Rview - Online Marketplace Inspection App
Scott Blackbourn, Founder of Rview set out to solve key long-standing challenges with online second-hand marketplaces - whilst goods are accessible like never before, the second-hand goods market is plagued by scams and misrepresentation, making it difficult for buyers to trust sellers and vice versa. This lack of trust results in lost sales, wasted time, and frustration for both parties, hindering the growth of the market. Additionally, the geographical limitations of physical inspections create challenges for buyers seeking items in distant locations, restricting their purchasing options. The idea for Rview was founded, and Scott approached DDL to establish a MVP, built efficiently, using reliable and scalable frameworks to support ongoing growth and feature development.
Overview
Rview is an app that allows users to facilitate remote hands-on inspections and checks of goods sold through online marketplaces – it allows purchasers to buy with confidence, knowing that an item is as iti s described and that someone with the appropriate skills and knowledge to determine it’s condition has validated it. Scott’s vision for Rview was typical of many entrepreneurs – validing an idea, with the appropriate balance of cost investment, with features and benefits that drive adoption and support scalability. As an app that was to be created to essentially create trust between transacting parties, core design principles design called for financial security/assurance, reputation management and rapid communications to establish and agree requirements for reviews to take place. DDL designed the MVP of Rview, which is being released on the App and Play stores in the coming days.
The Challenge
Rview has to ensure it demonstrates trust to it’s own users through providing safeguarding of transactions, secure messaging and communications and certainty of user reviewers and reputation. These functional needs were balanced by having an MVP-appropriate budget, whilst still needing to ensure that the initial Rview features were going to be able to be extended on and enhanced as user adoption grew. As a non-technical founder, DDL worked with Scott to ensure that the requirements were well defined, a software requirements specification was developed and the solution architecture was appropriate to the use case.
Our Solution
DDL developed a cost-effective MVP for Rview, comprising of the following core elements; • Flutter codebase was chosen for mobile device-agnostic development with next.js being used as the web framework • Supabase was the chosen backend, for ease of Access, scalability and Access to inbuilt functions such as user authentication • Stripe Connect was integrated to support secure escrow payment processes so that funds are held safety and only released once both parties have received what they expected • Firebase messaging was chosen to provide in-app messaging between Rviewers and Purchasers • A full Zoho One ecosystem was provisioned to provide customer management, support services, digital marketing and usage analytics through a custom connection to Supabase via Zoho Flow
The Outcome
The MVP was created on-budget with a distinct web-app and native mobile apps and an enhanced UI that reflects Rviews evolving brand position. Rview is now positioned to grow it’s market presence with the assurance of having a reliable technical framework and functionality that assures it’s users of a solid foundation, and trust integrated into the platform as a non-negotiable priciple. Kia kaha, Scott – we look forward to watching Rview’s success.