Last Updated: March 11, 2024
The on-demand services have disrupted the way we used to travel, shop, eat, and even carry out our everyday household chores. This tidal wave of change is creating a plethora of opportunities for entrepreneurs who can associate themselves with the Gig Economy. Research shows that on-demand home services are expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.7% between 2022-2026.
TaskRabbit and Thumbtack are two such flourishing services marketplaces that are incredibly popular in the US and parts of Europe for offering household services.
TaskRabbit is a company that provides a platform for connecting customers with local freelance labor, such as handymen, cleaners, and movers. It was founded in 2008 and has seen significant growth since its inception. According to data from Crunchbase, TaskRabbit has raised over $38 million in funding across multiple rounds of investment.
The company has reported that it has over 60,000 active taskers on its platform, and has facilitated over 8 million tasks to date. In 2017, TaskRabbit was acquired by Ikea, the Swedish furniture retail giant, and was integrated into the Ikea app as a service offering. This acquisition has given the company a wider reach and exposure to a larger customer base.
The company’s growth has been driven by its focus on providing a convenient and efficient way for customers to outsource various tasks and projects, as well as its efforts to expand its services to new markets.
Thumbtack is a company that provides a platform for connecting customers with local service professionals. It was founded in 2008 and like TaskRabbit, has seen significant growth since its inception. According to data from Crunchbase, Thumbtack has raised over $375 million in funding across multiple rounds of investment.
Additionally, the company has reported that it has over 200,000 active professionals on its platform and has facilitated over 20 million projects to date. The company’s growth has been driven by its focus on making it easy for customers to find and hire local service professionals, as well as its efforts to expand its services to new markets.
To know more about the benefits of such platforms for business owners, let’s read in detail.
No doubt, the opportunities in the home services website domain are endless, but so are the failures. Let’s discuss some of the possible reasons for these marketplaces’ failure:
Features play an integral role in the success of any online marketplace business. Here is a list of features that you definitely need to integrate into your home services website for each user type.
Customers must be able to find service providers without any hassle. Different filters such as cost, distance, specialty, etc., would ease the process and help improve the user experience considerably.
This feature comes in handy when a customer needs to access the details of their previous orders. The sections should consist of the service provider’s name, date, time, and contact details for the customers if they wish to hire them again.
Customers should be able to track the real-time location of the service provider with the GPS tracking system. The service providers should also be able to track the destination in the app and quote the right estimated arrival time.
Make sure the platform has multiple online payment options such as credit cards, debit cards, digital wallets, etc. Sticking to just 1 or 2 payment methods is not recommended as every user has their own preferences. Moreover, the integration of popular payment gateways should also be done to ensure safe and secure payment transactions.
The in-app chatting feature within the app helps in the seamless answering of customer queries and is much faster than calling customer support. In-app chatting allows customers and service providers to communicate in a better way to reduce confusion and errors.
The customers must be allowed to rate and review the service providers once they have availed of the service. This feature keeps the system transparent and helps other users in selecting the service providers with higher ratings.
The service providers should be allowed to add their payment details like PayPal, bank account number, etc. where they wish to receive payments.
It is important that the service providers receive the notifications in real time so that they can respond to the service requests and queries as quickly as possible, improving the service of the platform. All the notification options such as emails, text alerts, and push notifications should be included.
A feedback feature should be available for the service providers as well where they can rate and review the customers. This feature can significantly help other service providers before accepting a service request.
The dashboard for the admin should be intuitive and act as a control center for the entire platform. Admins should be able to monitor the activity of all users on the platform. The dashboard should be easy to access by the admin for maximum results.
Management of the service providers by the admin on the platform is imperative. Admin should be able to add/delete the service providers from the platform. In addition to this, the admin should also be able to verify the details and profiles of the service providers to prevent any fraudulent activities on the platform.
The admin should be able to set the prices of different home services on the platform. Moreover, additional costs or taxes should also be added by the admin with the help of this feature.
Business owners often offer lucrative discounts and promos to their users to promote the platform. With this feature, the admin should be able to offer attractive discounts and track the progress of the discounts offered to optimize sales.
