Boosted
BACKSTORY
The Arts Foundation has been ‘Backing Artists to Make Their Mark Since 1998’. Boosted was born out of a belief that an arts-dedicated crowdfunding platform will help reduce the space between artists and their audiences. This belief has been proven, the platform has raised over $8,000,000 for the arts in Aotearoa with over 70,000 donations passed on from the community kickstarting thousands of creative New Zealand projects.
With a stunning success rate of over 90%, this platform has become a crucial outlet for our creative arts community to tell their story, engage their audiences, and further their craft. Boosted is making giving to the arts both simple accessible and incredibly effective.
Boosting:
1. to lift or raise by pushing from behind or below.
2. to advance or aid by speaking well of; promote.
3. to increase; raise: to boost prices.
WHY WE DID IT
Based on the growing demands of Boosted and its community, the website and back office platform needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. Changing needs of creatives and their communities meant we needed a. more robust infrastructure to serve strong growth in traffic volumes and establishing reliable services that ensured we were delivering an exceptional user experience.
HOW WE DID IT
UiRevolution has vast experience and knowledge of the digital landscape and the right tools to realise success for our clients and partners. Whilst this experience runs deep, it is our curiosity and ability to re-imagine both the problem, process, and outcome that sets us apart.
From a design perspective, this means listening. Listening to creatives and the Aotearoa arts community.
From a development perspective, this means staying abreast of new platforms and tools, experimenting, prototyping, and breaking things.
Our team, and the team behind the product that is Boosted, are all artists. Not least, the developers and engineers that turn what could realistically be considered blunt binary tools into a living breathing entity that invites users and ensures trust.
WHAT WE DID
The tech stack was built using the best in class tools:
Keystone was the CMS platform we chose to rebuild Boosted on. This move to a Headless CMS gives Boosted mailability to grow while providing a powerful and robust back-end.
We implemented serverless architecture using AWS Lambda, allowing Boosted to auto-scale based on traffic volumes.
Vue.js for front-end development.
We have used the Amazon Elastic Container Registry for continuous integration and continuous deployment.
MongoDB formed the database.
Salesforce integration allowed for the co-ordination of marketing & comms activities.
With this exceptionally robust stack as the backbone, we introduced a truly responsive mobile experience, micro-services, a highly stable payment process, and brand rehydration.
And it didn’t take long before we were able to capitalize on the ability to add new features and functionality to the platform. Within weeks of Covid19 directly affecting NZ and its arts community, were able to spin up a powerful video performance platform. Read more about that here.
OUTCOME
Boosted relaunched in February 2020. Under the leadership of Arts Foundation's new Director Jo Blair, Boosted can better deliver on its value proposition and embrace a growing number of creatives looking for support along with their backers.
We feel humbled to be part of this journey with Boosted. We realise the importance of the performance, accessibility, and ongoing improvements to this product, and are committed to ensuring trust in the platform to allow for the seamless exchange of art and commerce.
