Relaunching the Synchronize Platform in 3 Months Instead of a Year

Synchronize

Synchronize delivers the top-tier history, culture, and science lectures in Russian. Despite the high-quality content, only 20% of clients renewed their subscription. What lied at the root of the problem was the platform’s technical limitations.

In collaboration with Synchronize we, FANS company, relaunched the platform, creating new architecture, designing an user profile, and rebuilding the content management system. We delivered the project in just three months although such projects usually require from half a year to a whole year.

Challenge

Synchronize had a high-converting landing page; the problems appeared after signing up on the platform.

It was difficult to choose a course and to find it in a user profile.
The search experience was inefficient: finding the course often took so long that users could easily get distracted by scrolling through Reels.
The system didn’t save progress: it wasn’t possible to pick up where a user left off. However, some clients were so passionate about the lectures that they wrote down timestamps in their notebooks.

The technical issues influenced the business: 15% of subscribers never added a single course to their user profiles, while only 20% renewed their subscription. As a result, in the fall 2024 Tanya Lunina, a Synchronize product director, approached FANS for support in relaunching the platform.

Solution

Usually, relaunching a service with multiple user scenarios takes six to twelve months, but the Synchronize team wanted to launch quickly — we had only 3 months. So, our first step was to figure out what we could deliver in that period. After reviewing the architecture, we suggested focusing on three tasks.

Building a user profile with user-friendly navigation and a new video player.

Creating new architecture without breaking the connections to promo pages, and to implement a phased rollout.

Rebuilding the CMS without developing it from scratch because of tight deadlines.

To meet the deadline, we created a week-by-week plan for three months. As a result, the first version was rolled out to production on time — 3 February, 2025. Here we are going to share how the platform was created.To hit the deadline, we mapped out a week-by-week plan for three months. Dropped the first version in production right on time—February 3, 2025. Here’s how we built a Netflix-style hub for cultural content.

User profile

User-friendly and visually attractive interfaces are an essential part of any project, yet they are often challenging to deliver under time pressure. To deliver on time, MateÇa digital studio’s designers, our frondend and backend developers were working in parallel.

The designers and the frontend developers met a few times a week to present progress updates. Together, they decided whether certain ideas could be implemented or not, what other areas they might affect, and what needed to be adjusted into the mockups. The client joined meetings, too — so, they managed to find solutions for all user scenarios that could be implemented within the limited timeframe.

Frontend stack: TypeScript, Vue, Pinia Colada.

Find your courses in one click instead of five.

Progress tracking works like Netflix—no more notebook scribbles.

Ditched the generic LMS vibe for a sleek dark mode interface, perfect for evening viewing.

Designers poured love into details: fonts, varied card formats, custom icons, smooth animations, clear tooltips. Frontend devs brought it all to life with precision.

Component-based development

Working on the interfaces, we moved to component-based development when pages are assembled only after coding and approving of the components.

Product idea

Design

Developing components

Approval

Component optimization

Pages assembly

Component-based development isn’t typical for MVPs—it’s usually for big, stable projects. But with tight deadlines and parallel design-frontend work, assembling pages from pre-built components was a game-changer.

After the project was completed, Synchronize gained the up-to-date component library. It will help to accelerate the future launches, for example, mobile apps.

Example: A dynamic banner reused across multiple pages.

New architecture

The Synchronize platform was based on an integrated solution which included off-the-shelf tools and custom code. Pre-built solutions have poor customization options and, above all, lack the ability to save user progress. So, it was hard to compete with Netflix and YouTube, where users can continue watching in a single click.

Old Architecture Diagram

To replace the entire engine at once is too risky: if something goes wrong, the business will be affected. This is why the new architecture includes the old solution and a new platform working in parallel. At the same time, we didn’t break old connections with landings: the system transmits purchases, subscriptions, and refunds.
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The core of the platform is video content, but to develop the delivery system and a video player from scratch is expensive and impractical. So, we implemented the platform Kinescope, but built an integration which allows Synchronize to migrate easily to a different video platform.

Phased rollout

The new architecture enabled the implementation of phase rollout: at the very beginning, only the most engaged customers had access to the new platform. Having tested in production, we gathered feedback from real users and fixed issues. At the same time, if something didn’t work, the client could switch back to the old version, so the business didn’t suffer losses.

The new system was designed with flexibility for the future needs, for example, courses can be split into stages with separate payments. We implemented modularity on the main page, so adding a new backend block with custom logic is now a matter of hours. Not only did we consider the current needs of the platform, but also the long-term cost of its development.

