Each app within your ecosystem has a dedicated listing, which provides in-depth information about the app itself, its compatibility with your existing solution, and other useful details that can help users make informed decisions. At its core, an app marketplace represents one of the most straightforward and efficient methods for showcasing your partner ecosystem and providing value to your users.

Without proper promotion, it can be challenging to demonstrate the full capabilities of your product to end-users, which may cause potential customers to choose competitors' solutions due to the perceived limitations of your software.

Moreover, an app marketplace can help you monetize your partner ecosystem.

Integration partnerships sometimes incorporate revenue sharing agreements.

By facilitating the discovery and download of partner apps, an app marketplace can generate an additional revenue stream for your company.

A final revenue-generating opportunity arising from a well-developed app marketplace is the potential for co-selling.

By creating a comprehensive marketplace that highlights your technology partners' solutions, you encourage customers to explore and inquire about these partner products.

This involvement in the sales cycle enables you to assist your partners in closing deals, which can, in turn, lead to reciprocal support from them in your own sales endeavors.

A key indicator that it's the right time to build an app marketplace is having several pre-existing integrations with other companies. If you've already established partnerships and developed integrations, it's likely time to consider promoting these integrations more extensively.

Relying on a single announcement and expecting customers to remember your integrations is unrealistic. Chances are, they won't. An app marketplace serves as the most effective way to continually remind customers of your integration partners, offering a centralized information source for users seeking additional functionality.

Furthermore, managing multiple integrations can be challenging for your internal teams. By creating an app marketplace, you provide a single location for your customer success and sales teams to track all integrations, allowing them to be more informed and efficient when engaging with customers and addressing their needs. This, in turn, enhances the overall customer experience and contributes to the success of your organization.

Another sign that it could be the perfect moment to develop an app marketplace is a surge in interest from individuals or companies looking to build on top of your product or create integrations with your solution.

A number of interested people looking at building out integrations with your platform can lead to confusion for your internal partner teams, as they are trying to deal with a number of ad hoc requests that quickly add up and lead to a disjointed integration strategy.

By establishing an app marketplace, you can implement a structured process for submitting and reviewing app proposals, streamlining a potentially complex undertaking.

This process initiates a well-organized workflow for evaluating incoming requests, ensuring transparency and efficiency in managing the app development pipeline. In doing so, you maintain control and order over a process that could otherwise become challenging to manage effectively.

When you offer a robust, public-facing API, you're likely to attract developers to your platform. If you've chosen to make your APIs publicly accessible, it's essential to consider building an app marketplace as well.

Developers tend to create new solutions that enhance your product's features and functionality. To ensure that your current customers can benefit from these innovations, it's crucial to provide a user-friendly platform where they can easily discover and download these integrations.

Without an app marketplace, many valuable integrations may never reach your end-users, negating the potential benefits they could bring to the overall user experience with your software.

When your marketing team is under-resourced, as is the case in many organizations, they may struggle to find the time to effectively announce new integrations to the market.

If you have a backlog of built integrations waiting to be launched, and the delays continue, it might be the perfect moment to create an app marketplace.

One of the advantages of an app marketplace is that it enables organizations to easily set up listings for self-promotion. Your marketing team can establish an initial template for integration partners to fill out in order to be listed, after which they can take a more hands-off approach, delegating the majority of the work to the partners themselves.

Without an app marketplace, your organization may face an ever-growing list of partners awaiting launch, leading to mounting frustration and inefficiency for your marketing team.

The first option for developing an app marketplace is utilizing your internal resources. Several benefits come with this approach. Firstly, your in-house teams possess an in-depth understanding of your company's internal architecture, enabling them to build the app marketplace more efficiently and with less onboarding assistance than outsourced developers would require.
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Moreover, in-house development teams are already part of your organization, which often simplifies project management. They usually utilize the same communication tools and work within the same hours as the rest of the company.

However, relying on in-house development can present some challenges, as it necessitates dedicating a team of developers to build the app marketplace. Your in-house developers are primarily responsible for developing your core product, so allocating their time to create the app marketplace might prove difficult.
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Furthermore, after developing an in-house app marketplace, the question arises: who will be responsible for managing updates and addressing ongoing bugs and issues? While your product team may initially be on board, circumstances change, and priorities shift. This could result in your app marketplace being overlooked in favor of more pressing matters, leaving it vulnerable to neglect and potential stagnation.

An additional option when looking to build out an app marketplace is to partner with a third party or outsourced development company.
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Using a third party supplier can bring some major benefits to you primarily from a cost saving perspective, as oftentimes when partnering with a overseas development company you are able to find affordable solutions.
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However, hiring an outsourced dev shop to build your app marketplace can also come with some difficulties.
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Firstly, you will need to be more hands on in the management of these resources to ensure the project is built out correctly.

