Eshka helps people sell and buy household items, cars & electronics, find professionals for current projects, and find tenants or housing for rent - all locally.
To post an ad or start browsing, just sign up - it's free.
We were approached by a customer in the Russian Far East who decided to create a local service exchange for the residents of his town and surrounding areas.
He planned to use it in his town and then scale to other regions.
Unlike other similar apps, Eshka allows users not only to search for the products on sale they need, but to place requests in "Buy" as well.
The Сustomer already had a design and prototypes.
We needed to write up a detailed project package and develop apps for iOS and Android.
Eshka consists of two large modules:
ads module (search, view, create, edit, elevate, pay, publish) and messenger module (chats, correspondence, media messages, blocking).
We chose our back-end solution for the ads module, while the messenger was designed based on Firebase services.
We have experience in using our own back-end solutions for a messenger, but it certainly requires organizing a sophisticated infrastructure for load balancing, backup management and cyber protection, as well as coordination of a whole software engineering team.
This would be more expensive for the Customer, so we chose ready-made Firebase.
Alexander Khrushchev, WINFOX Technical Director
The Firebase technology allows guaranteed messaging and does not require any significant costs at the initial stage of app launch.
The ads module does not depend on the messenger module and turned out compact, light and convenient for support and development purposes.
This section displays all the products available for purchase locally.
Add your request by clicking on the plus sign.
Users can view the products that other people sell.
Each product has a photo, short description and category.
Buyers and sellers chat in the app and do not need to switch to another messenger.
Users fill out their profile, including their name, phone, address, and photo.
We wanted to make the sign-up process as quick and easy as possible to encourage users to join. When you first log in, you only need to enter the verification code sent to the phone number you indicated.
In the new ad, you indicate the name of the product/service, their short description and price, and add a photo/video.
There is information about the person who posted the ad under it.
To make sure your ad is seen, you can elevate it to top for 30, 60 or 90 days.
This is a paid option which monetizes the app.
In the sections "Buy" and "Sell" you can view only ads from certain categories and regions, for example, household items from Ruza.
You can also filter ads by location or price.
By specifying their location, the user will see ads from other people who are nearby.
Alexander Khrushchev, Technical Director, WINFOXThe location in the app is connected to counties. However, there is no convenient and reliable service for detecting a user's area (not region or territory in Russia). Thus, we downloaded the boundaries of the counties via Yandex services and calculate user's area using the most common algorithm for point in polygon testing.
We developed a service that allows people to sell and buy goods and services, and the Customer monetized it.
Now, Eshka needs active development, scaling to other regions, new options and features which will make it stand out amongst its competitors.
Valery Sorokin, WINFOX Project ManagerThere are many online services built as a service exchange. Using technical solutions that proved themselves well in this project, we can quickly adapt this service to various areas or markets and produce similar applications for other companies.
Project Manager
Valery Sorokin
Technical Director
Alexander Khrushchev
Developed by
Edgar Tomasov & Renat Galyamov