Buuyers

Location:

United States

Partnership period:

2019

Industry:

Various

Technologies:

Laravel, Python, Elasticsearch, Javascript, Application, Infrastructure Modernization, Containers, DevOps, Security Management, Cost Optimization, Data & Analytics,

Team Size:

3 Frontend Developer, 4 Backend Developer, 2 Database Engineer, 1 DevOps Engineer

Competitive Environment

As consumers flock to online platforms enabling effortless price and seller comparisons, research shows over 63% now conduct extensive evaluations before committing to major purchases according to Pew Research. However, the inability to validate recommendations poses a major pain point. Between deliberately skewed brand sponsorships and the proliferation of fake reviews, buyers consistently struggle to get transparent guidance to earn trust. Surveys by Score.org indicate less than 15% of consumers perceive online ratings as credible reflecting the extent of doubt.

Our client envisioned a community-driven review site connecting verified consumers and service professionals to cultivate knowledge sharing. By focusing on candid B2C and B2B experiences spanning contractors, artists, consultants, and more verticals, the platform aimed to disrupt isolation and information asymmetry.

Problem Statement

Mistrust toward manufactured ratings presented a clear market gap for transparent, validated reviews. Buyers lacked visibility into provider work quality outside informational brochure websites. Without an independent networking platform, seasoned professionals struggled to be discovered by prospective customers amidst directory listings of thousands. Marketing funnels lacked qualified inbound interest despite extensive credentials.

Our client projected that nearly 82% of searchers did not convert to purchases due to the inability to evaluate options accurately. Providers fared even worse, with consultation rates less than 5% of traffic to directories. Research made evident the divide between visibility and viable engagement.

The finding became obvious - develop a dedicated application where members could share authenticated B2C and B2B reviews spanning contractors, artists, consultants, and more.

Solution and Objectives

Our guiding vision focused on nurturing trust, visibility, and connections between service seekers and providers through transparency. We defined targeted success metrics across stakeholders:

Consumers
Enable informed decisions through 200 million words of reviews annually
Provide consumer advocacy saving over $845 per Davison on average

Service Professionals
Drive $16 billion in referral revenue by matching buyers with best-fit sellers
Save SMBs an average of 105 days of marketing costs acquiring each new customer

Investors
Produce gross margin over 42% through verified lead generation marketplaces
Realize 2.6x multiple on engaged community-driven assets

Partners
Cultivate data-driven insights improving decision-making for 80 million purchasing advisors
Tap authenticated NPS feedback sparking 80% of product enhancements

Employees
Become the most ethical place to share reviews and refer businesses with 91% of employees willing to recommend to friends and family

Policy Makers
Shape perspective of 450 advocacy groups through constructive analysis
Lead standards preventing bias in algorithms recommending opportunities

Society
Fund $750,000 in continuing education grants through enabled economic mobility
Foster inclusive information access across demographic groups

Technology Planning

Architecture
Developed network diagrams encompassing security zones, hardware layouts, communication flows
Documented stack from operating systems to infrastructure services, middleware, apps/data layers
Completed risk assessment addressing OWASP Top 10, malware, insider threats
Evaluated and selected cloud hosting providers balancing compliance, jurisdiction, and cost

Development
Initialized modular microservices-oriented code repositories centered around Laravel and React
Outlined domain models spanning members, groups, search, reviews, and messaging entities with supporting data stores
Designed REST APIs aligned to core workflows of member search and community feeds
Built automated unit test coverage templates integrated into the CI/CD pipeline

Content & Data
Created moderation taxonomy and rules schema to categorize objections
Seeding script for 100K QA labeled reviews to train deep learning classifiers
Open-sourced Scraper assimilating 30M online ratings for search relevance tuning
Statistical analysis measuring inter-annotator biases establishing consensus baseline

With direction setting completed, our distributed teams followed proven Agile rituals to incrementally deliver capabilities leveraging Laravel and React tech stacks.

Phases

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Conclusion and Results

Within 8 months post-launch, Buuyers achieved:

Members
22,000 registered personal profiles
1,500 accredited advisor businesses showcase

Content Velocity
46,000+ pieces of original reviews and insights

Traffic
1.8 million organic impressions from search

Engagement
6X more leads and 4X profile views for top-rated providers
2.8X increase in sellers offering exclusive Buuyers promotions

Economic Impact
Enabled $7.2 million in referred revenue between successfully matched parties
Before Buuyers, over 38% of professionals struggled to acquire new clientele despite extensive industry credentials. Consumers battled assessing skill sets across crowded directories of service listings.

Member Impact
“As an independent consultant offering global taxation strategy services to emerging technology companies, Buuyers enabled my boutique practice to qualify inbound interest from serious buyers – driving a 22% lift on sales converted from high-quality leads.”

Key Challenge

Balancing open review sharing while governing appropriateness posed initial platform governance obstacles. Introducing granular flagging workflows coupled with both human and AI-assisted evaluation of objections became instrumental in nurturing community standards. Training adjudicators on tone analysis and facial recognition helped accurately decide complex cases spanning ethics, conflicts of interest, and local jurisdictional considerations.

Preventing Balkanization through proactive nurturing participation from underrepresented specialties took considerable effort. Business development staff helped coordinate AMAs and drive challenges by location and vertical to incentivize diverse sharing. Ongoing segmentation analysis also informed strategic partnerships like trade conferences to fill visibility gaps.

Next Steps

With solid market validation, our ambitious roadmap calls for enhancing personalization through:

Verified ID badges for licensed professionals via blockchain attestations
Commission model valuing high-effort referrals based on outcomes
Deeper CRM and payments integration modernizing customer management capabilities
Proactive recommendations leveraging implicit signals like chat conversations powered by machine learning
Expanded mobile capabilities including onsite photography evidence capture and augmented annotations

Buuyers

Buuyers

Competitive Environment

Problem Statement

Solution and Objectives

Technology Planning