Two Years of R&D to Build a Bespoke Gaming Marketplace from the Ground Up
After more than two years of research, development, testing and refinement, eRigged is now live.
Created by Lucid Pulse, eRigged is far more than a conventional ecommerce website. It is a completely bespoke marketplace platform designed specifically around the way gamers and PC enthusiasts buy, sell, upgrade and trade hardware.
From the outset, the ambition was to create something that combined the convenience of a modern ecommerce experience with the flexibility of a peer-to-peer marketplace. That meant solving considerably more complex problems than simply building a catalogue, basket and checkout.
Payments needed to work differently. Sellers needed their own accounts and workflows. Shipping needed to become part of the platform rather than an external process. Buyers and sellers needed to communicate. The marketplace required subscriptions, rewards, badges, account functionality, seller verification and an infrastructure capable of supporting future growth.
The result is a purpose-built digital platform developed around eRigged’s business model rather than forcing the business into the restrictions of an off-the-shelf marketplace solution.
Building a Marketplace, Not Just an Online Store
One of the most important decisions made during the project was to treat eRigged as a platform from day one.
Traditional ecommerce development tends to revolve around a fairly predictable journey: a retailer uploads products, a customer places an order and the retailer fulfils it.
A marketplace introduces another layer entirely.
eRigged needed to support multiple sellers, buyers, product listings, marketplace transactions, seller payments, fulfilment workflows, customer communication and platform commissions while keeping the experience straightforward for the person using it.
That required substantial work behind the scenes.
The live platform now provides a marketplace covering gaming PCs, components, storage, peripherals, monitors, laptops, VR, phones, tablets and consoles. Its customer-facing proposition focuses on buying, selling and upgrading hardware, while the current site also highlights verified UK sellers, UK-based support, secure payments and tracked delivery.
Rather than relying on a generic marketplace template, these workflows were designed and developed specifically for eRigged.
That distinction became increasingly important as the platform evolved during its two-year R&D period. Every new feature had to work as part of the wider marketplace ecosystem rather than existing as an isolated plugin.
A Bespoke Stripe Marketplace Payment System
Payments were one of the most technically important areas of the project.
A conventional ecommerce payment flow was not sufficient because eRigged needed to manage transactions between customers, the marketplace and independent sellers.
The platform therefore uses a deeply integrated Stripe-powered marketplace payment architecture, including an escrow-style gated payout process.
When a customer purchases an item, the system can manage the transaction through the marketplace and control the subsequent seller payout according to the platform’s fulfilment process. On the live eRigged website this is communicated to customers as “Payouts Are Gated Upon Delivery.”
This is an important distinction from a standard payment gateway integration.
Stripe Connect provides infrastructure specifically for platforms and marketplaces, allowing a platform to collect payments and subsequently transfer funds to connected sellers. Stripe also supports marketplace configurations in which charges and transfers are handled separately, giving platforms significantly more control over how money moves between parties. Stripe
For eRigged, the payment system had to be integrated into the wider order lifecycle so that payment status, seller activity, order progression and fulfilment could work together.
The objective was not simply to add Stripe checkout to a website. It was to make payments a core part of the platform’s architecture.
Shipping Built Directly into the Platform with Shippo
Shipping presented another major challenge.
A marketplace becomes significantly harder to operate if sellers have to leave the platform, arrange their own postage manually and then return to update orders with tracking information.
To create a more streamlined process, eRigged incorporates Shippo directly into the marketplace workflow.
The integration allows shipping functionality to become part of the platform itself, connecting order information with the fulfilment process.
Shippo’s API is designed for exactly this type of custom implementation. It can be used to retrieve shipping rates, generate carrier labels, manage shipment information and provide tracking data, while supporting integrations with multiple carriers through a single API. Shippo Support
For eRigged, that means shipping does not feel like a disconnected third-party service.
It becomes another part of the seller experience.
Orders can progress naturally from marketplace transaction to fulfilment, dispatch and tracking while maintaining the information required by the rest of the platform.
When combined with the gated payment workflow, this was a particularly important area of development because fulfilment and payment are closely connected.
Subscriptions Designed for a Growing Marketplace
Another major area of the eRigged platform is its subscription functionality.
Marketplace businesses frequently need more than one type of user relationship. Some customers may purchase occasionally, while active sellers or more engaged users may require additional functionality, benefits or account features.
Rather than treating subscriptions as an afterthought, the capability was incorporated into the platform architecture.
This provides eRigged with the foundations to develop recurring membership propositions, enhanced seller accounts, premium functionality and other subscription-led services as the platform grows.
