Online Payment Features Make Life Easier for Businesses and Customers

The term DevOps refers to the development of operations specific to IT and enterprise software development. The goal of DevOps is to change and improve the relationship between IT development and business operations by implementing a set of modern practices beneficial to both business units. Recently, Charter Global employed DevOps to help a company bridge the gap between IT and their business model by adding a payment feature to their website.

Traditionally, DevOps can be cumbersome for the average, non-IT savvy individual to understand. Terms like “source control” or “source code” seem like ambiguous industry jargon, bereft of any real meaning. However, configuration management is a lot easier to understand than you’d think – especially when you take a look at the finished product.. In the following example, you’ll learn how systems administrators, coupled with the right management processes, allowed for huge improvements in enabling a major online property leasing network to digitize the payment process.

Both the software development team at CharterGlobal and the IT team at RentPath combined forces to upgrade several elements of the framework for rentals.com. One of the most important features to this upgrade involved incorporating a feature called RentPay. This innovative solution was to be implemented so as to allow renters and property managers to submit and collect payments online. One of the biggest challenges in completing this project involved merging both the population of landlords and renters onto a single platform.

Identifying the logistics regarding handling of payment information, payment reports to both landlord and renters, along with payment notifications. After careful consideration, our client selected YapStone as their payment provider for this product. In order to effectively integrate this new feature, CharterGlobal analyzed the YapStone’s API. A data model was then designed for the team, along with a UML flow diagram, which was implemented with the new RentPay feature after receiving approval from our client. Upon adding additional pages to the host site, landlords are able to list properties associated with the RentPay feature.

Also, property managers can notify renters to pay rent and/or view their reports through this online platform. The process for on-boarding renters to this application involved the development of sign-up and sign-in functionalities. A 3rd party access management service was also integrated for managing the authentication process of the renter. Logic was also used to verify email addresses and phone numbers for both landlords and renters in real time. The convenience of the payment feature also includes auto-draft functionality, so that every month, renters can automatically send funds via electronic funds transfer – saving precious time and sanity.

The developers at Charter Global helped a national online property rental network unleash an optimized platform for rentals which saw great momentum immediately after the release. In addition to RentPay, Charter Global also helped our client with the following upgrades to their framework.

Improved Search Features

In under 6 months, Charter Global helped Rentals.com update their framework to a single page application with a wealth of new features incorporated into a new design. These features included  new display properties with the integration of Google Maps. Filter and sort capabilities were enhanced as well, enabling users to search for properties based on fine-tuned search results. Moving forward, these results can be refined based on popular search filters like school district, radius, and/or total square property footage.

Enhanced User Experience

As a result of the improvements to the overall design and website architecture, statistics concerning user engagement showed immediate promise. For example, with a better framework, the bounce rate decreased significantly, seeing a 33% decrease as users felt more comfortable staying on the site longer. The overall user engagement time saw a 25% increase, as the new features and enhancements empowers users with a more sophisticated, intuitive search engine. The overall page views increased by 46% as a result of all of these factors combined.