sharetribe not only allows your members to sell their products, but also to lease them. In other words, Sharetribe allows you to create service marketplaces.

Each member is free to customize their account according to their personal preferences.

Finally, it’s worth noting the great messaging functionality, which allows vendors to stay in touch with their customers.

Advantages of Sharetribe:

• + Designed especially for marketplace creation.

• + Feature-rich, letting members sell and lease both products and services.

• + Reasonable price.

Disadvantages of Sharetribe:

• – Cannot be integrated with existing e-commerce sites.

#9 X-Cart Multi-Vendor

X-Cart is an e-commerce solution that can work for all sizes of business. The Multi-Vendor plugin, sold for $1495, allows you to create a marketplace on X-Cart with all the functionality expected from this kind of platform.

Vendors can control their orders, modify delivery terms, and arrange their products into categories. X-Cart is designed to let the administrator retain complete control over all that happens in their marketplace: you can modify or remove any product on the site, and manage the registration of new vendors.

Advantages of X-Cart Multi-Vendor:

• + Administrator interface lets you keep control over products offered on your site.

• + Vendors can arrange their products into categories.

• + All-round rich functionality.

Disadvantages of X-Cart Multi-Vendor:

• – On the expensive side.

• – Only available on the X-Cart e-commerce content management system.

#10 OpenCart with Multi Vendor / Drop Shipper

Opencart is a relatively little-known open source software solution for creating small and medium-sized e-commerce sites.

To create a marketplace using Opencart you’ll need to use the Multi-Vendor / Drop Shipper extension. It costs $159.90, and provides each vendor with a secure management interface.

Vendors are sent a notification for each order they receive, and payout to vendor is performed automatically once per month. As an open source solution, Opencart requires solid knowledge of coding, so it’s not ideal if you’re a novice wanting to establish a marketplace by yourself.

Advantages of Multi-Vendor / Drop Shipper:

• + Reasonable price.

• + Good notification subsystem.

• + Automated payment management.

Disadvantages of Multi-Vendor / Drop Shipper:

• – Getting used to it can be a steep learning curve.

• – Not suitable for novices.

• – Only works on OpenCart.

#11 IXXO Cart Multi-Vendor

IXXO is a plugin that perfectly integrates with open source solutions like WordPress, Prestashop and Joomla. But IXXO also allows you to create standalone marketplaces.

The price of IXXO varies a lot: depending on the features you choose, it ranges from $295 to $1495.

Vendors get a good deal of freedom, such as the ability to choose their delivery method, set their VAT status, and manage how products are described and their placement on the page.

Payment to vendors can be done via PayPal. Vendors can receive notifications for each new order.

Advantages of IXXO Cart Multi-Vendor:

• + Tight integration with WordPress, Joomla, Prestashop and other environments.

• + Numerous and flexible features.

• + High level of security.

Disadvantages of IXXO Cart Multi-Vendor:

• – Difficult to master, and using it takes some technical skill.

Earn Even More From Your Online Store

So, is it really enough to have a mere online store, where your customers buy things, whether physical or in the form of services? Why not aim higher and win the loyalty of a bigger public by really giving them a cornucopia of choices?

Perhaps you know what’s coming next – yes, that’s just how the biggest online sellers, from Snapdeal and Flipkart to Amazon went about reinventing e-commerce.

The runaway success of these buzzing forums of commerce has turned online retail on its head. Dyed-in-the-wool online sellers and startup kids alike now understand that a multi-vendor model is not just what people are asking for, but what our times demand.

E-commerce investors also understand this, preferring multi-channel business models but showing a particular liking for multi-seller marketplaces.

But what exactly allows an e-commerce store to call itself ‘multi-seller’?

Well, put simply, it’s when you extend your store so that it becomes a platform on which any number of people can sell their products – or services. More vendors means more choice and more customers flocking to the array of available price-brackets, delivery options, and so on.

Why are multi-seller e-commerce platforms receiving so much attention? Well, as any tech entrepreneur knows, innovation is the key to success – and that’s what’s allowing stores that support multiple vendors to pull away from their more traditional competitors.

After all, just look at all the advantages a multi-seller platform can offer:

• Selling an endless variety of things. Each new vendor you add to your store comes with its own range of products. This makes your store just like a thriving physical marketplace where vendors compete to give customers what they’re looking for. No surprise, then, that online stores often see sales multiplying when they go multi-seller.