When you are in partnerships, you have hardly any free time, and so you need to factor this into the decision to build out an app marketplace using outsourced resources.

Additionally, it is crucial to thoroughly assess the outsourced developers to guarantee they have a solid track record and the necessary reliability and accuracy to build a robust app marketplace.

The last drawback of constructing an app marketplace through outsourced developers is the need for ongoing development and maintenance.

Beyond the initial creation, continuous efforts will be required to keep the marketplace up-to-date and functional. This factor should be considered when budgeting for the development process to ensure the long-term success and sustainability of the app marketplace.

The ultimate and potentially most efficient approach is to invest in a software solution that creates your app marketplace for you.
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By opting for a solution like Pronto, you can establish a visually appealing app marketplace in a relatively short amount of time.

Once you've built your app marketplace, it provides a platform for partners to display and promote their solutions.
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However, without adequate supervision, your app marketplace may become chaotic, with partners overlooking best practices and presenting content that is not valuable to your customers and prospects.
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To prevent this, it's crucial to develop guidelines that partners must follow to be listed in your app marketplace.
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With turnkey marketplaces like Pronto, you can spin up ready-to-use app marketplaces that come with pre-populated templates that partners can easily fill out, ensuring a consistent and visually appealing look across all listings.

There are several key components that should be incorporated for each listing to be fully optimized:

A crucial aspect of creating an effective marketplace listing lies in crafting a compelling "Synergy Story."
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A synergy story illustrates how the integration of two solutions results in a significantly improved or enriched experience for the end user.
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For instance, consider the Solidatus app marketplace listing within the Big ID app marketplace:

Another important component of an impactful app marketplace listing is to include media rich content in order to ensure the app listing not only looks great, but also provides an easy way for customers to grasp the value of the app.
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Again, looking at great examples of this, we can see the Venafi app marketplace below and specifically their listing for Google Cloud:

In your app marketplace listings, it's essential to offer a seamless way for potential customers to access integration options.

Requiring users to visit a separate webpage for downloading an integration can create obstacles and may result in customers losing interest or not proceeding with your partner's solution.

To circumvent this issue, an efficient app marketplace listing should include either a button enabling customers to download the partner's solution with a single click or, if that option is unavailable, a straightforward method for capturing leads that are then directed to your partners.

A good example can be seen below, when looking at the Atos marketplace listing inside the Venafi app marketplace.

A significant factor that impacts buyer behavior is the reviews from others. This principle also applies when considering how customers decide to download integrations.

A well-optimized marketplace listing should feature a section allowing customers who have used the integration to review and share their experiences.

An example can be observed in the Zendesk App Marketplace, which offers the opportunity to write a review:

Incorporating social proof into your app marketplace listings can positively influence customers' decisions when downloading specific integrations.

We've discussed various best practices and strategies for creating an app marketplace and considered factors for crafting listings for your partner solutions.

Now, let's explore some examples of well-established app marketplaces that excel in their implementation.

The first marketplace that is worth detailing is HubSpot.

Hubspot has a large ecosystem of partners not just covering technology partners, but also a whole range of service partners. The sheer scale of their program makes the overall design and effectiveness of their app marketplace even more impressive.

Each one of their app marketplace listings hits on all of the best practices mentioned above, whilst also ensuring that each listing follows the same format.

In a similar vein as HubSpot, Salesforce app exchange is another great example of an app marketplace.

The App Exchange features solution offerings from over 4000 providers and each solution has a templated app listing that includes all the important features.

The thing that makes the Salesforce App Store so impactful is the attention paid to gathering reviews for all the apps that exist in the App Exchange.

These reviews are front and center whenever you click on an app exchange listing ensuring that you are able to read verified reviews from users of the solution prior to downloading the advertised solution.

You've successfully built an attractive app marketplace, with each listing meticulously optimized according to the best practices we've shared.

Ready to launch, right?

Not quite.

Constructing the marketplace and populating it with partner solutions is indeed a significant endeavor. Still, without effectively marketing the app marketplace to your existing and prospective customers, it won't yield the desired results.

To enhance your marketplace promotion, consider implementing these tactics.

One of the most effective ways of promoting your app marketplace is to add it into the onboarding flow for new customers.

This strategy works specifically well if you are running a product led growth motion, where the onboarding process is fairly automated.

As part of the set up flow of your product, include a step which requires your customer to “connect your tools”.

