A service marketplace is an online platform that successfully connects sellers and buyers for buying and selling of services between service seekers and service providers. 

Fiverr, Uber, AirBnB, or Thumbtack, these service providers have successfully built two-sided service marketplace platforms which connect both buyers in need of a service and sellers who offer it.

Marketplace for professional services such as Thumbtack, TaskRabbit deal in laborers and professional service workforce.

Top Service Marketplace

The popularity of on-demand service marketplaces such as Uber, Fiverr, Freelancer, Consultants 500, Urban Clap, TaskRabbit etc., is rising day by day. According to a research, self-employed and contingent workforce is expected to increase more than 45% of the U.S population by 2020. 

Fiverr generates close to 1 million transactions per month. Uber, AirBnB, and Thumbtack have been valued billions of dollars in each month. It’s not difficult to imagine how big the opportunities are in the service marketplace industry.

Service marketplaces are used by organizations, entrepreneurs and small businesses for two important reasons:

1. Generate leads
2. Outsource jobs to service providers

Challenges comes in Running a Services Marketplace

Starting a service marketplace business is hard. First of all, you need two sets of customers: buyers and sellers. Without a quality list of buyers, you cannot convince the sellers to get on board. Without these sellers on your platform, buyers have no incentive to use your service.

While service marketers face plenty of challenges, keeping a service marketplace operating smoothly shouldn’t be one of them. Below are top 4 common challenges service marketplace operators face, and the ways extreme personalization helps to overcome them.

1. Product and service presentation

In a typical common online business, the owner retains control over the way the product and its services are presented to the customer. It is not unusual for these owners to hire models and professional photographers to help make the accompanying promotional images grand. In any case, in an online service marketplace setup, business owners and entrepreneurs have little control over how their products are introduced.  

2. Customer service

Traditional online stores have a centralized customer-management system which makes it simple to handle client inquiries. As a result, when it comes to buyers’ experience, the buck stops with the store owner. In a service marketplace, however, buyers who are unhappy with the product or service one of the sellers provides will typically direct their fury toward the marketplace, rather than respective seller. This is a repetitive issue which can often escalate into a PR problem or a social-media backfire.

3. Supply and Demand Gap

The main challenge for service providers is to deal with the supply-demand gap in the economy. Service marketplaces will confront situations where the gap between supply and demand is startling high. For example, a dealer that provides a huge chunk of sales may back out, leaving an excessive number of clients and merchants. On the other hand, a corporate purchaser may select another stage, leaving sellers high and dry, with little in the way of returns.

4. Trust

While building connections is an incredible method to earn trust from buyers and sellers, this by itself may not take care of the issue. When purchasers understand that, while your marketplace business is trustworthy, but your individual sellers may not be, a trust deficiency may emerge. And that may affect the conversion rate on your platform.

Why you should use wordpress marketplace platform

There are many ways to set up an service marketplace, but WordPress service marketplace is easily one of the best solutions. It may be best known as a blogging platform, but it possesses applications far beyond the blog area. WordPress is a dynamic, flexible, and powerful piece of software that can be modified with plugins and themes to create the perfect service marketplace.

Here are some cool reasons you should use WordPress for your business website.

It’s free

WordPress is a free CMS system that can be installed on any website. 

According to WPBeginner,

“WordPress is an open source software. It is free in the sense of freedom not in the sense of free beer. You may ask what is the difference between these two? Open Source software comes with freedom for you to use, modify, build upon, and redistribute the software in any way you like.”

  Lots of themes and frameworks

Another topmost reason for choosing WordPress to create service marketplace is the themes and frameworks.

A theme is a software package which determines your site’s styling – what it looks like, how it’s laid out, and how it’s menus looks like and sidebars work. Your theme is crucial because it controls how your site appears to front users. It also affects how easily they are able to get information and make purchases.

It’s very important to choose a theme that is either designed specifically for online store, or at least has all the design features you’ll need for your store. You’ll want to search a theme that provides a lot of customization options, a fully responsive design, and a user-friendly interface. We also suggest going with a theme that comes bundled with helpful WordPress service marketplace plugins.

You could also try out freelance service marketplace WordPress theme. Whatever you choose, first make a list of features that you need for your store and plugins it has to support. Then check each theme against that list before making a decision.

It’s easy to use

WordPress is intuitive and very easy to use. It might seem a little daunting at first, because it’s not pretty like Shopify, and doesn’t spend millions of dollars on marketing while their drop shipped doggie t-shirt store makes them millions, but, once you get beyond the initially sparsely designed interface, you’ll realize that WordPress is incredibly easy to use.