• Seamless running. Managing an effective store means creating silky-smooth operations that will get the product or service to the customer as quickly as possible. But when you allow multiple vendors onboard, all this – from looking after inventories to updating catalogue listings – becomes their individual responsibility. Meanwhile, healthy competition ensures that only good service can flourish.

• Lower costs. Without the need to maintain the large teams that are demanded when you’re managing your own inventory, your overheads can be dramatically reduced. You can focus on driving your business forward and giving the best support to your customers. And dividing up the work in this way doesn’t just cut costs – it drives up quality and efficiency, too.

• Dump the inventory! The biggest headache in launching an e-commerce business is establishing the physical space to store your stock, and compiling the human resources needed to move it around. These costs can really hold your venture back, especially early on. Letting independent vendors do this work allows multi-seller platforms to focus on being great marketplaces.

• An easy path to additional income. You’ll be doing valuable work on behalf of your vendors, saving them time and resources by providing a great platform for them to sell their goods and services. In return, they’ll be more than happy to pay a commission on the sales they make on your platform – the exact amount can be adjusted according to the type of seller. The arrival of new vendors creates little additional work for you, but with each one comes another source of revenue.

• Be responsible for less, but control more. As a multi-vendor online marketplace you have the ability to pick and choose who can use your platform, and to remove unsuitable vendors at any time. Once a vendor is trading on your platform, it’s up to them to deliver the goods. This frees you from a world of daily hassle, while leaving you in total control of who trades under your ‘roof’.

Of course, none of this would work if there wasn’t an advantage for the vendor. Luckily, there are many:

• – More people see their store; traffic arrives right from the get-go.

• – Less can be spent on marketing, and vendors benefit from the platform’s brand.

• – Far less time and money is spent than would be to set up a store from scratch.

• – The vendor benefits from the knowhow and data gathered by the marketplace.

• – All the technical stuff is taken care of by the management of the marketplace.

• – The vendor can focus on what they do best – offering great products and services.

So, which are the services and industries best placed to benefit from multi-seller platforms?

Well, in fact, virtually every industry vertical out there can enhance its operations with multi-vendor e-commerce. Here are just some of the cases in which this business model fits:

• Selling home-cooked food; multiple chefs and home cooks can offer their dishes. The buyer thus gets to choose from a huge variety of cuisines.

• Chains of food retailers with different locations – they get the ability to give their customers a ‘local’ feel online.

• People in search of doctors and medical professionals – multi-seller platforms let the mind just the right specialist.

• Sending flowers and gifts to other parts of the globe – the gift-giver can choose a store near the recipient’s location.

• Large franchises with multiple locations can add more outlets to a single marketplace.

• Technology products, clothing, cosmetics, and almost any other e-commerce vertical can benefit from the increased choice and competition of multi-seller marketplaces.

• Community and not-for-profit organizations can increase their impact by uniting on a single platform.

With opportunities and advantages like this on offer, the only real question is: “why wait?” The world of multi-seller e-commerce has already proven its worth on a big scale, but there are doubtless still bigger successes to come – here’s to getting out there and tracking them down!

5 Solutions To Create An Uber Or Airbnb In 10 Minutes

There are plenty of ideas that can make a top business, and every top business needs a platform so people could use the service.

There are several services able to help small business to overcome the popularity of Uber and Airbnb. When there is a need to start fast and see where it will take you, use this list to pick a platform. Here are five ideas for every type of business popular in 2019: food delivery, taxi, job offers, sales, etc.

1. TaxiStartup

This is a platform that unites all taxi drivers who don’t have Uber in their country. Let’s be real, Uber was a game changer in the world of services, so it is clear that more and more people want to recreate the experience.

TaxiStartup is a startup from Belarus that connects drivers. Its application has everything you need for a nice ride: geolocation, trip booking, and drivers’ ratings.

It costs more than $150,000 to develop a taxi application for iOS and Android, but TaxiStartup provides a pre-made solution for $299/month. There are several extra features that can be added for an extra price.

It is easy to start with TaxiStartup, no technical team needed to set it up. However, the business depends on this hosting and it can be limiting on business development.

The Freecab and SayTaxi services use the TaxiStartup platform for their business.

2. Sharetribe

Sharetribe was made for creating marketplaces for goods and services like Ebay, Etsy, Drivy, etc.

It is a simple yet powerful platform with fast implementation. Different products, rentals, and service marketplaces can be launched within 24 hours. Sharetribe has two forms: a SaaS version with different customization options, and an open source code version.

