Mobilunity Sales team received a request to build a marketplace specifically for designers, based on social networks API integrations with detailed category search of portfolio showcasing, that will allow users to: - use automatic search in Dribbble, Pinterest and Behance based on tags, keywords, creative fields, tools, relevance and different word frequencies; - look for vendors on social media; - generate clusters of potential vendors for their projects; - review their competencies, projects, expertise; - monitor jobs, their previous clients, and their connections (if registered); - offer their services and update their profiles on all social networks at once; - filter projects in the software itself; - get regular updates on the latest projects. Mobilunity carefully examined the features of three platforms and defined major functionality and capabilities of appropriate marketplace website. Thus after considerable market research and business analysis the developers and designers composed wireframes and user-friendly marketplace platform, which is now highly functional and is built for sophisticated business purposes. Build your marketplace business model! Use all-inclusive full-cycle web development at affordable rates! https://mobilunity.com/contact-us/

1. MARKETPLACE DEVELOPMENT
CASE STUDY
A story of building an integrated with numerous
design communities marketplace for designers.
Note: due to the NDA signed with the client, industry and specifics of the business model were changed in
this case study. All technical specifications, problems and solutions presented below are real.

2. 2
PROBLEMProject Team
2 Backend Developers
Frontend Developer
UI/UX Designer
QA Engineer
Project Manager
Finding a job as a designer is not an easy task, in
such situation one is likely to use huge employment
sites such as LinkedIn, CareerBuilder and Job.com or
other more niche-specific job search websites. This
process can be an arduous one, as some issues
might appear while using both types of platforms. It
happens that on websites similar to Job.com job
openings are not regularly refreshed and users are
not provided with the abilities such as detailed
category search or portfolio showcasing. While
employment websites concentrated on certain niche
do offer such functionality, they at times have limited
database of employers and employees being not
very popular, tend to be geographically prejudiced,
and often produce mediocre results.
CHALLENGE
Our sales team received an interesting request, to
build a marketplace specifically for designers which
has the potential to become a perfect solution to the
troubles that plague the typical job search process.
The main aim of this project was to create a
marketplace for designers based on social networks
API integrations that will allow the users to:
use automatic search in Dribbble, Pinterest and
Behance based on tags, keywords, creative fields,
tools, relevance and different word frequencies
look for vendors on social media and generate
clusters of potential vendors for their projects
review their competencies, projects, and expertise
monitor jobs, their previous clients, and their
connections (if registered)
offer their services and update their profiles on all
social networks at once
filter projects in the software itself and get regular
updates on the latest projects
“Marketplace was one of those tasks
which seem to be hardly feasible at a
first sight. But once we got deeper
into the matter, it became clear that
this was the chance to integrate and
use all skills and experience we
acquired in multiple previous
projects. At the same time
development of the Marketplace
website let the team enrich our
expertise and find lots of new IT
solutions”
Marina, Project Manager
Technologies used
Redmine
Trello
Node.js
Angular.js
Sails.js framework
MongoDB
Stripe
ElasticMail API
OneAll plugin
Photoshop (it is used for all our
designs)
Invision

3. 3
THE CASE STUDY
The team carefully examined the features of three
platforms - Dribbble, Pinterest and Behance - to get a feel
for the existing features and what those platforms may
lack in certain areas. These are the abilities provided for
users by the above-mentioned design platforms:
MARKET RESEARCH &
BUSINESS ANALYSIS
Feature Dribbble Behance Pinterest
View the pieces of work and projects
Purchase pieces of design
Find designers by different criteria
Find design communities
Team up with other designers
Learn about, host or participate in the meetups
Blog
Find a job
Post a job opening
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Around $300 - $400
per job
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Starting with $399
per job per month
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TECHNICAL
REQUIREMENTS
As soon as we defined major functionality and
сapabilities of the marketplace website, our Project
Manager started writing technical requirements for the
website development project and creating user stories.
The designers got down to composing wireframes. At
Mobilunity we use various tools for project planning and
tracking, including Redmine and Trello.

