Building a Marketplace to Take the Business to the New Level

Challenges

The client’s business has four restaurants, where the chefs hold cooking events. When the client feels the demand for participation, they decide to allow other users to hold such cooking events.

We analyze the capabilities of the current website platform — Magento 1 developed way back in 2014 and outdated enough to introduce the new functionality, that’s why we offer the client to migrate to the Magento 2 latest version.

Solutions

Discovery Stage

We start the project by discovering the client’s business in more detail to better understand it and suggest proper implementation options.

We introduce a role for users able to hold events, which we call New Chefs. They are a copy of the existing feature, Old Chefs, who can describe their own Restaurants and add different Courses and Masterclasses (events). To give a better option for Participants to register for events, we implement an entity of Session, which is a lesson within an event.

The project roles interact through commercial dealings, which means that we land on a business model that is a sort of a marketplace.

It turns out that, on the one hand, we have an interaction between the Old Chefs from the client’s restaurants (representatives of their business), and the participants of the events (consumers), which is a business-to-consumer (B2C) collaboration.

On the other hand, the client’s website allows New Chefs from other restaurants to hold their own events and introduces a business-to-business (B2B) element. The New Chefs from other restaurants, in their turn, interact with consumers, which adds another business-to-consumer (B2C) section. As a result, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) pieces are organized into a B2B2C part of the marketplace.

All the information from the previous steps allows us to build a sitemap and a high-level features list that gives the client information on budget and timeline at the early stage.

Planning Stage

Based on the high-level features list and the sitemap, we make prototypes of the templates to create a basic appearance of the website.

When we have a clear understanding of how the website pages look, we start working on the project specification document.

Development

Implementation Stage

Our paradigm is starting the work with the most complex and high-risk features. In such a way, we’re working on the very first iteration, which includes creating and optimizing the role of New Chef, the entity of Course, and the category page.

Then we move on to the final phase of the data migration and content population.

Pre-Launch Stage

The process usually lasts a week and covers going through the QA relaunch checklist to verify that the website complies with our standards for SEO, performance, security, and other requirements.

Launch Stage

The stage introduces launching a project in a live environment with configuring the Magento application, and third-party services.

Post-Launch Stage

The phase takes place and consists of another QA checklist to check the correct launch, enabling all the necessary SEO and marketing tools.

Features

An interesting part of the project is that the business model of the marketplace consists of three sections — B2C, B2B, and B2C.

The dotted part is responsible for that piece implemented on the original client’s website. For the project, we complete a website migration by moving all data from the old website version and expand it with roles and entities for sections #2 and #3.

As for section #2, we add the option for users to become New Chefs. They should sign up in the frontend, go through a moderation process, and get approved by the admin.

Product Staging.It means that all the content that New Chefs add should be moderated to prevent possible malicious and hateful content. There are manual, semi-automated, and automated moderation options, and for this project, the client decides on the manual one which the admin will be responsible for.

Chefs can create masterclasses and workshops in their personal accounts, which is immediately transferred to the moderator, who makes a decision to approve it or not.

A Chef can find a calendar plan with their classes inside the personal account to sort by month, week, and day. They can also see a list of Participants for a specific Session there with an option to add more Sessions, upload customized recipes, etc.

A Chef can create a Restaurant to hold events at. Each Restaurant has specific attributes and descriptions, such as Name, Location, Capacity, Amenities etc. To make the search for Restaurants more convenient and smooth, we integrate the Restaurant list page with a Google Maps feature, where a Participant can change the scale, and the list of the Restaurants in the neighborhood adjusts respectively.

Filters. We implement custom filters by city, date, price, language, etc. Each event has a webpage, where Participants can find detailed information, add it to the wishlist, see the prices, book a seat, etc.

Recipes. After a Masterclass is held, each Participant receives a Recipe to help them cook the dish.

Admin panel.We allow admins to change product information, a list of Participants, as well as cancel participation, waiting lists, contact form submissions with a CRM integration, gift cards.

Payments & alternative currency. The custom feature of hours is an alternative currency, which can be bought as a package. In addition to paying by card, it’s also possible to pay offline through the mail. Participants can also pay in a one-time payment or split into several ones.

Referral Program. Each logged-in Participant has a link that can be sent to a friend. When placing the first order, both of them receive 10% discounts.