ABC Salles: web platform redesign for the leading event venue finder
TCM led the web platform redesign of ABC Salles, from the search engine to the sales back office, without losing the organic search traffic that drives its business.
ABC Salles, the leading event venue search platform
Why did ABC Salles choose TCM?
The web platform redesign of ABC Salles is one of TCM’s long-running projects. ABC Salles is France’s leading event venue search website: more than 20,000 venues listed and thousands of organisers looking every day for a space to host a seminar, a wedding or a party. Its model relies on venue visibility and on very strong organic search rankings.
In 2014, ABC Salles entrusted TCM with the redesign and modernisation of its platform. Everything then lived in a single application: the public website, the customer area and the back office. The goal was twofold: give venue managers a simple, modern management space, and give the sales team the tools to handle every new lead efficiently.
Three challenges for a web platform redesign that breaks nothing
Protect business-critical SEO
Migrate more than 500,000 pages without losing the search rankings that bring in most of the traffic and requests.
Move away from a monolithic architecture
Split the public website, customer area and back office, until then bundled into one application, so each can evolve at its own pace.
Turn more visitors into requests
Offer a simpler, faster, mobile-first search with a short and effective request flow.
A rebuilt platform, from the search engine to the sales back office
A modular web platform redesign built around a central API
TCM split the legacy application into independent building blocks: a central API carrying the business logic, a public website, a back office and a media service. Each application now queries a single service, which makes changes simpler and keeps data secure.
The website was then fully redesigned mobile first, with a fast ElasticSearch-powered search engine and richer venue pages. Internally, the sales team now has a back office covering invoicing, subscriptions, sales actions and statistics.
Public website and search engine
Fast geolocated search, complete venue pages, simplified request flow.
Sales back office
Invoicing, venue subscriptions, add-on services, sales actions and statistics.
SEO engine
More than 500,000 pages generated automatically, by city and by event type.
Connected call centre
Call routing and automatic opening of the caller's record on the sales rep's screen.
Call and email tracking
Venue call tracking and transactional email tracking from the back office.
A service centre that keeps pace with the business
A web platform redesign run on a time-and-materials basis, with a dedicated TCM team working hand in hand with ABC Salles' technical leadership.
Defining the need
ABC Salles' CTO, acting as product owner, submits and specifies change requests.
Advice and design
TCM recommends the most suitable technical solutions before building them.
Weekly meetingDevelopment
A team of 3 at TCM, with tasks tracked in Asana and Slack.
Release
A new version shipped to production every week.
WeeklyKnowledge transfer
TCM trained two developers from ABC Salles' in-house team.
When search rankings are the core of the business, every change matters. Running the web platform redesign through small weekly releases, on an architecture split into building blocks, let us modernise continuously without ever putting traffic at risk.
The expertise we brought
Your questions about redesigning a high-traffic SEO platform
What to know before modernising a website whose search rankings drive revenue.
By mapping every existing URL before the migration, keeping or redirecting each one, and managing metadata and indexing page by page. For ABC Salles, TCM built a page management table (URL, status, redirects, metadata) that made it possible to migrate more than 500,000 pages while protecting traffic.
Splitting the public website, customer area and back office around a central API lets each block evolve at its own pace, use the right technology for each use and ship more often. That is what makes a gradual web platform redesign possible, with no risk to the rest of the site.
TCM (The Coding Machine), a custom software development agency based in Paris, has supported high-traffic web platforms since 2005. For ABC Salles, France’s leading event venue finder, TCM led the web platform redesign across technology, features and design, as a service centre with a production release every week.
