How we made our marketplace
Introduction.
I want to tell you about our experience in launching the marketplace - a catalog of various add-ons and ready-made solutions for the 1C-Bitrix platform.
The topic is very popular today - any large platform has its own store of ready-made solutions developed by partners. You don’t need to go far for examples - Apple App Store, Android Market, browser marketplays, even Skype has its own store :).
The CMS market (especially open source) also has a huge number of examples of ready-made solutions supported by the community. Probably, this is the only way to develop any platform - it’s unrealistic to develop modules for all occasions, and if you have a community of thousands of developers behind your back - it’s worth giving them the opportunity to self-realize.
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We gave :)
What came out of this can be viewed at http://marketplace.1c-bitrix.ru/ .
Now there are about 200 ready-made modules and solutions, 10 categories (multimedia, typical sites, social services and others), 90 developers, the total number of downloads of all modules is over 50 thousand. In a month, 30-40 new solutions are added on average.
We started taking the first steps to create a marketplace almost 2 years ago. Prototype, testing, first modules from partners. We began to actively develop this area this year - we developed a concept, an interface, and outlined plans. Started to work.
Over the past six months, we have learned a lot, and we want to share our experience with you.
The main participants.
In any marketplace, all efforts of the platform developer are reduced to attracting two main participants - the solution developer and customers .
How we did it, and what problems we faced - read below.
Search for developers.
What we have done to motivate the developer to start adding their solutions for our platform.
1. First, make the entrance to the marketplace accessible .
We did not make a paid subscription or strict selection. You register on our site, fill out a partner questionnaire, sign an agreement on the conditions of service.
Because of the fear of losing quality (since all modules will somehow be associated with 1C-Bitrix), we enabled the pre-moderation of modules, adding the ability for the developer to test the performance of their modules before we approve it.
We conduct a general test for the correctness of the installation, the ability to configure and operate the site after the module is placed.
Now, when an average of 1-2 modules are added per day - we are coping, in the future, we may consider either automatic verification scripts, or increase the staff :).
2. I put this point second, although it could have been taken out of the scope of the motivations of developers — we tried to make the marketplace such that the developer himself wanted to get into it .
I will tell you about the interface and customer acquisition below.
I would like to focus on filling the catalog. Since, in principle, it is not possible to do this without developers, a year ago, when we began to actively promote this service, we launched a competition among our partners. According to its results, we received 15 free solutions (model sites) in our catalog - the site of a car service center, beauty salon, consulting company, kindergarten, travel agency and many others.
The main thing is that the partners have learned how to develop ready-made solutions, understand the principles of working with the marketplace. For our part, we have compiled a base of frequent errors, updated documentation.
They didn’t forget about marketing - they wrote a detailed blog post on each site on our website, indicating the participants, posted information on social networks, and received feedback from our clients.
Today, most of these solutions have 1500-2000 downloads.
3. Implemented a convenient and functional developer interface .
In the personal account, the developer sees the full information on his decisions:
- number of installations for free, purchases for paid,
- customer data, installation and update dates
- amounts payable and other useful data.
In general, when this functionality was only planned - we wanted to enable partners to solve the following problem: if a partner has many clients with the same type of functionality (this can be a component implemented by a partner or a module that it installs to its customers), then the maintenance (update) of this module on all sites takes a lot of time (go in and manually update each client). On the one hand, if an update is a new functionality, then for this you can request additional payment, and if this is a serious bugfix, speed is important here.
4. We launched the processing of paid solutions and the scheme of deductions to developers .
In fact, this turned out to be one of the most difficult stages in the development of the marketplace. First, a legal question arose, namely the choice of a scheme for working with developers.
We considered several options.
One of them is to enter into a service agreement. We would provide services to attract buyers of the application by placing it on your website. However, in this case, we would have to take money from the developers, regardless of whether there were sales or not.
We stopped at the most appropriate option - licensing. We pay royalties to developers, and its size is 95% of the total amount we receive from sublicensing modules. At the first stage, we did not dwell on making profit, so we made the conditions most beneficial to the developers.
