Services · Ecommerce development · Interior design consultation platforms
Codeeo handles interior design consultation booking website development UK platforms can run nationally: a marketplace where homeowners, landlords and small businesses find a vetted designer, book a paid consultation, pay at checkout and leave a verified review, while the operator takes a commission and pays designers out automatically. It suits founders building a national network, retailers selling design time across their stores, and professional collectives that want one shared booking front door for members from Cornwall to Caithness.
The platform is about taking money for design time and paying the right person for it. Brochure sites and mobile apps are separate projects; this one handles listings, bookings, fees, refunds, payouts and the reporting a UK platform operator now owes HMRC.
200+ companies servedFrom a first store to an ADX listed developer
What the platform includes
A consultation marketplace has three sets of users who want different things. Clients want to compare designers, see the full fee before they commit and book a slot without phoning anyone. Designers want steady enquiries, control over their diary and prompt payment. The operator wants a commission on every booking, fewer support emails and records that stand up when HMRC, the ICO or a trading standards officer asks a question.
The parts below are the ones we build most often for a UK wide platform. We order them around how your money moves, because the payment design decides almost everything else: who the client contracts with, who issues the VAT invoice, when a designer is paid and what happens when someone cancels. Behind all of it sits an operator console with bookings, payouts, refunds, commission earned and open disputes, with separate roles for support, finance and administrators, and exports that feed your accounting software.
Applicants create a profile, upload portfolio images, confirm their trading status as a sole trader or limited company, and add insurance details. Your team reviews each application in a queue, checks the Companies House number where one is given, and approves, rejects or asks for more before the profile goes live.
Only designers you have checked appear in search.
Search by nation, region or postcode, room type, style, budget band and whether the designer offers video, in-home or e-design sessions. Each listing shows real availability and a clear consultation fee, so a client in Swansea is not shown a designer who only takes work inside the M25.
Clients shortlist in minutes instead of messaging ten designers.
Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and pay by bank through Open Banking, with Strong Customer Authentication handled by the payment provider. The price at the top of the listing is the price at checkout, including any booking fee, which is how the drip pricing ban in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 expects it.
No surprise charges at the last step, and fewer abandoned bookings.
Each payment is split between the designer and the platform through a provider that supports connected accounts, so your company does not hold client money itself. Commission can vary by designer tier or service type, and payouts run on a schedule you set once the session is delivered.
Designers are paid on time and your margin is calculated per booking.
The Consumer Contracts Regulations give consumers a cancellation period on services bought online. The booking flow records whether the client asked for the session to happen inside that period, works out any proportionate charge, and applies your own late cancellation and no show policy for both sides.
Refunds follow written rules rather than case by case arguments.
A review can only be left by a client whose booking was paid and completed. Reviews cannot be bought, hidden because they are negative or written by staff, which matters now that fake reviews are listed as banned practices under the 2024 Act.
Ratings clients trust and regulators would accept.
When a client says a session did not happen or a designer reports a no show, both sides submit their account and evidence in one thread. Your team can hold the payout, issue a partial refund or close the case, and every step is logged.
Disagreements settled inside the platform, with a clear trail.
Since January 2024, UK platforms that let people sell services must collect seller details and report their earnings to HMRC under the digital platform reporting rules. The platform gathers the required designer information at onboarding and exports the annual report from the same records.
Annual reporting comes from data you already hold.
Designers connect their Google or Outlook calendar so a booked slot blocks their diary, set buffer time between home visits, and run video sessions from a link created for each booking. Before the session the client answers a short brief and uploads room photos, so the designer arrives prepared rather than spending the first quarter of an hour asking questions.
Fewer double bookings and better first sessions.
Each region and city gets its own page listing local designers, typical project types and real availability, built from the same data as the listings. This is how a national platform earns search traffic in Leeds, Cardiff or Belfast without writing hundreds of thin pages by hand.
Search visibility that grows as each region fills with designers.
Who this is for
A national designer platform is not one product. A founder building a network from scratch needs supply first, a retailer needs consultations tied to product sales, and a professional body needs fair visibility for members. The commercial model changes the build, and interior design services platform development UK founders commission tends to fail when it copies a generic booking template that ignores those differences. So we start by agreeing which of these you are and which you might become.
Each of the four starting points below has shaped real scoping conversations, and each leads to a different first release. Some businesses sit across two of them, such as a retailer that later opens its booking site to outside designers, and the platform can be planned so that move does not need a rebuild.
You need designers before clients, so the first release puts weight on onboarding, vetting and attractive profiles, then opens paid booking once enough designers are live in each region. We plan commission, payout timing and dispute handling before launch, because changing them after designers have signed up is much harder than setting them well at the start.
Supply first, then open bookings region by region.
Your stores already give informal design advice. The platform turns it into a paid consultation booked online, sometimes credited against a later order, with sessions assigned to store designers or approved freelancers. The fee, any credit and its conditions are shown before payment so the offer stays clear under consumer law.
Members want a shared booking site that sends work fairly and does not favour whoever pays most. We build rotation or ranking rules you can explain, member billing for the network fee, and listings that show each designer's own specialisms and working area across the four nations.
One brand, many designers, different diaries and different rates. The platform routes enquiries to the right city, lets clients pick a named designer or the next available one, and reports revenue by studio. It works like a marketplace inside one company, with internal payouts or commission tracking instead of external transfers.
How we work together
Codeeo has no UK office. Our team of 80+ works with UK clients remotely from Dubai, Riyadh and Karachi, and every discovery session, design review and acceptance test runs by video call. Most platform owners start with a fixed scope first release covering one or two regions, then move to a monthly retainer for new features. Larger operators sometimes take a dedicated team that stays with the platform as new regions and service types are added. Whichever route you choose, the scope, the acceptance criteria and the handover of code and accounts are written down before work starts. We have delivered 200+ projects across the UAE and the US and are rated 4.7 from 23 Google reviews.
A defined build with a deadline
We agree what the product has to do, write it down with a price and a date, and build exactly that. Changes are priced before they are made, not discovered on the invoice.
A product that keeps evolving
Named engineers who work your hours, join your standups and stay on the codebase. You direct the backlog; we own the quality of what ships.
Something live that needs looking after
A monthly block of hours for improvements, fixes and the small requests that otherwise wait months. Unused hours carry for a quarter.
Technology
Usually a modern web stack such as Next.js or Laravel, a payment provider with connected accounts for split payouts, a calendar sync for designer diaries and your accounting software. The final choice depends on your team and the systems you already pay for.
01Web
02Commerce
03Data and cloud
04Marketing and tracking
Listings, paid booking, payouts, refunds, reviews and the operator console.
It covers the full commercial loop of a designer marketplace: designers apply and are vetted, clients search and book, the fee is taken at checkout, commission is split off, the designer is paid after the session and the client can leave a verified review. Around that sit the cancellation rules, dispute handling, HMRC seller reporting and the admin tools your team uses every day.
Schedule a free consultation and get a written recommendation, with costs, before you commit to anything.
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