- Platform
- Web and Mobile App
- Duration
- 14 weeks
- Industry
- Automotive Industry
- Read time
- 5 min read
Selling a used car in the Netherlands meant posting to multiple platforms, fielding low-ball offers from casual browsers, and spending weeks coordinating back-and-forth with people who were never serious buyers. For dealers, the reverse problem: chasing listings across sources and losing deals to whoever moved fastest.
Snelweg Deals came to us with a clear vision. Build a single marketplace where private sellers can list a car in minutes, dealers can see all current listings and bid in real time, and both sides can negotiate and close a deal without any intermediary. Secure contact sharing only happens after a bid is confirmed. Everything before that stays anonymous.
We built the web and mobile platform in 14 weeks. Within 6 months of launch, monthly active users had grown 78%. Listing time dropped 35%. Buyer engagement doubled.
RaftLabs' expertise in building a user-friendly marketplace app was commendable, transforming vehicle sales by boosting engagement and streamlining transactions.
before & after
What changed
- Sellers posted to multiple platforms manually with no single destination for serious buyers
- No real-time bidding: offers arrived at different times with no competitive dynamic
- Contact details shared too early, before any serious intent was confirmed
- Dealers had no central source for private car listings and chased leads across scattered platforms
- Sellers had limited tools to understand whether their asking price was reasonable
- No invoicing or structured transaction flow after a deal was agreed
- Sellers list a car once and reach all active dealers through a single platform
- Dealers see live bids from other buyers and place competitive offers in real time
- Contact details only shared after a bid is confirmed, with no exposure to casual inquiries
- Sellers and dealers negotiate directly within the platform once a bid is accepted
- Automated invoicing handles the paperwork after a successful transaction
- Both web and mobile apps give sellers and dealers access from anywhere
What we had to solve
- 01
Building a live bidding system where multiple dealers bid simultaneously
A real-time auction has strict requirements: every active bidder sees the current highest bid within seconds of it being placed, the bidding window closes reliably at the set time, and tie-breaking rules are applied consistently. Building this across web and mobile (with different network conditions, different device speeds, and potentially hundreds of simultaneous active listings) required a reliable event-driven architecture. Any delay in bid propagation creates a situation where one dealer wins a bid another dealer believes they already placed.
- 02
Keeping both parties anonymous until a deal is confirmed
The platform needed to enable negotiation and communication between sellers and bidders during the auction without prematurely exposing contact details. A seller who receives 10 bids does not need 10 dealers calling their personal number. The architecture had to support in-platform messaging during the bidding process and only unlock real contact details once a specific bid was accepted. Getting the permission logic right, and making sure no contact data leaked through any path before that confirmation event, required careful access control design.
What clients say
No hype. Just outcomes.
Three-year average engagement. Founders and operators describing the work in their own words. No marketing varnish.
RaftLabs' expertise in building a user-friendly marketplace app was commendable, transforming vehicle sales by boosting engagement and streamlining transactions.
outcomes
What we achieved
Sellers used a multi-step process across different platforms to list a vehicle. The process was slow, inconsistent, and gave no certainty that serious buyers would see the listing.
Dealers spent hours chasing leads across scattered listing sources with no live bidding mechanism to create urgency or competition.
The Dutch automotive market had no central platform for private-to-dealer vehicle sales with transparent real-time bidding. The gap drove both sellers and dealers away from existing options.
Buyers and sellers in your market are still struggling to find each other and close deals efficiently?
the build
What we built
The platform has two main workflows: the seller listing and auction flow, and the dealer bidding and negotiation flow. Both had to be fast, transparent, and secure at every step.
Sellers are live on the market in under five minutes
Sellers add vehicle details, photos, condition notes, and a target price through a guided listing flow. The process is structured to capture everything dealers need to place a confident bid (make, model, year, mileage, service history) without overwhelming the seller with form fields. Most listings go live in under five minutes.
Competition between dealers consistently produces closer-to-market offers
Active listings are visible to all registered dealers. Dealers see the current highest bid and can place competing offers in real time. Once an auction closes, the seller can accept the top bid directly or open a negotiation with the winning bidder to agree on a final price. The competitive bidding environment consistently produces offers closer to market value than direct negotiation alone.
Contact details only shared after a bid is confirmed — sellers aren't harassed
Sellers and dealers communicate within the platform during and after bidding. Contact details are only shared after a specific bid is confirmed. Until that point, all messages go through the platform. This protects sellers from unsolicited outreach and ensures dealers only invest time in deals they have genuinely won.
Deal close is structured — invoice generated, contact unlocked, handover coordinated
After a deal is confirmed, the platform generates an invoice for the transaction. Secure contact sharing unlocks so both parties can coordinate the physical handover and payment. The structured close reduces the ambiguity that typically surrounds the final stages of a private car sale.
Engagement
How we worked together
- 01Weeks 1–2
Discovery and scoping
We map the problem before writing code. Two weeks of technical audit, stakeholder interviews, and prototype — so both teams align on scope and risk before sprint one.
- 02Ongoing
Two-week Agile sprints
Each sprint ends with working software, not a status update. You review a real build, request changes, and approve before we move forward. No surprises at handover.
- 03Ongoing
Daily async updates
Slack for daily progress, Asana for task visibility, weekly video calls for decisions. You have full visibility without needing to attend every meeting.
- 04Final
Handover and warranty
Full code handover with deployment runbooks and documentation. Thirty-day warranty period for production issues at no extra cost.
stack
Why we chose this stack
- 01A marketplace used by both private sellers and professional dealers needed to work on iOS and Android with a native-quality experience. Flutter gave us one codebase that delivered both, which mattered on a 14-week timeline.Flutter
- 02The web platform needed real-time bid updates pushed to every active browser session simultaneously. React's component model made it practical to build a live auction interface that updates individual bid entries as they arrive, without reloading the page.React
- 03Vehicle listings, bid history, user accounts, and transaction records all needed reliable structured storage with querying fast enough to support live auction lookups. PostgreSQL handled both the data integrity requirements and the read performance the auction interface demanded.PostgreSQL
Frequently asked questions
Sellers list their vehicle and set a reserve price or target. The listing becomes visible to registered dealers immediately. Dealers place bids in real time and see a live leaderboard of current offers. At the close of the auction window, the seller sees all bids and either accepts the top offer or opens a negotiation with the leading bidder. The seller controls the outcome. The auction creates competition, not pressure.
Contact details are never visible during the bidding process. All communication goes through the in-platform messaging system until the seller accepts a specific bid. Once confirmed, both parties can see each other's contact information to arrange the handover. This design came directly from feedback that private sellers in the Netherlands found unsolicited dealer outreach one of the biggest friction points in traditional car selling.
Yes. Sellers who want speed can set a short auction window and accept the first reasonable bid. Sellers who want the best price can use a longer window and the manual negotiation feature after the auction closes. The platform supports both strategies without requiring separate listing types.
Existing platforms serve general listings without a real-time bidding mechanism designed for professional dealers. A custom marketplace can be built around the specific workflow (private seller to dealer auction, not peer-to-peer negotiation) and can enforce the rules that make the process trustworthy: controlled contact sharing, structured invoicing, identity verification for dealers. These are not features general listing platforms provide because they serve a broader use case.
A marketplace with real-time bidding, dual user roles (seller and dealer), in-app messaging, and transaction management typically falls between $40,000 and $80,000 depending on the feature scope and number of platform integrations required. The 14-week timeline for SWD was possible because the feature set was well-defined from the start. Contact us to estimate based on your specific requirements.