Swapit Update: A New Home

We’ve just updated Swapit again and this time with a big new revamp of Swapit’s home screen!

Get Your Swapit Update Today: http://get.swapit.la/now

Note: The crash that occurred on startup of Swapit on iOS in the last release has been resolved. Please get the latest version.

After several smaller changes in previous versions, Swapit’s latest update was a rather significant one. At least in terms of user interface and navigational entry points. We’ve been conducting extensive tests with our users, competition analysis and constantly collect feedback on the usage of Swapit. As a result, we believe this current change brings a lot of benefits to all users of Swapit.

New Home Screen

The new Swapit home screen has been carefully designed to offer easy to understand entry points to our Swapit marketplace. A few months back, we did introduce Quick Select to Swapit’s navigation. Now, we’ve basically blown up our Quick Select choices with beautiful pictures and a clear name, and we have extended them to cover more topics of interest.

As a result, it is now much easier to quickly jump right into a category that might of interest to the buyer who is browsing Swapit. It’s a quicker way to get to the product you’re really interested in.

Preventing Subconscious Compartmentalization

While that’s a mouth full, it clearly boils it down to the point. We’ve always been strong believers in the fact that people should be able to browse our catalog of 220,000+ listings (that grow by the minute!) as quickly and as easily as possible. That was the main reason, why right after starting the Swapit app, you previously saw a list of items posted nearby your current location. While the beauty of that was, Swapit’s content looked different for every user’s app launch. It was customized to that current location.

Compartmentalization. The problem with the above described situation, was that first-time users saw whatever items were being offered nearby right from the onset. If a nearby seller was specializing women’s fashion, then everyone in that vicinity would see women’s fashion when they first opened the app. The human’s nature of compartmentalizing first-time impressions kicked in, and for those folks Swapit was right away an app just for women’s fashion. If that user was a gadget fan, he would then most likely close the app and never open it again, because he is not interested in women’s fashion. Yet, Swapit has some really great gadgets listed on its marketplace.

To prevent such kind of compartmentalization that happens when first opening Swapit, we’ve now got our beautiful list Quick Select images that show right away the vast diversity of items and product categories that are available on Swapit.

Several other small improvements and bug fixes did also make their way into this release. It’s needless to say, that they improve stability and performance. We’ve also strengthened our fight against spam and scam attempts. That is running in full steam and we’ve already suspended several accounts, ensuring Swapit is a secure and trusted marketplace to conduct safe trade.

Stay tuned for future updates. At our blog, you’re absolutely at the right place. Feel free to sign up by email to stay on top of the game.

Have you tried Swapit yet? It’s free. You can get it here: http://get.swapit.la/now

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Preventing Scams

With growing popularity of Swapit, more people are joining every day. Besides many great and enthusiastic folks, there will always be that small percentage of people who just come to your platform trying to scam other users. Every platform with a large enough user base has this issue. Swapit is no exception to this.

Over the past weeks we’ve seen an increase of users joining Swapit, who then approach as many sellers as possible for the sole purpose of driving the conversation with them out of Swapit into their personal email accounts. They do this not for the purpose of closing a sale, but much rather to scam the sellers and get access to their private information. That is something that’s annoying to all users who have been contact and it also damages Swapit as a trusted marketplace.

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To solve this issue, we now do not allow to compose comments or chat messages that contain email addresses. Previously any sort of web link, email address, phone number may be clickable directly inside the app. We believe in convenience and making our user’s lives as easy as possible. However, in this particular case, allowing such email addresses to be sent and then being clickable, created an opportunity for scammers who started reaching out to Swapit users. To protect the Swapit user base we have now deactivated this functionality for email addresses.

While generally, we’d be fine with buyers and sellers choosing their preferred medium of communication, we do encourage all buyers and sellers on Swapit to keep their conversation exclusively on Swapit. That provides various advantages:

1. All conversation is in one place
2. A conversation about a particular item can be easily found
3. All conversation is traceable in case of any dispute

As a result, Swapit is now even more secure than it was ever before. It’s the trusted marketplace where sellers can easily sell their items to buyers nearby – may it be second hand or new items. Swapit brings them together.

Have you tried Swapit yet? It’s free: http://get.swapit.la/now

Swapit Update: Faster Post Creation, Faster Sale

We’ve just updated Swapit with several changes, performance improvements and a rather neat change that makes it more efficient and faster to post an item for sale or give it away.

Get Your Swapit Update Today: http://get.swapit.la/now

Besides all those small changes and something really big we are preparing to launch soon, we’ve just added a small change that makes everyone’s life easier when it is about selling.

When you now press the “+” button in the main Swapit screen, you can easily select either “Take a photo” or “Choose from gallery”.

Swapit already had one of the fastest ways to post an item for sale, but now we’ve increased that by such a simple change. I particularly like the small subtle animation you get when clicking the “+” button.

At the moment, only the Swapit Android is up-to-date on the store. Swapit for iOS will hopefully be approved soon.

Stay tuned for future updates. At our blog, you’re absolutely at the right place. Feel free to sign up by email to stay on top of the game.

