Customer story · Influenster
A review platform rebuilt around how people actually use it
We designed the new platform from real user journeys — and left the team with continuous delivery, code review and a development process that outlived the project.
About Influenster
Influenster is a community of consumers who share their opinions on a wide range of products, hosting user-generated reviews and Q&A alongside exclusive deals and Voxboxes of sample products that connect client brands with their audiences.
The platform runs on genuine recommendation and honest feedback, which makes it as valuable to brands as it is to shoppers.
The problem
The brief was a new website, but the useful question underneath it was narrower: what do people actually come here to do? A review platform lives or dies on whether someone can find the product they are deciding about and read something trustworthy about it.
What we built
Our first step was to make sure we were building a site where users could get the most out of what Influenster offers. We defined user journeys together and developed a thorough understanding of how people were interacting with the existing site, and that is what informed how the main features of the new platform were designed and built.
We also helped them change how they work, so that value arrived sooner and kept arriving. We introduced continuous integration and continuous delivery, helped define their development and deployment processes, and coached the team in Kanban. Regular code reviews and linters went in to keep the code base high-quality and organised.
The outcome
By 2019, Influenster's community of over 5.5 million users had written more than 38 million product reviews and over 8 million Q&A, and was adding roughly a million new reviews a month. In 2019, Bazaarvoice acquired Influenster.
“Their responsiveness made our project a success for all parties. We are very happy with the technical know-how and service provided by Sophilabs.”
What this draws on
Related services
- Product Development
User journeys first, then the features — a platform designed from how it is used.
- QA Automation
Code review and linting as a standing habit, not a phase at the end.
- Cloud & DevOps
Continuous integration and delivery are what turn "sooner" into something repeatable.
Something like this in your software?
The first conversation is with the engineers who would build it — not a sales script.