Sharetribe costs from $79/month with a free trial month.

It is a perfect platform for startups that want to start a marketplace as soon as possible and don’t have deep technical knowledge.

3. InDemand

This platform offers a SaaS solution for food delivery services, supermarket shopping, house cleaning, transportation, and more. It helps to launch a service marketplace within minutes. It has many handy functions and features, such as control system, the app for delivery, fleet and content management, notifications, and ratings.

InDemand works in 14 countries so far. It costs $119/month with some additional costs for installation and modules customization.

It is an affordable solution for startups but it doesn’t provide access to the code so that can be a headache in the future when the business grows.

4.Contact page, mailing list, and payment gateway

To create a working space for freelance web developers, the Crew (formerly Oomph) uses a contact page on Wufoo, a MailChimp mailing list, and Stripe to process payments. This is a simple combination of available tools to run a business.

It is the easiest way to start a business with already existing tools for a small amount of money. Just think over the combination and get ready to go.

5. Facebook

Facebook is a page where you can offer services and goods without spending money and a lot of time. When Uber got banned in Austin, Texas, the Arcade City started a private group where people could arrange their trips and find a companion to share expenses or to find a driver.

However, there is no possibility to customize the platform or to control a social media-based marketplace at all. It is a good way if you want to start fast with something and see how it goes.

So when an idea for a marketplace pops up, pick one of the solutions from this list to take your startup to life. There are plenty of cheap and fast solutions that don’t need much effort to start and grow.

An Advanced Search Algorithm For Collaborative Marketplaces

Which transaction workflows are best for service marketplaces?

Collaborative marketplaces, from big beasts like Airbnb to a local site for river boat rentals, has at its core a search and filtering engine to present the potential customer with the most relevant results based on his or her needs. But how do we ensure that this potential customer sees the results most likely to lead him or her to make a transaction, especially when the search, based on the strictly-defined filtering criteria the user has set, does not yield enough results?

To help answer this question, Roobykon Software have some insights from the team at Cocolabs, who created the awesome Cocorico engine for on-demand and service marketplaces – and made it available open source.

The majority of startups that decide to base their implementation upon the Cocorico engine naturally want to maximize the number of search filters available to their users, in order to help them obtain the most accurate possible results. But this is a mistake. What has been true in the economy of the web as we’ve known it so far with ecommerce doesn’t always work in the sharing (or ‘on-demand’) economy. The consumption habits of typical visitors to ecommerce sites cannot be applied to the sharing economy.

Is the problem a severe one? Not at all – we just have to do a little bit of math.

Let’s take as example a search based on geographical criteria. The user will naturally select the locations that he or she feels will be most convenient – but these locations may not be served by any suitable suppliers. Here, the Cocorico engine also looks for results that are outside of the specified areas but which are likely still be to accessible to the user.

The more the options there are for the user to add lots of search criteria, the more likely it becomes that no single available result will match all specified requirements.

Of course, in an infinite universe, it would be great to offer the user a result that corresponded to their exact desires – that, after all, would give the greatest likelihood of a transaction workflow. But in the finite universe that actually exists, giving too many options leads to a high chance of having nothing to offer at all.

There is a risk that automatic extension of the scope of the search could lead to results that aren’t relevant, and so compromise the reputation of the platform in the eyes of the suppliers using it. But as long as users are made aware that their results are being augmented with others that could be useful to them, the likelihood is that they will be pleased to receive additional, helpful suggestions.

Cocosearch – an advanced search algorithm by Cocolabs which seeks to provide the potential customer with the results most likely to lead to a transaction – therefore proposes to look at the problem for the opposite direction, rather than trying to live with an unsuitable approach. In order to maximize the probability of finding a satisfactory result for the user, the engine offers a range of choices of varying quality, and arranges them into a ‘virtuous circle’, with the most relevant results near the middle and less relevant ones towards the edge.

Isn't it great, this sharing economy!?

Ensure Customer Satisfaction & Boost Conversions With Cocosearch

A reliable provider, a satisfied customer

Ecommerce sites set up their search engines so as to offer the buyer the result that is closest to what was searched for: I want a red balloon, the platform offers me red balloons. This outcome is the best-case scenario, as it gives the greatest probability of a successful transaction. Once the buyer finds what he’s been searching for and proceeds to payment, it is taken for granted that the merchandise will be delivered – because ecommerce sites have total control over the purchase process.

