Background
Mission Viejo, one of the largest master-planned communities located in the United States wanted to engage its community and residents better by delivering best-in-class web and mobile experience. Ameex, an expert for omnichannel strategy, was approached to enhance their website and build a new mobile app that allows citizens to access information faster and learn about the services offered by the city easily.
Roadmap Development
Mission Viejo were early adopters of innovative technology solutions through omnichannel strategy. Now, the city wanted to strengthen its digital presence by delivering highly engaging experience across devices. Our team of Digital Strategists, Drupal Consultants, and UX Experts worked closely with their internal stakeholders to identify user experience gaps, assess platform capabilities, and develop a strategic roadmap to deliver optimum experiences across channels.
Initial Findings and Proposed Solution
Website
- High developer dependency for content authoring and publishing.
- Site navigation challenges and broken links affected user experience.
- Improper functioning of key features such as events, calendar, and site search.
- Issues with the hosting server resulted in slow-loading pages and poor performance.
Mobile
- Mobile app was built on proprietary technology and it is not very flexible or customizable.
- Large app size (150 MB) made users refrain from downloading it.
- App content was stored locally by JSON resulted in frequent data storage and management.
- Required better app permission management to overcome privacy concerns
- High on maintenance.
Incrementally Enhancing the Web Experience
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Phase 1: Upgrading the Drupal site
- Drupal site was upgraded to the latest version which improved content authoring experience.
- All broken links were removed or redirected and sitemap is configured better.
- Look and feel of the calendar functionality was improved and it displayed the events accurately.
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Phase 2: Improving Site Appeal
- Redesigned page elements to create strong impression, maintain brand consistency, and optimize user experience.
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Phase 3: Cloud Enhancements
- Cloud environment was reconfigured for better scalability and performance. It further improved development process, testing, and updates.
- Since security being the customer’s highest priority, we performed additional hardening of the infrastructure following best security practices.
Building a cutting-edge Mobile app on Drupal & Flutter
Focusing on omnichannel strategy, we devised a cross-platform framework for building the new mobile app where the frontend was built on Flutter and the content is augmented from Drupal’s backend API. This innovative mobile architecture helped in,
- Native Mobile Experience: Frictionless experience for both iOS and Android users.
- Faster Development: Single code base for multiple operating systems saved up to 80% of the development time.
- Low App Size: Lighter framework helped in reducing app size drastically.
- Easy Maintenance: Security patches and platform updates can be installed easily.
- Cost Advantage: Reduced overall app development & maintenance cost.
Unlocked the full potential of Augmented Reality (AR)
The client had implemented AR functionality to display hotels and shopping centers in the city. We migrated the same to the new mobile platform without any code loss and also made UX enhancements to provide deeply engaging experience.
Empowering Content Authoring Experience
With the decoupled architecture, content authors can easily edit or publish content with minimal developer support and provide information to citizens quickly.
Resolving Privacy Concerns
Best security practices were followed to prevent data leaks and security threats. Basic data encryption was enabled by default to protect users’ personal details.
Offline Mobile Access
To improve usability when lacking network reception, we developed an offline mode in mobile app that allowed users to access their data, save interactions, and communicate when the network is available.
Value Delivered
Website
- Easy Content Authoring Experience – Empowered internal teams to create content with minimal developer support.
- Improved User Engagement – Seamless navigation experience helped citizens access information faster and increase engagement rate.
- Better Accessibility – WCAG AA compliance for better accessibility to all citizens.
- No Website Downtime – After enhancing the cloud, there was no website downtime and we improved operational resilience too.
Mobile
- Significant Increase in Daily Active Users
- Reduced App Size by 50%
- Enabled Real-time Information Updates
- <2 Seconds – App page load time