Swapit Introduces: Swapit Referral – Give Swapit Premium & Get Swapit Premium

We just updated Swapit and you can now get Swapit Premium for free if you invite one of your friends to join Swapit too.

You can get the latest Swapit app from Google Play and the App Store, or by simply clicking here: http://get.swapit.la/now

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS

It’s easy, quick and you can share your invite anywhere. WhatsApp, Facebook, WeChat, Twitter, Email, text SMS, you name it. Both you and your friend will receive a Swapit Premium Day Pass.

In detail it works like this: As soon as one of your friends joins Swapit, a popup dialog appears and tells him or her that the Swapit Premium Day pass has been earned and is active now. At the very same moment, you will receive an instant notification about your friend joining and a new Swapit Premium Day Pass was added to the “Rewards” tab in the “Free Swapit Premium” section on Swapit.

Swapit Referral works across Android and iPhone.

So if you’re an Android user and invite a friend with an iPhone, you will receive your free Swapit Premium Day Pass as well as if you’d be inviting another Android user, or if you’d be an iPhone user and invite another iPhone or another Android user.

HOW TO GIVE FREE SWAPIT PREMIUM

It’s very easy to give someone a free Swapit Premium. Just open up your menu and select “Free Swapit Premium”. Then you’ll see your unique invite code which you can share with your friends or you can click one of the invite methods below, like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger shown on these screen shots:

Once you’ve sent out your invite to your friend, just wait and let magic happen. You can also invite another friend in the meantime and you’ll end up with two Swapit Premium Day Passes if both join Swapit!

THE GOAL OF SWAPIT REFERRAL

We are constantly working on making the Swapit marketplace more and more liquid. That’s absolutely essential for sustainable growth and for providing our users a place where it is guaranteed for them to sell their items in a short period of time … preferably to their neighbors. Swapit Referral has the following benefits:

1. Our sellers will get access to Swapit Premium without having to pay for it. It will increase the visibility of their postings and allow them to sell items much faster.
2. As a result, we will be getting more items posted on Swapit and the market becomes more and more liquid.
3. New users will be invited, the word about Swapit will spread even faster, because people want to give Swapit Premium a try and invite their friends.
4. Existing users who are predominantly buyers right now, will be incentivized to post items for sale on Swapit, once they earn a Swapit Premium Day Pass.
5. New users who receive their free Swapit Premium Day Pass on signing, will be more motivated to post items for sale as quickly as possible. Their Day Pass starts running for 24 hours from the moment they’ve installed the app and created an account. So within those 24 hours, they are more motivated to post as many items as possible for sale – so they can take full advantage of the Swapit Premium Day Pass.

So generally, we believe this will increase Swapit’s adoption across the board.

Let’s see how it goes. We will blog about the results and effectiveness here. So stay tuned for upcoming blog posts!

Have you tried Swapit yet? Get it for free at http://get.swapit.la

Advertisement

Swapit Introduces: Swapit Premium Day Pass, WhatsApp, Sorting (Distance vs. Date, Global vs. City)

We just updated Swapit with several new additions.

You can get the latest Swapit app from Google Play and the App Store or by simply clicking here: http://get.swapit.la/now

You told us you love Swapit Premium, but you’d like to pay for it on-the-go. We’ve been listening and now we have finally released our latest Swapit app update with the Swapit Premium Day Pass, which gets you access to the full range of Swapit Premium features for a full day for just $0.99 (HK$8).

We’ve added a lot more in this release as well. Let me highlight some points.

SWAPIT PREMIUM DAY PASS

Back in April this year, we launched Swapit Premium as a monthly subscription. While some people have picked this up and were happy they could access to such additional features, we knew that a monthly subscription was more attractive power traders. Yet, Swapit was build by individuals for individuals – as a true consumer-to-consumer marketplace.

To make sure, individuals can access Swapit Premium when they need to, we’re introducing the Day Pass now. It costs the lowest price we can charge through Google Play and the Apple App Store: $0.99 (HK$8). It’s a one-off payment. You won’t get charged again and you can use all Swapit Premium features for a full day starting from the time of purchase.

Of course, at any time, you can purchase a Day Pass again and take advantage of another full day of all Swapit Premium features.

