In this tutorial, we’ll set up a marketplace for one-time events like concerts, gigs, seasonal events, and one-time workshops. The key elements of the marketplace are:
Organizers add their event on the marketplace.
Customers find an event they want to attend and buy a ticket.
All settings are configured without coding, using Sharetribe's no-code marketplace builder. You can follow along and use your own marketplace idea and content.
When it comes to any marketplace, the most important things are your user flows:
User creation
Listing creation
Search and matching
Transactions
In this tutorial, we’ll focus on these main user flows and configure them for a marketplace with ticket purchases. At the end of the article, you’ll find a list of other features to configure, relevant to all marketplaces.
Please note that Sharetribe’s no-code capabilities don’t support one-time events perfectly, but can get you to a minimum viable platform to launch to early adopters and validate your idea. It can also offer you a great basis for custom development. Reach out to our support through the chat widget in the corner with your requirements and we’ll be happy to help you with the next steps, whether it’s with or without coding!
And if you’re interested, check out our other event marketplace tutorials:
Bookable, on-demand experiences (examples: private classes, experiences, and tours for groups or individuals)
Recurring events (examples: weekly classes, workshops, theme nights)
1. Update your marketplace vocabulary to event marketplace texts
We’ll start with a part of your marketplace that touches each of these flows, marketplace texts—in other words, your marketplace’s UI copy. This means updating your marketplace and email texts.
Marketplace texts are short pieces of text used across your marketplace website. This includes button labels, error messages, help texts, and more. Email texts are the copy of your automatic email notifications.
For event marketplaces, updating these texts is especially important, since many of the default texts in Sharetribe are not an exact fit. But this is only going to take a minute, since we’ve created alternative, default event marketplace texts! You’ll only need to copy and replace your general texts with the texts linked below.
Update marketplace texts
Open this document: Event marketplace texts.
Copy everything below the dividing line.
Go to the marketplace text editor in Console.
Delete all content from the editor.
Paste the event marketplace texts to the editor.
Save changes.
You can update the texts to fit your specific idea. But I recommend using these texts to get started fast. When your setup is ready and you start testing your marketplace, you’ll be in a better position to evaluate which texts you still want to change.
Update email texts
Open this document: Event marketplace email texts.
Copy everything below the dividing line.
Go to the email text editor in Console.
Delete all content from the editor.
Paste the event marketplace email texts to the editor.
Save changes.
Same as above, you can update the email texts to fit your specific idea at any time. But starting with the texts in the document helps you get started faster! You can always return to email and marketplace texts when there are no other pressing things for you to do first.
2. Tailor the user experience for supply and demand
On many event marketplaces, providers and customers need different user experiences to meet their goals. Often, the providers are event organizers, while the customers are individual consumers. You can set up unique user flows for these user groups with user type and user field settings.
If you’re building a peer-to-peer experience marketplace instead, where any user can belong to either group, you can skip user types and move directly to step three of this tutorial.
Tip! You can combine user types with access control features like user approval. For example, if you want all customers to get approved automatically, but want to review providers before giving them access to the marketplace, you can build an automated workflow with Zapier. Check out the Zapier tutorial on approving a user based on user type to learn how.
Modify the provider user type
Go to Console → User types.
Open the Provider user type.
Modify the name to something specific to your marketplace. Descriptive names in your marketplace's vocabulary are a good idea: such as “Event organizer”, “Venue”, or “Business”.
Change or leave the ID as is. If you change the ID, any change you make to the user type will not be reflected in accounts with the old ID. You can update a user’s user type on the user management page.
Choose the user role Provider. This determines the basic user account experience. This user type will see the provider inbox, and their public profile will include reviews from customers.
Enable or disable user account links. For the provider user type, we'll enable:
Post and manage listings: The user type will have access to links to post listings and manage their own listings.
Payout details: The user type needs to add payout details to be able to receive payments from customers.
Check the default user fields. You can turn two of the on or off:
Display name: Enabling the display name can be a good idea for a B2C or B2B marketplace. You can use the display name field for business names.
