Moovle is an Airbnb-like accommodation rental startup headquartered in Belgium.
Product: Rental marketplace
The scope of our work: Back-End, Mobile, project management
When we met our client, the Moovle project was in its idea stage with design. Sloboda Studio had to bring the idea to life and develop it into an MVP product.
We had to implement all the required features in a tight timeline of 1.5 months so that our client could present the solution to investors.
Our goal was to develop the core features, integrate the external APIs for listing synchronization, and implement the whole listing management mechanism.
The main distinguishing feature of Moovle compared to the other online rental platforms is the expanded functionality for real estate agents. On the Moovle platform, agents can not only create their own listings with accommodations but also import their properties from other real estate resources.
Besides, the real estate listings are enabled with full-text and map search systems.
To make it convenient for the users to search for a property through the listings, we implemented the full-text search feature and accommodation location.
The full-text search allows users to search by address the same way as they were using keywords.
The fuzzy search feature helps to find the required address even if they are not full or have typos. For example, if the user searches for accommodation only using the street name, the system will search this name through the property title, accommodation, or district description.
Thus the system shows all the apartments that are available in a particular neighborhood even if the address was indicated partly.
While searching, the customers are also able to see all real estate objects on the map.
The Moovle’s property management includes such features as:
Besides the standard features, the platform offers a neighborhood description of each listed property.
It is crucial for Moovle’s customers to know more about the Brussels neighborhood they are going to stay in. That’s why we decided to add a description of particular areas of Brussels. Once a user opens a description of a particular house or apartment, the system shows them the description of this area telling whether this is a decent location, what benefits it offers for the travelers, etc.
This feature provides users with a rich set of filters that gradually simplify the search process for the users. All they need is to click an appropriate filter (a type of accommodation, number of guests, etc.) and the system shows the matching results.
Besides, we placed the most popular categories of properties on the home page. Thus users can choose a category of “popular districts”, “studios” or “available now” and navigate to the appropriate listing.
To simplify the search, even more, we also implemented search personalization.
To make the process of searching for accommodation more convenient and easy, we implemented a search personalization feature.
Once the customers register their Moovle accounts, they are asked to fill in a small post-registration survey. The users are asked questions about their desired apartment like the type of accommodation (house, apartment, etc.), number of rooms, number of bathrooms, price range, parking availability, furniture availability, pet-friendliness, etc.
After filling up and submitting the questionnaire, the system applies all these filters for a user’s profile, so the next time the customer log-ins to Moovle all the filters are applied to the search automatically. And users get the notification if there is something new that falls with their search preferences. All the preferences can be changed inside the user profile.
Within the MVP scope, the client decided to implement the simplified version of the booking system.
We added the lead forms on each of the properties’ pages. As a result, when a user finds some accommodation suitable, he or she fills in a lead form. Right after a property owner gets a relevant notification.
To simplify the listing management for the real estate agents, we enabled integration with external real estate APIs so that the listings from those services are synced up with the agent profile in the Moovle app.
Due to a specific filtering system and the necessity to think of particular options, it was necessary to implement the full-text search so that it would be possible to apply all the filters the customers choose at a time. Put simply, the interaction between these two features was complex and our goal was to configure everything so that the search feature would work correctly.
Our team needed to create an MVP in less than two months to meet the deadlines to present an MVP to investors. To make it possible, we agreed on the list of the core features with our client and offer a simplification for the number of features.
As a result of Sloboda Studio’s work, the Moovle project idea was transformed into a working MVP just in 6 weeks and a customer pitched the product to investors.
All in all, we implemented such features:
April 2020 - June 2020
Alex, Project Lead
