In this tutorial, we’ll set up a reverse service marketplace. This means a marketplace where:
Customers post projects and tasks they need done. These are the listings of the marketplace.
Service providers submit offers to customers through the listings.
Customers accept the best offer after optional price negotiation.
All settings are configured without coding, using Sharetribe's no-code tools.
The example marketplace in the tutorial is a freelance marketplace in the style of Upwork, Thumbtack, or Airtasker. You can follow along and use your own marketplace idea and content.
What’s a reverse marketplace?
On most marketplaces (let’s call them regular marketplaces), providers create listings, customers find the product or service they want, and then start a transaction.
On a reverse marketplace, these roles are reversed. The customer creates a listing where they describe what they need, and providers start transactions by making an offer for doing the work. The customer then chooses one of these offers and pays. Once the agreed-upon work is done, the provider receives the customer’s payment.
A reverse marketplace serves customers who:
Benefit from receiving multiple competitive options
Want to negotiate on the details and price instead of booking a predetermined service.
When it comes to any marketplace, the most important things are your user flows:
User creation
Listing creation
Transactions
We’ll focus on these main user flows and configure them for a reverse service marketplace. At the end of the article, you’ll find a list of the features to configure next, relevant to all marketplaces.
1. Tailor the user experience for supply and demand
In a reverse marketplace, service providers and customers need very different user experiences. The customers need to be able to post listings and providers should be able to start transactions. This is a reverse flow compared to most marketplaces.
In this section, we’ll go through user type settings, which determine the basic user account experience. We’ll also look into Sharetribe’s access control features, which let you decide what kind of actions different users can take on your marketplace. Learn more about user types and access control.
Tip! If you chose B2B or B2C as your marketplace type during onboarding, your test marketplace will already have two user types. You can easily modify these user types to fit your needs.
If you’re building a peer-to-peer service marketplace instead, you can skip user types and move directly to step two of this tutorial.
Modify the provider user type
Go to Console → User types.
Open the Provider user type.
Modify the name to something specific to your marketplace. In our example marketplace, this will be “Freelancer”.
Change the ID to match the name. You can use the ID to create a signup URL that’s dedicated to a specific user type. In our example, this will be “freelancer”.
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:
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 it.
Save changes.
Tip! You can update the default field title “Display name” to “Business name” in the marketplace text editor. Marketplace texts are short pieces of text used across your marketplace website. This includes button labels, error messages, help texts, and more. In Sharetribe, you can modify texts to match your marketplace’s language and vocabulary. Learn more about marketplace texts.
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. In our example marketplace, we’ll leave it as “Customer”.
Change or leave the user type ID as is.
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:
Post and manage listings: Since customers will be the users who post their projects for providers to bid on.
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? Enabling the display name for customers can be a good idea for a B2B marketplace.
Do you want either field to be mandatory to fill?
Save changes.
Tip! You can link to the signup form of a specific user type by adding /user-type-id at the end of the signup page URL. This functionality is useful for user-type-specific CTA links and can help streamline the signup process.
For example, for the user type ID customer, the tailored redirect link would be https://example.com/signup/customer.
Set up and automate access control (optional)
With access control, you can determine what users can see and which actions they can take.
You can let everyone have access to all actions and trust users to take actions that are relevant to them—or choose to give permissions based on user type, for example.
The three user permissions that can be limited in access control are viewing listings, posting listings, and start transactions. You can choose to restrict none, some, or all of these permissions. Then, based on a new user’s user type, you can manually grant the permissions they need in user management.
On a reverse marketplace with all permission settings enabled, here’s how you would grant the permissions:
Viewing listings: grant permission to service providers
Posting listings: grant permission to customers
Starting transactions: grant permission to service providers.
You can learn more about granting permissions to specific users in this article on identifying pending actions in your marketplace.
Tip! You can also combine user types with access control and Zapier to automate granting permissions. For example, if you want all customers to get the right to post listings while service service providers shouldn’t, you can build an automated workflow for this with Zapier. Check out the Zapier tutorial on approving a user based on user type to learn how.
2. Define your listing creation and transaction process with listing types
Your listing type(s) determines two key things:
What kind of listings can be added to your marketplace.
