Letgo is one of the most successful classifieds apps on the second-hand marketplace. Being one of the fresh startups, for now it has already mediated transactions costing $23 billion in total! Downloaded by 45 millions of users, mediating transactions for $5 million minimum weekly, it has grabbed the serious market share from Craigslist and Ebay, what means that the startup has good chances to beat these old players on the classifieds' e-commerce market. But the main thing is that this app is outstanding in easiness of the customer experience, intuitivity of the user interface, provides really easy sales, and with this all gains the outstanding popularity among the customers from different countries. And this is why many entrepreneurs, thinking on their startups, are interested in how to repeat the success of the Letgo application and build an app like Letgo. 
In this article you will find the information about:
- The main features of the Letgo application;
- The key technologies for the app's success;
- How to develop the similar app.
At the time, the Letgo project consists of:
The 2 apps – for iOS and for Android;
Website for the project and apps presentation.
Features of the app like Letgo
Many young entrepreneurs might be interested on how to build an app like Letgo. First of all, it should be cleared up, what features of the application made it successful. Letgo is recognized, first of all, thanks to its functions and their easiness in use:
- Registration It is extremely easy to register in this project: you can use either your e-mail address, or your Facebook account. Simply download the app from Play Market and choose one of the options.
- Selling. The application brings your to this menu just after the registration. Using this function is outstandingly easy, what allowed the app to be unique. The 'selling' function is about the screen with a camera, with the help of which you simply take a photo of the product you're going to sell. The Letgo system has the artificial intelligence mechanism, which recognizes your product by its photo and the category it belongs to automatically. That's pretty much it – all what you need to do is to write the price for the product and the description – but the latter can be done later, already after the classified is published. You can also see how many people looked at your classified by tapping the "More info" button.
- Buying. When you enter the name of the product you wish to buy, the app automatically shows the items near your location. You can filter the products by posting date, category or location. Then, after clicking on the photo, you can see the product description and click the chat button, whereafter you can have an online conversation with the seller.
But all those functions are quite typical for the applications of this type. The uniqueness of Letgo is in the technologies used for those functions successful implementation, and a couple of other things:
- Geotagging. The Letgo app differs from the competitors with the localization of its market. Of course, the user can specify the region he searches the product in, but first of all, the app searches for the offers available nearby. This makes the process of buying or selling items easier.
- Built-in chats. Right from the phone, without having to call, users can circumstantiate all the deal's details. Of course, such a feature makes the user experience a lot easier.
- Integration with Facebook. With this feature, the registration process is very easy. In addition, this feature adds opportunity to share one's classifieds with the friends on Facebook.
Successful sales at Letgo
Selling at Letgo is easy, but this doesn't mean that everything you sell will be sold successfully – certain rules of successful deals at the Letgo service exist. First of all, successful sale at Letgo is about a good flypage of the product. The product must look attractive, what means the seller must work on the photo. But the flypage should also be informative enough.
Another component of the successful deal is the communication between buyer and seller. The Letgo application provides in-built chat, with the help of which it is possible to specify all the necessary details and make arrangements for a meeting easily and fast.
Letgo also offers the search option, with the help of which it is possible to search through the names or categories of items, regions where they're available.
Another option which works for the customers' success – is geotagging. Letgo shows the products available near the customer. But you can also change the proximity radius. As many other apps of this kind, Letgo uses the Google Maps service. The maps are convenient and well-detailed for different regions. However, after some number of inquiries, the service becomes chargeable (not for the customer, but for the project).
Useful personalization
Localizations. If you plan to expand your project to other countries, you should think about the language support;
Push-notifications. It is a very useful option for customers, but you should remember that neither Apple nor Google do not guarantee the delivery of all the push-notifications.
Other important components of the system
The Letgo system stands mostly on one pillar – the photographs of goods. Developing the Letgo clone app, be ready to receive, store and process big numbers of photographs. Thus, you need to care about:
The servers where the photos will be stored;
Optimization of photographs. This option is the key one for the whole system work. In order to make the work of the app fast and flawless. For this you should provide the right architecture of the photo storage, as well as optimize the photos' sizes;
The web component. Unlike the Letgo app, your project can have the web-panel and the web version. On the one hand, it will allow you to engage a bit more people to your project (as not everyone is dependent on mobile devices and there are people who use only computer for such things), on the other – you will have the convenient means to manage the project. With the help of the admin web panel you will be able to sort and block users, monitor and filter classifieds, manage finances, manage promotional actions.
What is the right system architecture?
The Letgo-like application is about working with big volume of data. All the time the new users appear, along with their classifieds, and every classified is about a photo, and if it's of high quality what is desirable, it means it's not about the small size. The fast work of such a system is possible only when there's the good data architecture on the server. The good data architecture means that the data is well-structured, according to the databases inquiries structure: which data is used often and which is not.
The system architecture can be divided into 4 parts:
The databases' servers;
The back-end part;
The front-end part ( the system management panel);
Mobile apps.
Thus, the mobile app – is only a part of the big system, and to provide its quality work, the thorough work on the rest parts of it must also be done. The system elements 'communicate' with each other with the help of API, which is developed together with the rest parts of the system.
Another very important thing to provide the fast work of the app is the app nativity. The app interface should be intuitive for a user, and this will provide fast success of the app. The nativity means that, while developing the app for iOS, the app interface should be designed according to the iOS guidelines, and designing the app for Android – the Android rules should be followed.
Before the start of works
Before the decision on the start of the app development, you need to answer the next questions:
How much money you will earn with the project?
What will cost to engage new customers?
How the customers will use the app?
How much does an app like Letgo cost?
To answer the questions above is important also because the development of such applications requires the serious investments of time and money. Speaking about the time expenses, to develop an app for one platform (iOS or Android) will require from 150 to 340 hrs. Speaking about the price for the product development, - it depends on the level of the developers' professionalism and on their country of origination. Hourly rate of a developer from the US is between $100 and $250, while a senior developer from Eastern Europe takes from $40 and $70 per hour.