WHATSAPP SHARING

With our last release we’ve introduced a much easier way to share Swapit items you like on your favorite social media. Besides supporting Facebook, Twitter, WeChat and LINE, we have now added WhatsApp to the list of 1-click shareables. It was a quick and easy change for us, but we feel that many of you will take advantage of it and enjoy telling your friends about your listings on Swapit.

SORTING THE SWAPIT ITEM LIST

You might not have noticed that, but we’ve been experimenting with different kinds of default sort settings in Swapit over the past couple of months. Initially, we’ve had our default sorting of the Swapit item list set to “Distance” – meaning, the items closest to you showed up at the top of the list. The further down you scrolled, the farther away such items were from your current location. Then we switched to the default sorting of “Date” – meaning, the items at the top of the list are the most recent ones and the further down you scroll, the older such items are.

Now there are limitations to such sorting settings. Swapit has been built as a globally applicable app, which connects buyers and sellers that are in very close proximity to each other – no matter where they are located at.

[start of tech talk] One of our main goals was to build a truly scalable backend. That means, we use the most modern technologies (NoSQL database, insanely scalable, easy to extend) in order to be able to have one single database for the whole world. Every Swapit item that is stored on the Swapit backend has at least one location reference to it, so we can match it with potential buyers nearby. [/end of tech talk]

So the very simple task of sorting your items by distance or by date created a bit of a challenge. If you see the closest item listings that are nearby your location first, it is very likely that those are actually relevant to you – in terms of language and currency. But if you sort by date – remember, we have one huge database for the whole world – you quickly realize that item postings in India, Philippines or the USA might show up at the top of your list. Those might be in a different language and usually have a different currency. Remember? Swapit supports 148 currencies. It was imperative to ensure that you only see items there, which make sense.

Solution. In the end, we came up with the solution of listing the whole world’s items when you sort them by Distance, but we only show you items within your city when you set the sorting to Date. That way, you will always see the most relevant items (in terms of language and currency) at the top of your list – no matter you’re sorting by Distance or Date. That’s why you now see clearly the distinction between “Distance Global” and “Date City”.

Currently, the default “sort by” setting is Distance Global, which makes the most sense for the on-boarding process of new users. Sometimes those users are located in cities where no items are available yet. So a sorting by Date City would return no items. That in turn, prompts the majority of such new users in new cities to deinstall the app – even though they might actually like the app itself. No content, no fun, right? So we would have created an artificially high churn rate ourselves. In order to prevent that, the default “sort by” setting is set to Distance Global. So you will always see the item that’s the closest to you – even if that item is in a different city, country or continent.

Should you change your “sort by” setting, Swapit now also remembers that setting and every time Swapit launches, it will use that same sorting again and again – until you change it.

A nice side-effect of all of that is: By sorting your list by Distance, you can browse all Swapit items that were listed in the whole world. The location of the item listing just gets farther and farther away, the further down you scroll. I sometimes try to challenge myself to reach the bottom of the list, which takes a lot of scrolling and could almost be considered a workout.

Besides all those changes above, we’ve done a lot of “under-the-hood” improvements and bug fixes to make the Swapit experience a lot more seamless.

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

Swapit is Featured at Best Spot on Google Play

Following our recent updates of Swapit (second-hand trading data, Swapit Premium, incredible traction), Google Play is now featuring Swapit at the most desired spot on Google Play. The top row banner. Only very few outstanding apps are chosen to be featured there and Swapit is amongst that elite group of apps now. We feel very honored by being chosen to be featured and we are certain our users appreciate that too. Have a look:

Head over to Google Play today and download Swapit for free. Remember, in April you’ll get 1-Month Premium Services for Free: Download Swapit from Google Play

Swapit Premium Launched – Sell Faster!

We are excited to announce the launch of Swapit Premium. Now everyone can sell their pre-loved items even faster than before! If you join during the launch month of April, your first month will be completely free. You can cancel at any time. No questions asked. Nothing charged. Rest assured, all existing free features, remain free for everyone.

Get the latest Swapit update on Google Play: http://get.swapit.la

 

BENEFITS OF SWAPIT PREMIUM

Unlimited Posts
Post as many items as you wish on Swapit. We invite everyone to leverage the Swapit marketplace to the fullest and you can trade as many items as you’d like to.

10 Photos per Post
Premium members can post up to 10 photos per item. The free account allows for 3 photos per item. Being able to share more photos has proven to increase the chances to sell an item dramatically.