What kind of transactions take place on your marketplace.
In this tutorial, we’re setting up a listing type with reverse price negotiation: customers post listings describing what they need and service providers start transactions by making them offers to do the work. Learn more about listing types.
Important: You have a listing type on your marketplace by default. The settings are based on the answers you gave during signup. You can modify the listing type or delete and start from scratch. Please note that if you already have listings in a listing type that gets deleted, those listings will stop working.
You can also have several listing types, meaning that your marketplace can support many different types of transactions at the same time—for example, both a reverse and regular transaction flow.
Now, let’s get started configuring our listing type.
Go to Listings → Listing types.
Open the listing type card.
There are three sub-settings to listing types, which we’ll go through next.
Listing type name and ID
(Optional) Modify the name to something specific to your marketplace.
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, you can link to a listing search with each of these types with the URLshttps://www.example.com/s/requestandhttps://www.example.com/s/offer.
Transaction settings
Choose a transaction process type Price negotiation.
Below, there’s a selection to determine the type of negotiation flow. Choose Reverse.
This means that customers will list what they need, i.e. create the listings.
Providers submit offers to them, i.e. start transactions, and the customer chooses the best one.
Default listing fields
Choose the default listing fields. The fields you can turn on or off are:
Location: Enable or disable location depending if the customer’s location is relevant on your marketplace.
Images: Enable or disable images depending if images are relevant to listings. On a reverse marketplace, the best choice is usually disabling images.
Save changes.
Check out this video for an overview of the reverse price negotiation transaction process:
3. Build a reverse matching flow where providers browse listings
With a reverse marketplace, just like listing creation, the search and matching experience is flipped. The users who browse listings are the suppliers, not customers.
In the user type section of this tutorial, we set up the basic user experience with user type and access control settings:
Customers can see the link to post listings, while service providers don’t.
Service providers can browse listings and start transactions.
In this section, we’ll complete the search and matching experience. This means adding listing fields and filters and modifying top bar links.
Add listing fields and search filters for narrowing down search results
Custom listing fields are specific information you want customers to add to the listing where they describe the work they need done. This data helps providers learn more about what the customer needs and make accurate offers.
Listing fields can also be used as search filters, meaning that they’re important to the search and matching experience. Providers can use them to narrow down the search results when looking for work. Learn more about listing fields.
Go to Listings → Listing fields.
Click to add a listing field and give the listing field a descriptive name and add a listing field ID. The name will be used as the listing field label in listing creation, listing pages, and search filters.
Choose the field type. Your options are the same as in user fields:
Free text: a text field for free-form information.
Number: a field that only accepts numbers in the range you define.
Select one: a dropdown field where the provider has to choose one option
Select multiple: a checkbox field where the provider can choose multiple options.
Video: a field where a YouTube URL is automatically rendered as a video embed.
Decide if the field is mandatory for the service provider to fill.
Determine further settings. These are different based on the field type.
Number: add a number range.
Select one: add minimum two options.
Select multiple: Decide if you want to show unselected options on the listing page and add minimum two options.
(Optional) Limit the field to a specific listing type or types.
(Optional) Limit the field to a specific listing category.
Determine search settings. These are different based on the field type.
Free text field: Include the field in keyword search. When enabled, your keyword search will return listings based on the contents of the field.
Number, select one, and select multiple fields: Add a filter to the search page. When enabled, customers can use the field data to filter search results.
Save changes.
For example, on a reverse marketplace, you could have fields and filters for things like:
Maximum budget
Timeline
Required skills
Language requirements
Modify the top bar
To complete the matching experience for different user types, we’ll modify the top bar settings.
Your top bar already looks a bit different to users based on their user type. Customers see the link to post a new listing while providers don’t. Equally, it doesn’t really make sense for everyone to see the search bar on the landing page, since only providers need access to all listings.
Go to top bar settings.
Under Search bar, choose “Only display on the search page”. Now, service providers can search listings while on the search page, but otherwise, no page on your marketplace has the search bar.
Under Link for posting a new listing, enable “Show to users who aren't logged in”. Now, the button to post a new listing will only be shown to users who sign up as customers.
