Kontorplasser is an online marketplace which lets companies rent out their offices or spare office spaces. You can think of it as AirBnB for workplaces.
The service is loved both by multinational corporations like Regus who operated 4000 business centers across 120 countries and by people who have just a few spare individual workplaces in their offices.
Kontorplasser provides a search by geolocation and facilities (parking, pet allowed, phone number available) and a built-in messaging system.
We have joined the project in 2016 upon the client’s request to redesign the frontend and add two types of subscriptions.
Our main challenge during the development stage of the project was a smooth implementation of monetization options. The platform used to be absolutely free of charge and these changes had to be done very discreetly not to affect the business negatively and not to dent the loyalty of the existing clients by making them pay for the service. We were able to make it nice and easy.
Firstly, users were asked to add valid credit cards to publish the advertisement. We started announcing the system would be fee-based in about half a year. In other words, users didn’t pay anything for a while but the platform already had the banking information and users were aware of upcoming changes.
Then we came up with different subscription plans both for the existing and new clients. Finally, we introduced charges.
There are two subscription plans at the moment: a weekly subscription and an unlimited one. All the credit card charges are made with Stripe, then clients receive invoices per email in PDF.
It is also worth mentioning, that the platform is fee-based only for the owners of the office spaces. Office-seekers are still using it for free. User can save search criteria and receive updates on new listings that meet those settings.
Any user can create a listing. As soon as he creates his first listing he becomes an Owner automatically.
An Owner has detailed listing form which is easy to fill out where he is asked to share the address, office type, tell how to get there, describe an office, upload photos of the space and, what is not less important especially in a shared space, tell a bit about himself or herself.
