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Top 3 trends in online marketplace industry in 2022

8 min to read

Online marketplaces are experiencing rapid growth across various sectors, including e-commerce, e-learning, food service, healthcare, FinTech, and insurance. Bringing together vendors with consumers, marketplace solutions allow users to make orders and payments without leaving the system.
Providers of goods and services, in their turn, receive access to a large audience without the need to build their e-commerce websites and launch costly advertising campaigns for customer attraction. With access to numerous goods, competitive prices, and fast delivery, 92% of US online buyers are shopping on e-marketplaces.

By matching organizations and their clients in one place, the owners of an online marketplace platform generate profit through monetization, for instance, a subscription-based or commission strategy. Thanks to this business model, marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, Airbnb, Uber Eats, Upwork, Coursera, Udemy, and Zocdoc gained worldwide recognition.

Aiming to meet changing consumer demand, organizations in different industries focused on digitizing their processes and boosting online presence. The COVID-19 has accelerated this movement, evoking a wave of marketplace startups and contributing to the increased popularity of the existing projects. In this article, we will consider the main digital marketplace trends for 2022 to discover the best investment opportunities. Let's get started.

1. Mobile shopping will be growing further

In recent years we have witnessed the rise of mobile commerce. Its rapid spurt was caused by the growing number of smartphone users globally. Current data shows that this marketplace trend is not going anywhere soon. Andrew Lipsman, an eMarketer's analyst, predicts that mobile commerce will take almost 50% of e-commerce sales in 2022. So what should you do to please mobile shoppers and grow your profit? First, before you launch a marketplace, make sure that your future platform has a robust, responsive design. Smartphone owners should be able to find and purchase the required items just as fast and easily as desktop users. Another option is to convert your existing e-commerce platform into a fast-loading progressive web app. This technology provides mobile shoppers with a native app-like experience. In simple terms, users can get push notifications and work offline.

For example, recently our team helped a client create an online intercity delivery marketplace in the US. This marketplace covers the US and provides a connection between verified drivers and senders - https://pickuplz.com/. When we were working on this marketplace, our priority was to create a mobile-friendly platform, since we knew that most of the target audience would use it from a smartphone.

2. Online sales growth due to COVID-19 pandemic

The online marketplaces industry is flourishing. Undoubtedly, the coronavirus pandemic has become a catalyst for e-commerce. Quarantines, self-isolation, travel restrictions - these measures have led to increasing online sales. As a result, more and more brands started growing their businesses on the Internet and got involved in online marketplace development.

For instance, Macy's, a store chain, is planning to launch a curated digital marketplace in the second half of 2022. It will follow the model set by Amazon, Target, and other retailers that have successfully provided a platform for other sellers. Macy's made this decision because digital sales continue to outperform in-store purchases. Another example is the company Walmart that has grown through online sales to near Amazon's level. Walmart adopted the online-sales trend in the marketplace domain properly. In 2020 Walmart Marketplace grew to an estimated 70,000 sellers, fueled by the surge of online shopping caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to Marketplace Pulse data, Walmart Marketplace is expected to have risen by 146% by the end of 2022.

3. New payment options will be adopted (cryptocurrencies and more)

Online shopping can become a hassle for customers using an unfamiliar payment option. Hence, your task is to provide consumers with all popular payment gateways. Allow them to pay for your products and services the way they used to. This tactic will help you improve the retention rate and get better chances of repeat purchases.

So what payment options should be added to your digital marketplace apart from traditional credit and debit cards? First of all, your online marketplace should accept digital wallets such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal. High demand for these payment gateways is a noticeable marketplace trend. https://blog.cookiedev.com/paymentgateway

When you aim to create a marketplace website to generate sales, you need to understand that the checkout process is the final stage of the user journey. It defines whether buyers will make a purchase thus boosting your conversions or not. At this step, they have already passed multiple steps from brand awareness, product search, reviews' analysis, communication with a seller, to finally making a decision of buying an item.
However, if the checkout procedure provides troubles like taking much time or requiring to fill in long forms, it may still force the consumer to quit this process. It means that you can lose a potential customer.
Therefore, implementing e-wallets trends in the marketplace will definitely accelerate the purchasing process and buying experience of your customers, increasing your conversion rate. It would also be a wise idea to start accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment method. What benefits will it bring to the marketplace industry? The key advantages include low transaction fees and zero reverse transactions. Not talking about it's on a huge hype these days.

Does it seem like you started thinking about a plunge into the marketplace business? Book a strategy session and our seasoned BA's be there for you with the newest insights - https://calendly.com/cookiedev/30-min/

Volodymyr Andrushenko
Co-founder, Business Development Manager at CookieDev
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