Finally, we’ll add a link to the search page for providers. Under Custom links, click to add a new link. (Please note that customers will be able to see this link, but if you’ve restricted viewing rights, they won’t see the listings after clicking on the link.)
Link type: Internal link
Internal link text: Find projects/jobs/tasks (or a similar CTA in the vocabulary of your marketplace)
Internal link address: /s (this is the URL for the search page)
Link placement: top bar or dropdown menu
Save changes.
4. Test your marketplace to learn how it works for your users
To test your marketplace, go to your test marketplace. You’ll find it 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. For more context, check out this more detailed step-by-step testing guide for reverse marketplaces.
Sign up as a customer.
Create a listing and describe your project.
Log out and sign up as a provider.
Add your payout details in account settings.
Search listings and find the listing you created earlier.
Reach out to the customer with an offer.
Navigate to user management in Console. Click open the customer user and click on the three dots on the left side. Click to “Log in as user”.
Navigate to the inbox and click open the latest offer.
Accept the offer. As a customer, you can also do WHAT.
Log in as the provider and go to the transaction page.
Mark the order as delivered.
Log in as the customer and go to the transaction page.
Accept the order.
Done! You’ve now successfully tested all major user flows: user creation, listing creation, and transactions. Once the order is delivered, the provider and customer will be asked to review each other.
If you want to test the reviews right away:
Go to user management and log in as either user.
Navigate to the inbox and click open the transaction page.
Click to leave a review.
Leave a review.
Repeat steps 1-5 with your other user. The reviews will be published automatically. You can find them on the listing page, user profiles, and 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. Complete your marketplace setup and go live
This tutorial went through Sharetribe functionality that’s most relevant for reverse service marketplaces. However, that’s only a part of Sharetribe’s no-code features.
Minimum final settings to configure
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. For example, it’s a good idea to add a link to the search page (internal link address
/s) for service providers, so that they can find a path to customer requests.Add terms of service and a privacy policy
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.
Update your marketplace vocabulary to fit your niche
For reverse marketplace, marketplace vocabulary can also make a big difference, and in Sharetribe, you can determine the word choices down to the smallest user interface text. The default copy of your marketplace and price negotiation process has been written to fit any kind of reverse marketplace, regardless of industry or niche. However, with marketplace and email text editors, you can modify marketplace vocabulary to fit your specific idea:
Marketplace texts: Marketplace texts are short pieces of text used across your marketplace website. This includes button labels, error messages, help texts, and more. With the marketplace text editor, you can edit all of these texts. Learn more about marketplace texts.
Email texts: Similarly to the marketplace text editor, the email text editor lets you modify the text content of the automatic emails sent to users from your marketplace at key events, like when a booking happens. Learn more about email texts.
Tip! Here are some quick example of how changing marketplace texts can change the vibe of your marketplace. We’ll use the CTA button on the listing page as an example.
Submit an offer (default): Neutral, in-between a professional and casual marketplace in tone.
Make an offer: Short and casual. Works best for simple, contained tasks. Used by Airtasker and Fiverr.
Submit a proposal: Professional and formal. Implies a more detailed proposal is needed from the service provider.
Apply now: Professional, opportunity-driven. Works if the job is not just a simple task or is likely to turn into longer term work. Used by Upwork.
Place a bid: Competitive, price-driven. Works best on competitive marketplaces where potential jobs are of high value.
More settings to check out
Depending on the exact user experience you want, you should also check out these features:
User fields: If you want to find out more about your users at signup, you can add custom user fields to the signup form. You can limit user fields to specific user types: for example, ask extra information from service providers only. Learn more about user fields.
Listing search: Configure your search experience in the listing search settings. Choose the main search type (keyword or location) and enable further filters depending on your needs (keyword, listing type, category). Learn more about listing search.
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.
Zapier: Zapier is a tool to automate workflows without coding with a built-in integration with Sharetribe. You can use Zapier to add new functionality for users and automate admin tasks. Learn more about Zapier.
Conclusion
This tutorial went through the minimum required changes to your Sharetribe marketplace to go live. You now have a reverse service marketplace, 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 plans 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!