E-commerce Platform for Buyers and Sellers | 4Sale Case Study

Company Overview

4Sale is a mobile application which deals in every legal product which can be sold or bought in Kuwait. The business works as an e-commerce platform for buyers and sellers, one of whom must be physically present in Kuwait. The other party can be anywhere in the world.

Problem

4Sale wanted to enable the product vendors in Kuwait to sell their products worldwide and there was no platform available with regional preferences and which was easy to use.

Problem Description

The client was looking for a solution to enable vendors in Kuwait to sell their products worldwide. There are many e-commerce solutions out there which could solve the problem but none of them was targeted for local users and their buying/selling styles. The solution had to be simple enough to encourage vendors to create their electronic shops. The consumer signup process also had to be dead easy in order to reduce onboarding friction. The solution must support Arabic language and other local preferences in order to personalize the buyer experience.

Solution

Digicorp developed end to end solution that consists of the backend system, iOS and Android application, and API that connects backend and mobile applications.

Digicorp designed and developed backend system the administration of users, advertise management, featured ads, moderation of posted ads etc. User management, user rights, and role management were created to help administrator setup system access credentials. The advertise management module was designed and developed intuitively which helped administrators to moderate posted ads by end users with ease.

The backend system architecture was designed in a way that provides ease of separating vendor’s backend management from super administrator backend management. Featured ads are part of the client’s revenue model. Options were provided to configure featured ads with smart predefined/customized algorithm to show ads on the application. Another revenue generating feature is to allow users to buy bulk advertisements which was made possible with in-app purchase. Users can buy up to 10 ads with a single in-app purchase transaction. Comprehensive configuration module was implemented in the backend to provide open-ended configuration using which administrators can change limits of ads., change pricing structure, create campaigns and offers.

The client wanted to offer rewards with fun elements to power users of the application who were regularly posting ads on this platform. Digicorp conceived “Scratch & Win” feature which chooses winners based on an algorithm (manageable) offering “Scratch & Win” option in the application.

Digicorp developed the complete application in the Arabic language which was a challenge met successfully. We also established an easy and smooth integration with SMS gateway. Faster interface was created for Android devices in order to enhance user experience after the success of 4Sale iPhone Application.

Initially, mobile applications were developed for end users who can post ads on the platform and buyers can connect with them offline. After a huge success, the system was extended to merchants and reseller stores. Store users can also post ads for their stores.

The platform went viral within a day of launch and it has more than 15K downloads. The scalable architecture design helped system to manage the load. The system serves almost 400 to 500 requests per second without any glitches. Amazon load balancing was implemented between 4 EC2 servers and RDS with media stored on Amazon S3 bucket

4Sale Architecture

4sale-architecture

[URIS id=2384]

Results

The application had more than 15K downloads within a day of launch.
4Sale mobile application remained top free application in Kuwait App Store.
The application immediately rose to More than a million downloads on iOS and Android platforms.
More than 900,000 registered users.
The platform is logging millions of transactions every week.