Analytics is very crucial as it allows admins to get useful insights into your business. These insights help the admins to make better decisions and improve the revenue of the services marketplace.
Admins should be able to add/edit/delete the services on the marketplace which will help in delivering a better user experience for the customers.
Management of commissions and other payment details are needed to be managed very carefully by the admin to avoid any confusion later on. Along with this, payments to all the customers and service providers are also to be taken care of in a services platform.
Managing reviews on the platform is an important task as it guides the customers as well as the service providers while on the platform. Admin can go through the reviews and display them on the platform.
A home services marketplace can be built using multiple methods. Below we have discussed the two most popular ways of building an on-demand home services platform.
Coding from scratch is an effective and efficient way to build a services marketplace. If you have good coding skills and sufficient time, this is a reliable and easy way for you. The platforms built from scratch have tailored functionality and integrations helping business owners stand out from the competition and serving reliable results in the long run.
However, the process is not recommended for people who do not have expertise in programming. Using readymade software with in-built necessary features is another way to build a services marketplace. This method is less time-consuming and cost-effective than building the platform from scratch. You can customize the software as per your requirements and validate your business idea.
Opting for this approach can be a smart way if you are testing the feasibility of your idea with an MVP. Once your business takes off, you can always scale the business with the customizations and integrations available within the readymade software.
YoGigs is one such readymade software that can be used to build a home services marketplace like TaskRabbit. This all-in-one software consists of all the essential features to build a fully functional home services website. The platforms built using YoGigs drive efficiency, streamline cumbersome processes, and optimize the entire management tasks.
The unique and powerful suite of features in YoGigs like multilingual, GPS tracking, review/rating, and many more help budding entrepreneurs reach the highest potential of their business. The software is scalable and capable enough to even run an enterprise-level business smoothly. In addition to this, third-party integrations in software like PayPal, Authorize.Net, Postmark, Mandrill, and many more enable businesses to expand their capabilities.
YoGigs is a fully customizable handyman software incorporated with best-in-class features to make building and running a home services marketplace like TaskRabbit and Thumbtack a breeze. Backed by this robust and scalable software, entrepreneurs can capitalize on this ever-growing on-demand gig economy. The points mentioned below can help you decide why YoGigs is an ideal software to get into this business.
YoGigs features open-source code, which means you can adapt the software to your business model. You can change the look and feel of your marketplace via the built-in layout and theme editors and expand functionality via add-ons.
Vendors are the driving force of the marketplace. YoGigs offers a fully-featured backend panel to vendors to effectively control the platform, set up automatic fund distribution, and control vendor privileges and payouts via plans.
You purchase YoGigs once and it stays with you forever. No monthly payments and no obligatory fees. Along with this, you get one year of free technical support.
The multiple currencies and languages in YoGigs improve the reach of your marketplace. Regardless of where your customers and vendors are from, you can offer them the best services and process transactions.
The future of home services marketplaces is very bright as the demand is growing rapidly. We can only expect more platforms like Taskrabbit and Thumbtack to emerge and take the center stage in the coming years. As a subset of the Gig Economy, on-demand home services are bound to witness further segmentation.
All of this presents a great opportunity for entrepreneurs with a vested interest in the Gig Economy.
Q1: Is YoGigs a perfect solution to start websites similar to TaskRabbit and Thumbtack?
YoGigs is a seamless end-to-end home service management software packed with all the latest features and built with modern technology to launch fully functional home services websites. Since YoGigs is fully customizable, the websites like TaskRabbit & Thumbtack can be built customizing YoGigs and integrating the features of these websites.
Q2: How much does it cost to build websites similar to TaskRabbit & Thumbtack?
The cost of building websites similar to TaskRabbit and Thumbtack depends on the approach of building the building. One cost-effective way of building the website is using ready-made software like YoGigs which can significantly reduce the cost of building a website from scratch. Also with a readymade solution, the time and efforts required to build the websites are also much less.
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FATbit Chef Post author
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