Service marketplaces, on the other hand, have to deal with suppliers of widely varying reliability. They are faced with a good deal of flexibility as to time and place of service delivery – i.e., the service provider can only deliver the service at a certain time and in a certain place. On top of this, there is the uncertain reliability brought about by the diversity of represented suppliers – micro businesses, solo entrepreneurs, individuals – of whose ability and/or desire to honor demand one cannot be sure.

In order to adapt to the constraints and meet the special requirements of service marketplaces, Cocolabs have tested a variety of search algorithms on different platforms. Below Roobykon Software team made a retrospective overview of how the Cocosearch algorithm evolved over time to deliver the most relevant search results to customers of the service marketplaces that use the Cocorico engine.

1st generation of the algorithm

The first generation of the algorithm did not address the offer reliability problem – the problem of how likely the person offering a service is to actually be willing/able to provide it. Instead it applied the traditional methodology of ecommerce sites directly to marketplaces. Accordingly, results were ranked by distance from the searched-for location, and according to the dates declared as available (the goal being to provide the closest result to what had been searched for). A few hundred transactions were processed before a major problem was identified concerning the rate at which suppliers were refusing to honor service requests. 

2nd generation of the algorithm 

After discovering how many refusals there had been from providers to fulfill the services they’d advertized, the Cocorico team upgraded its search algorithm so as to promote results whose availability dates had been explicitly declared by the provider. Marketplaces based on the Cocorico engine generally consider the provider to be always available by default – but if the provider wants to improve its ranking in search results, it can explicitly declare its periods of availability and unavailability. This change delivered considerable improvements, but still left a lot of room for further advancements. 

3rd generation of the algorithm (Cocosearch)

We now clearly understand that the best result for the customer, the provider and the platform is whichever is most likely to lead to a successful transaction workflow. We also believe that the greatest obstacle to the conclusion of a successful transaction is a refusal or lack of response from the provider. With this in mind, the Cocolabs team reoriented its search algorithm to pay greater attention to the historical behaviour of providers.

The principles of the algorithm are based on the following elements:

Location

A search by location returns a series of results close to the location specified. This list is divided into two parts:

• Exact results - The exact results are those whose location (street, zip code, city, county, region or country) exactly correspond to the specified place.

• Close results - The second part of the list comprises all those results close to the specified place.

Availability

During a search by date, the two lists of results, divided by location (see above), are further divided, each again into two groups:

• Proven availability - Listings whose dates of proven availability match the dates of the search – these appear first.

• Undetermined availability - Below appear listings whose dates of availability are unknown.

Platform rating

To each of the listings within the four groups described above, which appear following a search by date and location, a rating is assigned based on the following rules:

• Listing completeness (weight X) - The degree of listing completeness takes into account the amount of information given by the provider about the listing: whether or not details are specified or a title has been entered, if the description contains more than 250 characters, whether a price is specified, whether the number of uploaded images is greater than the required minimum etc…

• Profile completeness (weight X) - The profile completeness takes into account the amount of information entered by the provider, including whether its description of itself contains more than 250 characters, and if there are more images uploaded than the required minimum.

• Profile rating (weight X) - Takes into account the ratings that the supplier has received. Results sorting is designed first of all to rank down poor providers, rather than to promote good ones. This approach is based on the idea that a good service is the expected standard, and so poor service has to be heavily penalized. The engine takes into account the average score of the provider, which is weighted by how many individual ratings it is made up of.

• Date of most recent calendar update (weight X) - The fact that a supplier’s calendar is regularly updated is correlated to a greater willingness to respond to requests and provide the service advertized – so, having a more recently-updated calendar will improve a user’s search rating.

• Number of completed services during the last 30 days (weight X) - A higher frequency of recent service completion suggest a willingness to respond to requests and to provide the services offered. Ratings are adjusted based on the number of bookings paid for and not cancelled within the past 30 days.

• Message response rate of the provider (weight X) - To calculate the rate of response, Cocosearch divides the number of messages sent by the provider by the total number he has received, improving the rating of suppliers with a higher response rate.

• Acceptance rate (weight X) - The acceptance rate of the provider is the percentage of claims which he has accepted, whether or not the booking was completed.

• Transactions success rate (weight X) - The number of successful transactions is calculated based on the number of bookings whose transfer has been authorized in relation to the total number of bookings.

• Response time (weight X) - Taking into account the response time of the provider allows Cocosearch to favor those who are the most responsive to customer requests. The response time rating is based on the time between the last message received and the response made to it for each of the supplier’s discussion threads. If no response has been made by the customer, this time is not taken into account. The rating is adjusted based on the average time of response.

