Omtech | Raffle

The Vision

Raffle

Finding someone who will pay a decent price for your phone can be challenging, especially if you want to sell it quickly. It can also be challenging to find the best deals on your favorite products at your expected price so you can buy them before others do.

The idea of our partner was to change the way in which products are bought and sold digitally and develop a global platform where C2C communication can flourish. An online resale platform would serve as a good medium for connecting buyers and sellers of products. Yes, we know that many platforms make global selling possible by online marketplace, but this one is very special. The selling can be done in a never seen before Raffle way using well-known Tinder matching methods. You are curious how this all can come together in one solution? Then you should stay here for 5 minutes and continue reading!

Our Solution

Tap To Scan, Scan To Go

Our handcrafted solution connects people worldwide who want to buy and sell products locally or globally with an intuitive interface and credible content. With our solution, you can simultaneously be a buyer and a seller. If you’re a buyer you can access hot Raffles and bid on them to win, on the other hand if you're a seller, you can make your own Raffles to sell.

Think of the Raffle App as your own personal products finder. All you have to do is create an impressive profile and discover cool products near you, communicate with sellers, and bid on the products with just one tap. 1 tap? Correct. We integrated a tinder match features that let you explore products you are looking for and per simple swiping you can bid on them, mark them as favorite or just buy them directly! In addition, you can charge your E-wallet using PayPal in the app with a single swipe. As soon as new Raffles are launched or become available near you, you will be notified.

Raffle lets you sell, manage, and discover cool stuff nearby. You can easily create a Raffle with a photo and a description of the product. As a buyer, you can bid on unlimited Raffles and try to win them. If you are a seller, you can set whether Raffle items will be delivered by you or buyers will need to pick up the products from you. On the onboarding screen, you can see all Raffles and enjoy swiping right or left to choose your product. You will receive help and support from the Raffle team in case of fraud.

It's time to try your luck. See why our digital solution is currently one of the top-rankings in the market.

Main Features

Create Raffle

Sellers can create Raffles with the Raffle App by pressing the plus button. They will be able to add photos, titles, categories, descriptions, prices, shipping conditions, postal code, and city.

After that, they can see a preview of their Raffle before publishing it with just one click. Each seller is allowed to create fifteen Raffles in a month.

Anyone can list their used items on the Raffle effortlessly. Selling anything takes just a few seconds. Besides checking Raffle status, users can also edit and delete Raffles.

Explore Raffle

Raffle's product listings are pretty similar to those on other marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart, etc. However, the special development is the Tinder way of the Raffle in the “Explore” feature.

Users can explore and access various Raffle categories such as cars, electronics, furniture, home goods, sports equipment, books, and more. So, basically, everything a user wants is available in the Raffle explore section. Users of the Raffle App can apply filters based on location, price, electronics, furniture, home goods, sports equipment, bid percentage, and more to get accurate results.

It also has a swipe feature similar to Tinder Matching Method that lets you swipe to bid on the Raffle or skip it permanently.

Users can bid on any Raffle item with 0.50 Euro. The amount of each bid will be automatically deducted from the user's e-wallet.

Imagine that Freya bid on the smart headphones Raffle, which had a value of 40 euros. She placed a 0.50 euro bid and eventually won the Raffle. As per seller norms, Freya received the headphones within two business days. Once the winner is declared, the Raffle will disappear from the categories and all those who participated will be notified.

Raffle management

Seller side

Each user can see all their bids and also, withdraw their bids. As soon as they withdraw their bids, 0.50 euros will be credited to their e-wallet.

My Raffles on the buyer side consists of four types of Raffle filters: the brought Raffle filter option shows all the bought Raffles; the won Raffle filter option displays all won Raffles, and the received Raffle filter option displays all the items they have received personally or that have been sent to them by a seller. All brought Raffles, won Raffles, and received Raffles appearing under the all Raffle option.

Buyer side

Each user can see all their bids and also, withdraw their bids. As soon as they withdraw their bids, 0.50 euro will be credited to their e-wallet.

My Raffles on the buyer side consist of four types of Raffle filters: the brought Raffle filter option shows all the bought Raffles; won Raffle filter option displays all won Raffles, and the received Raffle filter option displays all the items they have received personally or that have been sent to them by a seller. All brought Raffles, won Raffles, and received Raffles appear under the all Raffle option.

Message, help & support

Users can easily negotiate with sellers. Raffle App users can communicate directly with each other via messaging and negotiate with them.

Users have to agree to the App’s privacy and policy at the time of login. Raffles that are copied or created in violation of the rules can be reported to the Raffle administrator. The report will be settled within a reasonable time frame, and authorities have the right to block the appropriate seller or buyer.

Notifications and charge E-wallet

In the Raffle App, users will receive two types of notifications; the first will be display all notifications related to the publishing of the new Raffle, bids, won, sold, and canceled Raffles, and the second will display all notifications related to transactions; add money, withdraw money. Each time a user bids or adds money, they will be notified.