By doing so you will not only help them in connecting the solutions they currently use to your product but also direct them to your app marketplace where they are able to view all the solutions available to them.

The vast majority of mature companies have a newsletter or form of communication that is sent out to customers on a regular basis informing them of important things such as product updates or events such as webinars,

A good tactic to promote your app marketplace is to include a section in your newsletters that showcases new partners that have been added to your app marketplace.

Not only does this redirect customers to your app marketplace to check out newly added solutions, but as a byproduct will also most likely result in them exploring other available solutions.

Webinars are a tried and tested method when it comes to marketing.

They can also be used as an effective way to promote your app marketplace.

A good idea or tactic that can be used is to host a monthly webinar where you invite some of your app marketplace partners to participate in a round table discussion that your customer base will find interesting.

As a follow up to the webinar, you can link out the speakers' companies to their listings in your app store, encouraging customers to go and check it out.

As with any project that you invest time and money into, there is a need to retroactively look back and evaluate the success of your app marketplace.

In order to do so you should track as a partner team some key KPIs in order to see what's working and what might need improvement. Some key metrics you should look at include:

The pivotal metric for determining the overall success of your app ecosystem is the number of app downloads you receive.

As previously noted, your app marketplace serves as the central hub where customers can explore and discover your partner solutions. However, discovery is not the sole focus; what truly matters is observing a steady increase in new downloads directly attributable to your app marketplace.

This not only indicates that your customers find value in the solutions available through your marketplace, but also strengthens your relationships with partners by driving leads their way. In turn, this may encourage them to reciprocate by promoting your tool to their customer base.

If you are seeing a low number of app downloads, it might be time to revisit your marketplace listing template, and change some of the design around, to make each listing more compelling.

While we previously emphasized the importance of app downloads as the key metric, it's essential to remember that users must first engage with your app marketplace to discover your partner's solutions.

Another critical metric to consider when evaluating the overall success of your app marketplace is the number of users actively exploring it. A high number of users consistently visiting your app marketplace likely indicates that your promotional efforts are effective.

However, if you observe a low number of users regularly accessing your app marketplace, it might be necessary to reevaluate your marketing plan and explore additional strategies to drive user engagement with the marketplace.

The last crucial metric to monitor in assessing your app marketplace's success is the conversion rate, which represents the percentage of users who download or install an app after visiting your marketplace.

This metric differs from the raw download numbers discussed earlier, as it specifically measures the likelihood of users taking action upon accessing your app store.

A low conversion rate could suggest that the app listings themselves are not compelling enough, prompting you to examine and address this aspect to improve overall performance. By optimizing app listings to better convey the value and benefits of each solution, you can increase the likelihood of users downloading and installing partner apps from your marketplace.

While the previously discussed metrics are quantitative, it's important to consider qualitative factors as well.

When developing an app marketplace, pay attention to feedback from your end customers.

If users express concerns about the ease of installing integrations or confusion regarding the functioning of certain apps, use this information to make necessary adjustments to ensure customer satisfaction.

Satisfied customers are more likely to revisit the app store in the future and download additional partner solutions, contributing to the overall success of your marketplace.

It is also essential to listen to your partners, who can be valuable stakeholders in your app store's success.

If they encounter any issues related to adding information or poor download numbers, collaborate with them to identify the underlying problems and resolve them early on.

As rightly pointed out by Katie Zietlin, the Director of Channel Partnerships at Riskified told us in an interview, trust is crucial in any partnership, as it fosters communication, information sharing, learning, and confidence. By addressing your partner's concerns and demonstrating that you value their feedback, you can strengthen their trust in your partnership and keep them engaged in your shared goals”

Read more about katie’s take on partnership in our, “Ecosystem pioneer interview series.”

An app marketplace can unlock numerous advantages for your partner ecosystem, including showcasing your ecosystem to customers and prospects and amplifying the power of collaborative efforts.

By neglecting to create an app marketplace, you risk concealing valuable features and functionality, thereby failing to capitalize on the full potential of your partner ecosystem.

Developing a thriving app marketplace demands a comprehensive approach that blends well-crafted listings, seamless user experiences, and strategic promotion to drive engagement and growth. If you are considering building your own app marketplace, Pronto is here to assist.

Our sophisticated, out-of-the-box marketplace solutions empower you to swiftly and effectively construct an app marketplace tailored to your needs.

Best of all, you can get started for free!

By showcasing your partner ecosystem and fostering collaboration, Pronto's platform enables businesses to harness the power of their partnerships and elevate their market presence.

To find out more about how Pronto can help you, book a demo, and for more partnerships best practices check out the Pronto blog.