Have you tried Swapit yet? It’s free. You can get it here: http://get.swapit.la/now

Swapit Update: Top 10 Seller Rankings

We’ve just updated Swapit with a lot of small changes, but one very exciting new feature:

Top 10 Seller Rankings

Get Your Swapit Update Today: http://get.swapit.la/now

Time Spent by Users in Swapit is up 80%

About a month ago I wrote about the Time Spent by Users in Swapit is up 91%. Now a little over 4 weeks later, that metric seems to be going up constantly. Have a look:

It’s great to see our Swapit users spending more time in our Swapit. That’s probably due to some of our recently added features, like following or the change in our web teaser sites where you can even browse most recent Swapit items with your web or mobile browser. Though, the web browsing not even count into the statistic shown above, which is for in-app behavior only.

We are still focusing on making Swapit the most efficient marketplace for buyers and sellers, it is great to see that our Swapit users do more and more enjoy browsing it and spending time inside Swapit.

Have you tried Swapit yet? It’s free. Give it a try: http://get.swapit.la/now

Swapit Air: April Fool’s (for now)

Yes, our Swapit Air announcement on April 1st was an April Fool’s Day joke. We had a lot of fun with it! 🙂

To be very clear: We do not have a drone fleet nor have we launched any such service in Hong Kong.

I would like to point out that the feedback we received over the last couple of days has been very very good. If we would have actually launched Swapit Air, we would have gotten a lot of media coverage.

Thanks a lot to the great folks at Sky Drone who played along well in our April Fool’s Day joke.

To be honest: Even though, it sounds futuristic or as some put it “too good to be true“, from a technological point of view, Swapit Air is doable. However, from a regulatory point of view, it is challenging to launch such a service. Most countries in the world have no legal framework to either allow or properly regulate such services. However, if you are interested in drone technology – especially for command & control and video transmission over extremely long / beyond-line-of-sight range – please do reach out to the Sky Drone team. They’d be happy to help you out and get you up and running in no time.

THOUGHTS ON DRONE DELIVERY

During the process of thinking about Swapit Air, writing the press release, composing the blog post and creating the artwork, I more and more realized that Hong Kong would actually be a perfect place for launching drone delivery.

There are several structural challenges in most other countries, which Hong Kong does not have due to the places people’s homes are located at. Let me point some of those factors out. My secret hope is, that the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department CAD is reading this.

1. Building Proximity
   Due to the fact that Hong Kong is the #2 city in the world with most high-rise buildings and they are all in very close proximity to each other, flight time between two buildings would be really short. That means less energy (=electricity) and less delivery time is needed, which drives down costs significantly. A short delivery time also warrants for a superior customer experience.
2. Population Density
   High population density means, that by servicing just one building, up to a thousand people could be connected to a drone delivery network. That’s very cost efficient and provides a stellar public service.
3. Empty Roofs
   Usually, building roofs in Hong Kong are not utilized. They are mostly reserved for maintenance equipment, air-conditioning and as fire escape locations. Though, I am not sure if it’s wise to be trapped at the roof of a 60 story building when all the floors below are on fire. Yet, in an every-day scenario, those rooftops are just sitting there empty. Hong Kong landlords are all about maximizing rental income. You can see that by every other roof hosting network cells of mobile carriers, which the landlords collect rent for. So deploying drone landing and launchpads at those roofs as well, would extend their purpose and increase rental income of landlords.
4. Easy Flight Paths
   Using roofs as take off and landing locations for drones, removes a lot of obstacles urban environments in big area countries have. The drone could just take off vertically and climb to an altitude of say 50 meters above the tallest building in the city. Then it flies directly to the destination building and vertically descents to land on the landing pad to drop the parcel. It’s a simple take off, fly a straight line and land scenario, which could be done ensuring high safety standards and short traveling and transport times. In other countries, drones would have to land at a different landing spot for every single customer / parcel destination. That creates an incredible about of possible scenarios such drone deliveries would need to be able to handle. Imagine simple things like landing in the front yard of a house where the kid left his or her skateboard at. Such unexpected conditions make it near impossible to operate a safe and cost-efficient service.

So never say never. We might just announce a service like Swapit Air in future. It is now at least clear that people love the idea and are interested in using it. So stay tuned into our Swapit blog. We’ll for sure post some more exciting and real-live innovation very soon!

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Have you tried Swapit yet? Even without Swapit Air, it’s the best marketplace to buy and sell pre-loved and new products. Download is free: http://get.swapit.la/now

Introducing Swapit Air: Drone Delivery in Hong Kong for Preloved and New Products

Note: This was our April Fool’s Day joke on April 1st, 2017. Read the clarification blog post here: Swapit Air: April Fool’s (for now)

Download:
Swapit Air Press Release

Today, Swapit proudly announces the world’s first commercial drone delivery service: Swapit Air. In its pilot phase, it is be available all across Hong Kong. Starting on Monday April 3rd, parcels can be delivered door-to-door or better roof-to-roof using our now fully established drone station network with hundreds of locations all over Hong Kong.

