In this seven-step tutorial, we’ll test the most important user flows in your marketplace from user and listing creation to transactions.
On a reverse marketplace, customers post listings, or in this case requests, and providers reach customers through those listings by submitting offers.
Our example marketplace will be a platform for freelance jobs and projects called Freelancetribe.
This video goes through a basic reverse transactions as well:
1. Create a customer account
Our first step is creating a test customer.
1. Go to your test marketplace through Console by clicking “View marketplace”.
2. In your test marketplace, go to the signup page. You’ll find it through the “Sign up” link in the top bar.
3. On the signup page, choose the user type “Customer”, if your marketplace has user types enabled.
Your marketplace will have user types enabled if you’re building a B2B or B2C marketplace and you indicated that in the setup wizard questionnaire. You can modify or create user types in Console.
4. Add the requested details. The exact set of information will depend on your answers to the setup wizard. At minimum, you’ll be asked:
Email
First name
Last name
Password
You may also be asked the following information:
Display name
Phone number
These fields are configured as non-mandatory, so you can leave them empty. They are default user fields that can be enabled or disabled depending on your needs. For example, the display name works as a business name field for business users.
5. Check “I accept the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy” and click “Sign up”.
Verify email
Before moving on to creating a listing, confirm the customer’s email address. If you used an actual email address for the user, you’ll receive an email with a link to confirm.
You can also verify emails through Console:
Go to Manage > Users.
Click open the new user’s card.
Click open the menu behind the three dots.
Click “Verify email”
Confirm.
2. Post a listing, service request, job, task, project
In your test marketplace, check that you’re logged in as the test customer you just created. Next, you should create a listing for the job, task, or project you’re looking for help with.
Click “Post a listing” on the landing page. This will take you to the listing creation form.
The listing creation form has sections based on your answer during onboarding.
Tip! With the marketplace text editor, you can modify any piece of text on your marketplace. For example, you could change the “Post a new listing” link text to “Post a job” or “List your project”. Learn more about marketplace texts.
Add request details
The first section asks the customer for basic details about their needs. This information will be on the listing page for providers to see. Data added here can also serve as attributes for searching, filtering, and sorting listings.
If you haven’t made any configuration changes in Console yet, you’ll be asked for a title and description.
I’ll add a listing for a biking tour guide in the Helsinki area:
Listing title: Edit a 5 short-form videos
Listing description: Hi! I’m looking for a video editor to edit 5 short videos from footage I’ve recorded. Experience with short-form content platforms is appreciated!
Listing fields: Any field you’ve added in listing field settings will appear on the details page of listing creation.
Add location
Depending on your answers during onboarding, you may be asked to add a location for your listing. Add any location.
Choose a style
Choose a style for your listing from the options. The style will have the listing title on a colored background of your choice.
In listing type settings, you can also enable photos for a listing. However, on a reverse marketplace where customers create listings, photos aren’t usually necessary.
Then, click “Publish listing". Your first listing is now public on the marketplace.
3. Create a service provider account
To complete a transaction on a two-sided marketplace, you’ll need at least two users. So let’s create another test account: this time as a service provider. This is essentially the same process you went through in step one of this tutorial.
On your test marketplace, log out of the customer’s account.
Click “Sign up” in the marketplace top bar. Add the requested information.
Confirm the signup.
Verify your email as the operator from Console or via the verification email sent to the signup email.
Add payout details:
Click on the round user icon in the right corner of the top bar.
Open “Account settings”.
Open “Payout details”
Choose an account type (individual or company).
Choose your country.
Save details.
Get verified with Stripe.
Got through Stripe’s onboarding process. You can use test data in all steps.
Confirm the info and you’ll be directed back to the marketplace.
Tip! You can’t use the same email for two users on your marketplace, but there’s a workaround for this. Add “+[alias]" to an email before the @-sign. For example, if your email address is your.name@example.com, you can create the alias address your.name+customer@example.com. Please note that this approach works only with some email providers, such as Google, Outlook, and Hotmail.
You have two users now. In the Manage users tab, you can switch between the users with the Log in as a user feature.
4. Browse requests
Logged in as the provider, click to “search listings” in the top bar.
Or navigate directly to the search page: simply add /s at the end of the landing page URL: your-marketplace-url.com/s.
Since your marketplace only has one listing at this point, it’s easy to find. If you add more test listings and configure your listing data and search, you can test the search and filtering functionality in more detail.
5. Submit an offer
The final step in this tutorial is submitting an offer.
Logged in as the provider, do the following steps to book the listing:
Open the listing page.
Click “Submit offer ”.
On the checkout page, add a quote in your marketplace currency and optional additional details compose a message to the customer. This details can include information about when you can start, a breakdown of your quote, which software you plan to use, etc.
Click to “Submit offer”.
If you didn’t add payout details in the previous step, you’ll be asked to add them before you can submit an offer.
Tip! With the marketplace text editor, you can modify any piece of text on your marketplace. For example, you could change the button text “Send an inquiry” to “Send an offer”. Or update the checkout page title “Send an inquiry to {authorDisplayName}” to “Describe your offer and budget to {authorDisplayName}”. Learn more about marketplace texts.
6. Accept the offer
To move the transaction forward, log in as the customer again.
Go to the user’s inbox through the link in the top bar. You’ll see a red dot to indicate a new offer next to the link.
Open the offer in your inbox.
Check the offer details.
Next, you can accept the offer and place an order.
Add your payment details and pay. The money will be held by the marketplace until the provider delivers the order to the customer.
Your other option at this stage is to make a counter offer to the service provider. This can be a result of negotiation through messaging. The service provider can either accept or reject the counter offer.
7. Deliver and accept the order
Once the offer has been accepted, the customer places an order and the service provider gets to work. Here’s how the rest of the transaction process goes.
Log in as the service provider.
Go to the inbox and open the transaction page.
Click “I’ve delivered the order”.
Then, log in as to the customer again.
Go to the inbox and open the transaction page.
You can either accept the order or request changes, if it did not match what was agreed upon. If you request changes, the service provider will need to deliver the changes next.
When you accept the order, the transaction concludes, the service provider is paid.
Both parties can review each other.
Next: Complete your service marketplace setup
You’ve now successfully gone through all of the key user flows of your marketplace. You can keep testing how your marketplace works in your test environment.
If you notice something you’d like to change in the user or listing creation, search, or transaction process, it’s a great idea to modify your settings and then see how the experience has changed.
And if you notice something your marketplace needs is not possible with Sharetribe's no-code tools, you can always extend your marketplace infinitely with code. You can customize your marketplace yourself or hire a vetted Sharetribe expert to make code changes for you. Learn more about customizing your marketplace with code.
Next, it’s time to complete your marketplace setup. Your marketplace already has many settings configured based on your answers during onboarding, but there might be things you want to change. You’ll also want to update your landing page and branding with your own content, among a host of other great features Sharetribe offers.