BetterThat Connect

The Challenge

Better That had built a powerful marketplace backend and a large, live product catalogue. The next opportunity was to let third parties run their own storefronts on top of it — specifically channel partners such as charities, sporting clubs, and associations who want a branded marketplace to raise funds, without building or operating any e-commerce technology themselves.

Doing that well meant solving several problems at once:

• One backend, many faces — every partner needs their own look and product mix (brands, shops, categories, logos, colours, good causes, auctions), all served from the same shared marketplace backend.
• Configuration, not code — spinning up a new partner store had to be a matter of flipping switches, not a development project, and switching settings had to be near-instant and highly available.
• Partner self-service — partners need their own login to see their customers and orders.
• A reason for shoppers to come back — fundraising works best when shoppers are rewarded and stay engaged.

The Solution

We designed BetterThat Connect (Marketplace Connect) as a configurable, multi-tenant layer over the existing Better That marketplace backend. A switch-based configuration system lets each partner front-end draw from the same 9M+ SKU catalogue while presenting a completely personalised, "ready-to-trade" store. On top of that foundation sits a channel-partner admin, a shopper commission wallet, and — in the current roadmap — a dedicated loyalty microservice and an embeddable drop-auction widget.

Feature Highlights

1. Switch-Based Configuration Engine

The core of the platform. A middleware/configuration layer lets administrators define, per front-end, which brands, shops, categories, logos, colours, good causes, and auctions appear — all drawing from the shared marketplace backend. New partner stores are stood up by configuration rather than custom development, with the design target of switching settings in under two seconds at 99.5%+ availability.

2. Personalised, "Ready-to-Trade" Partner Storefronts

Each channel partner gets a fully populated e-commerce store they can trade on immediately — no product sourcing, no inventory, no integrations to build. Partners pick from a diverse range of retailers and product categories and instantly have a branded marketplace on their own website, purpose-built for fundraising and revenue generation.

3. Channel-Partner Admin Portal

A dedicated backend login for partners with Customers and Orders views, so each organisation can see and manage the activity happening through their marketplace — plus administrative tooling to customise their instance.

4. Shopper Commission Wallet

A rewards system that pays shoppers back. Shoppers earn commission (e.g. 10%) on purchases, credited to a personal wallet after payment; they can view their balance and full transaction history (filterable by date, product, and type); and they can apply wallet balance at checkout as a discount, with capping logic so it never exceeds the product price. Refunds and cancellations correctly reverse wallet credit. Channel-partner admins get a matching view to oversee shopper wallets and transaction detail across their base.

5. Middleware for Third-Party Websites

A middleware solution lets external/third-party websites connect to the marketplace backend, extending the "ready-to-trade" catalogue beyond Better That's own front-ends and making the platform embeddable into partners' existing sites.

6. Shared Marketplace Backend & Real-Time Catalogue

BetterThat Connect inherits the full strength of the Better That platform: a master product database of 9M+ SKUs from 350+ retailers, kept current in real time via webhooks across Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento — so every partner front-end is backed by the same live, automatically maintained catalogue.

Roadmap Platform (in development, Nov 2025 – Jul 2026)

The current build extends BetterThat Connect into a modern, API-first platform across three parallel workstreams:

7. Loyalty Microservice

A standalone, high-performance loyalty service designed for zero data loss (event-sourced) and to handle millions of concurrent requests. It exposes clean Accrue / Redeem / Balance API endpoints, undergoes performance/load and fault-tolerance testing (including simulated server failures), and powers points across the ecosystem.

8. BTConnect Platform — Admin Dashboard, Reporting & Public API

A rebuilt admin dashboard and reporting module (full-stack), an email notification system, and a documented public API for widgets and integrations. The approach is API-first: backend contracts are defined early with Swagger/OpenAPI so front-end and integration work is unblocked from the start.

9. Drop Auction Widget

An embeddable, customisable drop-auction widget with its own customisation panel and a real-time bidding/purchase engine, integrated with Stripe for payments and wired into both the BTConnect public API and the Loyalty Microservice (to accrue and redeem points during auctions).

Technical Architecture

Building on a proven backend meant partners inherit a battle-tested catalogue and auction engine, while the new services (loyalty, public API, widget) are cleanly separated so they can scale on their own.

Outcomes

• Marketplaces as a product — organisations with no e-commerce capability can launch a branded, fully stocked fundraising store, configured rather than coded
• Maximum reuse — a single shared catalogue and backend power unlimited personalised partner front-ends, keeping the cost of each new store near zero
• Shopper retention built in — the commission wallet turns every purchase into earned, re-spendable credit, aligning shopper behaviour with partner fundraising
• A forward-looking architecture — the in-flight platform is API-first with an independently scalable loyalty microservice and an embeddable auction widget

What's Next

• Delivery of the three roadmap workstreams: Loyalty Microservice, BTConnect admin/reporting/public API, and the Drop Auction Widget (targeted across Nov 2025 – Jul 2026)
• Deeper third-party website embedding through the middleware and public API layers

Designed, built, and maintained by Vista SysTech — end-to-end architecture, development, integration, and ongoing support.