Marketplace for online bike-sharing

Project preview
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The German marketplace provides handy solutions for online bike-sharing by connecting B2C and C2C markets in over 50 European countries.

What we did
Business Analytics
Design
Front-end
Back-end
Audit
Mobile development
Support
Project preview

Background

List and Ride is a bike startup founded in 2016 by two avid cyclists from Germany and the Netherlands. The startup is a platform that connects cyclists around the world by simplifying the interaction of two-wheeled horse amateurs.

After the first release in 2016, the company focused on end-users to ensure smoother, faster search and payment of bike rentals. Nowadays, after scaling List n Ride target is bike-sharing, ease of integration, pays for the B2B segment. Precisely this fact has prompted the startup to add new functions to the platform already in 2019. As a result of collaboration with Faster Than Light, all B2B and C2C users are now able to offer and use bike-sharing services on List n Ride. The main offices' locations are in the cities of Germany. However, the website has already supported six languages, allowing uniting bikers from over 50 European countries with a single idea.
location
Germany
period
2016 - Present
tech stack
Ruby on Rails, Angular

Customer Request

Author icon
Hello, we are a small startup of 5 people with a great idea. We currently have a workable website version, which we are willing to refine for the user into a full-fledged platform with many new functions specifically for bikers. The current issue is users’ complaints about crashes. We need a reliable team that will get our idea, take our MVP as a basis, improve the technical and user side to ensure fast and smooth communication, and enable project scale.
Author icon
Hi. All right. First of all, we’d like to see everything from the inside. For this, we need to get access to a website and the source code. Also, we should review the marketing side of the project. After receiving all the information, we will provide you with complete and reasoned feedback: what and how to improve, what results from it will bring, what time frame we will implement it, and how much it will cost. We can transfer all communications to Slack for instant interaction between teams.

Challenges

  • Duration and disorganization of the IT process.
    The lack of technical documentation, a working procedure of making tasks and decisions led to confusion in the interaction of IT specialists and a slowdown in the development process.
  • Malfunctions and lack of necessary functionality.
    The lack of a system for monitoring problems and external testing led to difficulty grasping the causes of failures. Moreover, there was utterly no users’ feedback.
  • Lack of data on project progress and conversion.
    The tracking of project progress and its position was impossible due to the lack of integration with analytical tools and the technical obsolescence of the infrastructure.

Challenges

Challenges

Solutions

  • Alignment of IT processes.
    According to the Agile methodology with QA control, we created technical documentation. We established work processes, which allowed us to make a complete project roadmap that ensured the speedup of work as a result.
  • System monitoring and implementation of automated tests.
    Integration of 4 monitoring and testing services allowed us to identify and eliminate the platform pitfalls and cover over 75% of the functionality required by users.
  • Implementation of analytics, SEO and project scaling.
    The implementation of analytics and SEO helped us to see opportunities for scaling. As a result, we migrated the marketplace to the more modern platform with open source Angular code.

Solutions

Solutions
50

countries where bikes are provided

20k

cyclists have already registered on the platform

24

brands, which cyclists can test on the platform

22k

bikes requested on the platform

Main features

Intuitive admin panel and user account

The initial MVP did not have a system for uploading content in 6 languages, updating bicycle assortment, and administering user or customer data. As a solution, we implemented an adaptive administration system of 11 blocks to manage content without working with marketplace source code. We managed to automate content uploading and moderate information about users thanks to integrating third-party libraries and several plugins. Besides, we rewrote the notification system and two-factor user authorization with OAuth and SSL certificates and implemented user accounts' adaptability with connected automatic "smart" notifications. We added a password storage system and database hashing to ensure maximum protection of client information.

Intuitive admin panel and user account

Intuitive admin panel and user account

Payment form

Redesign and improvement of the payment form. There were failures in the payment interface, the complete absence of mobile payments, and the inaccessibility of many payment types. For that reason, users often "abandoned" their shopping carts. The FTL team redesigned the user payment form, fixed several bugs and glitches, and added many alternative payment types and methods, including integration with PayPal. Implementation of new payment channels through a merchant account, integration of 3D secure and competent simplification of the payment process through the platform up to just three steps, including creating a mobile form, increased the number of payments through the marketplace by three times.

Payment form

Payment form

Smart Booking Calendar

Users often confused about where they rented a bike, for what date, how and where to rent a bike. We developed a unique calendar to simplify the interaction between users and booking companies. Thanks to well-designed integration algorithms and the implementation of notification systems, including SMS mailing, users could easily find information about the bike in their account. Companies solved the problem of duplicating reservations, since all information about the model, term, a user was immediately captured in the calendar. The adaptability of the “smart” calendar for mobile devices also ensured the demand increase.

Smart Booking Calendar

Smart Booking Calendar

WordPress Bussines Integration

The project development slowdown was due to the lack of partnerships and integrations with B2B, which sought to be represented on List n Ride at no additional cost. The FTL team improved the platform for integrating with partners, expanded the architecture and interface, created plugins for the public WordPress Store, and training materials for quick and easy 2-minute integration with partner sites. Moreover, businesses could make payments through List n Ride based on their pricing with withdrawals to their accounts, which helped to attract about 30 new contracts, connect more than 1000 different stores and rental points, which significantly increased the demand for the marketplace in various parts of the world.

WordPress Bussines Integration

WordPress Bussines Integration

Our team experts

our team

Technologies

Frontend:

Angular
Angular Universal
TypeScript
Webpack
Angular Material
HTML
Bootstrap
Moment.js
Lodash
RxJS

Backend:

Ruby on Rails
Node.js
Express JS

Databases:

Postgres SQL
Redis

Tests:

Rspec
Capybara
Jasmine
Karma
Protractor

CI:

GitHub Actions

Customer review

Testimonial
play
Gert-Jan Van WijkCo-Founder List and Ride
Johannes StuhlerCo-Founder List and Ride

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