Lean Startup Method
CobbleWeb uses the Lean Startup Method - a combination of hypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning - to help your marketplace business grow from concept to successful reality. This strategy has contributed to the success of digital platforms like:
Our process of BUILD - MEASURE - LEARN will help you stay within budget, prove product-market fit, gain competitive advantages, and as a result grow your business successfully.
Studying your business and its goals
We break your marketplace concept down into key assumptions (see illustration). This helps us focus on actionable elements: which problems you are solving for consumers, how you are solving those problems, what your competitive advantages are, potential revenue streams, and which metrics should be tracked to show product-market fit.
Map out the user journey
Once we have a clear understanding of your business assumptions, we create a detailed storyboard of each potential user interaction. This allows us to identify the required features and functionalities, as well as the resources that will be needed to build them. The finalised storyboard is then translated into a rough prototype to test usability with a small group of users.
These first two steps help to clarify goals, validate core assumptions, and reduce the risk of building and launching a fully-fledged product that users don't want or need.
Build a Minimum Viable Product
With core assumptions validated and a development roadmap in place, we can start building a market-facing platform following Agile practices. We forego the bells and whistles that can clutter your marketplace, confuse users and dilute your value proposition. Instead, we build the simplest product that satisfies the needs of the target market. A clean minimalist platform makes it much easier to rapidly iterate towards product-market fit and growth.
Use a low-risk MVP to test assumptions
The aim is to test the core beliefs your business holds about the target market, its users and the challenges that they face. A simple, basic platform makes it easier to adjust or pivot if your initial assumptions were incorrect.
Collect data and analyse user behavior
Software like Kissmetrics and Optimizely allow us to track how users engage with your marketplace, while chatbot conversations, surveys and direct interviews provide valuable feedback about the user experience.
Measure performance
The data collected in the previous step is used to identify the growth drivers of your business. We do this by analyzing appropriate marketplace metrics that are aligned with the customer funnel: acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue (see infographic). Optimising your marketplace for these metrics can fuel future growth.
Validate business assumptions
By comparing the assumptions we made in the first phase (BUILD) with the performance we analysed in the second phase (MEASURE), we can decide if your business assumptions should be either refined, discarded, or adopted.
Evaluate the product-market fit
When your marketplace satisfies a real need in the market in a way that delights users, you have taken the first crucial step towards building a viable business. We look at the user feedback gathered during phase two (MEASURE) to determine the level of product-market fit. Glowing feedback indicates that we are on the right track, but if most users are underwhelmed it’s a signal to change tack.
Keep iterating for ongoing improvement
Once you have established product-market fit and gained some traction it’s time to optimise those aspects that will further scale your marketplace. That’s why it's so critical to build your marketplace with technology that can handle a rapid growth curve.
Benefits of our process
Speed
We build products using a rapid iteration cycle which allows our clients to adapt the product with frequent releases.
Agility
We build products that can be easily altered to meet new challenges and address new business opportunities.
Reduce risk
We evaluate every feature on how it solves a problem and whether users would pay for it, which saves our clients time and money.
Drive growth
We stay focused on whether your customers will pay for your product by prioritising features that will best drive growth.
Learn faster
We identify actionable metrics and implement user interviews & analytics tools to gather data and shorten the user feedback cycle.
Boost innovation
We help our clients institute a cycle of build, learn, and measure so that they can promote a more innovative workplace culture.
Successful marketplace startups
that we have worked with
FanPass is a B2C marketplace for buying and selling tickets to sports and entertainment events worldwide. They needed advanced features, like dynamic search results based on users' prior searches and preferred event types, to help the platform grow.
+10,912%
Increase in Turnover
(year-on-year)
+340%
Increase in Turnover
(year-on-year)
Adrien, Executive Director
“It’s really reassuring to work with a company that makes managing complexity easy and enjoyable."
Services built into our process
We are able to provide you with end-to-end assistance over the full life cycle of your business, from concept and MVP to early and growth stages.
Planning an online marketplace?
Find out how our marketplace development process can help you establish product-market fit and grow successful revenue streams.