How To Build a Trading Platform

The stock, securities, and cryptocurrency markets attract many people. Experienced traders and newcomers are usually looking for a platform to help them work and make money on exchange rate fluctuations. And you, as a business, can help them with this and earn a lot of money simultaneously. The only thing left to do is to figure out how to create a trading platform that will become both your source of profit and a way to benefit your clients. This article will tell you how to get started and what you should pay attention to.

What is a trading platform?

So let’s take a closer look: how to start a trading platform and make it successful? And what exactly is a trading platform?

Usually, this term refers to software designed for trading, buying, analyzing, and other operations with specific assets. These can be stocks, securities, cryptocurrencies, etc. The world had come a long way since exchanges began to emerge. Now, to trade the above assets, it is enough to have access to the Internet, have some, at least a small, capital, and know how to use special software.

And this is where you can win. Such software usually earns money quite simply: from each transaction, you will receive a small percentage of the funds that have been invested in the transaction. That is, you will have a commission. And the more users your platform has and the more transactions are made using your software over a certain period of time, the higher your income will be.

Stages of work

1. Project launch.

To start trading platform development, you need to have an idea. Every startup begins this way, and it is unnecessary to live and create in a garage and eat cat food (as some businessmen describe the beginning of their successful careers). Today, a startup can be a new project within an existing company or a large corporation. The essence of a startup is a fresh idea. How can a platform for traders be a fresh idea? Everything is quite relative. If your company provides financial services of one kind or another, creating a platform for traders can be a fresh idea for this particular business. Besides, it all depends on how you will position your product.

2. Planning and defining the scope of work.

Define the project’s scope, describe the main expectations, and formulate the idea into a more straightforward plan. You can’t even imagine how many worthwhile ideas have remained “on paper” because you didn’t pay enough attention to work planning at the time.

3. Finding a team.

It all depends on your approach to work. In fact, this stage can sometimes be interchanged with the previous one. However, the point remains that you can only create your dream project with a team. Therefore, you have two options: hire specialists in-house or a contractor. We recommend the second option because experience shows that it can be more profitable and less resource-intensive. After all, when hiring a contractor, you hire a ready-made team immediately. But if you hire specialists in-house, you will have to spend time and resources on finding and hiring each individual member of the future team.

4. Design, research, and summarization.

Design and research are crucial stages of work if you want to create a unique product that will meet user needs and solve their problems. To develop such software, you must at least recruit respondents and conduct in-depth interviews to find out what problems users of similar platforms usually face. In addition to in-depth interviews, quantitative surveys can sometimes be helpful, and user tests can be practical after design development. Of course, when we say “you,” we mean the team you’ll be involved in the project.

5. MVP.

Based on the results you get after research, you can create a Minimum Viable Product. You may ask: “Why is this necessary if you can immediately build a trading platform with a full set of functions?”. However, the MVP makes a lot of sense. This test version of the software helps to identify the weaknesses of the project, find where to change something, get feedback from real users, and build up the first base of loyal users.

6. Finalization and introduction of additional features.

After MVP, you can safely finalize the project and develop it into a full-fledged platform. There is already room for additional features, improved UI, advanced capabilities, and everything else that didn’t make sense when you launched the MVP. It is also essential that MVPs are often developed exclusively for one platform. If you want your already full-fledged project to succeed, you should implement it for several platforms. After all, different users can use different devices.

7. Development, testing, implementation.

This is where the purely technical part of platform development begins. Writing code, refactoring, improving, and speeding up the software… Also, don’t forget about testing because users will not be happy if error messages keep popping up during their work. In trading, sometimes only a few seconds can make a difference, so it is crucial that the platform is as fast as possible and does not cause any complications in the work of traders. Only after all the functions have been thoroughly tested and improved, you can upload the code to the product and gradually launch the platform for real users.

What is essential to consider?

When figuring out how to build your own trading platform, it is easy to lose sight of some details. After all, modern software usually includes a lot of features, technologies, and functions. And in fact, the specific list of features strongly depends on the software you are developing. But there are some things that everyone should consider:

1. Cybersecurity. You are working with finances and valuable data, so protection against cyberattacks and attempts to steal data should be at the highest level. After all, people leave their personal information and payment account information in one way or another to be able to deposit and withdraw funds from your platform. This automatically increases the risks because payment information, as well as some statistical data, is one of the most valuable assets attackers can try to steal.
2. Competitors’ experience. Look at popular trading platforms, and read user reviews, especially negative ones. You can safely consider competitors’ backgrounds so as not to repeat their mistakes. This also applies to the positive aspects: creating a completely unique environment will be challenging, and all software in the same field has certain similarities. Therefore, it’s okay if you borrow some ideas from your competitors. The main thing is to ensure the borrowed idea does not violate copyright.
3. The characteristics of your target audience. Your clients are essentially your customer, so you first need to analyze the needs of those for whom you create a product. Even in trading, there are different layers of users, and having chosen the primary target audience, you need to customize the software to its needs.
4. Mobile interface. The share of mobile devices has been boldly outpacing the share of laptops and notebooks worldwide for several years. Unlike a smartphone, a laptop and computer are not very convenient to carry around all the time. Therefore, people should be able to use the result of your work not only from a PC but also from a mobile device.
5. Various options for depositing and withdrawing funds. This is also important because different people prefer different payment systems.

And, of course, we should remember the platform’s capabilities. To what extent will a trader have access to tools for analyzing market trends? Will they be able to set a stop loss or a profit amount at which the trade will automatically close? Will a person be able to draw figures on the chart and make notes for himself? After all, trading is far from being about luck and intuition. Some clear patterns and algorithms help people raise funds. Your platform must provide the widest possible opportunities to apply these algorithms conveniently.

Who can you turn to for help?

Fintatech is a company that specializes in developing software for traders. We even have our own Trading Platform Designer. It allows you to create software based on ready-made blocks, which speeds up the work but leaves wide customization opportunities.

Sign up for a consultation, and we can discuss everything in more detail!