Be it renting a house or heavy construction equipment, the online rental industry has made its entry into almost every sector of the market. Renting things online has multiple benefits such as ease of access, easy renewals, and saving time and money. The online rental industry was valued at $19 billion in 2017 and is projected to reach around 60 billion by 2023.
This can be a perfect opportunity for those who wish to enter the online rental business by building a stable and agile online rental marketplace. In this article, we will be discussing the step-by-step approach to building an online rental marketplace.
Step by Step Guide to Building an Ecommerce Rental Marketplace
Here are some key points that you should prioritize before entering the eCommerce rental market.
1. Conducting Market Analysis
It is important to know about your key competitors and the features that customers find helpful while renting a product. A comprehensive market study will help in defining the business objectives and creating a unique selling point for your marketplace.
Additionally, here are a few aspects that should be analyzed:-
- Identifying target customers
- The current state of the industry
- Competitor analysis
- Revenue projections
See Also: How to Build an Online Marketplace Website
2. Choosing Revenue Streams
Some eCommerce rental marketplaces offer premium listing services to their renters and rentees, some display advertisements while some follow hybrid and complex revenue channels to yield profits. Some common and effective revenue practices for eCommerce rental marketplace are:-
- Advertisements: Being a rental marketplace owner you can reserve space for third-party advertisements from relevant businesses to earn money.
- Subscriptions: In this revenue model, marketplace owners charge membership fees from both stakeholders to access the platform. The subscription fee depends upon the traffic and time span availed for the services.
- Sponsored Listings: Rental eCommerce marketplaces charge fees for the product owners to promote their products on top with matching search results. This helps product owners in enhancing their visibility on the platform in exchange for pre-decided fees.
- Commissions: A one-time commission fee from the product owners can be charged after every successful lead is generated. This is the most common revenue model for rental marketplaces as the fee is justified on the basis of leads generated.
3. Finalizing Features for the Marketplace
- Real-Time Messaging: Meaningful interaction between both stakeholders through messaging should be facilitated on the platform so that customers can enquire about the exact products and charges. Also, there should be features to facilitate audio and video conversations as they help sellers and buyers create trust among each other.
- Listings: The platform should allow users to create well-optimized listings with crisp information. Also, a balance should be there between the images and text formatting to gain user attention and present a better view of the products.
- User Profiles: The registered users should be able to create a profile that is rich in information and acts as their portfolio to depict their offerings and requirements.
Some other user-friendly features that an eCommerce rental marketplace should have include push notifications, a search bar, user reviews, video tours, etc.
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4. Selecting Development Approach
Selecting a development approach for your rental platform can be confusing. To decide whether you need a readymade solution or a custom-built platform, you should check your requirements to validate the development methodology.
a) Readymade Solution
If your requirement is a readymade solution, then you can go with readymade eCommerce marketplace solutions available on the web. Availing of a readymade solution for building a rental marketplace saves you a lot of time and technical effort.
Software like YoRent is the best suitable option to create a single vendor and multivendor rental marketplace platform where you can start your own online rental business. It comes with a variety of modules such as document verification, Tiered pricing, product inspection, and many more.
It’s a completely white-label rental software for entrepreneurs who are looking for a scalable, secure, and fully customizable solution for their rental business. Apart from that, you can start both renting & selling business with YoRent rental software.
b) Custom Development
Building a custom solution for rental eCommerce marketplace can provide you with personalized features and source code for the web application. This development approach makes your platform unique but the development costs are very high as you need to hire skilled developers to develop and maintain the product.
See Also: Top 10 Construction Equipment Rental Software
Final Words
Dedicated and ready-made software to launch a rental marketplace will be a more effective solution to materialize your business idea without any technical expertise. Additionally, the ready-made rental software also allows customizing as per business requirements. The online rental marketplace requires complex features to maintain the user flow.
While building an eCommerce rental marketplace, you should keep the essential features as a priority and add other features once the platform reaches its real potential. As a marketplace owner, it is important to keep the platform secure and prevent users from online fraud.
