CaringBridge - Replatforming Transition
Market Problem:
Founded in 1997, CaringBridge is a social platform for families experiencing health challenges who want to share their stories safely and securely. CaringBridge’s business model is a donor-driven nonprofit that relies on community members to be so engaged that they would help fund the platform.
As a 15-year-old platform, CaringBridge had not been fully updated and rearchitected since its launch. When the company decided a rebrand and repositioning was necessary, the product also needed to be updated to meet the new brand promise, but the existing technology could not support a facelift or provide major new features.
The biggest problem, beyond rebuilding a beloved product with 20+ million annual visits, was respectfully migrating existing communities.
Who’s it for:
Platform in transition
What we did:
Partnering with our Architect, we devised a plan that would reduce the risk of users rejecting a new user experience and allow for a firm end-of-life date for the old platform. Instead of a hard cutover for communities and users, we rebuilt the current experience with a “Faux” interface on our new infrastructure after extensive performance tests.
Next, we slowly rolled communities over to the new experience first voluntarily (getting feedback along the way), then new sites, and finally an orderly transition based on community activity. This allowed all sites to be moved off the old infrastructure, reducing costs, and ensuring the acceptance of the new normal by users.
Success metrics:
- Less than 3-month development timeline of the “Faux” experience assisted by known workflows and use cases
- 3-month transition timeline
- Continuity of important business metrics including activity and donations
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