Background
AutoHero.com.au is recognised as Australia’s leading tyre comparison platform, providing consumers with a seamless way to compare prices and book tyres and mechanical services online.
The platform’s business model is centered on empowering users to enter their vehicle or tyre details, instantly compare quotes from multiple local tyre retailers and mechanics, and book services online, all without paying a commission on sales.
With a reputation as Australia’s most trusted and reviewed tyre website, AutoHero.com.au has become the go-to destination for drivers seeking a convenient way to get the best deals on tyres and related services.
The Challenge
The founder of AutoHero.com.au, while highly entrepreneurial, lacked a technical background and required a robust, low-maintenance solution that could be self-managed with minimal ongoing developer intervention.
The previous system, built on a patchwork of legacy tools and plugins, suffered from frequent downtime, slow page loads, and limited scalability. As the platform’s popularity surged, the existing infrastructure struggled to handle increasing traffic, particularly during peak periods, resulting in degraded user experience and lost business opportunities.
A custom solution was essential to support over 100,000 daily searches, ensure high availability, and provide a foundation for future growth.
Our Approach
Discovery & Planning
Ample Tech began the engagement with a comprehensive discovery phase, conducting in-depth interviews with the founder and key stakeholders to understand business goals, pain points, and user expectations. Performance benchmarking of the legacy system revealed critical bottlenecks in database queries, image handling, and third-party script execution. These insights informed a detailed project roadmap, prioritizing scalability, maintainability, and ease of use.
User Centered Design
The design process was anchored in user-centered principles, with dedicated workflows for three primary user groups: customers, dealers, and administrators. For customers, the focus was on intuitive search and comparison tools, enabling users to find tyres by vehicle make, model, or tyre size, and to upload photos for assistance if needed. Dealers were provided with a streamlined backend for managing inventory, quotes, and bookings, while administrators benefited from a simplified dashboard for overseeing platform operations and analytics.
Development Process
Leveraging .NET for the backend and Angular for the frontend, Ample Tech adopted an agile development methodology, delivering iterative releases and incorporating stakeholder feedback throughout the project. The .NET backend was architected for high concurrency and reliability, while Angular enabled the creation of responsive, dynamic interfaces. Emphasis was placed on modularity and testability, ensuring that new features could be added with minimal disruption.
The Solution
Platform Architecture
The resulting solution featured a robust three-tiered architecture:
- User Frontend: Built with Angular, the frontend delivered a fast, mobile-optimised experience, supporting advanced search, quote comparison, and booking workflows.
- Dealer Backend: A secure portal for tyre retailers and mechanics to manage listings, respond to quote requests, and track bookings.
- Admin Backend: A comprehensive dashboard for platform administrators, offering real-time analytics, user management, and content moderation.
This architecture was designed to support high performance and scalability, with load balancing and horizontal scaling capabilities to accommodate traffic spikes.
Security Enhancements
Despite constraints imposed by some legacy infrastructure, Ample Tech implemented industry best practices for security. This included role-based access controls, encrypted data storage, secure API endpoints, and an updated codebase to ensure ongoing protection.
Subscription Management
To streamline dealership onboarding and revenue management, Ample Tech integrated Stripe for subscription billing. Dealers could easily register, select subscription tiers, and manage payments through a secure, self-service portal, reducing administrative overhead and improving cash flow visibility.
Business Process Automation
Automated workflows were introduced for dealer onboarding, verification, and management. New dealers could register online, submit required documentation, and receive automated status updates, significantly reducing manual intervention and accelerating time-to-market for new partners.
Project Recovery
Inherited code from previous vendors was refactored to improve maintainability and performance. Ample Tech established a robust CI/CD pipeline, automating testing, deployment, and rollback processes to minimize downtime and ensure rapid delivery of updates.
Performance Optimisation
To support over 100,000 daily searches, Ample Tech implemented a suite of performance enhancements:
- Image Optimisation: Automated compression and resizing of images reduced page load times without sacrificing quality.
- Minification: CSS and JavaScript files were minified to decrease payload size.
- HTTP Request Reduction: Bundling and lazy loading techniques minimized the number of requests per page.
- Browser Caching: Strategic caching policies ensured repeat visitors experienced near-instant load times.
- Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): Static assets were served via CloudFlare CDN, reducing latency for users nationwide.
- Mobile Optimisation: Responsive design and adaptive image loading ensured optimal performance on all devices.
- Third-Party Script Reduction: Non-essential scripts were deferred or eliminated to streamline the user experience.
- Database Query Optimisation: Indexing, query refactoring, and caching strategies were employed to accelerate data retrieval and reduce server load.
The Impact
The new AutoHero.com.au platform delivered measurable improvements across key business metrics:
- Operational Efficiency: Staff augmentation and automation reduced manual workload by 31%, enabling the founder to self-manage most platform operations.
- Business Process Improvement: Automated dealer onboarding and subscription management accelerated partner acquisition and reduced onboarding time by 14%.
- Enhanced Data Reporting: Real-time analytics and custom reporting empowered data-driven decision-making.
- Dealership Acquisition: Semi-automated outreach tools enabled targeted campaigns, resulting in a 11% increase in new dealer sign-ups within three months.
- Performance Metrics: Average page load times decreased from 4.2 seconds to 1.1 seconds, while bounce rates dropped by 18%. The platform consistently handled peak traffic volumes exceeding 100,000 daily searches without performance degradation.
Through a combination of technical excellence, user-focused design, and process automation, Ample Tech delivered a scalable, secure, and low-maintenance solution that empowered AutoHero.com.au to maintain its leadership in Australia’s competitive tyre comparison market.
