Marketplace journey mapping template.
Map your buyer and supplier journeys in parallel, find the stage where both sides hit friction, and leave with a ranked list of what to build first. Free, no sign-up, saved in your browser.
What this is
Most journey maps cover one side. That is fine for a linear product, where the only relationship is between a company and its user. A marketplace has two customer bases whose journeys are entangled: the buyer's moment of trust is the supplier's moment of risk, and the same transaction looks completely different depending on which side you stand on. Mapping one lane at a time hides exactly the problems worth finding.
This workbook runs both sides through the same four stages, so the two lanes sit directly above and below each other. Every cell asks five questions: what the person does, what they think, what they feel, where the friction is, and what the opportunity is. Five rows, four stages, two sides, forty cells in total.
Who it is for
Founders about to build, and operators auditing a marketplace that launched but is not compounding. If you have users on both sides and transactions are not following, the problem is usually a specific stage on a specific side rather than a general shortage of marketing. This finds which one.
What you need before you start
Nothing formal. It is more useful with real evidence than with guesses, so if you have recent conversations with either side, have them to hand. The workbook opens on a filled-in example, a fictional B2B equipment rental marketplace, so you can see the level of specificity that makes a cell worth writing before you clear it and start on your own.
What you get out
Three things. A crossroads view that lines up the opportunity rows from both sides at each stage, because the stage where both lanes show friction is your highest-leverage roadmap item and two-sided fixes compound where one-sided fixes do not. A set of three synthesis questions to answer once the grid is full. And a printable PDF you can put in front of a team or an investor.
The cells you cannot fill are as useful as the ones you can. A blank is a research question, not a failure. If you want a second opinion on what you mapped, that is what the pre-development sprint is for, and the traction forecasting model turns the retention assumptions you write here into numbers.
Marketplaces fail at the seams between sides. The buyer journey looks fine. The supplier journey looks fine. But where the two intersect, at sign-up, at first match, at the moment of trust, is where the friction lives. This template forces you to map both sides in parallel so the seams become visible.
We organize every marketplace journey across four stages: Attract, Convert, Adopt, Retain. Attract is how they hear about you. Convert is how they sign up and commit. Adopt is the first real action, the moment a habit either forms or does not. Retain is what happens once they are using you. The reason A-CAR works for marketplaces is that each stage applies symmetrically to both sides, and the gap between buyer and supplier at the same stage is usually where your roadmap hides.
Your marketplace
A-CAR by five rows by two sides
Every cell asks five things: what they do, what they think, what they feel, where the friction is, and what the opportunity is. Five rows, four A-CAR stages, two sides: forty cells. Half the value is what you write. The other half is what you cannot answer. Those gaps are research questions.
Buyer journey.
The buyer is the loud side. They are who you imagine when you describe the marketplace at a dinner party. Map them first, then notice how few of their needs actually depend on you. Most depend on supply behaving correctly.
Supplier journey.
The supplier is the quiet side. They sign up less, complain less, and churn silently. They are also the side that determines whether your marketplace has a moat. Map them with more rigor than feels necessary.
The crossroads.
The most valuable rows above are the opportunity rows, and the most valuable opportunities are the ones that show up in both lanes at the same A-CAR stage. That is where your roadmap lives.
Own the long-tail "rent [equipment] [city]" keywords with location-specific landing pages and live availability.
Lead with payouts ("our average supplier earned $X last quarter") and damage protection messaging on the supplier landing page.
Show pricing immediately. Move credentials check to post-quote, before booking confirmation.
Pricing assistant: show median rate by category and region at the moment they set the price. Auto-fill condition fields from photos.
Mandatory condition photos, standardized listing fields, dispute-resolution SLA visible at booking. In-app pickup checklist.
Standardized handover photo flow inside the app. Pre-authorized damage hold visible to supplier. Insurance proof on every booking.
Build a "fleet account" tier. Procurement export to QuickBooks. Team seats for foremen.
Surface referral program in transaction confirmation. Build CSV import for fleet operators.
If the same stage shows opportunity on both sides, for example friction at activation for buyers and suppliers alike, that is your highest-leverage roadmap item. Two-sided fixes compound; one-sided fixes do not. We use this exact synthesis on every Build and Launch engagement to set the first 90-day priority.
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Three questions to leave with.
If you cannot answer these three after filling the map, you have research to do, not opinions to debate.
Where is the friction symmetric?
Find the stage where both buyer and supplier hit pain. That is your single highest-priority roadmap item. Fixing it improves both sides at once and makes liquidity follow.
Where do the journeys depend on each other?
The buyer's transact stage and the supplier's transact stage are the same moment, viewed from two angles. If they are not in lockstep, if your supplier is anxious while your buyer is impatient, you have a UX problem disguised as a marketplace problem.
What did you have to guess?
Look at every cell. The ones where you wrote with confidence are where you have evidence. The ones where you hedged are research questions. Five user interviews per side, well-structured, will turn most of the hedges into facts.
A journey map is the first hour. The next hour is what to do about it.
Book thirty minutes. Walk us through what you mapped. We will tell you which row matters most, which one is a distraction, and what the first three roadmap items should be. For free, no strings.