B2B marketplace website: buyers and sellers

Some marketplaces build two sign-up paths, one for buyers and one for sellers, and the paths rarely check each other. A buyer who signs up first with a work email, then wants to list their own spare stock, meets a message that the email is already in use. The sign-up offers no way to add a seller role to that account. The visitor starts a second account with another address, or leaves. Each path looks finished on its own, so the fault appears only when one person walks through both. That is the walk a founder rarely repeats, because they already know how the accounts connect.

• Does the home page show a clear route for buyers and one for sellers, both above the fold?
• Can an email address that signed up as a buyer also sign up as a seller?
• Does a category with no suppliers yet say so, and offer a next step?
• Does an access request show its status, and what happens after approval?
• Can a buyer see sample listings before any company details are asked?

Start from the home page on a laptop, then on a phone, and read it as a buyer and then as a seller. The first screen may have one button, Get Started, that leads to a generic form with a role choice buried in it. A seller who reads the buyer wording may pick the wrong role and see a catalog they cannot use. A buyer who clicks For Suppliers may land on a page built to collect listings, with nothing that shows what a buyer sees. Walk each path once, then compare the two. If the two routes name the same things differently, a visitor who has used one will assume the other is a different site.

Landing page testing

A new marketplace can have suppliers in some categories and none in others. A buyer who searches for a product line with no listings sees an empty grid, and reads it as a site that does not work. A seller who arrives in the same category sees no buyers and does not sign up either. Search for a category you know is thin, the way a buyer would, and check what the page says. A plain line that names the gap and offers a request for a quote, or an alert when a supplier joins, keeps the visitor on the site. A blank grid with a footer link does not.

Some marketplaces hide prices until a buyer is approved, to protect supplier terms. That can be a sound rule. The problem is the screen after the request. A buyer submits company details, sees a line that says the team will review the request, and then has no way to tell whether it is in a queue or has been lost. The buyer cannot plan around that, so they buy somewhere else. Submit an access request with made-up company details, then look for a status screen and a confirmation email. If neither shows where the request stands, add both before you send any more buyers to the page.

The first run shows which route blocked the visitor. The fix may be a shared account model, a plain message for an empty category or a status line on each access request. Run the same buyer and the same seller after you add a category, change the approval rules or open a new market. Repeat it before paid traffic goes to any category page, since a thin category is the first thing a new visitor sees.