Unlimited Highlight
Highlight as many items as you wish when posting them. Highlighted items show up with a green bottom bar in the standard item list. Therefore, their chances to be discovered increase significantly.

Unlimited Feature
Feature as many items as you wish when posting them. Featured items show up with a green ribbon at top right corner of the item’s image in the standard item list. Therefore, their chances to be discovered increase significantly.

Two Premium Category Posts per Month
You can post up to two premium items per month in any of our 4 premium categories: Cars & Motorcycles, Yachts & Boats, Property and Memberships & Debentures. There is currently no limit on the price of such items.

Edit Posts at Any Time
Premium members can edit their posts at any time. As before, the free account still allows editing an item within 15 minutes after posting.

Verified Member
The identity of each verified member has been digitally authenticated. Verified members are an integral part of our vibrant Swapit community.

 

LAUNCH OFFER: 1 MONTH FREE

During our launch month of April, the first month of Swapit Premium is free of charge. Get the latest Swapit update today to join: http://get.swapit.la

After the first free month, Swapit Premium costs HKD $88 per month.

We are absolutely convinced that Swapit Premium will help sellers sell their items even faster than before. The additional benefits, which Swapit Premium members get access to,  are carefully chosen to increase their chances to sell items much faster. By providing unlimited access to all those premium features, Swapit has now an easy and straight forward way for sellers to tap even better into the vibrant Swapit marketplace. More premium features are planned to be added over time and our subscribed Premium Members will receive access to those new features automatically.

 

FREEDOM OF CHOICE: CANCEL AT ANY TIME

We believe so much in the power of Swapit Premium that we offer cancellation of the service at any time. Even within the first free month, you could cancel at any time and you will still have access to all premium features within that month.

After the first month, when the Swapit Premium membership converts into a paid monthly subscription, you can cancel the membership at any time. You will still remain having access to all premium features for the rest of that month.

 

Have you tried Swapit yet? You can download it for free at: http://get.swapit.la

Swapit Updated: 10 Photos & Chat Snippets

A couple of days ago, we published a new update of Swapit. If you don’t have it yet, you can download it at: http://get.swapit.la

The most recent changes are:

PRESENT ITEMS BETTER WITH 10 PHOTOS

From the onset, it was possible to add up to 3 photos for each item you’re selling on Swapit. Using a great photo significantly improves the chances of selling your item faster. We’ve seen many people using all 3 photo slots to present their items.

While 3 photos are absolutely sufficient for most items, some other items (e.g. cars, property, etc.) require more photos to properly present the item to potential buyers. We have realized having more than 3 photos can be a very important differentiator of an item over another similar one. Therefore, Swapit now allows to upload up to 10 photos for each item as a Premium Service. Similarly to our other already existing Premium Services (premium categories, item highlight & item feature), during our beta it is absolutely free to use this premium service. All you need to do is inviting a friend to download Swapit. You can then instantly add up to 10 photos for the item you’re posting.

Give it a try now! Post an item for sale on Swapit!

CHAT SNIPPETS FOR MESSAGING EFFICIENCY

The latest Swapit update also comes with a great enhancement, we have been wanting to add for a long time: chat snippets. It’s a concept that’s not new and we have been using it for many years in the customer support tracking software / service of our choice FogBugz (it’s free for a startup account, by the way). So we figured, Snippets will add a lot of value to our users and make their life a lot easier when using Swapit.

With the change in the last version of Swapit where interested buyers can directly open a chat to buy an item, we now take it to the next level by offering the buyer a convenient way to say a couple of most-used phrases to get the conversation going. These are simple things like: “I’m interested.”, “Where do you want to meet?” and so on.

Update your Swapit app to the latest version to get access to the latest Snippets: http://get.swapit.la

Furthermore, we have added many small improvements and fixed several bugs to improve the user experience for everyone. A simple example would be the easy quick-switch to select or de-select all categories in the filter panel.

There is more to come. We have some great advancements on our roadmap! Stay tuned for future updates!

Swapit beta 10 – Launched

We just launched beta 10 of Swapit on Google Play. Over the past weeks, we have been working hard on getting beta 10 out the door before the end of October. Though, it’s November already, we finally made it! You can download it today at!

