REB case: platform revamp

Our partner

REB Projects B.V.

REB started in 2007; as a family-owned, boutique real estate development firm established in the heart of Amsterdam.

The mission of REB is “to make life beautiful”

Website: https://rebprojects.com/en/

REB case: Where we started

REB’s request was to make its content appear seamless, user-friendly, and innovative. Therefore, we created an overview of the corporate website and identified the problem areas that needed improvement.

After the investigation of the REB website, we found these issues:

• Design and UX(User-experience)
• Website performance
• Security of the platform

REB case: What we did

Flatline Agency offered 5 solutions for each REB issue: UI(User interface), performance, automated deployments, testing, and security.

UI(User interface)

The user interface needed adjustments to keep up with the needs of its target audience. This step requires web design support as you want your website visitors to engage fully with the website and its properties.

Flatline Agency offered a solution of improving the existing web design instead redeveloping the entire web design content. Sometimes redesigning the content takes more time and costs more than necessary, so we need to think if the whole design change is required or not. After considering what was required, we concluded that the REB website needs amelioration based on the existing design.

User interface: Before

User interface: After

Improved web design allows for intuitive data entry and an easier way to see what information is available.

Performance

Through examining the website, we found we can improve the performance of REB. In website management, appearance is not the only crucial factor but also the system design behind the interface. To improve the performance of the website we focused on cache and Linter.

Firstly, caching is, similar to how your brain saves information to your recent memory, a technique for temporarily keeping the contents of a webpage or application nearby the user. Optimizing the cache improves website speed and performance because the website no longer has to process useless information. Our developers optimized this caching of the REB website to make the website performance better.

Second, Linter refines the code that is working in the background of the website. The entire website performance gets better by making the code run more efficiently and easier to manage.

Automated deployments

Flatline Agency automated the website deployments process. We adopted Gitlab for this automation. It provides a central server that manages Git repositories and is used to simplify the administration tasks of many corporations worldwide. This automation allows REB website managers to deploy their website just by adding the code to GitLab, then it automatically goes to the AWS server to publish.

Testing

Unit tests and setting up CI(continuous integration)/CD(continuous deployment) pipelines on GitLab were performed by our team. We automated the test process by setting up CI/CD. REB does not have to retest the module manually anymore. The CI/CD pipeline introduces monitoring and automation to improve the website development process, especially during the integration and testing phases and the delivery and deployment phases.

Security

One of their concerns was the security of the website. Therefore, we chose to use Sonar Qube for REB. SonarQube is an automated code review tool that supports “bug finding”, “vulnerability discovery,” and “difficult-to-maintain code detection” in code. It integrates with existing CI/CD workflows to enable continuous code inspection across project branches and pull requests so that all developers can create cleaner, more secure code. In short, we increase the security of the website by removing vulnerabilities.

Results

The overall performance of the REB website increased sharply, and improved UI/UX makes the website more intuitive and easier to use. By improving the website not only from the outside but also from the inside, the website has become overwhelmingly easier to use. We are proud to say that this new website achieved the REB’s original request of making its content look more user-friendly and innovative.

Why Flatline?

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