Web Application Redesign for Family Activity Platform

Project background 

Overview

The client is the leading service in Norway for discovering cultural and sports events for kids and families. They had an existing platform that contained vast amounts of data on events across the country, but the platform was outdated and suffered from performance issues, especially in terms of mobile support and overall user experience. The main goal was not just performance optimization but a complete web application redesign to meet modern standards and enhance its stability and performance.

Project goals

• Redesign the platform for mobile compatibility.
• Improve user experience and UI for better usability.
• Drastically improve the performance and loading times of the platform.
• Implement advanced filtering options for event searches.
• Integrate with Google Maps for real-time location services.
• Build a stable and scalable solution to handle large amounts of data.

Challenges

• The platform lacked mobile support and had poor UX, causing frustration among users.
• There were multiple errors in the web application, and the codebase was unstable.
• The platform was slow, with main page loading times of up to 8 seconds.
• The server-side generation of the main page took too long, requiring a new approach to speed up the user experience.

Our approach

Solution

After a detailed discussion with the client, it was clear that merely adapting the existing system for mobile devices would not be sufficient. Together, we decided to undertake a full redesign of the web application. We created over 160 layouts, including 90 specifically for mobile devices. After finalizing the design, we moved on to updating the tech stack from ASP.NET MVC to Angular Universal/NGRX for the frontend and .NET Core/MS SQL on the backend.

One of the key challenges was the slow loading time of the main page, which was due to multiple operations like fetching user location, loading event data, and prioritizing activities. We solved this by implementing a daily cache generation for all cities in Norway. This solution improved the page load time from 8 seconds to just 100 milliseconds, i.e., an 80x performance optimization.

Team

The project was executed by a well-balanced team, including frontend developers for UI/UX, backend developers for improving performance, and dedicated QA engineers for stability and a smooth user experience.

Results

The complete redesign and tech stack update took 18 months to complete. The integration of SPA and SSR technologies with Google Maps enabled seamless location-based searches and event filtering. 

The updated platform attracted over $700,000 in investments, and it was successfully monetized through partnerships with event organizers and paid advertising campaigns. Mobile-friendly interface increased user engagement, and the platform now serves as a top resource for family activities in Norway.