Phone number: The phone number is protected data, meaning that it can’t be seen by anyone else except the user themself and the marketplace operator. This is a good field to have if you expect to reach out to users in person or want to set up SMS notifications, for example.
Decide if the display name and phone number fields will be:
Included in the signup form. If not, they can still be added in the user’s profile or account, but won’t be mandatory.
Mandatory: When a field is mandatory, the user can’t sign up without filling the,
Save changes.
Tip! You can update the text “Display name” to “Business name” or "Company” in the marketplace text editor. To update the display name label, these are the marketplace texts to update:
"ConfirmSignupForm.displayNameLabel": "Display name",
"SignupForm.displayNameLabel": "Display name",
"ProfileSettingsForm.displayNameHeading": "Your display name",
"ProfileSettingsForm.displayNameInfo": "The display name defaults to first name plus initial of last name.",
"ProfileSettingsForm.displayNameLabel": "Display name",
"SignupForm.displayNameLabel": "Display name",
"SignupForm.displayNameRequired": "You need to add a display name.",
Modify the customer user type
Go to Console → User types.
Open the user type Customer.
Modify the name if you wish.
Change or leave the ID as is. If you change the ID, any change you make to the user type will not be reflected in accounts with the old ID. You can update the user type of a test user in the Manage users page.
Choose the user role Customer. This determines the basic user account experience. This user type will see the customer inbox, and their public profile will include reviews from providers.
Enable or disable user account links. For the customer user type, we'll enable:
Payment method: Customers will be able to save a payment method to their account.
Check the default user fields:
Do you want to ask customers for a display name or a phone number?
Do you want either field to be mandatory to fill?
Save changes.
Tip! You can collect more information during signup with custom user fields. They also help your users create richer user profiles. You can create user fields for all users or limit them to certain user types only.
Remember that too many user fields can lead to people abandoning the signup form. Signup should always be as effortless as possible, so it’s best to only ask for the information that’s necessary for you to have. Learn more about user fields.
3. Define your event creation and ticket purchase process
Your listing type(s) determines two key things:
What kind of listings providers can add to your marketplace.
What kind of transactions take place on your marketplace.
In our one-time event marketplace, we’ll create a listing type that enables:
Providers to add an event to the marketplace.
Customers to buy tickets to the event.
You have a listing type (or several) on your marketplace by default, but if you’re building a marketplace for one-time events, it might not be exactly what you need. Instead of the calendar booking transaction process, we’ll use the purchase process.
This is also why step one, updating marketplaces texts is so important in this tutorial. The purchase process is, by default, used for product sales, but with the correct vocabulary and settings, it can support an MVP one-time event marketplace flow.
Now, let’s get started configuring our listing type!
Go to Listings → Listing types.
Open the listing type card. You can modify the listing type or delete and start from scratch. But please note that if you already have listings in a listing type that gets deleted, those listings will stop working.
Listing type name and ID
(Optional) Modify the name to something specific to your marketplace, such as “Event”, “Concert”, “Workshop”, etc.
The listing type name will be shown during listing creation and as a label for the listing type filter if you have more than one listing type. If you only have one listing type, the name will not be displayed anywhere.
Change or leave the ID as is.
If you change the ID, please note that any existing test listings with the old ID will stop working.
The listing type ID will be used in listing type search URLs in the format [your marketplace URL]/s/listing-type-id. For example, if you have a marketplace with two listing types with the IDs book-class and book-private-event, you could link to a listing search with each of these types with the URLs https://www.example.com/s/one-time-event and https://www.example.com/s/recurring-event.
Transaction settings
Choose a transaction process type Purchase.
Choose the stock type Finite stock, multiple items. This enables:
Providers to define how many tickets are on sale for the event.
Customers to choose how many tickets they want to buy.
Default listing fields
Choose the default listing fields.
Enable Delivery: Pick-up. This is relevant if events on your marketplace have a set, physical location and address. Instead of a pickup location, this field will be used as the event location if you’ve updated the marketplace texts on your platform.
