There’s a difference between a page of partners and a real ecosystem marketplace. One is passive. The other drives growth.
Too many B2B SaaS companies launch a “marketplace” that’s just a static page of logos or “integrations pages” with no real content or next action. There’s no filters. No lead capture. No social proof. No way to track installs, measure performance, or scale listings without constant internal lift.
And then they wonder why it doesn’t move the needle.
But companies like Gong, ZoomInfo, Mindbody, and Salesloft know better. They treat their app marketplace as a core part of their ecosystem strategy—a resource that offers immense value to customers, partners, and internal teams.
The result? Faster integration adoption, better partner reciprocity, and a real backbone to their platform ecosystem.
“Good App Marketplaces are a “source of truth” for customers and for the people who sell to them and support them.” – Hugh Durkin, AppMarketplace.com
In this post, we’ll cover what it takes to build a marketplace that actually works—whether it’s public-facing, in-app, or developer-focused. And the good news? This checklist is fairly short, only 21 things to consider when building an effective marketplace for your partner ecosystem.
1. Build a public marketplace that converts
Make discovery easy, build trust, and drive partner adoption
The public marketplace is often the first place customers and partners see your ecosystem. Treat it like a growth asset, not a content dump.
✅ Listing templates and requirements
Set up templates for different types of partner listings. You can develop templates for integrations and service partners, gold and platinum partners, etc. But if your partner types are different, you’ll want to include different sections like team members or “how it works”.
Establish a consistent look and feel for your listings. Templates ensure that every app has the right logo size, description, CTA, and metadata. And you can set template sections to be “required” or “optional” to reduce back-and-forth with partners before they submit listings.
Example: Gong’s marketplace listings use consistent formatting, bold logos, short descriptions, and a “Learn More” CTA that links to deep partner content.
✅ High value content, and more than you think you need
This can be helped by templates and requirements, but ultimately you need each partner page in your marketplace to have a lot of useful content. Anything you think someone might need. That means a thorough description of the partner’s company and how the integration or partnership works. Services, products, benefits, FAQ, etc.
✅ Visual content on your partner pages
Every landing page on the internet now has visual components to it. That means your partner pages need screenshots, graphics, co-branded logos, videos, data flow diagrams, etc. It will help capture attention and add value to the other content on the page. Plus, a more interesting page will drive up conversion rates.
See the data flow diagram on Virtuous’ marketplace:
✅ Co-branded visuals
Co-branded logos or headers build credibility and make listings feel more intentional. They also improve click-through rates.
✅ Social proof, social proof, and more social proof
Include as much social proof as possible on your partner pages. This means a star rating, displayed prominently on their card and page. Include syndicated or natively collected reviews, and add testimonials as much as possible. You could even add a case study or two in the resources section of their partner page.
We know this feels like a lot, but it will help the best partners “rise to the top” and offer more value to customers on your marketplace.
Here are G2 reviews syndicated onto their own Partner Hub:
✅ Intuitive taxonomies
Tags and filters let users search through your marketplace by use case, industry, function, tool category, etc. Let users filter down to what they need, and you could even offer dynamic taxonomies for your integrations vs service partners.
Example: SmartRecruiters lets users filter down by partner type (including AI solutions), star rating, objective, language, and many other options, making it easy to find integrations and solutions to for their software.
✅ Clear CTAs & next steps
Give customers a next step: “Connect,” “Install,” “Request demo.” But these should either be installation flows or capture leads (via form or calendar). A link to a homepage will reduce the number of leads actually generated, and make tracking results from your marketplace near impossible.
DO NOT skip this step. Capturing leads and tracking installs from your marketplace is the first key step to understanding the value it drives and the potential for reciprocity from your partners.
Example: Gong’s marketplace allows you to install integrations immediately. For service partners, the CTA is a form that is sent along to the partner.
✅ Header CTA tracking
One of the key CTAs to track is prospects booking a demo of your software after browsing the marketplace. Make sure the “Book a Demo” or similar CTA in the header of your marketplace has a tracking URL so you can attribute deals to your partner ecosystem.
Here’s Smokeball’s header CTA in their marketplace:
✅ Program applications
Give prospective partners a way to sign up for your program on your marketplace. Set up a form and link to it on your marketplace homepage so anyone who may be interested doesn’t get lost in general contact forms or support triage.