4. UI/UX DESIGN
As this is a platform meant to be used by designers, the
design of the marketplace was given special attention to,
for it was clear to us that even the slightest
inconvenience would be immediately noticed. At the
same time the website is highly functional and built for
sophisticated business purposes, so our design team
made it as user-friendly as possible. The final design was
created using Photoshop, and implemented using
InVision, a multi faceted prototyping tool.
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5. To optimise and speed up the development process our
backend developers decided to use a JavaScript runtime
Node.js. This platform can be integrated with numerous
modules and frameworks that help to code the backend
of any website faster and make it less prone to defects.
The backend team was tasked at implementing the
following capabilities into the website:
Account
Create an account
Sign in with email address, or social sign in via
Behance, Pinterest or Dribbble, in case one has an
account on these platforms
Choose a membership plan (Free, Premium or
Enterprise account)
Search engine
Keyword search
Filter based search
Continuous criteria-conditioned automatic search
Mark profiles as favorites
Add profiles to blacklist
Communication
Private chats (vendor-employer/ admin-employer/
admin-vendor)
Collective chats (employer-team of vendors)
Tech support chat
Payment management
Escrow pattern implementation
Integration with Stripe billing operator
Automated data management
Creation of profiles and inserting them into a database
Compilation of top designers list
Algorithm for search of profiles meeting set criteria
Employer specific features
Job opening publication
Job opening promotion for extra fee
BACKEND
DEVELOPMENT
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6. Backend Integrations
Platforms integration
Since the marketplace was planned to pull data from three resources at once - Behance,
Dribbble and Pinterest - our developers utilized the relevant APIs and managed to meet all
the requirements and limits set in the guidelines. As all of the above mentioned APIs’
responses are returned in JSON format the team decided to use one of the best databases
for storage of JSON format data - MongoDB.
Social login
It was planned to equip the marketplace with the social login function, so that the users
don’t have to waste time entering lots of data, and could instead use their existing accounts
on Behance, Dribble or Pinterest to sign up for the marketplace website. For this purpose
OneAll plugin was used, which provides a social login service. The trick was that this service
worked only with Dribbble and Pinterest, therefore, integration with Behance had to be done
customly via API.
Billing system integration
To ensure the secure financial interaction of freelancers and employers, the team
attempted to implement the escrow principle. Here we used Stripe - a software platform for
running Internet business, a perfect toolkit to enhance payment flows and facilitate
payments coding.
Designers’ work estimation
Price bid for executed work
Designer specific features
Apply for job openings
Upload portfolio from Behance, Pinterest or Dribbble
Admin specific functions
Approve creation of account
Locate terms & Conditions violations
Tech support
Settling disputes between vendors and freelancers
Make changes to Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions,
criteria of Tops creation, Fees & Charges
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7. For frontend development of the marketplace Angular 2
was used. This framework is a great aid for any frontend
developer, as it provides HTML templates for all elements
of website UI allowing for the use of special AngularJS
directives, that extend the HTML syntax making the user
interface more dynamic and expressive.
Angular: controllers, models (navigation menu, search
field, filters)
Forms: log in, sign up, retrieve password, post a
project forms etc.
Push notification widget
FRONTEND
DEVELOPMENT
Due to the intricate structure testing marketplace was
not a simple task. As it was made for three categories of
users who are likely to use it in different ways, it had to
be tested to account for the multiple functions that it
offers. Along with having the testing process well
documented in test plans, test cases and bug reports,
special attention was given to testing of the search
engine, payment forms and security in order to prevent a
negative user experience associated with security
breaches and sensitive data leaks. After proper testing,
bug fixing and regression testing, the marketplace
website was released.
TESTING & BUGFIX
https://mobilunity.com sales@mobilunity.com
Do you plan to build a marketplace for your business?
We can offer all-inclusive full-cycle web development at affordable rates.
Get in touch to discuss details!
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