I helped develop a website in a week that drove $5m in gift card sales and $85m in online ordering sales.
RallyForRestaurants.com is a website that helps provide restaurants with additional sales to sustain reduced traffic as a result of COVID19 shelter in place laws. This web application pulls in data about restaurants and displays it in a searchable list, allowing users to find their favorite restaurant and purchase a gift card or order food online.
Timeline
1 Week Build
My Role
Front End Developer
Tools
Themes
Crossfunctional Collaboration | Big Data | Search
The Problem
A sharp increase in coronavirus cases caused many cities acrross the US to enforce Shelter in Place laws to prevent the spread of COVID19. This was a critical blow to restaurants because as a result many people no longer could go out to eat and instead remained indoors. To make matters worse many restaurants only had traditional brick & mortar solutions and didn't have an online ordering website or electronic gift cards. As a result many resaurants that were surviving paycheck to paycheck were at threat of closing their doors for good because they did not have the savings to survive even a couple weeks without business.
The Solution
Create a website that allowed users to search their favorite restaurant and purchase an electronic gift card or order food online. In addition, spread awareness about the restaurant industry trends at the time and inform restaurant owners about how they could apply for financial help from the government.
Goals
Deploy it ASAP
Ensure the application is efficient and fast
Allow people not on the Toast Platform to opt into including their restaurant on the website
My Role
I was one of the lead front-end engineers developing the application from the ground up. I helped get the initial build of the application production ready, focusing on refining the search experience and restaurant feed.
Development Process
01. - Understanding the Available Data & Defining the Scope
It was clear that primary objective of the team was to deploy a website that allows users to buy electronic giftcards as soon as possible. It was also necessary to have the ability for restaurants not on the Toast platform to opt into being listed on the Rally for Restaurants website. Furthermore, we needed to deploy this website in 4 days. With these 3 pieces of criteria in mind we decided that a static site hosted on AWS would be the most efficient approach. This allowed for a fast deployment, auto scaling to handle increased traffic, and allowed the team to focus on the user experience rather than getting bogged down with system architecture.
02. - Hook Up the Data
Our team decided to use Algolia as our primary method for searching for restaurants and to retrieve data. Algolia provided an easy to use API to hook into their indices making search as easy as a simple function call. Furthmore, Algolia allowed us to sync our data periodically to update their restaurant feed with batch uploads meaning we could routinely update our list with new restaurants that opted into being listed on the wesbite.
03. - Iterating Over the Design
With the strategy and tools decided the only thing left to do was develop and deploy the site! Our team worked closesly with the marketing design team to build the initial designs and quickly iterate to it's current design. At many times we were developing the designed site while the designs themselves were changing on the fly. Once completed and reviewed we launched and within the first 24 hours we generated over one million in E-Giftcard sales!
Check it Out!