Spirit labs
Dec 09, 2021

The Future of Offices & Workspaces

  • #Digital Insights
  • In a post-pandemic economy, it’s possible only the biggest companies will have the budget to maintain headquarters, while businesses without the financial resources may scrap the idea of having a physical location altogether. Others may decentralize their physical presence and open regional hubs wherever their workers are located, whether that’s in the suburbs, mid-sized cities, or across the country entirely.

     

    In addition, millions of professionals have proven they’re able to do their jobs remotely, many experts agree it will become more common for people to split their time between working from home and going into an office.

     

    But what will that office look like once they get there?

    The significant rise of Co-working spaces

    The number of co-working spaces worldwide is projected to reach almost 20,000 this year and cross over 40,000 by 2024. While the industry is set to grow at a slower pace in 2020, we expect growth to rebound and develop even more rapidly from 2021 onwards, with a yearly growth rate of 21.3%.

     

    Co-working spaces offer the same amenities you would find in a traditional office, along with a lot more. A major differentiator is a flexibility since you don’t need to sign a long-term lease in a co-working space.

     

    Every Co-working space will always have basics like WiFi, printers, usually, some type of conference room… and some will have tea, coffee, and snacks available. Some will have startup resources at your disposal ranging from digital assets, and even coaches and advisors. Some may have 3D printers and another tech that you may not always have access to. Some budget-conscious co-working spaces are more barebones, offering little more than a desk and WiFi.

    Workspace rental platforms: fill the needs of your companies

    As rental market trends change and demands grow, online rental platforms are becoming more popular, with millions of renters, landlords, and property managers as regular users. It makes a living using several monetization strategies, including fees, commissions, and advertising on a well-established platform.

     

    If you are passionate about commercial real estate, co-working spaces, lounges, and communication, then building a workspace rental platform is the right choice for you.

     

    The main advantage of a workspace rental platform solution is that it allows for real-time monitoring and booking of a variety of co-working spaces that can be rented out on very flexible terms including hourly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly periods. What’s more, with just a click, you will have wide selections in front of you and be able to find all the information about a Co-working space that you are interested in, which is categorized by location.

     

    Here are 6 steps help you to understand how to develop a workspace rental platform:

    Step 1: Understand how the workspace rental platform works

    A workspace-sharing website is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution. It connects people who want to rent an office or a co-working space directly with the hosts.

     

    At the very core, it works as a simple listing website that allows hosts to post their co-working spaces for rent. Tenants can search and book the desired office space or room.

     

    According to Ergonomic Trends:

    • 83% of respondents say that they have become less lonely after joining a co-working space;
    • 79% admit to having increased their contacts thanks to shared space;
    • 89% of people say that they’re happier after joining a shared workspace.

    Step 2: Define the business model of a workspace sharing website

    When it comes to building your workspace rental platform, you should understand that it takes advantage of freelancers, entrepreneurs, and startups or in other words — independent workers and provides flexible hourly and monthly rental services.

     

    The best thing about the workspace sharing platform business model is that it helps establish no long-term financial engagement as the general rental agreement does. Such a strategy helps focus on a much broader market.

    Often, workspace rental platforms provide more functionality than just renting out spaces. They also offer additional perks like fancy design, in-office activities like ping-pong, access to the kitchen, food courts, etc. All these fancy features help to create a perfect working environment and atmosphere for freelancers and startups.

     

    What’s valuable in the business model of a workplace rental platform is that it helps different types of customers co-work regardless of their economic situation. While regular offices wouldn’t be interested in startups that could go broke tomorrow because they require yearly payments, the workspace-sharing website is okay with that and offers flexible renting opportunities.

    Step 3: Outline a plan on how to create a workspace marketplace

    The cool thing about such a platform is that it’s just a website and so it has to be nicely designed, feature-rich, but not too heavy because nobody likes intrusive JavaScript.

     

    The first thing you should start with when you try to build a platform for renting office space is to plan the design of your website carefully.

     

    • Focus on your UX and UI design: Who is your audience? How do you plan to segment them? Is it user-friendly enough?…
    • Decide what services you want to connect: Advertisements services, services may include some tracking functionality like Google Maps, cookies, and other third parties that will help you track and segment your users.

    Step 4: Highlight the main features of a workspace sharing website development

    There are some essential features for a workspace rental platform:

     

    • User-friendly listing
    • Precise search
    • Easy booking
    • Secure payment
    • Stable communication channel (notification system, social media, etc.)
    • Seamless event planner

     

    Extra features to make your sharing space platform design even better include:

     

    • Intuitive navigation with a simple menu in the top bar
    • The pricing section with membership plans
    • “Benefits” describing each type of rental space
    • Separate pages to showcase the coworking offices
    • “Booking a tour” option
    • Effortless members onboarding
    • Multiple payment options
    • Help center or Self-service portal
    • Clients’ testimonials

    Step 5: Research about your competitors

    There are several competitors with solid examples of workspace sharing websites that you should look into before you create a platform that co-working spaces yourself. Research, learn, and find out what’s best for your business.

    Step 6: Plan your budget when developing a workspace rental platform

    Depending on the complexity and richness of features, the cost to develop a platform to rent out workspaces may vary from anywhere between $15,000 and $30,000+.

    The price for such a website is based on several aspects, including:

     

    • Website design
    • Custom widget development
    • Extended functionality
    • Dashboard development
    • Payment system creation and integration
    • QA and testing, etc.

     

    Also, it’s very common to build a mobile application for such a platform to ensure seamless access for users and increase your market share.

    A website with a mobile application would easily fall into the range of $70,000 — $100,000+.

     

    At Spirit Labs, we provide scalable solutions with cost-efficiency. With the engagement team, we work on steps with our clients to be clear about the scope of the projects. 

     

    Choosing the suitable technologies for web app development will determine the success of your platforms. With rental platforms, we implement two programming languages: React.js using JQuery and Node.js, on account of certain advantages. Besides, MySQL, Ghost, and AWS are also used in our projects. If the blog inspires you to consider taking similar steps, feel free to contact us and we will give our clients free consultation and the best pieces of advice.

     

    REFERENCES:

    Blog: Creating a Workspace Rental platform. Shared place platform development by Alina Seredenko

    Article: Global Coworking Growth Study 2020

     

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