URCTRL

Social Network and Marketplace Management Web Solution

Multifunctional platform with Centralized Content Management System features for cross-platform sharing (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest), Marketplace functionality for trading/buying/selling different kinds of goods, internal Social Community where people can share their lifestyle, preferences and find like-minded people, personal cloud storage, and tools for increasing of Marketing and Advertising Purposes.

Target Audience

Social media users, marketers, and those who want to promote their services through social media and want to optimize their marketing campaigns.

The main tasks and challenges

A client came to us with a ready-made design of a tool for managing the work of social networks, as well as conducting online sales. In addition to the design, the customer also had a rough web solution logic scheme from point A to point B. We have thought out the web solution logic from A to Z so the user can:

easily and quickly share his publication to integrated social networks
manage data in a personal storage
make a backup of the content of personal accounts from integrated platforms
create selling posts
easily negotiate buying offers
withdrawal profit from selling goods/items
and many more

We have developed additional functions and features of this web solution that weren’t included in original plan to improve web solution’s effective work. The overall development process lasted 3-4 months.

Solution

We developed a multifunctional platform, one of the ideas was that the user could use one convenience platform and have access to various social networks. It has its community, an internal social network, and a marketplace. And users can use both of these options with one account. In a community, users can communicate, just like in any other social network. And the community itself works according to the principles of Instagram: descriptions, publications, likes, sharing, reposts, comments, etc.

Personal Drive Storage

When entering the storage section by default, a user sees the amount of free space on the disk, a bagel diagram with filling, and a specific demarcation of content by color. Under separate tabs, you can click on pictures, music, videos, and documents in storage. You can also create and move folders here. Personal drive storage contains the content that was extracted from posts in various social networks. This function is quite useful, because if a user wants to create a new account through URCTRL, they will be able to download the data from the drive.

A user connects their account and chooses a subscription and the required number of social networks. Depending on the subscription, the user has personal storage ranging from 5 to 20-30 GB or more.

Subscription for a user is determined not only by the amount of storage but also by the number of social networks to which the user can be subscribed – from two to eight. In total, we have approved 8 popular social networks to work: Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest. And a user can choose the number of desired social networks, according to the subscription. For example, a user can choose Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook, or Twitter, Reddit, and TikTok – depending on their needs. They connect to the social network, log in through it, and the user receives information about existing posts.

Social Media Communication and Sharing

The user on URCTRL creates a post, chooses a photo, and writes its description. They put tags here, and categories: (audio, video, etc), choose a social network for publication (Facebook and Instagram, for example), and click to publish. After that, this post does not appear in the general feed, it appears in the feed of those who are subscribed to the user. This post accordingly appears in the user’s profile, just like in Instagram.

Marketplace

And there is a marketplace where users display and sell their items. A user creates similar posts as in the community, but a list of items (up to 5 products) is added. These items are marked on the photo and the price is indicated. The seller creates a product description, and the buyer, who is interested in an item, can add the product to the saved, and send a purchase request. As for the purchase of the product, there are two options available: to quickly buy it at the specified price or to make your offer with their price, which can be higher or lower.

After making an offer with a new price, a red mark appears in the seller’s post, indicating that the bid has been made. After making an offer, the user can click on the bid and see the details of this bid: date, price, etc. This is a convenient tool for showing other buyers the number of bids, which indicates how popular a particular product is. In turn, the seller, who sees this bid, receives the message: “You have received a bid.” Here, they open the offers tab and see what was sent to them. It is worth mentioning that we have implemented the Stripe payment system for the marketplace so that customers can pay for their own purchases, and the seller can transfer money to his own personal account through Stripe.

Content Management System

The platform also has a CMS (Content Management System) section that connects user content with social networks. On the Content Management System page, the user has a list of those posts that they have posted somewhere. By choosing one or more social networks, a user sees posts and the reactions people leave on the selected social networks. If a user receives a comment on one of these social networks, they can reply to this comment, and the comment will be published on Facebook or any other social media. In addition, the platform allows you to edit a post that was published on Facebook and publish it on