Project Background

Hyprop is a major JSE-listed real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns and manages dominant retail centres in mixed-used precincts in key economic nodes in South Africa and Eastern Europe. Managing these properties’ web and mobile presences was challenging and time consuming. It required changes across unrelated systems and reliance on multiple content agencies with little insight into marketing or a capacity to add new features.

Swipe iX worked with Hyprop to develop a central front-to-back white-label content and hosting management system – the Hyprop Management System – providing the company with one platform to manage the websites of current and future centres.

The Challenge

Innovative malls rely on website content to bring tenant businesses and customers together. But when these are inefficient, they require more attention than the value they deliver. For Hyprop, given its multiple retail centres in South Africa and Eastern Europe, managing the individual centres’ digital content became an expensive time sink.

Hyprop contracted Swipe iX to establish centralised management of its website content. It needed a white-label platform that unified everything and provided extra benefits, such as:

Proper customer data gathering
Universal and individual brand management
Ability to easily add new features or events across one or several retail centres.

The Solution

Swipe iX collaborated with Hyprop to develop a bespoke content-hosting management system that met its current and future needs. Our agile full-stack development established this system from the back to the front to cover multiple requirements, including design and branding.

The journey started with discovery workshops to determine Hyprop's fundamental requirements. Based on this feedback, we developed a project plan incorporating various requirements and components:

Publishing blogs
Adding competitions
Creating personalised customer communication
Managing specific brand elements for each centre

Swipe iX worked closely with Hyprop’s content teams to determine the necessary features, providing examples of popular content management systems (CMSs) to help develop ideas for its platform.

We created a cloud-based hosting and content management platform on Amazon Web Services for scalable and flexible performance. Our developers built the necessary APIs to integrate content and customer data, and an account management system where Hyprop's administrators can assign and control access rights.

The platform uses a custom-designed framework that manages complex aspects of each centre, such as:

Operating times
Special events
Centre maps
Wayfinding
Sponsor activations
Shopper profiles
Targeted email
Push notifications
Personalised content deployment

Swipe iX remained involved at every step, including user experience (UX) workshops and testing, data controls, super-admin features, and alignment with crucial personal data regulations.

The Result

Hyprop was concerned that its websites weren’t reaching their full potential due to a lack of central control over content assets. Swipe iX designed, developed and operationalised the bespoke Hyprop Management System, a hosting and content management platform that provides central control of Hyprop’s different retail centres while maintaining their individuality.

We used our multi-stack development and consultation approach, delivering an integrated and scalable cloud-based platform with all the features that Hyprop’s content management, branding and marketing teams expected. This platform delivers:

Granular administration controls
Central hub for customer marketing data and activities
Data compliance controls, such as purging

The resulting platform is a massive success, with Hyprop’s sites experiencing a surge in return visitors and newcomers.

Bounce rates decreased from 63% to 33.5%
Page views were up 124%
Pages viewed per session increased by 156%

Our solution helps Hyprop stimulate more engagement, access in-depth customer and traffic analytics, and deliver a superior user experience to its centres’ shoppers, tenants, and marketing and customer teams.

Hyprop now manages all its varying and dynamic website content through one source, from blogs to shopping hours to targeted campaigns tailored to each mall’s individual needs and branding identity. It no longer relies on third-party applications, and has brought much of its content management in-house, reducing Hyprop’s dependence on external agencies.

The new platform gives Hyprop complete, consolidated control, opening the doors for more exciting features. The company can create individual experiences for each centre, including branding, competitions, and tenant information, while saving on hosting and agency costs. In addition, developers can continually deliver improvements and new features – such as behaviour tracking and venue insights – through the scalable POPIA- and GDPR-compliant Hyprop Management System, designed and produced by Swipe iX.

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