How Matta's marketplace design reshaped chemical sourcing and purchasing across Africa

B2B procurement platforms fail for a predictable reason: they are designed around product catalogs rather than purchasing decisions. Buyers in complex markets: chemicals, raw materials, commodities need pricing transparency at the point of comparison, supplier verification before committing to a first transaction, and documentation access without going off-platform to request it. In the Matta engagement, Lazarev.agency mapped both buyer and supplier journeys before writing a single design requirement.

Two-sided marketplaces have a structural chicken-and-egg problem: buyers won't use a platform without supplier depth, and suppliers won't invest in a platform without buyer volume. The design answer is building tools to make both sides more self-sufficient. 

In the Matta B2B marketplace platform design, buyers got transparent pricing, sample ordering, and a clear catalog navigation. Suppliers got dedicated profile pages, order management, analytics, and a streamlined product-listing workflow. Neither side needed the other to be fully active before finding value in the platform.

Trust in B2B procurement is built on verifiable information. Buyers evaluating an unfamiliar supplier need to see documentation, understand the supplier's product range, verify their location, and assess their credibility, ideally without leaving the platform. 

Lazarev.agency addressed this in the Matta project through a dedicated supplier page. It surfaces all of the following data in one place: product listings, supporting documents, location, and links to external profiles. On the transaction side, sample ordering and PFI requests give buyers a low-commitment path to a first transaction before committing to full purchase volumes.

Static pricing works for consumer products. In commodity and chemical markets, pricing depends on volume, supplier, and conditions that change faster than a product page can be updated. A platform forcing suppliers to list fixed prices will either display inaccurate information or have large portions of its catalog showing no price at all, both outcomes undermining buyer confidence.

Procurement cycles in industrial markets are long because information is hard to retrieve. A buyer comparing three suppliers across price, documentation, minimum order quantity, and sample availability typically needs to contact each supplier separately, wait for responses, and reconcile the information manually. A well-designed platform compresses this by surfacing the relevant information at each stage of the decision without requiring off-platform communication for routine queries.

Emerging markets present a specific design challenge: users arrive with varying levels of digital literacy, existing workflows built around informal channels, and a baseline level of skepticism toward new platforms requiring some kind of behavioral change. A marketplace platform succeeding in this environment needs to meet users where they are rather than where a product manager assumes they should be.

Suppliers stay on a marketplace when the platform makes their commercial operations easier to run than the alternatives. A listing page alone is not enough. The Matta supplier account gives suppliers tools they would otherwise manage across separate systems: order tracking, buyer request management, analytics, and profile management in a single view. Sample requests and PFI inquiries arrive through the platform and are responded to through the platform, keeping the transaction record in one place.