Optimizing Performance And User Experience For A Leading Vehicle Leasing Platform

Upcore's end-to-end overhaul encompassing architecture, design, features, and performance helped the client leapfrog consumer expectations. The iterative approach ensured the continuous delivery of value despite the platform's complexity. With its technology foundation rebuilt for speed and innovation, the client is now positioned to aggressively gain leasing market share across Europe.

Client:

The client is one of Europe's largest vehicle leasing companies with over 50,000 cars leased to retail and corporate customers across the region. Founded in the 1990s, the client has experienced rapid growth driven by its competitive leasing rates, flexible terms, and hassle-free customer service. The client manages an extensive fleet of vehicles from leading automakers and has a team of over 300 employees providing leasing, fleet management, and ancillary services.

With more consumers opting for leasing over purchasing vehicles, and businesses moving to managed fleet solutions, the client saw the opportunity to grow its market share several fold by enhancing its digital platform and capabilities.

Challenge:

The client's existing website and leasing portals had multiple limitations impeding further growth:

- Outdated web technology stack and monolithic architecture
- Web pages had high load times of up to 15 seconds
- Platform lacked many features expected by modern users
- Fragmented document and data formats across portals
- Minimal test automation resulting in undetected defects
- Technical debt accumulation made enhancements tedious
- Poor mobile optimization deterred engagement

It was clear that with its legacy platform, the client would struggle to keep up with evolving customer expectations and competitor offerings. A major upgrade was imperative to boost customer experience, enable rapid innovation, and pave the way for geographic expansion.

Goals of Engagement

The client selected Upcore based on our track record of optimizing enterprise platforms. The key goals outlined were:

- Significant improvement in page load speed
- Building new feature capabilities
- Transition to microservices-based architecture
- End-to-end test automation implementation
- Streamlining document workflows
- Responsive mobile design
- Continuous monitoring of web vitals

Upcore formulated a phased approach to address these targets through incremental enhancements focused on tangibly improving the user experience at every stage.

Solution :

Upcore put together an agile team of full-stack developers, DevOps engineers, and QA specialists dedicated to the 6-month engagement. Our solution approach comprised three phases:

Phase 1 - Transitioning to Microfrontend Architecture

The priority was to break down the monolith into independent micro frontends without disrupting the live platform. Key steps included:

- Assessing existing architecture to map out micro frontend breakdown strategy
- Implementing a module federation framework to stitch micro frontends
- Developing build orchestration mechanisms for deployment autonomy
- Extracting checkout functionality as the first micro frontend
- Ensuring continuity in user experience across micro-frontend boundaries

The decomposition enabled us to enhance specific functions faster without being encumbered by the monolith.

Phase 2 - Features and Capabilities

With the groundwork laid, our team focused on rolling out new platform capabilities:

- Developing car comparison pages to aid selection
- Building guided search for customers to find the right vehicles based on parameters like price, fuel type, seating capacity, etc.
- Implementing dealer review and rating capabilities for transparency
- Adding a one-click certificate of inspection download feature
- Enabling real-time leasing calculators to show estimated monthly payments
- Building a customer portal for self-service lease management

Rapid development sprints were possible through the combination of micro frontend architecture and agile processes.

Phase 3 - Optimization and Quality Assurance

In the final phase, Upcore's team executed extensive performance tuning including:

- Converting icons and images into lighter formats like SVG and WebP
- Minification, translations and tree-shaking to optimize JavaScript bundles
- Fine-tuning GraphQL queries and caching for faster API response
- Lazy loading lower priority components and routes to reduce initial payloads
- Route-based chunking using SplitChunksPlugin to improve caching
- Prefetching techniques for faster subsequent page loads
- Comprehensive web vitals monitoring to continuously improve optimization

Additionally, our automation engineers implemented:

- Unit testing across critical frontend functions
- End-to-end testing suites covering major user workflows
- Integration of tests with CI/CD pipeline to enforce quality gates
- Scheduled smoke tests across environments after deployments
- Synthetic user monitoring to simulate real-world usage patterns

Results

The successful modernization effort delivered immense value to the business:

- Cut average page load time by 62% - down to sub 5 seconds
- Reduced fleet management documentation turnaround time by 3 days
- Increased customer signups by 20% in 6 months post-launch
- Improved mobile conversion rates by 30%
- Decreased developer onboarding time by 40%
- Enabled launch of Italy operations 3 months faster
- Boosted application stability through preventive testing

The future-ready platform significantly elevated user experience while enabling faster rollout of innovations:

"Upcore exceeded our expectations in revamping our platform. Their technical rigor coupled with automation skills has transformed our web presence and unlocked our ability to rapidly deliver capabilities that improve the customer journey.

Technologies Used:

AWS, Apollo GraphQL, Next.js, Vercel, Amazon Textract