The client
Drinkaware is committed to the mission of reducing alcohol-related harm by providing invaluable support to individuals in making informed decisions about their drinking habits.
The challenge
Rebuild and modernise Drinkaware's digital presence to provide a solid foundation from which they can deliver personalised experiences to their users.
The solution
A robust, innovative and future-proof suite of digital tools and web services to support Drinkaware's five-year digital transformation strategy.
Discovery
We undertook an extensive Discovery phase working with Drinkaware’s non-technical product owners and key stakeholders. We worked in detail through audience analyses, stakeholder and user requirements, and peer and competitor research in a collaborative, outcome-driven approach which successfully delivered a project blueprint and well-informed strategy to deliver their project.
Umbraco CMS
The website itself was built using the Umbraco CMS, which manages both the webpage data, plus a range of data points consumed by individual web tools built using Vue.js. The solution is a partial headless implementation due to a significant amount of data being consumed from the Umbraco CMS via APIs to varying front-end, client-side applications.
Technology
We deployed cutting edge web technologies in delivering a secure, high-performance suite of solutions to Drinkaware.
Micro-service tools
We designed and built multiple web applications (tools) composed of ‘micro-frontends’, each sending and receiving data to various microservice-driven APIs. This API layer also integrated with DotMailer CRM and a bespoke integration with Google Tag Manager allowing Drinkaware to track individual user events.
Azure APIm
We used Azure API Management (APIm) and Azure services to manage and compose RESTful APIs to multiple services under a single ‘house style’. This allowed Drinkaware to create a consistent and modern API gateway for their backend services.
Azure cognitive search
Leveraging Azure’s cloud services, Azure Cognitive Search was used for global site search, faceted search, auto suggest and autocorrect to provide users with an intuitive way to discover and navigate content anywhere in the site while maintaining high levels of speed and performance.
Tracking and reporting
Drinkaware wanted to better understand the motivations of their users, how they navigate and interact with the site, what data they submitted and how their drinking behaviour changed over time. To support this requirement, we implemented a complex user event tracking system linked up to PowerBI via Azure Data Warehouse to provide the advanced data required.
Mobile app
Currently in development, we are currently working to integrate Drinkaware’s new mobile tracking app to the overall digital solution by extending the existing website APIs to facilitate the additional functionality, content and data needs of the app. Previously positioned as a standalone product, the new app will soon be fully integrated to the overall digital ecosystem, allowing for a truly cross-platform user experience.
