Case Study: How We Created AYIO Social Business Platform

If you plan to build a project, you should first think about its benefit for future users. If they use your service with pleasure, it will be your profit and success. Our new customer has decided to provide users with a useful and necessary project where everyone can offer their services or make use of offered services. Meet AYIO service to hire a specialist in the field you need!

A customer from Switzerland contacted our sales department team and described his idea and what he wanted to create. He wanted to build a social business platform for people who are looking for professionals in different fields. Also, such service is known as a P2P service platform. As a result, one user can book certain services in their neighborhood quickly. For example, you have a faucet broken. You can find a special plumber service which may be more expensive, or you can use AYIO service to find a specialist in this field. Or you need an event manager for your birthday party. AYIO is at your disposal. But first things first.

AYIO service had to provide users with the following categories which customers and vendors may use to find a specialist they need:

• Human (beauty, health, fashion etc.)
• Living (food & Drinks, plumbing, household etc.)
• Mobility (car, rental, transportation)
• Leisure (music, travel, sports, dance etc.)
• Community (family, friends, events)
• Art (music, painting etc.)

Before launching web app development services to build the project, it is required to perform thorough planning and understand what customer wants to. A customer explained to our specialists that he wanted a simple service to find professionals in different fields. The main idea of a customer was to create a web version first, and then mobile clients.

It was important for him to elaborate an appropriate revenue model, build MVP with all must-have features, and also he noted that it would be better to add a feature with an introduction video. That is, each user will add a short presentation about themselves.

When have found out everything a customer needed to have in the application, we proceeded to research and analysis of the idea.

Analysis of competitors. We have conducted detailed research to find out what competitive services exist and what strong and weak sides they have. This information helps us create a unique product that will be strong enough to compete with existing solutions.

Analysis of payment systems. As new service envisages payments exchange, we needed to figure out what payment system is more convenient, what fees each system charges and which one is more appropriate on the whole. After our specialists have looked through the capabilities of three main processing systems like Braintree, Stripe, and PayPal, they chose a Stripe system where a custom payment account can be used. It makes it possible for users to automate funds withdrawal

Analysis of technologies. Our developers have studied the project particularities to compile the technology stack for the project. As the project is considered as a large freelance service for all popular platforms like web, Android, and iOS, it was decided to create back-end and front-end from scratch, use third-party services for mobile and web development. You can get acquainted with a detailed stack below. Each project requires an individual approach, and it allows developers to integrate the right tools.

Analysis of MVP features. In addition, our task was to single out basic features for a minimum viable product, so we needed to find out what features a standard P2P service platform includes. During the research, we have compiled the following list of MVP features that P2P platform should contain:

• Listings creation
• Search
• Chatting
• Payments
• Social sign-in
• Rating

Also, a P2P social business platform should always include an admin panel or a content management system (CMS). It makes it possible for a website owner to edit and manage content when necessary. Admin panel for AYIO marketplace includes such basic features like:

• create/delete/edit admins;
• review of critical statistics;
• review of user profiles;
• review of request details;
• chats with users;
• management of categories (delete/create/edit subcategories).

Analysis of revenue models. As for revenue model, our specialists have discussed it with the customer and it was decided to add a commission model. That is, it charges 10% of each deal and it makes it possible for a customer to get his profit. But in return users of AYIO get efficient interaction with customers and vendors, transparent service, they don’t need to spend money on advertising expenses, and so on.

The last step of a preparational stage was wireframes building where our UI/UX design services were utilized.

Also, requirements analysts have made a detailed estimation for a customer and he received wireframes and estimation to see how the service may look and how much it will cost.

Everything was approved, the contract was signed and the job has started.

There were 3 challenges we faced during the development process of AYIO and we had to deal with them as efficiently as possible.

We have successfully solved all issues above and proceeded to the most important stage - a development process.

The development process was interesting and time-consuming. Since service was targeted for all widespread platform like web, or Android, a development team included 15 specialists from QA, Android, web, UI/UX design departments, specifically the following:

• 3 Android developers
• 2 iOS developers
• 3 web developers (1 back-end and 2 front-end devs)
• 3 UI/UX designers
• 4 QA engineers

First, according to technical requirements, the development process was divided into sprints. A customer has chosen a Fixed Price model to cooperate with Cleveroad, and this model envisages software development by sprints.

After a meeting with developers from mobile and web departments, QA engineers, and designers, we allocate the time for each sprint depending on the complexity of each feature development. In the estimated time we always add possible risks in case if the development of a certain feature will require more time during the process.

When each sprint was completed, we have sent it to the customer for his detailed review.

AYIO web version was the first in priority that should be created since it was the main task. Our web developers used their strong skills to create a service of a high-quality level.

AYIO service provides all users with the features we have mentioned above. The development of such features like Search, Social, sign-in, Chat and Rating took a short period of time since our developers often apply their skills to integrate these features into other apps and websites.

It is much more convenient for admins or web owners to use CMS where they can manage the whole content by themselves. So our web developers create a custom content management system specifically for AYIo project to chat with users, edit user profiles, delete them or block if necessary and so on.

As the project was built for a few platforms, it required the utilization of many tools. Despite the fact we have indicated the main tools we used for features integration, Let’s check them out.

Back-end: Node.js 7 (JavaScript), WebStorm 2016.3.2, AWS EC 2, MySQL, Socket.io, Swagger

Front-end: TypeScript 2.2 (JavaScript), WebStorm 2016.3.2, Angular Universal

Third-party services for web development: Sprout Video, Amazon S3, Elastic Email, ElasticSearch

Tools for mobile app development: Swift 4.1.2, Xcode 9, Alamofire, Kotlin, Android studio 3.2.1

Mobile third-party services: Firebase, Stripe, Facebook API, Google+ API, Google Maps API, Google Places, APNS

Libraries for documents scanning and images picking: YPImagePicker, WeScan

Finally, the project was completed. Web, Android, and iOS app versions are available for today. It takes about 12 months of total development considering the following maintenance.

As for results, the app is already available in more than 100 countries and it has more than 200 users in beta testing mode. The matter is that the project has just been presented to the public officially in February 2019. And we expect AYIO service to gain its appreciative audience very soon.

We will keep on maintain the service and update it upon requests. Stay tuned and contact us if you have any idea that can be turned into great software! Also, mind to subscribe to our blog to read all interesting articles and learn more about our other case studies.