Creating an effective customer-provider matching experience is crucial for the success of your online marketplace. Whether your marketplace operates as a matching or search platform, optimizing the design and user experience is essential. By understanding the distinction between homogenous and heterogenous supply and implementing best practices in search, categories, filters, sorting, and display, you can enhance the product discovery journey for your customers.
Building a powerful search engine
Optimizing your marketplace search engine is essential for a seamless user experience. When searching for keywords, make sure the search bar is prominently positioned with clear instructions, prioritize relevance, consider autocomplete, and general keywords for continuous improvement. track. “Find Places” enables searching at different levels, provides nearby results, uses maps or sorted lists, and uses autocomplete. Improving the marketplace search experience can increase customer satisfaction and engagement.
Use categories to build taxonomies
Using categories to define your marketplace taxonomy is an important aspect of organizing your website and guiding your customers as they browse. Search is essential, but categories play an important role in helping customers discover relevant products and services. Carefully consider the importance of search and categories based on the size and selection of your marketplace. While traditional e-commerce sites often use hierarchical category structures, some newer marketplaces prefer alternative approaches such as faceted search. It is important to start with a manageable category structure and avoid complexity and empty categories. As your marketplace grows, you can expand your categories based on supply and demand to ensure a user-friendly experience.
Filtering results
Filtering results, especially with faceted search, is a powerful tool to help your customers find the products they need. However, it is surprising that only 40% of his e-commerce websites use this feature effectively. To optimize your Mindset Marketplace solution, prioritize category-specific filters, integrate theme filters for your own taxonomies, ensure a balanced and clean user interface, and step-by-step filter extensions to eliminate empty spaces. prevent the consequences of Implementing these strategies can increase user satisfaction, improve discoverability, and increase sales on your platform.
Sort results
The key is to understand the different needs of our customers and offer them the right sorting options. Relevance is usually the default sorting method, but it’s important to consider additional sorting criteria such as price, release date, and rating based on customer feedback. It’s important to balance sorting options without overwhelming the UI. A visually appealing layout is essential when presenting results. Using a grid format with high-quality product images can be effective, but care should be taken to vary the height of the cards to ensure usability. If images are not applicable, a simple list may be a good alternative. Including relevant information such as titles, prices, images, and vendor details helps users make informed decisions.
Infinite scrolling implementation with “load more” button ensures a seamless browsing experience and avoids page clutter. Additionally, the map view integrates with location-based search and reliably syncs with lists to improve the user experience. By adopting these strategies, you can optimize your market, attract customers, and enable efficient product discovery.
Viewing results
You can use list view or map view when viewing marketplace results. A grid of large product images works well for a list view, but a simple list is fine if pictures aren’t available. Emphasize important information such as titles, prices, and images. Pagination is the traditional approach, but infinite scroll or a “load more” button is better for easier browsing. Set the map to an appropriate zoom level and enable location search refinement while panning the map. The list and map should be in sync. Combine pagination with infinite scroll, or a load more button with a combined list and card view. Interaction between the two improves the user experience, such as scrolling a list when hovering over a map pin.
Reverse Marketplace
In certain service-oriented markets, especially in industries such as software development and home services, traditional search and negotiation processes can be cumbersome for customers. To address this issue, vendors can adopt a reverse her marketplace approach, where vendors actively seek out customers based on their specific needs. In this model, customers are asked to provide detailed information about their requirements through a series of questions. The vacancies are then posted for vendors to bid on. Known as a “reverse marketplace,” this approach offers a more streamlined experience. Well-known platforms such as Thumbtack and Upwork have successfully implemented this reverse search workflow. The core principles of marketplace design still apply, but the main difference is the focus on the search experience and vendor-specific needs from the vendor’s perspective.
Therefore, creating a user-friendly and visually appealing platform that is attractive to both customers and vendors is essential for market success. By taking the right approach and implementing best practices, you can ensure a seamless experience for everyone:
- Choosing a search workflow:
- Customers often want to be able to compare different vendors so they can mix and match their products. So it’s a logical decision to adopt the traditional search workflow instead of vice versa.
- Using categories and filters:
- Categories play an important role in effectively describing the services offered. Start with a one-level hierarchy. In addition, the integration of important filters is essential. Considering that customers have different budgets, price is the obvious filter.
- View results:
- We recommend displaying the map and list view side by side. The list should be in grid format and should emphasize high quality photos. Pagination is the preferred option to ensure an organized browsing experience. See your results clearly without cluttering your map with too many markers at once.
By following the strategies outlined above, you can improve the user experience of your marketplace and make it easier for your customers to find the right vendor. Remember that simplicity and flexibility are key. So start with the basics and adapt as the market grows. These insights can be used to create a seamless vendor discovery experience that drives satisfaction and success in the service marketplace.
As marketplace experts, Mindset understands the complexities involved in optimizing vendor discovery. We help you navigate this process and implement effective strategies to improve user engagement and satisfaction. Our team of experts has extensive experience in designing user-friendly marketplaces and can provide valuable insights tailored to your specific needs. Whether you’re in the early stages of building a services marketplace or looking to modernize your existing platform, we offer comprehensive consulting services to guide you through your vendor discovery journey. From improving search functionality and building categories to implementing intuitive filters and results display, we can help you create a seamless and engaging user experience.
Contact us today to discuss your needs and find out how Mindset can help you grow and thrive in your market!