Helping Classified Ads Business Go Digital

Download Case Study: Digitisation of a Classifieds Business

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The customer realized that these older workflows and the existing systems were not enough to support a viable digital business, and contracted First Line to build a completely new classifieds website.

Customer

Our customer is one of the oldest advertising publication in existence. It started out as a primarily classifieds-driven paper, to be later transformed into one of the leading classifieds online portals in the country.

Challenge

Originally, the customer’s product offered to the public was the classified ad space in the paper, and when they first launched their website a number of years ago, clients – individuals and businesses like – had the option to have the ad also placed online at an additional cost. The customer realized that these older workflows and the existing systems were not enough to support a viable digital business, and contracted First Line to build a completely new classifieds website.

First Line’s solution

In order to enable our customer’s strategic pivot towards a “web-first” strategy, and the eventual abandonment of the print in favor of the online classifieds business, our team designed and implemented a brand new website that automated the entire lifecycle for buying, creating, and managing classified ads online. A user could now create an account, decide on a category where they would like to place their classified ad, create the ad, and submit it to the editors. After going through the moderation process moderated, the ad would be published. Apart from placing free classified ads, users also had their choice of various paid promotional options: larger size ad, color highlighting, enhanced search results, etc.

The solution also had to meet the customer’s strict performance requirements: the site was supposed to be able to handle 100,000 unique visitors and 2 million views daily, and up to 100 requests per second at peak load.

An innovative feature implemented by First Line’s engineers was the video classifieds: in addition to images, users could now attach videos to their ads. We implemented developed a specialized video transcoding engine (developed earlier for another project for the same company) to serve video streams to users, dynamically optimizing bitrate and quality to the available bandwidth.

To enable stores that carry large nomenclatures of goods to do business through the site, our team implemented an API for bulk upload. Another key feature was the integration with Yandex for PPC advertising, so that ads placed on the site would also automatically appear on Yandex.

Results

Thanks to the collaboration with First Line’s software engineering team, the customer was able to completely modernize its business model and focus exclusively on the online classifieds business, eventually discontinuing the print edition. The site is now among the top 3 classifieds portals in the country.

Team size: 3
Total effort: 35 person-months.

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Client References

I want to express my gratitude for all of your team’s hard work, support and extra help. We are very grateful for all that you have done for us.
Senior Project Manager, a U.S. specialty digital design and web development agency

Your quality of work is exceptional, and your flexible approach has allowed us to build and deploy a large amount of complex functionality in a very short space of time. Kudos to everyone for their professionalism and for delivering results that exceeded our expectations.
CEO, leading social media analytics provider

We have never had a better release that we can think of. And that is all because of your hard and dedicated work. So here is a big THANK YOU to everyone from all of us!
Editor, leading Scandinavian newspaper

For a software vendor like ourselves, picking the right development partner is crucial. First Line’s technical expertise and solid project management, coupled with their proficiency in Agile methodologies, have made them an integral part of our product development group.
VP Product Development, leading enterprise software vendor

Our First Line Team has been doing a great job. All of the guys check in great code, and they have a forward thinking mindset, not a feature-to-feature approach. They are also very open in terms of sharing knowledge, which is critical to running productive distributed teams.
Application Development Director, global marketing company

We've all learned a lot from you, and it is great working with you.
Application Development Director, global marketing company

The First Line team has an excellent process and we can learn from your team and improve.
Product Owner, Strategic Software Consultancy

I would like to thank the First Line development team for their dedication and high level of quality in their work. Despite being thousands of miles apart, we have been able to work quickly, effectively, and intelligently. Your team has been a major part of why we have been successful thus far.
VP Engineering, e-learning startup

First Line is a great technology partner capable of delivering complex, ‘industrial grade’ projects. They have demonstrated strong technical competence and solid understanding of the media and publishing domain. We have also been very impressed by the management team's attention to our needs and commitment to our success.
CEO, leading European digital media company

Your effort is the #1 reason that this project is going so well. I've worked with a lot of teams over the years and there are very few teams that I trust and respect. When you are given a task or feature, I never have to worry whether or not it will be accomplished on time and I never worry about the quality - you always deliver.
Architect, Strategic Software Consultancy

The team we put together in the last half of this year is one of the most productive, skilled and enjoyable I’ve ever worked on. It’s great to see the product brought to life, and I’m proud to work with all you folks.
Senior Architect, Fortune 100 company

The First Line Software team is professional, results driven, and proactive. I know that when we provide requirements for new functionality, they will not only deliver on the scope of what has been asked but will look beyond and give insight into how we can make our product even better. It has been a privilege to work with First Line Software, and I look forward to continuing our partnership in future.
VP, global marketing company

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