I would also add that we made an API for working with marketplace modules, with the help of which each developer can independently implement his own processing, start selling and managing clients for his technical support.
5. Actively worked with third-party companies in the integration with our products .
There are many services on the market that are tied to work with the site - payment systems, deliveries, SMS services, even gaming platforms. Here various exhibitions where we participated, and joint actions and press releases worked.
6. We develop the category “Typical sites ” and the very idea of drawing solutions .
This category of marketplace solutions is very popular. One of the first such solutions was the “Website of the management company of housing and public utilities, TSZh and ZhSK” from our partner, the company “Citrus” - in fact, it was a finished project that includes everything you need. From the series of our industry solutions for state organizations "1C-Bitrix: The official website of the state organization" - set and use. The partner-developer had a good experience in this segment, so the released solution turned out well and remains very popular.
Our company actively supports the idea of ​​ready-made websites, when low cost and visibility of the result is more important for a client in the first stage of launching a business on the Internet. Without loss of quality and growth.
In the spring of this year, we had a series of seminars with the company Runner, in various fields - medicine, logistics, restaurant business, tourism and others. For each of the speeches I managed to find in our marketplace a corresponding solution from our partners.
7. Organized a system of incentives for posting solutions.
Most of the marketplace developers are our partners (web studios), whose rating on our website is based on the number of points (for sales, projects, marketing activities) - a kind of tool that allows you to select active companies with competencies in various areas.
Those. For partners, points are a real incentive that affects the positions in the rating and the discount level (well, plus various bonuses according to the affiliate program).
Development of solutions for the marketplace - demonstration of its capabilities, which in my opinion should also be encouraged - with the same points. When the question of the proportionality of points to solutions came, a heated argument began. The affiliate department, which strictly monitors the scores, was skeptical of this idea. Especially when it came out that by adding 3-4 typical sites (we give 100 points for them) - you can easily get the status of a gold partner.
On the other hand, it is much more difficult to make a standard website, place it in the marketplace than just sell a few senior editorial boards and get points for resale. So I defended :).
Moreover, the points are given for 1 year - another incentive not to stop.
For clarity, on the marketplace site, we additionally brought out a rating of developers, which is based only on points for added solutions.
8. Launched a new competition with valuable prizes - http://habrahabr.ru/company/bitrix/blog/127048/ .
Customers
Now, as for the second group of marketplace participants. To interest them, you need to fill the catalog with popular and high-quality solutions and make working with the service convenient!
What is done:
Launched an updated site marketplace.1c-bitrix.ru
There is a list of categories, popularity ratings for free and paid, new items.
The screen appeared screenshots, videos, the ability to vote and leave your comments. You can walk around the site, find the right solution, read reviews.
After the launch, requests from our users fell instantly, so the plans in September are to release a large website update, where we take into account many useful pieces:
- there will be an updated design,
- We will redo the feedback system (developers complain about unreasonable reviews that strongly hit the module karma),
- structure and search for solutions will become more convenient,
- add a subscription by rss,
- report a bug
- in the module card we will display similar solutions,
- and much more.
A convenient directory will appear, similar to the site where the client will be able to find the necessary solution and immediately install it (or pay, enter a coupon and install).
Another somewhat unexpected move - a section with a general update of the 1C-Bitrix platform will be transferred to the Marketplace section in the admin panel. Thus, each owner of the site (or portal), updating its 1C-Bitrix, will not pass by the catalog of ready-made solutions :), and it is possible that it will find something interesting.
And do not forget about marketing - facebook , twitter , affiliate e-mails and the site 1c-bitrix.ru - our main tools through which we communicate with our customers and partners.
Conclusion
This is how we discovered a new direction. At the end of the year, I think, we will summarize, and publish our plans for further development. Read about new products and interesting solutions on our website and on social networks.
Join now!
Sincerely, Denis Donchenko
manager of the business development department "1C-Bitrix"
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/127504/
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