Live in Taiwan
the best free classified ads platform for people who live in Taiwan

Development of a classified ads platform

Industry: Classified ads platform

Services: Web design , Web programming

Country: Taiwan

Tags: Laravel, automation, user roles, Google map API, web application

Live in Taiwan is an online platform aiming at providing non Chinese speakers living in Taiwan with a place to buy miscellaneous goods, look for a place to live in, seek job, and participate to events.
The platform, launched in June 2019, already features about 1400 classified ads, mostly in the housing section of the website.
We've been working with Live in Taiwan on the development of this complex web application.

Challenges

01Developing a scalable web application that can evolve along with the popularity of the website and offer 3 user roles: Buyer, Seller, and Admin.
02 Creating a solution to automatically post classified ads from professional advertisers.
03 Working on an interactive map that shows results based on user search and filters selected.

Solutions

01Taking into account the need for scalability and customization of the platform, we decided to develop the website front and backend from scratch based on a PHP framework called Laravel.
02 We wrote a script that scans partnering professional websites to automatically generate ads on LIT web application.
03 We worked on Google map API to develop an interactive map locating all the registered accommodations which would automatically update based on the search/sort/filter options selected by the user.

Benefits

01The web application is at the center of the company's activity: It was made fully scalable so that the company’s growth would not be restrained by the platform capabilities.
02 Feeding content to the website is one of the main challenges a classified ads platform has to face. Thanks to the script we developed, posting content is now easy and straightforward for professional advertisers, resulting in a strong increase in the website’s number of up-to-date ads.
03 With more than 1200 accommodations available on the website, it was crucial for LIT to have an interactive map that offers sorting/filtering options. Since the map has been implemented, LIT has seen a significant drop in the bounce rate and an increase in requests to the landlords who posted ads.