Building a Trust-First Social Polling Platform: Enhancing Engagement, Data Transparency, and Advertiser Value
Expertise Delivered
Industry
The Client
Our client, Civic Insights, is a London-based social polling platform dedicated to reshaping how individuals and brands connect and gather opinions. The platform empowers users to discover real insights through instant, transparent polls while fostering meaningful conversations.
Civic Insights lets users create private polls for focused feedback or join public discussions to inspire global conversations.
Disclaimer: The name Civic Insights is a placeholder, as there is an NDA signed between both parties.
The Challenge
Google announced it would phase out third-party cookies by 2022, making it harder for advertisers to track users and run targeted campaigns, putting ad revenues at risk. Civic Insights faced the challenge of maintaining effective ad targeting without third-party cookies.
They aimed to solve this problem by developing a social-utility app that allowed users to share opinions through interactive polls while helping advertisers gather insights. Instead of relying on third-party cookies, the app would use "a handshake"—a smart contract system ensuring privacy and transparency.
Initially, Civic Insights worked with freelancers, but the process lacked direction and consistency. They faced several challenges along the way:
- Hiring Inefficiencies: Their early work with freelancers lacked structure and consistency.
- Unstructured Ideas: They had a clear vision but needed a skilled team to turn it into a real product.
- Dynamic Scope: The project evolved quickly, requiring flexibility and precise execution.
- Time Constraints: They needed to launch an MVP quickly to secure funding and enter the market.
To tackle these challenges, they partnered with Maruti Techlabs, trusting their expertise in MVP development and ability to adapt to changing needs while ensuring smooth execution.
Why Maruti Techlabs?
Civic Insights found Maruti Techlabs through our insightful blog on app development and was impressed by the team’s technical expertise, structured approach, and track record of delivering innovative solutions. Maruti Techlabs hosted two detailed workshops to clarify the project scope, refine features, and plan the roadmap for the MVP.
Solution
To address the challenges faced by the client, we first developed a fully functional MVP mobile app. We created wireframes and prototypes to ensure the design matched their vision.
Then, we proceeded to build the mobile app using Flutter for a seamless cross-platform experience and enhanced the web portal with modernized UI/UX and improved functionality.
The solution featured the following key functionalities:
- Dynamic Poll Creation and Management: Enabled users to design and launch polls effortlessly, with customizable options for audience targeting and response collection.
- Real-Time Analytics Dashboard: Provided actionable insights through interactive charts and graphs, allowing users to analyze poll results instantly.
- Audience Engagement Tools: Added features like comment threads, sharing options, and notifications to enhance user participation and interaction.
- Privacy and Data Security: Implemented industry-standard encryption to safeguard user data, ensuring trust and compliance with regulations.
- Scalable Architecture: Designed a backend capable of handling high traffic and large-scale data operations efficiently.
- Localization Features: Integrated support for multiple languages and cultural settings to expand global reach and enhance accessibility.
We added third-party APIs for features like social media sharing and sentiment analysis. With modular development, we made integration easy and avoided extra dependencies. The solution was carefully tested using both automated and manual methods to ensure everything worked perfectly.
Your product idea. Our engineering prowess & seamless execution.
Communication and Collaboration
During the project, we prioritized strong communication and collaboration to ensure all stakeholders were aligned. Transparent updates and a well-structured feedback process helped us resolve challenges efficiently and keep the project on track.
Here’s how we maintained effective communication:
- Slack: For daily updates, quick discussions, and immediate clarifications.
- JIRA: For tracking tasks, managing sprints, and monitoring project progress.
- Confluence: Served as the central hub for documentation, knowledge sharing, and project-related resources.
This combination of tools ensured seamless collaboration and allowed the team to stay organized, address risks proactively, and deliver the solution within the agreed timeline.
Technology Stack
Our Development Process
We follow Agile, Lean, & DevOps best practices to create a superior prototype that brings your users’ ideas to fruition through collaboration & rapid execution. Our top priority is quick reaction time & accessibility.
We really want to be your extended team, so apart from the regular meetings, you can be sure that each of our team members is one phone call, email, or message away.