You can access and edit basically everything you need to from the WordPress CMS, and if you find something you can’t, there’s generally a plugin you can install that will help you.

Unlike closed CMS platform like Shopify or Wix, where you are limited in what you can edit and access, WordPress is an open CMS platform where you can edit and access everything.

It’s scalable

WordPress is very scalable. You don’t need to pay an extra $100 per month once you reach a certain level of traffic.

WordPress is typically installed directly onto your domain and all you need just to pay for is your domain and hosting. You can get inexpensive WordPress hosting packages starting from a few dollars per month, and as you scale you can get high quality professional hosting plans.

There are tons of free tutorials and guides

As WordPress is the largest CMS market share, it also has the largest library of tutorials, guides and how to content.

Built in users section

WordPress comes with a built in users section which makes it easy to delegate access to new users based on the level of access it’s appropriate to assign.

For example, if you want to give your developer access, they may require admin access to access the source code of the store.

This is not the same level of access a contributor to your blog will require, and you may want to assign a lower permission level as a result.

It integrates with everything

As WordPress is the most commonly used CMS in the world, it integrates with everything.

If there’s a service you’d like to integrate with your online store, chances are there will be a WordPress plugin, or at the least an easy to use API.

For example, here are some of the most popular services that integratee with your WordPress website:

1. PayPal
2. Stripe
3. Freshbooks
4. Xero
5. Hubspot

How to create service marketplace with WordPress step by step

First, you need to make sure that you are using the right platform. There are two types of WordPress available: WordPress.com vs WordPress.org. One is a limited blog hosting service while the other is known as the self-hosted WordPress.

You will need the following things to build an service marketplace website using self-hosted WordPress.

• A domain name and Web hosting. (This is where your website’s files are stored)
• An SSL Certificate (To securely accept online payments)
• WordPress
• WooCommerce (best WordPress eCommerce plugin)
• Service marketplace plugin (like Dokan)

Step 1

Once you are confirm that you have your own domain and hosting service from your respected provider you need to install WordPress on your server. This is different for every web hosting provider that are available. If you are encounter any problem configuring WordPress you can always visit their official website for more information.

Step 2

When you have installed WordPress successfully on your server you need to access the back end to install the necessary plugins. To access the back end just go the URL of your page and type your domain name /wp-admin. This will take you to the login page which looks like the following.

After logging in you will enter in the WordPress Dashboard page.

Step 3

Now you have to install all the necessary plugins for your service marketplace. At first you need to install WooCommerce plugin from WordPress plugin store. To download WooCommerce you have to go to

wp-admin -> Plugins -> Add New

Now go to the search option and type WooCommerce. The result will show the WooCommerce plugin with an install now button like the following. Just click on to install. Then activate the plugin.

Next you have to install another plugin, Dokan. To install Dokan you have to again search at the plugin option for Dokan. After getting the plugin you have to click on the Install now button and activate after that.

Step 4

You will now be able to see a menu named as Dokan on the Dashboard page. The Dashboard section shows an overview of your service marketplace. There are also different subsection menu that gives you options to customize all.

Now you have to enable membership registration to start adding vendors. To do that you have to go to

wp-admin -> Settings -> General

there you need to put tick on the check box of “Membership Anyone can register box” then click save.

Step 5

Now to see the front end page of a vendor you have to add a vendor user. To add vendor just go to:

wp-admin -> Users -> Add New

Fill up the form with the necessary information and select role as Vendor. Then click on save. Your vendor will be created.

To see vendor store page add /store/vendor to the last part of your URL.

If you fill up all the necessary information for your vendor and add products it should look something similar to the following:

Congrats! You have successfully installed Dokan and set up a vendor page for service marketplace. You can now see all the features and customize it the way you like. 

A complete fully customized Dokan service Marketplace should look something like this.

Cost Analysis

Regarding building the service marketplace platform for your business, the proper solution you need must cover the two latter problems: “convenience” and “reliability”. You may simply hire developers and start everything from beginning, but this decision will cost you around ten thousand dollars or more. A much better way is to find a reliable provider who gives you an all-in-one service marketplace platform crafted exactly for your purposes. The choice is obvious!

Conclusion

Building an service marketplace website for your business is a crucial first step into the vast online marketplace. You may want a storefront that is attractive and professional, gives customers what they want, and runs itself as much as possible. That’s where WordPress comes in. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more more flexible, customizable, and well-supported platform.