Trust - an important strategy in building a successful marketplace platform

When a new brand emerges into the market, we normally rate how trustable the marketplace service is. We judge based upon the quality of their marketplace service, pricing, how friendly their help support team and how easy it is for the customers in approaching and using the marketplace platform - website or a mobile app.

But why is trust so important in any business, especially an online marketplace? Because Trust is essential in building a successful marketplace platform or be it any business that involves large consumers. A customer won’t come to you unless he trusts your marketplace platform is safe, easy to use and benefits him.

So any entrepreneur or startups have to remember people’s trust brings success.

In this article, we go through how to build trust in building a successful marketplace platform using key tactics.

I Tactic - Get your marketing done right

A company talks to its customers, explaining their service, through marketing. More than Sales, marketing reflects the nature and personality of the company. If marketing is done right, people might easily identify your marketplace.

Create a marketing advertisement that lucidly communicates the message you put out, it builds trust in a profound way. For instance, Airbnb marketed itself as a great platform, helping to travel anywhere and live with strangers. That is exactly what the marketplace offers.

Now, you get the idea of what I am talking about. This ad gives the perfect message to customers explaining their service and makes the ad fun and emotional, very essential for marketing.

Apart from this, market your company by showing the reviews received from customers.

Like how Airbnb does neatly,

If you go through Airbnb’s Instagram account, they shared the customer’s stories with a picture of how amazing they found the home. So, these are the selling points to any marketplace.

Another, start using your company’s social media handle wisely. Spread stories of your service. If you are on Instagram, post wonderful pictures along with a good description of your customers on how they felt happy and satisfied with your service. This builds the audience to your platform.

II Tactic: Taking protective measures to reduce risk

Frauds and bad situations are prone to happen in business. Even though one cannot completely shut out bad circumstances from not happening, you still can reduce the risks involved.

The common approach to reducing risk are:

Introducing reviews and ratings

Reviews either exalt or disparage the company reputation depending upon how good the marketplace service is. Introducing reviews on the platform makes users feel secure in choosing their bona fide service, across all the listed services in the marketplace.

In order to be rated well and improve sales, Providers in the platform attempt immense effort in gaining customers as well.

Verifying Users and Providers

A marketplace is only safe if there is less probability of fraudsters signing into the platform. And to avoid that, verifying Users and Providers makes the marketplace appear safe.

Verification can be done by showing a passport or any government identification number. Some marketplace asks for a social media login and asks to upload an image of the user to show credibility.

Well-known marketplace like venue-sharing or home-sharing does a background check to keep their marketplace secure and avoid any deceivers log into the platform.

Use escrow service

Enabling escrow service would reduce the risk involved in money transactions. Escrow service would enable the third-party to temporarily hold the money until the required job is done by the user participating in it.

For example, Upwork utilizes the escrow service. Freelancers are paid only after the completion of the requirements or the work hours allotted.

III Tactic: Designing an interactive and attractive user interface

The user interaction depends upon various factors like visually appealing, usability and an easy Call-to-action process.

The research done by the Nielsen Norman, a user research group, found out that the end-users ignore the small issues and problems in UX design if they find the website is attractive enough to capture attention. This effect is called the aesthetic-usability effect.

Even though the person may find errors or obstacles in using the website, they fail to identify it as the website design captivate them.

You can achieve it by:

1. Wisely choosing the color palette.
2. Be consistent with the color schemes in all sub-web pages.
3. Use the font size in the right place.

Keeping in mind the Usability, Nielsen Norman Group upon the following characteristics:

1. Learnability: Being easy for users to accomplish basic tasks when they encounter the design for the first time.
2. Efficiency: The pace they perform the task.
3. Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
4. Errors: Errors users make while performing the tasks.
5. Satisfaction: Pleasant to use the design.

To make the website highly usable:

1. Simplicity is the key. Design a simple User Layout avoiding unnecessary elements that are not needed in the first place like Ads or gifs.
2. Fewer navigation links in the Home Page. Keeping more navigation on the Homepage of the website would be very confusing to users. It is not recommended in good SEO practices.
3. Test the website with a real audience. Even when you create a perfect website, you may realize numerous possible errors when real users interact on the website. Each user is different in usability. Approach an iterative design mode for any website.

Takeaways

Let’s have a short recap of what is said above.

1. Make effective marketing campaigns.
2. Take important measures in reducing the risk factors in your marketplace platform.
3. Design a user-friendly and appealing user interface, either it’s your website or your mobile app.

I hope you find this blog useful. And insightful enough to get in action building a successful marketplace.