With the improvement in technology, there had been seen a change in the work pattern. Not only 9-5 job remains the source of income; nowadays a lot of people are making money online too. With different online freelance marketplaces like Upwork, Fiverr, etc. the job market has transformed completely. The Covid 19 pandemic has forced employees to search for online opportunities which had increased the demand for freelancers too.
What is a Freelance Marketplace?
It’s an online platform where several service providers select freelancers to do remote jobs. The cost to develop the platform relies on numerous factors like the platform, functionalities, development hours, complexity, and much more.
There are numerous reasons for the popularity of freelance marketplaces:
- Cutting Costs: Hiring freelancers minimizes the costs for businesses since they won’t have to provide them with a fixed salary or perks. Also, there’s no requirement for any office space for workers.
- Flexibility: This benefit people who don’t want to work hectic 9-5 jobs. Freelancers have the choice to work as per their comfort.
- No Geographical Boundaries: Businesses can look for skilled freelancers doesn’t matter where they are located.
How to Create an Online Freelance Marketplace?
If you are planning to start an online freelance marketplace then you must be aware of the fact that competition is quite high these days. In order to survive in the market, you have to compete with your competitors.
Here we have jotted down a few tips on how you can build a successful freelance website:
Plan Your Business Strategy
Before you start building your freelance marketplace ask yourself why customers will like to choose your platform instead of other reputable giants. So, before developing a freelance marketplace, ensure to answer the question; what unique thing your site offers which makes it different from other platforms?
If your website offers unique features that can solve the problems of users then your platform will start gaining loyalty very soon which will benefit your business only.
Determining the Functionality
Have a proper understanding of the features that your website won’t be able to work without may incorporate:
- Signup and user profiles
- Submitting projects
- Project bidding
- Communication tools
- Project management tools
- Payment processing
You have to give more emphasis to secure the information as well as the payments. Why? Since users will share with you all the confidential data including the financial information. Ensuring security implies encrypting the data, detecting malware, ensuring there are no susceptibilities in the system, and so on.
Creating the Design
Determine how your site will appear. For that, you might require the help of professionals for ensuring the user experience, as well as the user interface, are perfect. Also, the website you create must be simple to use and understand. Might be it seems simple however it takes enough research as well as time for designing such a website.
Follow the below given two tips:
- Better go for a minimalistic design
- Also, don’t forget to create a mobile version of your website
Custom Development
Now you have to put all your concepts in code for building a freelance marketplace. Once the concepts are clear, it’s time for the team of app development to go through the client requirements and begin their work on the actual website design.
Website development needs good skills in the field of coding so in case you won’t have a strong team to work on; you can also hire a good outsourcing agency that can do the work for you.
Testing
It’s the vital phase of product development and checks the website’s performance. Product testing needs to be performed at every stage of marketplace development. Also, testing helps in improving the system quality, reliability as well as performance. In addition to this, it also checks whether the functions of software are working properly or not.
Deployment and Maintenance
Once you have created the website, the final step is to launch your marketplace. Launching the site won’t imply that your cooperation with a web development company is ended. Once it gets launched, you will receive feedback from the users based on which you have to decide what is required to be fixed. For that, you need professional support too. Also, you will need someone for updating the website on a regular basis.
Top features your Online Freelance Marketplace must-have
For building a competitive platform, let’s have a look at the top features that you must include in your freelance marketplace:
Advanced search: The users must perform the advanced search by making use of filters like domain, experience, hourly rates, specific skill set, dates, etc.
Job listing: The clients must be able to easily post the requirements of their projects and can list each of them. This way freelancers can look for the projects and specific skills the particular client is expecting
Mechanism for bidding: Freelancers make a bid on the projects available on a platform. After that, clients choose the freelancer on the basis of the bid for completing the assigned task
Messaging: With a proper in-app chatting platform, it will become easy for clients to have a conversation with their assigned freelancer regarding the project.
Payments: Payment integration is another crucial feature for any website. Every transaction shared between the client and freelancer is kept safe through an integrated payment gateway
Takeaway
Developing an online freelance marketplace is a great idea only if you put your efforts into making a unique platform and not copying the concept of other marketplaces. Hence, if you decide your niche properly, plan a proper business strategy and hire the best development company; then you will surely take your business to the next higher level.
Interesting Reads:
How To Create a Freelance Service Marketplace
How to Begin Your Freelance Business in 2022 – Tips and Tricks