Because the underlying functionality is bespoke, subscription features can interact with other areas of the user account rather than operating as a completely separate system.
That gives eRigged significantly more flexibility for future development.
Badges, Rewards and Marketplace Engagement
A successful marketplace isn’t only about transactions. It is also about building trust and encouraging users to remain active within the ecosystem.
For that reason, badges and rewards were developed as part of the wider eRigged platform.
These features create opportunities to recognise activity, achievements and participation across the marketplace.
From a technical perspective, this required building account-level logic capable of monitoring relevant user actions and applying the appropriate status or reward. From a user-experience perspective, the challenge was ensuring that these systems enhanced the marketplace rather than distracting from the primary buying and selling experience.
It also establishes an important foundation for the future.
As the eRigged community expands, the rewards system can evolve alongside it, providing new ways to recognise established sellers, repeat customers and engaged community members.
A Bespoke Buyer and Seller Messenger
Communication is essential when transactions involve individual marketplace sellers.
Rather than directing users towards external email addresses or third-party messaging services, eRigged includes its own integrated messenger platform.
Buyers and sellers can therefore communicate within the eRigged ecosystem.
Developing messaging directly into the platform creates a more cohesive experience while allowing conversations to sit much closer to the accounts, listings and transactions they relate to.
It also provides eRigged with greater control over the user journey.
Instead of purchasing an item on one platform, communicating through another service and arranging fulfilment somewhere else, the objective has been to bring as much of that process as possible into one consistent environment.
That philosophy runs through the entire project.
User Experience Across the Entire Platform
Despite the amount of technology working behind the scenes, the front end needed to remain fast, clear and approachable.
The visual identity uses a predominantly dark interface with eRigged’s distinctive orange accents, creating an aesthetic suited to gaming and high-performance PC hardware without compromising ecommerce usability.
The homepage immediately communicates the central proposition — buy, sell and upgrade — before directing users into product categories, current listings and seller functionality.
Responsive behaviour was also fundamental.
The marketplace needed to work effectively across desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile phones because customers may discover products on one device and complete a transaction on another.
This meant considering much more than simply resizing page layouts. Navigation, product discovery, account functionality, checkout processes, messaging and seller tools all had to remain usable at different screen sizes.
Two Years of Research and Development
Projects of this scale rarely follow a straight line.
During more than two years of R&D, eRigged evolved from an initial concept into an interconnected marketplace platform.
That time allowed both the technical architecture and the commercial requirements of the platform to develop together.
Payment processes could be tested against marketplace scenarios. Fulfilment workflows could be connected to shipping. Seller functionality could be refined. Subscription models, rewards, badges and messaging could become part of a consistent account experience.
The R&D phase was especially important because the project was not simply recreating an established ecommerce model.
The goal was to create the infrastructure for a new marketplace.
That requires thinking about what happens not only when everything goes correctly, but also about the numerous states surrounding real-world marketplace transactions: different users, different sellers, order statuses, payment statuses, fulfilment events, account permissions, shipping events and ongoing communications.
A significant proportion of bespoke platform development exists beneath the visible interface, and eRigged is a strong example of that.
Built for Where eRigged Goes Next
Launching the platform is a major milestone, but it was never intended to be the end of the development journey.
One of the advantages of building eRigged as a bespoke platform is that its underlying systems can continue evolving with the business.
Instead of depending entirely on the roadmap or restrictions of a third-party marketplace product, new functionality can be developed around real customer behaviour and commercial requirements.
Subscriptions can evolve. Rewards can expand. New badge mechanics can be introduced. Seller tools can become more sophisticated. Messaging can develop further. Payment and fulfilment automation can continue to improve.
That flexibility is one of the most valuable outcomes of the project.
eRigged Is Now Live
After two years of development, technical problem-solving and continuous refinement, eRigged has moved from R&D into a live marketplace.
For Lucid Pulse, the project demonstrates what bespoke web development can become when design, ecommerce, payments, logistics and custom software engineering are approached as one connected system.
This wasn’t a case of installing a marketplace theme and adapting a few templates.
It involved creating the foundations of a digital business: a marketplace architecture, custom transaction workflows, Stripe-powered seller payments, Shippo fulfilment integration, subscriptions, account systems, badges, rewards, messaging and a responsive customer-facing ecommerce experience.
And the most exciting part is that the platform now has somewhere to grow.
Explore the live marketplace: Visit eRigged
Website design, development and bespoke digital platforms: Visit Lucid Pulse
Technology: Stripe Connect · Shippo API