If your marketplace is for online events and location is not relevant, disable both delivery fields.
Disable Delivery: Shipping.
Enable or disable images: Enable or disable images depending if images are relevant to the event and the customer’s purchase decision.
Enable or disable Payout details required before publishing. This setting determines when a provider has to add their payout details.
When enabled, the provider has to add their payout details before they can publish a listing.
When disabled, the provider can add them after publishing the listing. Note that buyers can’t make a purchase before the provider adds their payout details.
And save changes! You’ve now created a listing type for events and ticket purchases.
Add event date and time fields
To complete event listing creation, you need to add listing fields that will include key information: date and time. Here’s one way to achieve this:
Add a date field.
Click to add a new listing field.
Give it a name and an ID, such as “Date”.
Choose the field type Free text.
Make the field mandatory.
Optional: Limit the field to specific listing types or categories, if you have several.
Optional: Include the field in keyword search.
Add a time field:
Click to add a new listing field.
Give it a name and an ID, such as “Starting time”.
Choose the field type Dropdown.
Make the field mandatory.
Add options:
Option name: 00:00, Option ID: 00:00
Option name: 01:00, Option ID: 01:00
etc.
Optional: Limit the field to specific listing types or categories, if you have several.
Disable: Add a filter to the search page.
You can then add any other relevant fields to the listing. For example, you could have an ending time field in addition to starting time, or a calendar event URL field.
4. Build streamlined search and matching experience
The final setup section is about building a search and matching experience. How will customers find events on your marketplace? We’ll set up or search experience with categories, listing search settings, and landing page search.
Tip! You can also use custom listing fields as filters. These can be super powerful in building search experiences. Learn more about listing fields as search filters.
Create categories
Categories are a great way to organize listings on your marketplace and help customers find what they’re looking for. They can be very useful in an event marketplace that offers multiple different kinds of events, such as concerts, meetups, and workshops. Or concerts for different musical genres, such as rock, classical, pop, etc.
Bear in mind that often, it’s better to add categories only after you’ve already gotten some listing volume. Empty categories are not a great experience for customers.
Click to add a new main category.
Give the category a name and an ID.
(Optional) Add a subcategory. You can have two levels of subcategories inside a main category.
Save changes, and repeat!
Providers will choose the category before filling in other listing details during listing creation.
Modify listing search settings
Next, let’s check our search settings to guarantee a smooth search experience for customers.
Go to Listings → Listing search.
Choose a search type.
Location: Great choice for marketplaces where events that have a set location. The location search includes results based on pickup address.
Keyword: Great choice for marketplaces where the provider comes to the customer—or the area of operation is relatively contained, and the exact location isn’t a key deciding factor.
(If you chose location search) Enable or disable the keyword filter. This will add a text field filter to your search page side bar.
Enable or disable the listing type filter. This can be a useful filter if you have more than one listing type in use.
Enable or disable the category filter. If you’ve added categories, this filter is super important to the search experience.
Disable the date range filter. Unfortunately, the date range filter only works with booking-type listings.
Disable the seats filter. Seats are a booking process feature and not relevant to this marketplace.
Enable or disable the price filter. The price filter can be useful for customers who have a specific budget range.
Save changes.
Modify the landing page search bar
Finally, we’ll check that the landing page search bar has the right search options for our event marketplace.
Go to your landing page settings in Pages.
Open the hero section.
Scroll to “Section call to action” and make sure you have “Search” enabled as the option.
Choose the search fields that make sense for your marketplace.
Main category: Enable this if you’ve added categories.
Keyword search: Enable this if you chose keyword search as your main search function.
Location search: Enable this if you chose location search as your main search function.
Date range: Disable this one. Unfortunately, the date range only works with booking-type listings.
Usually, two search options on the landing page work well! People will have options, but won’t get overwhelmed.
Tip! In top bar settings, you can also choose to not show the top bar search on the landing page. This way, the main search bar in the hero section will draw all the attention!
5. Test your marketplace to learn how it works
It’s time to go to your test marketplace!
You’ll find your test environment when you click “View marketplace” at the top right corner of Console.