It is possible for Raffle users to use an E-Wallet. Therefore, users no longer need to use their Paypal account to pay for each 0.50€, which simplifies the whole process. Rather, they have a wallet they can use to add money to, withdraw money from, and work within the App safely and quickly. The application will redirect users to the payment screen if they do not have enough money in their wallet to bid.

Our Solution

Feature Overview

User profile management

E-Commerce marketplace

Explore products in a Tinder way

Messenger

Rating and feedback

Manage raffle

Payment services

E-Wallet

Tech Stack

We are listening to our customers and thrive to cover all open questions and demystify software development processes and technologies behind it. Enjoy exploring some of the topics in our blog categories below.

Native development android (kotlin), iOS (swift)

Native App Development is the creation of software programs that run on specific devices and platforms. You can build beautiful native apps for target devices-smartphones.

Back-End Framework, Logic, Server

Raffle's back-end was developed using the laravel framework. With laravel's built-in support for fast, distributed cache systems like redis, laravel is an incredibly scalable and scaling-friendly framework. For the Raffle database, we chose mysql, which is widely used and offers atomic, consistent, and go-to solutions. Data was called from the server to the user interface through REST APIs.

Social login

By integrating facebook, google, and apple sign-in, our users can eliminate the registration process within minutes, in one click. Integrating social logins enhances the user experience and makes authentication more secure.

PayPal payment

For cash-ins and cash-outs of the balance, as well as quick buy experiences, we have integrated PayPal. PayPal accepts 25 different currencies from 203 international markets and multiple payment methods.

Firebase messaging

Firebase messaging delivered contextual messages to active app users. By integrating firebase In-App messaging, we're enabling users to communicate with the app's other active users by sending them targeted, contextual messages that encourage them to use the Raffle App.

Firebase push notifications

Our integration with firebase notifications is a free service that enables user notifications for Android and iOS devices. Firebase's console allows admins to easily send notifications across platforms without having to write server code.

Alamofire library

We used Alamofire swift-based HTTP networking library for iOS and macOS, which is third-party library to communicate with our back-end. Alamofire has chainable request/response methods, JSON parameter and response serialization, authentication, and many other features. It wraps URL session and provides an interface on top of apple's networking stack.

Admin panel

The admin panel is extremely interactive. All user data is accessible to administrators, who can review uploaded information to prevent fraud. It displays real-time statistics and allows monitoring and accurate information for each user. Administrators can edit or delete product data, support and review feedback, verify the original reviews, export invoices, and view analytics reports.

Challenge

Biggest Challenge And Our Journey Of Overcoming

The issue we encountered was that the live amount was credited to a dummy PayPal account as we used live PayPal credentials in the development build.

We resolved this issue by separating the live and production Gradle files and checking twice before generating builds. In the Gradle file, we created pre-defined build variants for development and production. Variants are used to create builds without changing any lines of code, both in development and production. In the build.config file of Android Studio, there is a feature called "build variant" that offers a block of code with custom properties. We defined two variants. 1st is a debug variant, and the 2nd is a release variant. We used some important configuration lines such as PayPal live secret key, Google API key, socket URL, API endpoints, and deep link critic URL.

Another issue we encountered was that if the user doesn't provide an email id while registering, it is not possible to identify the actual user in the following case;

1.When the user adds/withdraws money from a PayPal/ E-Wallet account.
2.When a buyer does not receive a product on time and contacts Raffle support to take action against the seller.

In order to resolve the issue of user identification, we implemented a logic that doesn't allow user to add/withdraw money from PayPal/E-wallet accounts without providing their email address.

For each project, our project team prepares a lesson learned document that describes everything from the issues we encountered to how we overcame them in order to be able to identify similar issues in the future, which will save time and help us to build more efficiently in each project across the whole company. In this case, we grew a lot by our challenges.

Special Moment

Most Special Moment In Our Journey

It is always a great opportunity to bring innovation to existing business models like E-Commerce marketplaces. Through Raffle we had the opportunity to transform the way buyers get their products through online Raffles in a Tinder way.

In a Raffle where sellers create a Raffle of their used products and put them on sale, buyers will bid 0,50€ for any product on the Raffle.

Jack, for instance, wants to sell his old smartphone. It's used but still functional and visually appealing. He wants 80,00€ for it. Jack will put the smartphone on the market for 80,00€. As soon as the seller's desired price has been reached, in this case, 80,00€ for Jack, the product will be Raffled off among all participants.

Petra wants to try her luck and has signed up for Jack's smartphone for 0,50€. In this specific example, 160 people have to bid on Jack's smartphone to start the Raffle.

The random function will be executed in order to find the winner. Petra was lucky this time and will receive a new, used smartphone through the Raffle – for just 0,50€!

This way sellers always get their desired price and get rid of the 'what's the last price' inquiries. Likewise, buyers are happy to have the chance to get a smartphone for just 0,50€.

Thank you for reading and joining us on our Raffle experimental journey where we successfully mixed the ingredients of E-Commerce, Raffle, Tinder, and our team’s out-of-the-box thinking. It will be exciting to see what we will mix next! 🙂