About
A highly customized platform focused on the sale of used audiovisual
equipment in Norway and nearby countries: audio, lighting equipment,
and the stage itself. By providing a wide array of exclusive options
for partners, it offers a safe and unique environment for both
buying and selling.
Challenge
The client, a leading Norwegian event company, hired our team for
building a custom marketplace specialized in used audiovisual
equipment. The idea was to divide users into different groups of
sellers and buyers with different product positions in order
to offer them a personalized experience on the platform. People on
both sides of the trade deal were to see only positions accurately
selected for them. Another important feature was an ability to work
on the platform together as a team with a shared interface and
different roles.
Solution
We developed different types of sellers’ and buyers’ accounts for
the marketplace, including the possibility for users to create
individual or company profiles. A company profile allows users from
one company to work within a shared interface according to the roles
assigned by the company account administrator.
Sellers
Sellers create items and provide an expanded description for
them. The platform allows users to suggest custom categories if
there is no desired item in the predefined list. Sellers can choose
the currency, and the platform will automatically convert prices.
Buyers
For buyers, we have two account types — regular and broker accounts.
Broker accounts have certain privileges: only the broker can see and
order expensive items. The advantage of the regular account
is the ability to both buy and sell items. Brokers can submit a
manual search request instead of a simple site search.
Admin
Platform administrator has control over the whole process — approve
new companies and users, approve seller’s items, descriptions, and
new categories, send invites, and manually respond to brokers’
search requests. They also have the ability to send customized
newsletters with updates on specific sets of items.
UI/UX approach
First, we created a sitemap of the platform to see the big picture
and plan all user flows. Then we built wireframes to get the whole
interface architecture. This allowed us to perform early usability
testing. At the very end, when the UX part was ready, we moved to
the visualization part.
We received stakeholders’ feedback for each iteration and made
adjustments accordingly. Particular attention was devoted to tablet
and smartphone versions of each page, as a great deal of customers
will use the platform from their mobile devices.
Result
We developed the entire platform from scratch and prepared the 1.0
version in 6 months. Besides that, we released the first beta
version in just three months, which allowed us to get early feedback
from users and make appropriate adjustments to the product
roadmap. Now, the platform is widely used by equipment owners and
brokers in Norway and other countries. We continue ongoing work on
the platform to bring new functions and improve user experience.
