Alteryx launches add-on marketplace, speeds up time to market by 6x with AppDirect
Global analytics cloud platform leader adopts the AppDirect platform to power their marketplace, fortifying their partner ecosystem strategy and offering customers a one-stop-shop for finding first and third-party add-on products.
Challenge
The company’s existing community-powered tool and workflow gallery required supplemental verification capabilities & support requirements
Wanted to create monetization capabilities, ability to accept product payments, and build checkout flow with existing community webpage
In-house custom marketplace build would be expensive and time consuming
Solution
Alteryx Marketplace, powered by AppDirect
Results
Spun up a marketplace via the AppDirect free trial offering
Sped up time to market by 6x, compared to estimated in-house custom marketplace development
Achieved 19% conversion rate and exceeded download goal by 10x
The monetization gap
As a global leader in the analytics space, Alteryx is no stranger to the power of a robust platform. The company offers a unified platform of data science and analytics products. Alteryx software is designed to make advanced analytics automation accessible to any data worker so they can better support informed, data-driven decision making. With more than 8,000 customers internationally, Alteryx has a loyal and vibrant community of users and partners alike.
For the last eight years, the Alteryx team dedicated themselves to creating a unified interface for seamless community engagement. The result: Community Gallery. Originally an internal platform for sharing tools and enhancements, it evolved to include in-house and user-built resources to augment Alteryx’s capabilities. Though the tool served a critical purpose, it lacked key functionality to sell core offerings or showcase third-party products.
Aside from the lack of user verification capabilities, the team also realized they were potentially missing out on a lucrative monetization opportunity within their marketplace.
Megan Harron, Head of Alteryx Marketplace explains: “What’s happening is our partners are either offering these Add-Ons without our help and verification or they aren’t offering them at all because they lack the resources to distribute them.”
Harron, continues: “Our previous system had a sharing mechanism, but it didn't have any of the verification, support requirements, or transactional pieces we needed for it to scale.”
Harron, with her extensive experience in online marketplaces from her tenure at Magento (now Adobe Commerce), was brought on board with a clear mandate: transform the existing single-pane-of-glass interface into a comprehensive marketplace.
Marketplace
From the beginning, it was clear to Harron that architecting and building a custom marketplace in house was not feasible. She estimated the need for a team of over ten, including product managers, engineers, and substantial funding. Realizing the impracticality of this approach, she shifted focus to exploring white-label marketplace development platforms.
During her search, Harron consulted with a contact at a marketplace software firm to get product recommendations. After discussing Alteryx’s focus on digital products and services, her contact, whose firm specialized in marketplaces for selling physical goods, recommended exploring AppDirect.
After reviewing AppDirect customer success stories and identifying use cases similar to Alteryx, Harron signed up for a free AppDirect Marketplace trial, building a marketplace of her own.
Free-trial success
She explains, “I had our store completely built on the free trial. I got it to a place where I could demo the free trial in company-wide meetings. By the end of that demo, it was clear—we should buy.”
After the successful demo, Harron and her team quickly decided to move forward with AppDirect. Following the self-serve process, she was able to successfully spin up the Alteryx marketplace as a business user.
6x faster with AppDirect
Harron explains that the design template currently applied to the Alteryx Marketplace was completed during the free trial period. Shortly thereafter, in the following quarter, the team successfully launched the full marketplace. She estimates an in-house build would have taken at least two years.
Building out the channel strategy, a path to monetization
Aside from a faster time to market, the AppDirect powered marketplace is contributing to executing Alteryx’s larger partner ecosystem strategy. Harron explains that the marketplace is a way for the company to get qualified partner leads in. “We're building our channel strategy with the marketplace in mind.”
AppDirect provides a clear path to monetization of the partner ecosystem strategy because it supports the complexities of subscription billing.
“Setting it up so a third party can dictate their pricing can be very complex. Knowing that we have the capability available to us when we’re ready was part of why we chose AppDirect.”
- Megan Harron, Head of Alteryx Marketplace
When asked about the potential impact of the Alteryx Marketplace on partners, Harron believes the monetization capabilities could be a true gamechanger. “Many smaller companies don’t have the ability to set up a licensing tool or subscription billing on their own. So, they are a bit stuck with how they can monetize, which makes it harder for our customers to get access. With the monetization functionality now built into our marketplace with AppDirect, we have a solution that helps partners and customers.”
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Tracking marketplace performance—Exceeding product download goals by 10x
Currently, the Alteryx marketplace features a range of downloadable products. In all, two-thirds of the products are Alteryx-built, while about a third are partner solutions.
With the marketplace, the team exceeded its initial download goal by 10x.
“That’s unreal when it comes to product adoption. It’s rare that you see that kind of adoption that quickly.”
Additionally, they are seeing a 19 percent conversion rate which Harron notes is quite high for the industry in her experience, with e-commerce benchmarks for paid products normally sitting in the 3 to 5 percent range.
“There is tremendous value in customers being able to see the solutions available to them, but it's even better when the products downloaded are useful and lead to conversions. As we expand our partner network in the marketplace, the high conversion rate will be a significant catalyst.”
- Megan Harron, Head of Alteryx Marketplace
Product listings demonstrate value
Harron highlights the benefits of the Alteryx Marketplace for partners with a specific example. A service provider listed on the marketplace now has a dedicated space for showcasing product information, videos, and specifications. This visibility not only helps customers grasp the value of these offerings, but also serves as a gateway for them to engage in deeper conversations and accelerate innovation with their joint customers.
Alteryx’s commitment to its customer and partner ecosystem is fueled by a clear vision. With a team dedicated to building a thriving marketplace, achievement is nearly inevitable—supported by the unwavering commitment of the AppDirect team. Learn how Alteryx and its Marketplace can help you unlock analytic innovation and increase efficiency at marketplace.alteryx.com.
Interested in experiencing the power of the AppDirect platform for yourself? Sign up for a free trial and launch your marketplace today.
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