✅ Integrations with CRM tools
In order to properly track and follow-up on the leads coming in through your marketplace, set up integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, or Slack to give your sales team immediate access. This enables follow-up, upsells, and campaign attribution.
2. Embed a seamless in-app marketplace
Deliver ecosystem value inside your product
While the public marketplace is great for discovery, the in-app marketplace is where adoption happens. It’s the native layer where customers connect tools, discover new integrations, and solve problems without ever leaving your platform.
Most SaaS companies’ users and customers live in their platform, not on their site. You can give them better access to integrations and services if you embed your marketplace directly into your site (under an “integrations” section in your sidebar).
Here are some best practices for an in-app marketplace.
✅ Design a seamless experience
The in-app experience should look and feel like part of your product. Use your design system, load listings fast, and minimize friction.
✅ Pre-apply filters based on user data
If you know the customer’s industry or plan tier, use that context to prioritize listings that are most relevant to them. Smart defaults help drive engagement, installs, and even PLG upgrades for gated integrations.
✅ Show active integrations
Don’t make customers guess what’s already connected. Surface active integrations first, tag them as “Installed,” and make it easy to manage.
✅ Map CTAs to user roles
An admin might be able to install. A general user might only request access. Tailoring CTAs reduces confusion and improves conversion.
✅ Track app installs per customer
This isn’t just for usage metrics—it’s gold for your sales and customer success teams. Knowing what’s installed, what’s working, and what isn’t can shape renewals and upsells.
✅ Embed the marketplace directly
Use a widget or iframe to integrate it into your product. No redirects. No friction.
3. Use a developer portal to scale your ecosystem
Make it easy for third-party developers to build, launch, and grow
It’s unscalable to build every integration yourself – in the long-term. So think of your marketplace as the front-end of a powerful ecosystem strategy. How can you continue to build useful integrations for your customers, without burying your team in extra work?
You can enable third-party developers to build.
If you have APIs, give external developers a seamless place to build and get listed with a back-end dev portal that plugs into your app marketplace. And make sure it’s useful, or it won’t drive actual builds.
A great developer portal provides clarity, guidance, and autonomy. It turns your API into a flywheel of ecosystem expansion. Here are some best practices:
✅ Set up onboarding pipelines
From initial application to go-live, break the journey into gated steps:
Apply → Sign legal docs → Submit app → Review → Publish → Co-market
Pro tip: Automate reminders and resource access by stage so partners aren’t stuck waiting.
✅ Configure roles in the partner portal
Give devs access to API docs and testing environments. Give marketers access to branding and listing tools. Keep everyone focused.
✅ Organize resources in folders
This could include:
- Legal forms
- Security checklists
- APIs, SDKs, and documentation
- Co-marketing and branding guidelines
- “How to get listed” videos
- Launch enablement templates
✅ Use simple, smart forms
Don’t rely on email. Build forms & app approval processes that collect integration info, listing details, and marketing materials all from within your developer portal.
✅ Define app review, legal, and versioning processes
Make it crystal clear how apps get approved—and how updates get pushed. This builds trust and reduces churn.
What great looks like: Examples to learn from
Here are a few standout marketplaces getting it right:
- Gong: High-clarity listings and strong integration storytelling
- Mindbody: A fully embedded partner store that drives installs
- ZoomInfo: Deeply integrated marketplace with install tracking
- Salesloft: Great use of filtering and strong co-marketing
- Smokeball: Small team, big ecosystem vision—done right with Partner Fleet
- Demandbase: A newly launched marketplace and developer portal, looking to double in size within a year
Conclusion: Treat your marketplace like a product
If you want integrations to drive revenue—not just sit in a dusty directory—your app marketplace needs:
- Smart UX across public, in-app, and dev portal layers
- Clear pathways for customers and partners to take action
- Tracking and tooling for your GTM and ecosystem teams
- A mindset shift: this is a product, not a side project
When you get this right, your marketplace becomes more than a list of tools. It becomes your platform’s discovery engine—and a source of compounding ecosystem growth.
Want to see how companies like ZoomInfo, Mindbody, and Gong do this with Partner Fleet? 👉 Book a demo and we’ll show you behind the scenes.