• ‘Certified’ status (weight X) - This status can be assigned to listings by an administrator, for example after certain documents are provided by the supplier. Possession of ‘certified’ status helps the listings attain a better ranking in search results.

• Newcomer bonus (weight X) - To welcome new providers to the marketplace and to give them a chance, a newcomer bonus is assigned to all listings which were added less than 30 days ago.

• Random bonus (weight X) - In order to prevent listings’ immobility within search results, and to encourage providers which have been unable to obtain a favorable ranking, a random bonus is awarded to 5% of site listings. The receivers of this bonus are changed each day at random. The weight of the bonus also changes at random.

TO SUM UP

When managing a platform focused on the sharing economy, the major goal is to ensure customer satisfaction and maximize the conversion rate – and further, to make the enterprise profitable. The main difficulty of this market is in the fact that no collaborative platform is able to guarantee the reliability of every listing placed on it – because the providers are usually individuals, or professionals acting in a private capacity. The latter, who do their main business outside of the platform, do not show either the dedication or the involvement of a company whose ecommerce business is its sole or main activity. The major risk is that the customer faces repeated refusals, or even worse, an absence of responses.

The listings of unreliable providers must be identified and ranked down in search results. Such unreliability appears according to the provider’s situation – the availability of the things he is offering as part of his service, and his need to make money from them. For example, if I am planning to take a trip in four months’ time, I might offer my car for rental (and therefore also do without it) during the period between now and then, in order to save money for my travels. But there’s a strong chance that a potential customer contacting me in six months’ time about rental of this same car will get a refusal or just no response, either because I have not updated my listing, or I simply because I’ve stopped visiting the site. This experience happens again and again for a great number of customers of collaborative marketplaces; it should be avoided at all costs, no matter what the stage of the platform’s lifecycle.

For platforms to succeed it is critical that they don’t look at the sharing economy as we have, to date, been accustomed to looking at the rest of the web. The participatory economy breaks the rules. It revolutionizes distribution networks and reshapes consumer psychology. Now, the customer is no longer looking for a cheaper place to buy for the product which he noticed in the store but found too expensive; rather, he’s after something that ‘feels right’. Customer satisfaction is subjective, yet it will be the holy grail of the search engines used in future service marketplaces.

The essence of Cocoseach can be found in the reasoning behind the following conundrum: consumption habits have changed, customer expectations have changed; the way of providing services must change so as to favour the results that will lead to a successful transaction.

Building A Transaction Workflow - Cases For Service Marketplaces

Which transaction workflows are best for service marketplaces?

When it comes to service marketplaces, classical transaction workflows just don’t work. In e-commerce marketplaces, managing stock is relatively easy, since it’s controlled by a single management team. In contrast, service marketplaces require availability dates and times to be dynamically maintained by service providers often made up of many individuals. As a result, those tasked with maintaining such marketplaces face uncertain provider reliability – and this calls for a new approach to the transactional workflow.

The models first proposed by service marketplaces presented the following workflow:

1. Customer makes a request to the provider.

2. Provider accepts the request from the customer.

3. Customer receives an acceptance message.

4. Customer pays for the services.

5. Provider receives the payment.

6. Provider fulfills the request.

A workflow along these lines is used by the majority of service marketplace solutions.

But this workflow has many flaws, not least the lack of a trusted third party to help prevent fraud and create an atmosphere of confidence. It also has the inconvenient aspect of requiring the customer to be involved twice: first creating a request, then, only later once acceptance has been received, making payment (steps 1 and 4).

Roobykon Software has discovered the optimal solution earlier found by Cocolabs, who tested a variety of different transaction rearrangements that are in use on different platforms, serving different types of customer group.

The transaction workflow which delivered the best results in terms of conversion rate, acceptance by the provider and fraud prevention was the following:

1. Customer makes a request to the provider by entering his credit card details, with only pre-authorization performed at this stage.

2. Provider accepts the customer’s request and triggers completion of the payment transaction.

3. Platform receives the payment to escrow.

4. Provider fulfills the request.

5. Platform releases the payment to the provider – after the service completion date and provided the customer hasn’t filed a dispute.

The Launch of Cloud Application for Distance Learning

Breaking the silent note, Roobykon Software is proud to share the results of its dedication. Guys, we definitely haven't been sitting on our hands since the last month! Quite to the contrary, we’ve integrated the cloud learning application for our great Chinese partners - http://home.yincaiyun.cn/.

