Optimizing a Car Auction Platform to Drive Sales

Technology Stack

Next.js
Node.js
PostgreSQL
AWS

The Client

The client owns a car auction marketplace showcasing fantastic collections of ultra-luxury cars like Porsches, BMWs, Aston Martins, Jaguars, etc. Car enthusiasts can opt to place their bids on or directly buy these cars from this marketplace. The platform is also connected with an esteemed BMW club portal, which helps drive high-value engagement and sales.

The Challenge

The client already made this auction platform live several months back. But, the live platform wasn’t driving high-quality sales. The existing platform had multiple pain points, for example:

Non-responsive layouts resulted in lost customers.
Unoptimized images led to increased page load time.
The lack of SEO-friendly solutions brought down search engine ranks.
The lack of the SSO feature turned down high-value sales.

The client contacted Capital Numbers for solutions to address these problems. Our challenge was to make the website well-optimized at various levels. It wasn’t about getting traffic only. It was about getting good-quality traffic.

So, firstly, we needed to integrate the Single Sign-on (SSO) feature to connect the platform with the high-profile BMW club portal. We needed to do this to attract high-value engagement. Plus, we needed to make the website extremely fast-loading, mobile-responsive, and SEO-friendly.

We collected these requirements and worked towards doing the necessary. We have already developed auction marketplaces from scratch before. But, our focus in this project was to optimize the site extensively to draw high-value customers. The idea was to raise revenues by engaging premium-quality bidders.

The Solution

Keeping the project goals in mind, we first examined the existing website architecture. At this point, we found that migrating the existing React.js architecture to Next.js was necessary because the former was holding the platform from its desired performance.

The React.js components restricted the platform from being SEO-friendly, fast loading, and mobile-responsive. Realizing this gap, we migrated the frontend architecture from React.js to Next.js. During this migration work, we skillfully updated the data fetching logic, file structures, and import paths for them to work in Next.js.

We chose Next.js because it provides server-side rendering (SSR), guaranteeing fast page reloads. Next.js also provides static site generation (SSG) support, preparing it for better SEO. It also automatically splits code into smaller bundles to keep websites lightweight.

All these capabilities aren't available in React.js. If we were to get these capabilities in React, we would need to install external libraries and dependencies. Whereas, Next.js already comes with these capabilities in its package. So, migrating to Next.js was an obvious choice.

Once we were done with the migration, we integrated the Single Sign-on (SSO) feature to allow the elite BMW club members to access the portal through a single login. In addition, we made a few enhancements to scale the Node.js backend and PostgreSQL database. We also compressed the large image files and ensured the platform was mobile-responsive.

We then prepared for the deployment part. While deploying the solution on AWS, we configured the server resources for the new data fetching logic, file structures, import paths, and other variables to run correctly. From updating architecture to server configurations, we optimized the system at various levels to ensure reliable operation while keeping costs under control.

Results

We completed the entire work in 40 business days, giving the auction website a performance boost. Impressed with our capacity planning and system improvements, our client said we earned the stripe to be their long-term partner. Here's what the newly-optimized website offers:

High Bidding Activity

Fast-loading pictures and pages offering vehicle synopsis motivate high-profile visitors to actively participate in car auctions.

High-quality Engagement

The SSO feature helps in attracting good-quality traffic from the BMW club community.

Competitive Auction Prices

Rising engagement from the elite community allows the client to set competitive ‘Place Your Bid’ and ‘Buy Now’ prices.

High-value Sales

Competitive ‘Place Your Bid’ and ‘Buy Now’ prices gear up high-value sales.

Mobile-responsiveness

Skillful optimizations make the website adapt to all mobile screen sizes.

Faster Information Retrieval

The new data fetching logic helps retrieve website information much faster than before.

Scalable Hosting

Well-done server configurations ensure scalable and reliable hosting.

Quicker Page Rendering

The new SSR logic helps render pages and content much quicker.

Good-quality SEO

Updated logic also prepares the site for impressive ranks on Google and other search engines.

Better Revenues

Our work paid off well, as the high-performing website now wins engagement and revenues from premium auctioneers and bidders - something the client greatly thanked Capital Numbers for.