The LastBit Journey

LastBid is a marketplace for auction houses who want to give the unsold items a second chance. The primary challenge of auction houses is that a 100% sell-through rate is exceptionally unusual. Up to 30% of all auction houses bids remain unsold. At the same time, the auction house could not decrease the price merely to sell the lot, or it could not receive the commission. The LastBid team to solve this problem decided to develop a two-sided marketplace, which offers unsold lots to a worldwide audience of interested bidders online.

In the primary stage of the project, the client has faced the following business and technical challenges:

1. Buyers are increasingly selective with their purchases. Sophisticated bidders are looking for an exact match for the requested parameters set.

2. A tedious sales process involves negotiation and validation. Strict security requirements need to be met to prevent any circumvent attempts and keep all the conversations within the embedded messaging platform.

3. A high volume of incoming requests and messages on the seller’s side needs to be categorized, updated and timely processed.

4. Replicating a vibrant atmosphere of a fashionable auction event on the premises of a digital salesroom requires a personalized user experience. Impeccable customer journey and experience design ought to ensure a high rate of returning customers.

5. A complex sequence of simultaneous events on the website backend is triggered by a single user action which demands consistent information architecture.

The client decided to work with us because of the necessary e-commerce development experience under our belt. Also, we have offered the most suitable and cost-effective ideas to face customer challenges.

Our Solution

LastBid hired our team to build a custom two-sided marketplace. The LastBid website needed to feel like a real auction where buyers have a limited amount of time to make a bid and buy the item. Another customer's requirement was to create a user-friendly and safe website, which allows sellers and buyers to communicate within the site while bidding on a particular item. Also, the future online auction needed to include advanced search filters to help buyers find precisely what they are looking for.

Results We built the two-sided marketplace with auction features from scratch. The final product meets initial customer requirements, including advanced search capabilities, a tailor-made messenger and complex sequence of simultaneous events from the back-end. LastBid also offers a streamlined billing process and a user-friendly interface.

Client Testimonial “It is important to find a team that will understand how the end product would look and feel. I actually enjoyed the team's vision. Thanks to a deep understanding of marketplace development, the team performed the best results. Even though my project was not the simplest one, Dinarys developers offered the most suitable solutions for back-end and front-end. By applying current technologies, the team showed care about the marketplace usability for both sellers and buyers”.

Erik Klinkovich CTO at GetCider