Tanya Lunina

Synchronize product director

«The new architecture enables us to create products we didn’t think about while preparing a tech spec. The flexibility of the system allows us to implement almost any idea without developers — only using the admin panel. For example, a free course could be opened on schedule, even though we didn’t discuss this user scenario at the beginning. That’s impressive.»

Effective admin panel

The previous content management system was complicated and confusing, but the development of a new one would take at least a month and a half. At the design stage we defined the requirements for the admin panel so that most data could be presented in a tabular format.

It enabled us to use a standard admin panel Django and accelerated the launch at least for a month. If the data structure or requirements become more complex in the future, Synchronize will be able to to improve the custom admin panel.

As a result, Synchronize content managers got a tool with advanced features, such as versioning, almost without any additional development costs.

Татьяна Лунина

Директор по продукту

«Благодаря новой архитектуре мы теперь можем создавать продукты, которые изначально не закладывали в ТЗ. Гибкость решения позволяет реализовывать практически любые идеи без участия разработчиков — только через админку.

Например, мы внедрили механику открытия бесплатного курса с лекциями по расписанию, хотя такой сценарий даже не обсуждался на старте. Это действительно здорово»

«ФАНС не просто соглашались с нашими идеями, но и отговаривали от неудачных решений, четко объясняя, почему они неэффективны или ненадежны — это было очень ценно. При этом оставались открыты к компромиссам, даже если они выходили за рамки вашего стека или не были идеальными.

Например, частичный редирект на старую платформу, интеграция виджета рекуррентов, подтягивание баллов из старой системы — все это не самые изящные решения, но они сэкономили нам время и деньги, и главное — работают»

«Ребята не боялись выходить за рамки изначального плана, добавляя такие детали, как меняющиеся аватарки, рандомайзер картинок на странице авторизации, симпатичные empty states и страницы благодарности. Это были спонтанные идеи, не связанные напрямую с бизнес-целями, но их реализовали, когда видели, что есть ресурс.

При этом не раздували сроки и не перекладывали на нас ответственность за дополнительные задачи»

Tanya Lunina

Synchronize product director

«Providing the reasons, FANS advised us against ineffective solutions. At the same time, they were opened to compromise even when the solutions lay outside the chosen stack or weren’t optimal. For example, partial redirection to the old platform, integration of the recurring payments widget, and the import of points from the legacy system aren’t the best solutions, but they helped us to save money and, most importantly, they work.

The team wasn’t afraid to go beyond the initial plan, adding new details such as a random image generator on the login page, appealing empty states, and thank-you pages.

These ideas were spontaneous and not directly tied to business goals, but the team implemented them whenever there was capacity. What mattered to us was that FANS handled it without delaying the project or shifting the extra workload onto us.»

Results

Synchronize has the launched product, configured CI/CD pipelines, processes, and its own technical team which was hired with our support. We handled the technical interviews, whereas the client assessed culture fit interviews. When a candidate passed both, they were onboarded, while our engineers were gradually rolled off the project.

To evaluate results, we set up a product analytics, and it is already clear that the platform relaunch has had a positive impact on Synchronize business.

OLD WEBSITE

NEW WEBSITE

GROWTH (%)

3-day retention

33%

37%

+12.12%

7-day retention

23%

30%

+30.43%

3-day stickiness (DAU/MAU * 100)

32%

37%

+15.63%

7-day stickiness (DAU/MAU * 100)

22%

30%

+36.36%

Purchase-to-use conversion (day)

55%

87%

+58.18%

Purchase-to-use conversion (week)

66%

91%

+37.88%

Why it Worked

At the very beginning, we aligned with the client on the minimal product

We found a solution which could be implemented in 3 months instead of rebuilding everything within a year.

We collaborated openly, making adjustments and finding common ground

When the client wanted to make changes after the project had already started, we accommodated them whenever possible. It also worked the other way around — the Synchronize team agreed to simpler solutions when they realized that certain features would take too much time to implement.

We operated as one product team

A Synchronize designer became a part of the design studio, while our team took mockups into development mid-sprint and were in touch with a Synchronize product manager.

We used off-the-shelf solutions in order to save time

For example, we implemented Kinescope instead of developing proprietary video hosting and used the ready-made admin panel.

In Progress

Developing Synchronize mobile app
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Lectures are allowed offline, meanwhile the app is built based on web technology — it helped us to save months of development by reusing the website code.

Discussing the relaunch of the course marketplace
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The client appreciated how quickly we were able to launch new products and wants to repeat this experience with the public-facing part of the website.

Synchronize team develops the user profile account with a data-driven approach
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For this, we implemented product analytics, including Mindbox, Amplitude, and other tools.