Guess who's back...

After a brief (1+ year) hiatus, Marketplace Minute is back 💥

So why the long break? To be quite honest, I wasn’t really enjoying the old format. It didn’t feel very inspiring and I don’t think I was providing much value to my readers. So I hit pause and focused on my client work.

The newsletter has been in the back of my mind for a little while and I’ve spent some time thinking about how I want to shape it going forward.

I want the newsletter to be more design focused (I’m a designer after all) and tailored to they types of clients I work with - marketplace businesses!

So, I’ve given the newsletter a complete revamp and this is the first of (hopefully) many more to come.

So let’s dig in!

Problem: A single image at the top of listing pages could be hurting your conversion

If you’re running a product, accommodation or experience based marketplace, the images of each listing are going to be of high importance. Customers want to visualise exactly what they’re going to get, and providers want to showcase their offering from different perspectives.

When clients come to me for a redesign projects, I notice that lot of them are missing a trick, by displaying one large image at the top of each listing page, with a button to see more.

However, a single image does not convey the full story.

Customers tend to scan listings and eliminate them quickly. They’ll only put the effort in (e.g to view more images) once they’re really serious about buying/booking. So it’s important, for conversion, that each listing is working hard to convince the customer it’s the right choice.

Solution: Display images in a grid

Hipcamp do a fantastic job of helping their customers visualise their camping experience very quickly.

They do this by displaying 5 well spaced images (one larger and 4 small) of the accommodation and surrounding space in a simple grid.

Instantly, customers can get a better “feel” for the campsite at a quick glance - this includes images of the campsite from angles, impressive features such as the lake, what it looks like at different times of day (night/day), and even different seasons.

This simple change helps to “sell” the listing, therefore improving overall conversion.

Hipcamp aren’t the only ones to do this. Airbnb and Landtrust do this too!

So if listing images are an important aspect of your marketplace, I recommend considering a grid layout. This is achievable in Sharetribe using custom code, so you’ll need a developer to implement this feature.

✉️ Reply with your own design inspiration and I might feature it in an upcoming issue

“Should my homepage target customers, providers or both?”

A lot of clients are confused when it comes to the design of their homepage. They want to appeal to both customers and providers, and end up giving mixed messages that appeal to neither. So what should they do?

Quite simply, the homepage should speak directly to your customers.

The main reason being, customers drive the demand that ultimately attracts and retains suppliers. In most marketplaces, suppliers are motivated to join when they see demand. So if your homepage is customer-focused, it signals an active and engaged customer base, making it more attractive for suppliers to participate.

The second reason is first impressions matter for conversion. Customers typically make quick decisions about whether a marketplace fits their needs, so an appealing, customer-centric homepage is key to converting their interest.

Take a look at the homepage of any of the big, successful marketplaces and you’ll notice that they’ll focus their messaging solely on their customers. They’ll include things such as featured listings, popular categories and blogs and customer FAQs.

But what about providers?!

Most marketplaces have a separate landing page for providers. They will use this page to communicate provider-specific details that customers would not be interested in. E.g. The benefits of being a provider on your marketplace, how to sign up and create a listing, how payouts work etc.

Here are a few good examples of provider-focused landing pages:

• MentorCruise

• Etsy

• Maven

Discard draft listings

Providers can now delete draft listings from your marketplace. They just need to head to the "Your listing" page, where they can select the option to delete the draft listing. However, please note that deleting a listing draft can't be undone.

Read about other recent updates here.

Improve your analytics with Lemondao

I recently had a chat with with Albert, CEO at Lemonado. Albert and his team have created a great no-code tool to help you to analyse your user data.

Whilst you can so some simple analysis within Sharetribe, it can be challenging. You often need to build separate spreadsheets and manually upload the data using CSV exports.

Lemonado makes this easier by giving you a no-code tool to build an analytics dashboard and the capability to sync with your marketplace database.

One stand-out feature for me, is the ability to create seller dashboards, so your providers can get more insights into, and track their own performance.

Learn more about Lemonado.

Fiona Burns

Find me on LinkedIn or Book a 1:1 call

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