All our efforts were based on the open Canvas LMS made by Instructure. We achieved the back-end part through the Ruby, and Ruby on Rails framework. Also, used NodeJS as a runtime environment, Webpack as a module bundler, and Gulp.js as the wide toolkit. As for the front-end part - it’s clearly React and CoffeeScript. Eventually, we’ve gathered all these pieces together, and the hardly messed-up puzzle was finished way before the deadline.

This cloud system gives an opportunity for teachers & students to manage their studies at one place. It provides all the necessary digital tools they need and tangibly increases communication. Online courses, tests, instructions, grades - everything on one platform, on any device, at any time.

We truly hope our experience will serve an example for other creative teams!

Top 5 Digital Analytics Tools for Marketing

Like most of the consumers, we in Roobykon Software prefer to try first and then purchase, especially when we’re talking about solid analytic platforms that would strongly influence the business decisions. And it seems like a horrible dream to stuck with the prepaid tangled platform and keep on trying to push out everything it can provide. At the same time, with the numerous proposals, it’s so easy to get into this trap. That’s why day by day, bit by bit we’re collecting advices out of our friends and influencers to make a final decision.

The following review of the marketing analytic tools is not pretending to be a deep research, but more likely the last push for those who have doubts.

So, here it goes:

1. Google Analytics

Now, this is an awesome platform to start with, and for most of us, it’s truly a way out because it’s free. And what is more important it gives quite relevant information! So here are the common pros:

• you can check out where your customers are coming, what site’s sections they are surfing, how often they return, and lots of other useful information;

• the more you will be involved in your site's analytics, the more details you’ll get, and at the same time it wouldn’t be difficult at any stage;

• incredibly robust in terms of what it offers, absolutely enough for a small business, and moreover it’s completely sharpened by them.

Overall, it’s a must-have platform, and if you are not running this on the site, you obviously should - in cohesion with other tools.

2. Woopra

Woopra is another online platform that allows you track page views and provides data about your conversion funnels. Plus, it could help you to learn more about your customers’ actions to improve website conversions. Biggest pros:

• allows tracking data on your website, email, apps and more;

• allows monitoring more than one website at the same time;

• an ability to see visitors on your website in real time in addition to aggregate stats;

• provides a live chat feature, so you can actually talk with your customers while they are on your website.

An awesome real-time customer analytics platform, period. There are both free and paid options depending on the number of functions you plan to use, but in general, this solution is a little pricey.

3. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is an excellent additional tool that’ll help to figure out your visitors’ engagement and raise your conversions. In short, Crazy Egg:

• allows building ‘heat maps’ and, literally, tracking every single click of your visitor, so you can easily correct roughnesses in the website usability;

• allows you to see what specific site blocks are most clickable and investigate your user’s interests;

• helps to improve website design and boost conversions.

Moreover, there are another two solid arguments for Crazy Egg - absolutely easy to setup and has a 30-day money back guarantee on all accounts.

4. KissMetrics

KissMetrics offers a cool system that helps to find out more about your visitors, but it rather would be more practically useful for eCommerce than for blogs:

• the data funnel tool helps to find website’s strongest and weakest features;

• allows making necessary adjustments and increase your chances of getting conversions;

• tells you, in great detail, what visitors are doing on your website, before, during, and after they make purchases.

When you need to implement your CRO strategy and make sure that your sales funnels are working effectively, Kissmetrics would come in handy.

5. Clicky

If you are starting to take your online business a bit more seriously, then Clicky might be a better option.

• you get real-time analytics, including SpyView, which lets you observe what current visitors are doing on your site;

• simple to use and presents all the data you want to see clearly;

• one of the coolest heat maps out of numerous.

Also, a great plus is that Clicky offers a free service if you have only one website and a Pro account for a monthly fee.

INSTEAD OF CONCLUSION

All in all, before you’ll make a final decision, you should consider three critical futures - channels to process, complexity, the number of integrations.

Whether you’re doing SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, or a mix, it’s essential to have a chance to track everything from one single platform, so be aware of choosing the platform flexible enough to grow along with your appetites and able to accommodate your future needs. But at the same time, when your team is constantly struggling to use a particular platform, it can quickly become more trouble than it’s worth, and the benefits will be negated by the complexity.

And finally, be sure to look into integration capabilities. In future, it could cause serious financial losses and ridiculous downtime.