acelerando e redesenhando um dos locais de acomodação de estudantes mais visitados do Reino Unido, impulsionou enormes aumentos nas listagens de propriedades e inquéritos dos alunos, garantindo que agora também possa capitalizar o PASTHERN REMERN ROTENS AMPORTERN A REMERNO DE REMONDERN A REMENDERN A REMERNO DE MANCHESTEN EM RESTENHERN.COMPERNATIONS.MONERD EM RESTENHERN A REMENDERNS.COMNERENTS. meses e impulsionou os alunos em mais de 16 %. Ele também aumentou o tráfego do local e as visualizações de página, seguindo a reformulação de seu software herdado. É visitado por mais de três milhões de estudantes todos os anos e anuncia propriedades para 32.000 proprietários particulares, 1.200 agentes de locação e 500 salas de residência particulares. Atribuindo taxas de bounce muito altas e conversões reduzidas. Tempo de inatividade e proporciona uma experiência aprimorada do usuário no tempo mais rápido possível. Simultaneamente. Questões não gerenciáveis e mais de 10 tempos de carregamento da segunda página que eram impossíveis de se adaptar a uma mudança de expectativa do usuário do cliente. Acabar com modelos/domínios de armazenamento de dados independentes claros (em oposição a um modelo de dados monolítico do servidor SQL), com uma camada de API poderosa, rápida e altamente escalável, que pode ser usada por uma variedade de consumidores de usuários finais de alta velocidade (aplicativos da Web, apps etc.), todos hospedados em AWS/Azure com o DevOps e a automação para garantir que a demanda seja escalada.
Accommodationforstudents.com , based in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, has delivered a 54 per cent increase in property listings during the past 12 months and boosted student enquires by more than 16 per cent. It has also increased site traffic and page views, following the revamp of its legacy software.
Accommodationforstudents.com is an online search engine that allows students and landlords to find and list available properties instantaneously and in real-time. It is visited by more than three million students every year and advertises properties for 32,000 private landlords, 1,200 letting agents and 500 private halls of residence.
The site was originally coded 15 years ago and the home grown technical stack, which had taken the business from a start up to one of the UK’s leading student property portals, was causing an increasing amount of issues, resulting in page load times of over ten seconds and attributing to very high bounce rates and reduced conversions.
Business founder and managing director Simon Thompson turned to Manchester based digital product agency Code Computerlove for a solution to how he could create a fast user driven experience with 15 years of legacy software.
Instead of launching a new website, Accommodation For Students was keen to redevelop the current platform to ensure no downtime and deliver an improved user experience in the fastest possible time.
Working with Code Computerlove, the original code was rewritten using an iterative approach, with a key focus on user journeys and interactions.
Understanding the best performing locations, Code focused on the areas of the site where customers would see the most improvements, releasing each phase as it was completed and running the old and new iterations simultaneously.
This not only improved user experience, but also reduced risk to the business, as releases were only made live once fully tested.
Code Computerlove Technical Director, Dave Heath explains: ”Although technically simple in principal (Classic asp, SQL Server & traditional hosting), Accommodation For Student’s software had sprawled out of control in complexity and debt over 15 years resulting in SQL Server scalability issues, unmanageable codebase, and 10+ second page load times that were impossible to adapt to a changing customer user expectation.
“Re-writing the entire stack from the ground up, including all the supporting administration and client login/management features is a huge task, and one that would have resulted in very little change to the end user for a long time.
“From a technical position, our ‘Technical North Star Aspiration’ was to end up with clear independent data storage models/domains (as opposed to a monolithic SQL Server data model), with a powerful, fast and highly scalable API layer, that could be used by a range of high speed end user consumers (web application, apps etc.), all to be hosted in AWS/Azure with the DevOps and automation to ensure it could scale on demand.
“Para começar, criamos uma camada de API entre o atual armazenamento de dados do servidor SQL, empurrando a pesquisa regular e as atualizações de dados de propriedades em um cache de dados de alta concorrência / alta disponibilidade. Isso não apenas reduziria a carga no SQL Server, mais de 50%, reduzindo o risco de negócios. Tecnologia de aplicativos da Web, para que pudéssemos iterar rapidamente como engenheiros e desenvolvedores de front -end. A experiência do usuário foi construída com um forte foco no celular primeiro e no orçamento de desempenho para garantir que a experiência do usuário seja a experiência em jejum no mercado. Isso significava que não agregamos nenhum risco alterando o software de 15 anos e podíamos iterar mais rápido e agregar valor sempre que tínhamos algo pronto. ” Desde a reconstrução, houve uma enorme elevação na conversão, especialmente no celular. Isso ocorreu devido ao investimento na separação técnica que alimenta o aplicativo da Web Experience Fast Experience, resultando em 1-2 tempos de carregamento na segunda página para os maiores locais de pesquisa de propriedades e filtragem instantânea. It. Speaking of the project, Simon said: “The approach and results in transforming our site have been spot on and, as well as implementing the initial project, Code has also worked with our team to help us develop our internal capabilities to continue to build out towards our technical north star and to deliver end user improvements.
“We chose React.js as the front end web application technology, so we could iterate quickly as engineers and front end developers. The user experience was built with a strong focus on mobile first and performance budgeting to ensure that the user experience would be the fasted experience in market.
“The first user journey and search locations were released with a brand update whilst the old site ran for the rest of the user experiences and search locations. To do this we implemented a reverse proxy, so we could control which URL’s patterns were directed to the new technical solution, with all others going to the old tech solution. This meant we didn’t add any risk by changing 15 year old software, and could iterate faster and deliver value whenever we had something ready.”
Accommodationforstudents.com is now enjoying fast load speeds, with page downloads of just 1.5 seconds. Since the redevelopment, there has been a huge uplift in conversion especially on mobile. This was due to the investment in the technical separation that powers the fast user experience web application, resulting in 1-2 second page load times for the largest property search locations and instant filtering.
Over time it has scaled out more and more search locations, and added more user features across different user device types, always using data to identify the most valuable/important thing and then releasing quickly to maximise value return and iterating on it.
Accommodationforstudents.com was established by Simon Thompson, who launched the venture after experiencing first-hand the difficulties in finding suitable student accommodation. Speaking of the project, Simon said: “The approach and results in transforming our site have been spot on and, as well as implementing the initial project, Code has also worked with our team to help us develop our internal capabilities to continue to build out towards our technical north star and to deliver end user improvements.
“The original site was fit for purpose, however as the digital world has evolved we knew we needed to look at how this could be improved, which was why we employed the Habilidades especializadas do código ComputerLove. Eles usaram uma abordagem muito pragmática, focada em melhorar as áreas do local em que veríamos o maior benefício no tempo mais rápido possível, o que nos permitiu maximizar vendas e conversões. ”
