Project Background
The local marketplace for product rental is one more product we’ve built during our productive collaboration with the Japanese Startup Factory. The company’s main partner is a well-known robotics businessman in Japan.
The idea for the project emerged in response to the global eco-needs resulting from an over-dependence on consumption. Instead of spending money and other resources to buy new goods, platform users can simply rent the items they need from its owners for a while.
We started with the MVP, which contained only basic functionality for early adopters and for sale. Later the project was enhanced with a custom design and additional bells and whistles, which made the platform more convenient and attractive.
What makes it so outstanding?
Product Description
It is a Japanese marketplace where you can lease goods and find people who are interested in renting it for a fixed period of time. It’s a good solution when, let’s say, you need a bread maker, a construction tool or a jacket for a while, and you don’t want to buy a new one.
There are two roles on the platform: user and super-admin. The first has a personal account where they can see the items rented or leased, personal information and chats with other users. The other has access to analytics on all products and payments made through the platform, as well as access to editing content on the platform.
The marketplace is fully localized for the Japanese market and is currently at the pre-launch stage.
Value provided through development
Before starting development, the Corpsoft.io team performed its own marketing research of the future product’s audience. We reviewed the results of other marketing researches on this topic, as well as directly communicated with notable target audience members to see if our product would be relevant for them. We also identified the target audience’s pains and needs, which we considered and addressed in the final product.
For example, the product search function on the map appeared, since for many people the decisive factor was the product location rather than its price or other attributes.
Key Highlights & Challenges
This marketplace has many useful features that we want to mention, but we’ll focus on the key ones:
1. Smart search feature
We dedicated one whole sprint to creating this feature as it’s one of the key advantages of the platform. Users can search for products not only by title, but also by category or location.
What makes this search smart as such is the synonym and typo recognition system, which analyzes the user’s request and selects the most relevant results.
2. Displaying products on the map
In addition to displaying search results as a list, the user can also open a built-in map and select products by location. When a user clicks on an item a product card opens with basic information such as the product title, photo, price, and a brief description.
The function is implemented with the Google Maps API integration, which makes the image relevant at any time.
3. Payments within the platform
For better platform usability we’ve implemented an internal payment function. The user only needs to specify the duration of the rent and, after the owner of the item has confirmed it, pay for the rental.
We examined a number of options for payment systems and came up with the conclusion that the best solution would be Stripe. And since we’ve been well versed in this system for a while, its implementation didn’t take much time, and now the function works like clockwork.
4. Twilio integration
An important aspect of the platform is security to protect users from scammers. And one of the ways is a user verification system via phone number confirmation.
To implement this feature, we used the well-known Twilio API integration. The user provides a phone number and the system sends a verification passcode to it, which the user then has to enter in the right box. Besides user verification, the function can also be used to receive notifications via SMS.
Client’s feedback
We were happy to receive positive feedback from our client. Without spoiling it, check out what our client shared as his feedback:
