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I used to consider myself a hoarder, and I still have bits from my first computer, an old school diary, and a slew of other items that my parents dismissed as rubbish Letgo. My challenge was letting go of old items while still wanting newer ones, which resulted in storage concerns. Although my father would gladly recycle those items, I knew that a lot of what I had was still usable—and that I could swiftly sell it to someone who needed it.
When I couldn’t find purchasers among my friends, I went to the internet, using sites like Craigslist and mobile apps like Offerup and Letgo. In the first week, I sold a lot of my items, including my old CRT TV, which someone wanted to use as a security monitor! After I sold most of my old items, I realized how much space these things took up!
Are there any popular local buy and sell apps?
Entrepreneurs are drawn to discovering solutions to common problems, which is why applications like OfferUp, LetGo clone, OLX, and Quikr exist. The customer-to-customer or C2C vertical, which operates in the $3,284,927 million e-commerce market, is growing at a robust CAGR of 5.3 percent. Furthermore, C2C purchase and sell applications are benefiting from user penetration rates of around 50%. In Q3 2020, the user traffic of major US-based C2C or buy and sell apps surpassed 28 million, indicating a solid growth trend that is expected to continue.
What is the process for buying and selling apps?
The popularity of buy-and-sell applications like OfferUp and Letgo can be attributed to their simplicity and ability to enable consumers swiftly buy and sell what they desire. This is how two-way apps work:
Sellers take photos of items they want to sell and write a description for them. Using filters, the listing is added to the relevant category for the product.
Buyers looking for those items will find them in their search results, where they can use similar criteria to get what they’re looking for.
They can ask boilerplate (pre-set) questions, negotiate the price, and buy the merchandise straight from the seller once they’ve seen the seller’s ad.
The following is a list of some of the most popular buy-sell apps.
There are dozens of buy-sell applications on the market today, but not all of them are popular with clients. Here’s a rundown of the top 5 buy-sell applications available right now:
eBay
Everyone is familiar with eBay, the world’s largest online marketplace, which was launched in 1995 as AuctionWeb. The app, which has roughly 200 million users globally, allows users to sell through auctions or fixed-price listings. As sellers are contractually compelled to sell the item if there is a winning bid, this allows vendors to earn the maximum possible price for their product and buyers to spot a bargain when they see it. The sale of a $168 million gigayacht designed by Frank Mudler made headlines around the world, making it the most expensive object ever sold on eBay.
Collective Vestiaire
Vestiaire Collective is the most well-known C2C portal for pre-owned luxury apparel in the world. This app is extremely popular with individuals looking to acquire secondhand luxury products at inexpensive prices, with a year-over-year growth rate of 530 percent. Vestiaire Collective is extremely popular, with approximately 10 million active users and over 30,000 articles contributed each week. It made headlines when Dello Russo used their service.
services to liquidate her personal clothes collection at a discount. The site makes money by charging up to 25% in commissions per sale. Items sold are first shipped to the company for inspection before being shipped out to the buyer.
Letgo
Letgo started in 2015 as an app that made selling and buying things easier for the world. With over 400 million listings, 100 million+ app downloads and nearly $1B in funding, Letgo’s popularity caught the eye of their competitor—Offerup. OLX-owned OfferUp purchased LetGo in March 2020 for $120M. Letgo (now Offerup) makes it easy to buy, sell and look for items through their highly intuitive interface.
Offerup
Launched in 2015, OfferUp is a wildly popular buy-sell app and website duo with more than 24m visits every month. With a highly intuitive interface and a large user base, OfferUp is a part of the $1.21B OLX group. Offerup has designated community meetup spots that are unique to the app. Any long-distance transaction that involves shipping incurs a shipping fee and a 12.9% charge from offerup. The app acquired Letgo in March 2020 for $120M. Both companies access each other’s customers and bring nationwide shipping to Letgo users as a combined entity.
What tech stack should I choose to build apps like Letgo and OfferUp?
Although the options in the app world are nearly infinite, here is our pick on what you can use to create apps like Letgo and Offerup. Note that these are not the only technologies we work in, and decide the final tech stack during consultations with our tech team. We’ve sorted the tech stack according to the requirements of an app like OfferUp:
Development platform: This depends on whether you wish to launch the app on both the Play Store (Android) and the App Store (Apple iOS) or on one store to begin with.
Technologies for server-side development: You can choose between Express.js and Node.js to build server-side components of your app. Most of the background processing occurs at the server end, also known as backend development.
Front-end or client-side development: You use technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Bootstrap to develop the front end of your app. This interface is what your users will see when they open the app.
Web Frameworks: You can pick between Angular.js, Backbone.js or React.js.
Programming Languages: You can choose between Swift/Objective-C for iOS apps and Kotlin/Java for Android apps.
Database: Databases store persistent data such as videos, images, user profiles and more. You can choose from MongoDB or MySQL.
Cloud architecture: AWS
Payment integration: Payment integration services facilitate online payments. You can pick from Braintree, Stripe and PayPal.
Web server: Web servers serve web pages and applications to your users. Popular servers include Nginx and Apache.
Other tools: You can pick from AWS S3, Confluence, Swagger and many more depending on the features you choose for your app.
Must-have features for your buy-sell app
Here are the most important features that your buy-sell app must include to be a hit with users:
Creating a profile
Creating profiles is essential to both buy and sell items. Additionally, you can keep track of your favourites and active posts through your profile.
Filters and categories
Filters and categorization help buyers search for items easily. Sellers require categories to place their products effectively so buyers can find them easily.
Camera
Access to the camera is vital for sellers to put up images of products they are trying to sell. Sellers can take a picture, add a description and post the ad!
Chat
Chat allows buyers and sellers to interact with each other, exchange quick notes and item pickup locations.
Advanced Search
The advanced search capability offers buyers a way to fine-tune their listing so they can narrow down the available results to their liking.
Geolocation
Geolocation is important for hyperlocal buy and sell apps such as Offerup. Users will see local listings that help them pick sellers from areas close to them, avoiding travel and shipping expenses.
Rating and feedback
Seller and buyer ratings are an excellent way to ensure that users stay away from fraudulent buyers and sellers.
Push notifications
Push notifications are essential for messages, price changes and other important updates from users and the app.
Delivery and shipping
Integrating logistics services such as delivery, shipping, and pickup allows users to send their product to the buyer in remote locations.
Payment integration
Offering a payment system completes your app by ensuring that buyers can easily search, negotiate, pay for, and deliver the item to their home with minimal effort.
Although the list of features in such apps can be endless, it is good to ensure that you include the must-haves so that your users love what you’ve made!
How to create an app like Offerup and Letgo?
Creating an app has many prerequisites. Here’s what you must do before you start developing your buy-sell local app:
1. Do a market analysis and a feasibility study
Understand what you’re trying to achieve and see if the market is ready for your app. If you have created something that has no need, it might not find favour with your prospective users. It is best to create an app that is both feasible and needed by the market. Your app must fulfil the underserved need of your customers.
2. Analyze your competition
If you are a first-mover in your vertical, you may need to work harder than the others to find takers for your app. With no one to turn to for inspiration, you must develop a truly innovative idea to make it big in the app world. Analyzing your competition is a great way to see what is lacking and how your app can fill those gaps, making it a win-win situation for you and your target group.
3. Think of monetization options
Figure out how your app can make money. An app is only viable if it can make money and sustain itself in the long run. A solid, sustainable business model will help you stay in business and keep your customers happy.
4. Finalize the initial feature set for your app
Finalizing features helps you to prioritize your development needs and find a team that can build them for you.
5. Find a suitable development partner or hire a development team
Hiring the talent you need is essential to creating the app of your dreams. With an experienced development company such as Volumetree by your side, you can rest assured that your app will be all that you wanted and much, much more!
6. Choose a tech stack
Choosing the right tech stack is essential. If you do not know where to begin, it is better to use the services of a world-class development company such as Volumetree so you can choose the best tech stack for the job.
7. Finalize metrics and business intelligence
Setting up data points and business intelligence channels for your app is essential to gather valuable insights about how your users are using the app.
8. Set up marketing channels
Setting up information and marketing channels is vital so that your stakeholders can stay in the know. These channels will help you build traction and find a community of your first users.
9. Customer service/ Support
Set up support systems so your users can contact you in case they run into a problem. You can have phone support, mail support or live chat within the app. You can also use this channel to figure out what your customers need the most from the app.
10. Maintenance/updates
Building an app is not the end of the game. Ensure that you proactively set up updates and maintenance cycles so that you can address any issues your quality team did not find in their tests.