Swapit Free Download: http://get.swapit.la

User Experience Improvements

Remember? In beta 9 of Swapit we introduced Facebook group sharing, which we quickly expanded to reach up to 221,000+ members of Facebook groups. In beta 10 we paid a lot of attention to improve the user experience you have there. It is now easier and more straight forward to share your posts to a multitude of Facebook groups with just a few clicks. At the same time, Swapit provides more insight to what exactly happens there and how many people you are actually sharing your item to.

Like always, the user interface is beautifully crafted, using Android’s latest Material Design principles. So Swapit comes with the native look and feel all Android users expect.

Premium Services & Monetization – BETA

In beta 10 we introduce two premium features to Swapit. Those two premium features are similar in nature and are aimed at helping sellers to sell their items faster.

On the right, you can see an example how easy it is to enable such a premium feature for an item you’re posting. With just a flick of a button, the seller can turn on

• List Highlight and/or
• List Feature

We made it dead simple for everyone to promote their item in our list. At the same time, we pay very much attention to maintain and excel on the user experience we provide for buyers in Swapit. While it is essential to allow sellers on our platform to promote their items, it is also essential to not distract buyers from their original motivation of why they opened the Swapit app in the first place. So we believe, offering a slight highlight of an item in our main item list, is not distracting from the core purpose of our list. In fact, it helps identifying interesting items.

FREE. As shown in the screen shot, those two initial premium features are available for free as long as Swapit is in beta. As there is no such thing as a free meal 🙂 we do require the seller to invite at least one friend to Swapit if (s)he wants to use a premium feature.

These premium features go on top of the existing offering and therefore, are an addition to the existing basic service of Swapit. Rest assured, none of the existing features are being limited by introducing these premium features.

From a business perspective, this serves several purposes:

(1) Set Expectations. We’re dropping an anchor (see anchoring) for monetization by showing the future pricing of those premium features. While using such features is free right now, it is very clear that eventually, we will charge for them.

(2) Grow Faster. By requiring sellers to invite their friends in order to use such premium features in beta, we are increasing our viral coefficient. That means we will end up with more users inviting their friends and therefore, growing our user base on an accelerated pace.

(3) Plan Ahead. We can statistically analyze how many users are using our premium features in general. That helps us a lot in terms of business planning and monetization direction, to more accurately estimate our revenue projections.

(4) Know Whats Wanted. We can furthermore, analyze which kinds of premium features sellers are more interested in. Especially in this case, where both premium features are rather similar, it will be interesting to see which one is more preferred by sellers.

(5) Effectiveness. At the same time, we can track how effective either the list highlight or the list feature is. In very simple terms, we can compare how many people click on a normal (non-highlight / non-feature) item, how many click on a feature or highlight item. Such data helps to make decisions based on hard metrics on whether to keep those features in Swapit, remove them, revise them and how much to charge for them in the end.

So all in all, this current move to introduce a very small selection of premium services in beta, has a lot of advantages. Therefore, we are excited to find out how our sellers and buyers react. I will tell more about our findings right here on our blog. So make sure you’re subscribed.

User Experience Improvements

The current Swapit beta 10 also comes with several user experience and interface improvements that aim at making everyone’s life easier. For example, we’ve added each item’s condition and category as a small icon to the item list. That makes it easier to identify whether it’s an item you’re interested in or not.

Furthermore, we have received a lot of feedback from our users (thanks a lot to all of you!) and we are constantly applying that feedback into changes we make on Swapit. One of such points was, that new users who want to just quickly post something for sale, didn’t find the “Sell” button. We did initially think it would be pretty obvious as it’s the only big green button on the main list. It’s even round as opposed to most other things on the list that are rectangular shaped. However, especially folks coming from iPhone, had some trouble finding our little green “Sell” button. So we’ve now added a nice tooltip to that with some description to make it super obvious to everyone. Once that “Sell” button has been clicked for the first time, that tooltip will disappear.

We’ve also made the “Sell” button automatically float out of the main list screen when scrolling down. This gives the user an absolutely unobstructed view of the whole list while browsing. As soon as the user scrolls up, the “Sell” button floats back into the list and you can start offering an item with just a click on that button.

That’s it for now. We all hope you’ll enjoy our new Swapit beta 10.

If you don’t have Swapit yet, you might want to give it a try. Especially our new premium features are interesting and can be used for free – while in beta. So just head over to http://get.swapit.la and download the app. It’s free.

P.S.: Please let us know what you think. We love feedback!