Creadoor - Marketplace
for Photo and Video Makers

About the project

Creadoor is an online marketplace connecting individuals and small companies with creative content producers such as photographers, videographers, etc. to help them promote their products or services.

“Creadoor aims to fill the growing demand of content creation from personal brands on social media. The expansion of the influencer marketing industry has opened up a gap for content creators to create professional content for those looking to start their own personal brand, and get their message noticed.”

Reade Owen, founder of Creadoor

The story started in London. The founder came up with an idea that could potentially help hundreds of service providers find the right contractors to create high-quality digital content for their websites, promotions, etc.

To bring this idea to life, he needed a strong tech partner. After analyzing our background and tech expertise, the whole marketplace development process was assigned to Clockwise Software.

What the client came with?

Reade Owen has certain experience in the creative industry and realized the gap: there was no local solution to connect brands that are in need of professional visual content with reliable contractors. The clients had to look for contractors on international platforms or hire freelancers without the particular specialization. Such cooperations were not efficient.

This is how the concept of Creadoor appeared. The idea of the founders was to implement location-based search to enable brands to partner with contractors in their area for more convenient and effective cooperation.

The founder came with the ready marketplace app design. The next step was creating an MVP web application. Also, our team has designed and developed a landing page to attract users. Clockwise Software took over both tasks.

Technologies we used

Angular

Laravel

MongoDb

Redis

Team

4 Software Engineers

Manual
QA Engineer

UX/UI
Designer

Project
Manager

The development process

Aiming to replicate the success of Fiverr, Upwork and other service marketplaces, our client has brought the idea of a complex application with dozens of features. The initial estimate for the development process exceeded 1200 hours but such an investment wasn’t reasonable at this stage.

After the market research and competitor analysis, we have reduced the functionality of the marketplace application up to a few core features. The focus was on testing the assumption with real customers before investing a big amount of money into development. As a result, the estimation was reduced by 800 hours.

We've adhered to Agile methodology with short sprints. This approach enabled fast delivery and efficient collaboration between the development team and the client.

The developed functionality

Our technical team has started the development of an MVP (minimum viable product). The application has two interfaces: the one for clients and another one for content creators (sellers). This approach is usual for online marketplace development.

The central feature of the application is the map with professionals offering their services. As a result, the client can choose a contractor in his neighborhood, which makes their cooperation more convenient.

The client can browse content creators and check their portfolio. After posting an order he can communicate with them directly in the chat. Once the deal details are negotiated, Creadoor charges the client and holds this sum in escrow. The creator sends the client photos or videos for approval.

To support fair cooperation, the app limits the resolution of content sent for preview. Therefore, the client can download the full version of photos or videos only after the project is finished and the content creator gets paid by Creadoor.

App’s frontend

The frontend of the product was developed using the latest Angular 7. The usage of Fuse template enabled us to reduce the development time and focus on critical marketplace features.

A lot of functional UI/UX blocks were implemented as modal windows and most of the features were accessible under the same route. Challenges with displaying modal windows on different screen sizes were successfully solved with the help of Sass. The solution we have chosen enables the modal windows to adapt to the screen size no matter the operating system.

Stripe was chosen for payment processing. One of the key reasons for implementing it in this project is holding the payment in escrow and transferring it to the service provider only after the order is complete. The feature was implemented with the help of Stripe.js

Instead of a custom chat, which would take a lot of time and money to build, we have employed Layer. This library was a proven decision due to convenient API both for frontend and backend.

Backend development

The core backend technology is PHP framework Laravel.

We’ve also used different types of databases to fulfill different tasks:

- MySQL to store user profiles, listings, etc.
- MongoDB enables geolocation-based search of projects and contractors
- Redis to store the tasks queue

The backend was implemented as a set of REST API. We have also used Apiary.io for API documentation. The developed logic of the application was immediately covered with the unit and functional tests.

Backend is completely covered with unit tests for easy future scaling.

Project outcome and future plans

Creadoor has already launched in London. As a result of tight cooperation, we managed to release the MVP in less than four months. Due to extensive testing, the app works flawlessly.

Hundreds of content creators and their potential clients interact with the application, test new functionality, leave their feedback.

At this stage, it is important to gather as many reviews as possible to understand the real market demand and keep developing the product to expand to other cities and countries.