Segoflats: We Built an Advanced Web-App for Segoflats!

About the Project

Segoflats platform was built with a focused mission – to provide students in Segovia – Spain, the fastest and most intuitive way to find their dream apartments. The idea of Segoflats came to the founders when they struggled to rent an apartment for their study time in Segovia. With the purpose to help non-Spanish students avoid this unpleasant experience, the founders of Segoflats decide to use the power of technology to modernize the apartment rental industry in Segovia and hold an ambition to expand the service nationally within the upcoming months. More than that, they wish to bring a seamless experience for students who are looking for rental apartments.

With this great mission in mind, they quickly started the development of Segoflats with a small internal team. However, the big dream of providing the best user experience to people who use the platform exceeded their initial resource. Realizing the technical challenges, the young and ambitious CEO of Segoflats – Erik Ojantakanen came to Aurora Digital to extend Segoflats’s tech resource.

With the help of Aurora Heroes, in less than two months, we were able to deliver a feature-rich web app that not only met Segoflats’ requirements but even exceeded their expectation.

The Challenges

Create a robust housing platform wasn’t an easy task. Our client – Segoflats – wants to make lives easier for their users by providing as many useful features as possible. The platform should act as a marketplace which allows users to put up listings with texts & images and then, enable visitors to directly book apartments, schedule a visit or view the apartments on the platform. The platform also can smartly search for apartments by only listing those which match users’ inputs such as distance from the university, number of guests, number of semesters, type of house, size, number of bathroom, bedrooms and price. Adding to the complexity of the project, the timeline was very tight to develop the first MVP (minimum viable product) of the platform. In order to catch the incoming wave of students starting their studies in Fall, we had no choice but working extra hard to realize our client’s requirements.

The Solutions

With the limited time and limited budget that our client had for the initial phase of the project (i.e, to launch a robust MVP), we chose WordPress as a must-do solution (after an extensive evaluation of various pros and cons of different technologies). We then quickly assembled a team of Aurora Heroes to take on the project. A group chat was set which allowed all parties to easily communicate with each other. We then supported our clients 24/7 by answering their inquiries, fixing reported bugs and issues during and after the development period.

Within only two months, we were able to deliver a feature-rich web app that goes beyond our client’s expectation. In the following, we will list all features that we developed for SegoFlats platform:

• Social Media Integration: Users can sign up & log in with either their emails or their social profiles (Facebook & Google accounts).
• Advanced Filter Search: Search for the most suitable apartments using various filters: location, price range, academic semester, the number of bedrooms to the inclusive facilities (wifi, heating, electricity, cleaning etc.).
• Multiple Listing Views: A grid listing view or a visual presentation of property listing in the form of an interactive map. This will help users easily find and locate the apartment that suits their needs.
• Instant Booking System: This feature allows users to book an apartment and pay reservation fee in just a few clicks, without a manual approval from the landlord. This booking process was intentionally made simple in order to reduce any confusion or questions from the users. The process is automated behind the scene, thanks to a sophisticated and intelligent booking system that we developed!
• Schedule a Visit: User can also schedule to visit the property. They can choose up to three-time slots for their booking. In case, they have a question, they can choose to send a message to the landlord.
  Email automation system: All the email notification in and out is handled between different parties – the web owner, the landlords and the users. The email notification feature is very helpful to make the involved parties stay notified whenever a new user signs up, a new listing is submitted, a booking is confirmed, a user schedules a visit or a contact the landlord.
• A User-Friendly Admin Dashboard: An all-in-one dashboard that allows a seamless management of all functions. The Dashboard was made to help the admins and landlords easily update a user profile, see all listings, add a new listing, see the past bookings, manage invoices and manage messages.
  Stripe payment integration: All payments on the platform was handled through Stripe. We enabled Strips feature of two-step verification to allow SegoFlats team to manually verify payments to ensure safety for both the renters and the landlords.
• And of course, a few baked in features: Delivering more than what the customer expects and thinking ahead of time is our all-time motto. That’s why we always go an extra mile to produce future-ready features for our client. We baked in some useful features, making the platform ready for future expansion.