Here’s a quick how-to for testing the most important user flows of your marketplace:
Sign up as an event organizer.
Create an event and add your payout details in Stripe’s test environment.
Log out and sign up as a customer.
Search for events and choose the event you created earlier.
Buy a ticket.
Navigate to user management in Console. Click open the provider user and click on the three dots on the left side. Click to “Log in as user”.
Navigate to the inbox, open the purchase, and click “I've delivered the tickets”.
Log back in as the customer.
Go to the inbox, open the purchase page, and click “I've received the tickets”.
And done! You’ve now successfully tested all major user flows. The transaction will complete automatically, and the provider and customer will be asked to review each other.
If you want to test the reviews right away:
Navigate to transaction management and open the transaction card. On the right side, you’ll see the options for operator actions: “Cancel” and “Operator complete”.
Click “Operator complete”. You’ve now completed the transaction as an operator. The customer's payment has been released and the provider will receive their payout. So doing this on a live marketplace is not the best choice.
Go to user management and log in as either user.
Navigate to the inbox and click open the purchase page.
On the purchase page, click to leave a review.
Leave a review
Repeat steps 2-5 with your other user. The reviews will be published automatically. You can find them on the listing page, user profiles, and the review management page in Console.
Tip! As the operator of a Sharetribe marketplace, you can log in on behalf of your marketplace's users. This feature is useful for understanding the user experience, solving reported problems, and helping users edit their listings or user profiles.
In the test environment, you can take any action when logged in as a user, so it’s a great tool for testing user flows. In a live environment, you’ll have limited actions to take on behalf of your users.
6. Modify final settings and get ready to go live
This tutorial went through Sharetribe functionality that’s most relevant for event marketplaces. However, that’s only a part of Sharetribe’s no-code features. This section lists the other settings to configure, relevant to all marketplaces.
What else you need to configure before going live
Below are the features any marketplace founder should configure before going live:
Branding: Add your brand assets, such as logo, color, favicon, and a social media image in your branding settings.
Footer: Edit and add relevant links and social media profiles and add a copyright disclaimer in your footer settings.
Content pages: Modify your landing page content, add terms of service and a privacy policy and edit or delete your About page in Pages. And add any further content page you need.
Monetization: Update your commission rates in commission settings or set up an alternative monetization model like subscriptions or one-time fees with the help of our tutorials.
After these settings, you've made the minimum updates to your Sharetribe marketplace to make it truly yours. In other words, you're ready to subscribe to a live plan and set up a live marketplace. And remember, even after going live, you can change your marketplace settings at any time.
Further settings to check out
Sharetribe has a lot more useful features that might help you fine tune your user experiences.
Here’s a list of further settings you may want to consider modifying or configuring, depending on the exact user experience you want:
Layout: Your marketplace has layout settings based on your answers during setup, but you can change them at any time. Choose your search page and listing layouts and listing thumbnail ratio in the layout settings. Learn more about layout options.
Access control: If you want to differentiate further between the providers and customers in your marketplace, access control features let you do that. For example, you could only give publishing rights to verified providers to guarantee high quality listings. Learn more about access control.
Top bar: By default, the top bar includes the logo, search bar, and links to sign up, log in, and a button to post a new listing. In the top bar settings, you can add links to other pages. You can also hide the search bar or the link to post a listing. Learn more about the top bar.
Zapier: Zapier is a tool to automate workflows without coding with a built-in integration with Sharetribe. Learn more about Zapier.
Conclusion
This tutorial went through the minimum required changes for your Sharetribe marketplace to go live. You now have a marketplace for one-time events, ready to launch.
Even if you are eventually planning to customize your marketplace with code, it’s still a good idea to set up your platform as close to your ideal setup with Sharetribe’s no-code tools. You can launch it as an MVP or use it as a basis to discuss your unique requirements with potential developers.
Remember to test your marketplace to learn how it will work for your eventual users. And once you’re ready, it’s time to take the plunge and go live—just click “Go live” in Console, start a live subscription, and get ready to launch!