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Affiliate marketing platform development

Financial product comparison platform unleashes potential through cloud

Bankrate.com is one of UK’s leading comparison platform for most popular financial consumer products in the UK.

The team behind the magic – Freedom Marketing Ltd., a subsidiary of Bankrate USA aims to deliver a straight forward and a transparent way for consumers coming from all walks of life to access information in the most accurate format in line with compliance guidelines laid out by Financial Conduct Authority, UK. Bankrate.com is a complete resource for consumers to compare finance products, receive money saving tips and interact with other like-minded users. It is completely free for online users and operates solely on cost per acquisition model for their advertisers.

The next level : 

Through a deep dive analysis of the current system and business process, the teams at Blackwater Tech Ltd. and Freedom Marketing Ltd. formulated a technology architecture followed by a CMMI based development plan to allow parallel development and deployment of technology infrastructure.

  • Their rapid growth made evident the need for a lean operating infrastructure that has the ability to grow and shrink on demand with minimum downtime.

  • High level data security to ensure industry compliance and to provide the best possible security for all their advertisers and online visitors.

  • Web content management system to unlock team agility enabling the platform editors and developers to modify and adapt to the growing demands of the online market at the speed of thought.

  • Advanced customer insights in and out of the site to ensure the content is aligned to fit the needs of their visitors.

  • Data collection and analysis requirements to provide accurate reports on traffic and other advertising metrics.

the leap : 

Over a span of more than 10 years, Bankrate.com as a platform has evolved to handle large volumes of content developed to meet the advertising needs of a rapidly growing range of clients. To tackle these advertising requirements, the team at Freedom Marketing deployed technology innovation by developing a content management system on the fly to keep the business momentum rising. As the technology grew to its full potential, scope for further development has been revealed. This required a next level process streamlining to boost the speed and performance of team and technology. Here are some of the highlights of the findings:

some of key features : 

As the technology team rolled out development through a continuous integration model, the deliveries were handed over via the Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) interface to allow the team at Freedom Marketing to conduct UAT and mark completion. This not only provided the team at Freedom Marketing Ltd. a transparent view of the development but also a systematic method to organise progress and post-delivery workflow on their end.

result : 

Enterprise agility provided by Microsoft Azure Cloud services enables scope to scale into a platform that has absolutely no limits. No matter what the traffic or the performance requirements, platform is set to scale with a minimum downtime providing its users a seamless and engaging online experience on the go.

Rapidly growing Drupal 8 technology platform provides a wide range of features unlocking potential to adapt quickly to a constantly evolving internet landscape. In addition to performance and automation features, the Drupal 8 CMS combined with the custom database allows scope to mine deeper insights into online experiences laying foundation for future deployments of machine learning and AI.

The custom technology and data architecture designed uniquely for Bankrate.com allows wide range of online data readily available making industry compliances laid out by Financial Conduct Authority and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance manageable.

As a Digital Partner to Freedom Marketing Ltd, Blackwater Tech Ltd is proud to support their commitment to quality and technology as they grow fast into a dominant network worldwide.