ARCHIVES: This is legacy content from before Industry Dive acquired Mobile Commerce Daily in early 2017. Some information, such as publication dates, may not have migrated over. Check out our topic page for the latest mobile commerce news.

Letgo introduces user ratings, secures 13.2M monthly active users

Mobile seller-to-seller application letgo is adding ratings and reviews for buyers and sellers so users can be more confident in their transactions following the app’s growth past 30 million downloads.

Letgo will now feature ratings of users provided by other users who have transacted with the individuals before, making it easier for shoppers and sellers to get a better understanding of who they are transacting with. The mobile app is continuing to make lots of headway in the seller-to-seller space, and will likely exceed $13.2 billion worth of transactions by the end of this year.

“[The ratings feature] is really simple to use, like the rest of the app,” said Jonathan Lowe, head of communications at letgo. “Letgo will now let you rate other buyers and sellers from within the chat feature inside our app.”

Mobile growth
As peer-to-peer selling has moved from desktop-only marketplaces to a solid mobile presence, letgo is one of the leading apps leveraging the space. The app is now adding reviews for individual users so that shoppers can be confident that they are buying from a substantial source and vice versa, or also get a heads up if they are dealing with an unreliable user.

Since peer-to-peer selling can have problems, many users will only shop with sellers that have substantial reviews. With so many peer-to-peer platforms, the addition to letgo can mean less shoppers looking elsewhere and create a more trusted app.

As the mobile classifieds sector grows, the merger of peer-to-peer selling applications letgo and Wallapop put the heat on competitors such as Craigslist and eBay’s Close5 with the potential to create a go-to destination after a merger (see more).

Letgo has seen a significant amount of growth since its launch in 2015, and after introducing faster in-app messaging, now sees users threads growth of 21 percent to 40 percent monthly. The app also introduced an artificial intelligence solution to better showcase products that are relevant to individual users.

This year alone, letgo has seen a 393 percent increase with 300,000 items being posted for sale daily. A total of 460 million messages have been sent within the app since its launch, alluding to more transactions and longer user time within the app.

Peer-to-peer competition
Recognizing the increasingly important role that mobile search plays in the shopping journey, eBay is leveraging Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages framework to deliver simple, accessible and fast browsing experiences when shoppers click on a link in an external platform in the hopes of competing with other peer-to-peer dominators such as letgo (see more).

“Ratings are visible to others so buyers and sellers can complete transactions with even greater confidence,” Mr. Lowe said.