We live in a world, where companies and clients are engaging with each other every second. Companies are in a constant chase of gaining customers or clients while customers are looking for the best deals, choosing among many choices.
Discounts and deals may be the feature that makes a business successful. And you may wonder why is that? We all love to save money by purchasing our favorite items. Moreover, 91% of people confirm that they would repay a visit to a store or site after being offered a deal.
Disclaimer: The information and screenshots presented below reflect the website and/or application at the moment of its publication. Wiredelta does not have a maintenance agreement in place with this client, therefore all changes and updates that occurred after this date have been made by the client.
Why are deals sites so popular among customers? The answer is because customers are driven by the fear of missing out. We have all been attracted by purchasing a deal for half the price that we would otherwise not be able to afford. Mostly when we know that this deal comes with an expired date and then the price is too good to not be lured by. That’s how those sites work. This makes it a win-win situation where businesses see their profit flourishing, gaining new customers, sales increasing and on the other side customers feel accomplished and happy to purchase while saving some bucks.
Although deal sites can be the secret weapon of many businesses, in 2011 the deals sites started to suffer from their business models. Precisely, 2011 was the year where 798 deal sites saw their presence disappeared. Customers were buying but not as much as before. Customers who were engaging with deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial felt some kind of mistreatment from merchants as those were only notifying them when there were deals. So customers were not feeling appreciated and preferred to give up on those apps.
Despite Groupon recovered since then, it’s necessary to look at those examples to not repeat the same mistakes when building such sites.
Rappit
Rappit is a Danish startup with the ambition to build a deal site inspired by the success story of Groupon and Foursquare. Rappit was built under the concept where companies add deals customized to users’ tastes or past purchase behavior. All in mind to stay constantly engaging with clients accepting the deals. Rappit takes inspiration from Groupon in the sense that is focusing on location-based deals, providing opportunities to clients to get the deal without the need to commute far away from their current location.
The problem
In a market with such strong competition to find the best deal, Rappit needed a deal site that delivers speed, a smooth layout, and easy navigation through features.
As mentioned above, many sites have failed in the past. This is due, among other things, to the lack of sophisticated support where both buyer and seller can connect in a timely manner. The challenge was to boost deals in a timely manner, connecting merchants and clients at the same time. Also, bringing the user experience to the next level by enabling attractive features, linking to their social media, and organizing deals and transactions in an efficient way. Moreover, both public pages, and company panel should be responsive in a way that deals can be made from the smartphone in real-time.
Public pages refer to the website and app that users can access, and company panel refers to the company admin, where they can manage all the deals.
The solution
Rappit reached out to Wiredelta to start a project for Android, iOS, and website inspired by Groupon and Foursquare.
The website was divided into three panels: Admin panel, User panel, and Company panel. Therefore, the solution we build with Rappit is divided among these three groups. First, we built a web platform dedicated to the Rapitt’s team called Admin panel. Second, we created a company panel dedicated to businesses to manage their profiles on the site. Third, we created a user panel dedicated to end-users to experience the deal site.
We implemented all panels across all platforms, such as mobile application, available for Android and iOS and website.
Rappit Web
Rappit’s main objective was to build a platform where businesses like stores, shops, and others can create and bring their offers, deals, along with ads. All that in mind to engage clients and bring those offers to them in real-time.
Rappit landing page
Wiredelta made Rappit very easy to use and at the same time keep up professional. The Rappit landing page is simple yet sophisticated. Using simple colors, such as blue and white, to provide clean workspace and open space. As a result, companies are easily concentrated to find out all the information and join the website.
Rappit Company panel
The app was built for companies to access their web, add deals, delete deals, manage payments and have an overview of the relevant aspect of statistics.
When a company accesses the Rappit website, they have three options to choose to depend if it is their first time visiting the site. All in mind to provide a smooth onboarding to learn more about Rappit, and start building their profile.
Businesses have the option to add pictures, descriptions and also set both start and expiry dates.
Rappit Admin panel
Finally, for the Rappit team to manage everything, we made the Rappit admin panel to allow the Rappit team to manage all profiles from companies and users, working as CMS that gave Rappit full control of the usage of their applications.
Rappit Mobile
The app (Android and iOS) is built in Phonegap. The goal was to provide the users with a quick and easy overview of deals while on the go. Users can sign in either by entering their email address and password or login via Facebook.
To get started, the user has to login with either Facebook or Email and Password:
Once they are logged in, the app provides social possibilities for the consumers such as engaging in Facebook or sharing their deals with peers. Also, the mobile app has been built in order to enable user access to many other features such as:
- Deal types
- Add/Send/Share/Recommend functions
- Hide companies (unhide in settings)
- Favorites (deals and companies-directly notification)
The sophistication of the use of the mobile app has been met by displaying the deals into categories, hence users can easily navigate and find specific deals.
This feature allows users to recommend deals to friends or peers. For that reason when a user recommends a deal, the user’s friends see the recommendations on their newsfeed. What is even more exciting is that users can easily search for deals near their location with the ability to sort by nearest 1, 2, 5 and more kilometers. Also, under the deals, users can search the offers more appealing to their taste, such as bar/restaurant, shops, events and so on. So it is all organized to enable us to meet the user experience required.
Users can easily track the distance between their place and the shop or business they are looking into.
For new users, there will be an introduction guide, to explain all the items and Rappit features, all to make the users comfortable to use the app.
When the user clicks on the map, it will show the user’s location (the user’s city). Moreover, the map section has a dropdown from where the users can select a category. After a category is chosen the map will show the deals.
When clicking on the pin, the user will be directed to the company profile listing the deals offered.
Price and actual discounts are also displayed.
Technical infrastructure
For the admin panel, the team relied on NodeJS since they will use it for the front office as well. Moreover, PHP was the coding language chosen for this project. To understand better, here is the detailed breakdown of the exciting project developed by our team:
Back-end: node.js and ExpressJS
Data Layer: MongoDB and Mongoose
Tools: Grunt, Bower, and Browserify
Testing: Jasmine, Karma, and PhantomJS
Front-end: Backbone.js and Marionette.js
Conclusion
Creating a sense of urgency around a sale is still a strong and fruitful strategy. A strategy that allows businesses to grow quickly, make a profit and potentially create a loyal customer base. This same customer base will be the one driving your business, clicking on deals, following the notifications and referring to their peers and friends. All in all to fulfill the ultimate goal for such apps to bring as many followers as possible.
If used properly, a daily deal site can be the key to stand out from the competition. At Wiredelta we understood that user experience plays a huge role in this, along with a sophisticated and eye-catching design, to start attracting a flux of people to click on deals.
As well stated by Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO of LivingSocial, “Ultimately, it’s up to the merchant to offer a great experience so a member will want to come back.” With these lines, at Wiredelta we empower merchants by sophisticated features so they can be able to reach the desired audience and meet UX(User Experience).
If you also have an exciting idea or project that would greatly benefit your team or your users, don’t hesitate to contact us! Together we can bring your dreams into the digital world and revolutionize your world too. In the meantime, don’t forget to visit our website for more cases or your daily dose of tech insights.