SWAPIT AIR INTRO

HOW IT WORKS

On the Swapit mobile app, buyers who purchase an item from a seller can now book a delivery of the item via drone. You can choose to deliver it to your home or work location.  The seller then drops the product off one of our hundreds of drone delivery stations. A Swapit Air delivery drone knows automatically which parcel it is and where it should be delivered to. The drone takes off and within max. 10 minutes, the item arrives at the buyer’s building.

Here is how our drones looks like:

Currently the maximum delivery envelope of a parcel is 15x15x15 cm. We will soon extend that through an upgrade of our fleet and expect full operation with hundreds of drones flying over Hong Kong by the end of 2017.

SWAPIT AIR DRONE FLEET TECH SPECS

Each Swapit Air drone consists of a carbon fiber body, arms and rotor blades. They come with very durable characteristics and yet are lightweight. The autopilot in Swapit Air drones is based on the open-source PX4 autopilot which has been field tested for many years. Low-latency command & control channel is provided by Sky Drone solutions and operates on MAVLink / UART interfaces on the drone-side as well as local TCP-servers on our Swapit Air ground control center. In case of any emergency, a remote Swapit Air drone operator in our ground control center can take over control of the drone and fly it to safety.

WHERE ARE THE LOCATIONS

The Swapit app offers a full list of drone delivery locations. To find a location near you, please download Swapit from: http://get.swapit.la/now

Some of the most popular drone stations are located on roof tops of famous buildings like the International Commercial Centre, Hopewell Centre and more. Have a look:

Swapit Air drone locations are already deployed at hundreds of buildings, but the number of buildings will be extended within and with a target of covering around 1,000 buildings across Hong Kong. Building owners who would like to participate, may contact us directly.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST

In our pilot phase, drone delivery is free-of-charge. Eventually, we will charge a delivery fee for Swapit Air, but it will be at very competitive prices compared to local courier and parcel services. As there is minimal manual labour involved and the entire Swapit Air architecture has been automated and our drones are flying in full autonomous mode, delivery charges can be at very low rates compared to existing traditional surface delivery.

COLLABORATING ON INNOVATION

This cutting edge technology was developed in collaboration with Sky Drone – a leading drone technology company. Sky Drone’s unique technology of connecting drones with ground control stations, with each other and with their Skynet cloud, using 4G / LTE technology, allows Swapit to fly drones remotely beyond line of sight in a secure and reliable way. Military-grade encryption of such data channels and controls, ensures secure communication and reliable operation of our Swapit Air drone fleet.

Going to infinity and beyond!

Upgrade Swapit today to unlock Swapit Air for you!
Free Download: http://get.swapit.la/now

Sign up on our website to get updated when Swapit Air launches in your city: http://www.swapit.la/#swapit-air

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About Sky Drone:
Parcel drone delivery, non-line-of-sight flights, remote drone control from anywhere in the world and similar technologies are available already. Sky Drone does provide high-end solutions in that field and everyone who is interested to find out more, please contact ASky Drone directly.

Swapit Update: Single Column Browsing for Easier Discovery

We’ve just updated Swapit with many small changes, but one more significant one:

Single Column Browsing

Get Your Swapit Update Today: http://get.swapit.la/now

Time Spent by Users in Swapit is up 91%

We’ve been working hard on making Swapit more and more useful for our buyers and sellers on Swapit. So it is great to see that our stats are up by 91% for the time our buyers and sellers spent inside our Swapit apps (Android & iOS combined) in the last 60 days compared to the 60 days before that. Here is a chart of that:

That’s exactly what we’re working for. It is our goal to make Swapit the best trading platform for all of our buyers and our sellers. Yet an average of 5.9 minutes spent per user per day, is not even close to what social networks like Facebook for example have. However, our goal with Swapit is not to waste people’s time in our app. Our goal is very simple: Make it easy for our sellers to sell their stuff quickly and make it easy for buyers to buy products quickly. Though, it’s a good thing for us, that people appreciate our app and like to stay in there, browse around and have a good time — we do still want to make it easier and quicker for them to buy and sell. If that would mean, that the time spent inside our app goes down, then so be it. In the end, we can only be measured by the transactions that are processed through Swapit.

Have you tried Swapit yet? It’s free. Get it from: http://get.swapit.la/now

Patrick from Swapit on the #impact Podcast about Reducing Waste, Social Impact, Entrepreneurship and more…

After our Swapit for Social Good pitch, Regina from #impact reached out to me for a podcast. Of course, I was happy to share my views on how Swapit can have an impact in the world and Regina was kind enough to drop by our office and have a little chat with me.

I have just listened to the entire podcast for the first time and it was actually fun listen to it. There is even a short childhood story of me selling stuff at school back in the 90’s. Every now and then, some of my childhood friends still bring that up when we meet up for drinks at the bar. It’s actually quite interesting how these childhood experience can shape your life so many years later.

Feel free to listen to the #impact podcast #3 at: #3: A NEW DAD ON A MISSION TO REDUCE WASTE

If you’d like to check out Regina’s other podcasts, you can head to her website hashtagimpact.com or subscribe to the #impact podcast on iTunes.

Thanks again Regina for having me on your Podcast. Keep up the good work!

Have you tried Swapit yet? It’s free and you can get it at: http://get.swapit.la/now