Online solution for event organizers and visitors

Back-end

Front-end

Audit

Support

Herokey is an online solution for smart communication between event organizers and visitors, which allows the promotion of events in a digital environment 24/7.

Background

Herokey has been on the market since 2016. At that time, the initial goal of developing the event marketplace in Berlin was launching and promoting annual music festivals of a particular organizer in Germany. The company grew its ambitions and began attracting other event makers, both in the German region and outside the country. In 2018, the platform became a springboard for clients from South Africa, while actively developing work with new organizers from Europe. Today Herokey has more than 150 events of various sizes with an audience of over 100 thousand visitors and ticket purchase transactions worth over 5 million euros per occasion.

Location

Berlin, Germany

Period

January 2016 - Present

Tech stack

Ruby On Rails, Vue.js

Customer Request

Hello. We are a small Berlin company that has developed an event marketplace prototype with essential functions tailored to the client and the basic needs of their consumers. We are now looking for a permanent development team that will take over the support and scale the platform's capabilities. The current team, which cannot continue leading the project for several reasons, recommended you as ambitious guys with an excellent technical background and skills. Are you able to take our project considering a scalable approach and long-term development?

Hi. Of course, we exactly specialize in digital solutions of such areas. Let's see what you have at the moment regarding code and technical lines. To evaluate a working prototype, we need to know your current business objectives, the needs of your customers and their users, and understand what you are striving for. We can transfer all interaction to Slack for quick communication, and we will announce the details with our proposal after a series of calls.

Challenges & Solutions

Challenges

Lack of a transparent development system and the presence of errors in the code.

At the time of the prototype launch, there was no system for setting goals, interaction, development. As a result, an impressive technical debt with outdated code and, consequently, a large number of bugs has accumulated.

The system is not ready to work with new clients.

The platform first served one festival organizer, handling promotions and tasks. Expanding required a flexible system where each event operated independently in time, payments, and promotions.

Low payment activity of users.

Electronic tickets, used for payments at festivals, allowed refills only via the event marketplace’s payment form. However, limited integration with one provider reduced ticket purchases and refills, lowering event monetization.

Solutions

Optimization of development processes and streamlining of the software base.

To solve the issues, QA and PM identified errors and ensured fixes via proper task management in Jira and Slack. We set project goals and developed a strategy with a detailed step-by-step progress plan.

Changing the architecture of the event marketplace.

We modified the web app so each event operated independently, letting organizers set dates, locations, user settings, and generate reports without conflicts. To boost speed, we migrated to a cloud DBMS.

Improvement of the payment acceptance system.

We integrated multiple payment systems—Klarna, PayPal, Secure EFT, and major card networks—to meet user needs. Additionally, we enabled instant synchronization for fast fund transfers to the bracelet-ticket.

project facts

states covered in Europe and South America

150

events have already been successfully held

100k

maximum visitors registered on one festival

main features

Accreditation tool for managing crews and guests

Although the organizer's admin panel and ticket store have a comprehensive, customizable functionality, it did not allow issuing access cards for staff serving festivals or VIP guests. The problem solution was a development based on Vuetify to simplify the interface of a separate control panel for working teams, that ensured managing tickets with customizable access levels for locations and entertainment. Its availability allowed the organizers to distinguish between visitors and groups, check in guests by categories and zones, and also upload flexible reports with information about the team.

CRMs for events managing detailed customizations

After changing the marketplace architecture, there was a need to customize the panel in such a way that all settings of the festival would automatically display on the visitor's page. So, numerous settings and functions allow you to organize an event entirely according to the tasks of the event maker. As a result, the user can get a ticket of different access levels in the personal account, sell or change a card, and top up the balance in real time with its instant upload to the bracelet. The visitor can view the history of transactions and purchases, and receive additional bonuses from the organizers during the event. The organizer can upload event reports using custom filters and parameters, considering the information from all visitors tickets.

Customizable and embeddable ticket shop

With the development of the admin panel for individual event organizers, there was a need to create a custom panel for issuing tickets for visitors. The FTL team has developed a customizable ticket dashboard where organizers can create promotional codes, and special offers, and control the number of tickets and access levels (ticket types). Also, the managers run partner offers that a visitor can receive for the balance on the ticket bracelet. At the same time, there are options to automatically synchronize ticket stores with all organizers' offices on the event maker side and to upload to third-party platforms for sale in just two clicks.

Technologies used

Learn More

We apply the latest web technologies to craft seamless and engaging applications, making sure your digital solution stands out and elevates your business.

Backend

Frontend

Databases

Tests

Ruby On Rails

Ruby On Rails is popular web application framework written in Ruby. It follows the convention over configuration (CoC) and don't repeat yourself (DRY) principles, making it faster for developers to build applications without writing boilerplate code.

25%

Shorter development cycles

60%

Lower maintenance costs