You may be building your marketplace search around user profiles. This is a common need in marketplaces, especially when customers are looking for services from individuals or companies. Customers need to browse and compare providers in a way that feels like viewing profiles, by filtering specific attributes through filters, and make a booking or purchase based on the information they find. These attributes can include experience, expertise, and other important details about a provider’s profile.
In Sharetribe, searches are built around listings by default. Listings are searchable in various ways, including location, keyword, categories, and custom fields. Listings can store availability or stock. All transactions in Sharetribe also must be initiated on a listing.
In Sharetribe, a listing is anything offered on the marketplace. This can include services, products, rentals, events, or experiences. In a service marketplace, each listing can represent a provider and display information about their offer and expertise.
You may not expect that listings can be designed to look and feel like user profiles, but this is possible. You can configure listings to function like profile pages using no-code tools in Console. The rest of this article shares the steps you can take to model listings after user profiles.
Edit marketplace texts
Marketplace texts are the short pieces of text that appear throughout your marketplace, such as button labels, menu items, and listings. Learn more about editing Marketplace texts.
By default, your marketplace uses the word listing. A listing is anything offered on the marketplace. To make your marketplace clearer for service providers, you can replace the word listing with “Profile”.
For example, the default link that prompts providers to create a listing says “Post a new listing”. In a service marketplace, this may not clearly explain what the provider is expected to do.
Because of this, you should change this default “post a new listing” text to something descriptive of your marketplace concept. This is the first step in configuring your listings to look like profiles.
Consider changing the “Post a new listing” text to something like “+ Add your profile”. This signals to providers that they are adding their profile information. Behind the scenes they are still creating a listing, but to the end user, it will feel like they are filling in details about their profile and the services they offer.
Note: Using “+ Add your profile” works only if you use a single listing type and plan to display all provider information in one place. If you use multiple listing types, this wording may confuse providers because they will see several Listing types that look like adding different profiles.
If you have multiple listing types, consider using a clearer and more appropriate text such as "Post a service".
Listing type configuration
Listing types determine how your customers and providers transact. Learn more about Listing types.
If you plan to process online payments on your marketplace and charge commissions on transactions, you should consider using a listing type that uses the “Calendar booking” transaction setting. Calendar booking is useful when your providers offer services that require customers to reserve a specific time. This can include appointments, coaching sessions, on site visits, classes, or any service that happens at a specific scheduled time.
If your providers offer services with different booking lengths and different prices, consider using the “Fixed” booking unit together with the “Price variations” setting.
Price variations let providers list multiple service options under one listing, while the Fixed booking unit allows providers to determine the duration of such service. Therefore, a listing can have different bookable options, each with its own time duration and price. This is useful when providers offer service tiers like basic, standard, and premium or when they provide different lengths of services that share the same availability calendar.
If transactions on your marketplace do not involve booking a specific time or date, consider using the Purchase transaction setting. This works well when the service does not need to be carried out at a scheduled time. In this case, make sure to remove the shipping option, unless the specific service involves also delivering a product.
If you expect customers and providers to discuss and agree on a price before the work begins, consider using the Price negotiation setting. This is useful in project-based or task-based service marketplaces where the exact scope of the work needs to be negotiated first, and will determine the final cost.
Listing fields configuration
Listing fields define the information shown on a listing and can be used as search filters on the marketplace. Learn more about listing fields.
Since you are configuring listings to look like provider profiles, your listing fields should be set up to capture the provider’s experience, expertise, and any other important information.
These fields should reflect what matters for your marketplace, the industry you serve, and what information customers need to compare providers. Listing fields can also be enabled as search filters, so choosing the right fields helps customers find the most suitable provider.
For example, you could add listing fields that capture information about a provider’s skills, certifications, years of experience and languages spoken, just to name a few.
Note: if you use listing fields to capture information about a provider's profile, you should avoid adding User fields to the signup process, since most provider details will be captured in listing fields, during the listing creation instead.