Crowdberry
investment
platform
About
Crowdberry enables private investors to invest their capital directly in carefully selected Czech and Slovak companies. They asked us to redesign and rebuild their investment platform.
2020
Outcome
€60M+
invested capital
35
financed companies
€300M+
turnover of financed companies
Mission
Personalise the platform for each user
The goal was to create a scalable investment platform and automate the process of offering a personalised experience by connecting the page with live CRM data, while also increasing security and lowering the manual workload for the Crowdberry team.
The expectation was to build the platform on a headless, cloud-hosted CMS and ensure fast page loads, user-friendly navigation, and easy scaling. Improving the website conversion rate was also an important factor.
Challenge
Replace an outdated solution with a scalable one
It was necessary to re-engineer the legacy PHP solution from top to bottom and build it using scalable, more future-proof technologies. Together with Crowdberry’s own technical advisor and their broader marketing team, we provided the solution architecture, product management, design, and development. Within six months, the core product was delivered. Within the next three, the full release was out and we continued providing development support.
Solution
The power of Next.js rendering modes
We’ve met the expectations by taking advantage of different Next.js rendering modes. The platform uses Static Site Generation for pages where immediate page loads are essential, and the content is the same for all users—like the About Us page. Additionally, static pages that need to be re-generated periodically, like the Careers page, make use of Incremental Static Regeneration.
Client-Side Rendering is used for content that is only accessible to authenticated users and thus doesn't affect SEO—like dashboards. This also saves some SSR costs. Server-Side Rendering, then, provides a means for displaying the core pages that need to be heavily tailored to the current user and affect the SEO at the same time—like investment opportunities.
All the personalised, user-centric content is updated live data through a cloud-based CRM. The integration with the CRM also allows for automating the formerly manual processes.
Bonus
Making changes easy
We’ve made it possible for the Crowdberry team to edit all the content they need on the website—without our intervention. Using the CMS, they can easily update pages through a variety of ready-to-use blocks that make the website consistent, yet flexible. Thanks to a preview mode, it is possible to view new pages without having to publish them.
Additionally, to ensure a smooth transition for users, we’ve made sure that all the old links people might’ve saved are still fully compatible—so that e.g. all their bookmarks are still usable.
