More and more platform companies are bringing supply and demand together. But as you keep growing, how do you ensure efficient management, continuous improvement in online visibility, and a platform scalable enough to realise future ambitions? High Profile Locaties (HPL) faced exactly this challenge. Their mission: connecting venue seekers with venue owners to turn special events into favourite memories. Together, we embarked on a comprehensive digital transformation, delivering a scalable marketplace platform that unifies all websites and the venue owner portal into one digital ecosystem. The result: 400% more requests, 50% time savings for venue owners, and a foundation built for continued growth.
Scalable marketplace platform unifying three websites and admin portal
400% increase in venue requests compared to previous platform
50% time savings for venue owners through centralised content management
Microservice architecture on Umbraco, Elasticsearch, and Azure Cosmos DB
250,000+ virtual SEO pages driving organic visibility
Blended team of 65+ iO specialists across strategy, tech, data, and marketing
The challenge
How do you make a growing marketplace platform more manageable, more findable, and scalable enough to support future growth ambitions, while serving two distinct audiences: venue seekers and venue owners?
The solution
We delivered a comprehensive digital transformation: a renewed digital strategy, one premium and scalable digital ecosystem, a new brand positioning with a recognisable visual identity, targeted marketing campaigns, and a solid data infrastructure. The platform now empowers HPL to grow while delivering better experiences for both venue seekers and venue owners.
One team, one goal
High Profile Locaties connects venue seekers with venue owners. Whether it's a conference, training, company party, wedding, or birthday celebration, HPL helps people find the perfect location to turn a special event into a favourite memory.
When HPL came to us, they were looking for a partner who could tackle the full spectrum: from digital strategy to implementation and ongoing optimisation. We worked as one team, bringing together more than 65 iO specialists across strategy, development, data, design, content, and marketing. This blended approach ensured that every decision, from brand positioning to microservice architecture, was aligned with HPL's growth ambitions.
I'm glad I chose iO. I couldn't have managed this with any other agency.
Why a growing platform needed a digital reset
HPL had built a successful business connecting venue seekers with venue owners across three websites. But success brought complexity. Managing multiple platforms had become time-consuming, online visibility was not keeping pace with ambitions, and the existing setup was not scalable enough to support future growth. HPL needed more than incremental improvements. They needed a digital transformation that would address manageability, findability, and scalability in one integrated approach.
Defining a new digital strategy together
We started with strategic sessions to define a renewed digital strategy, including a new brand positioning. Together with HPL, we created a roadmap for implementation: developing the new platform, composing brand guidelines, creating content for awareness and activation campaigns, and setting up a proper data infrastructure. This strategic foundation ensured that every subsequent decision was aligned with HPL's business objectives.
One scalable marketplace platform for all touchpoints
To improve manageability, we developed a new digital ecosystem using a microservice architecture. We built all websites and the admin portal for venue owners on one platform and connected all data. This architecture means the platform consists of separate components, making it relatively easy to scale up or down, or to replace technologies as HPL's needs evolve. Currently, the platform includes Umbraco as the CMS, Elasticsearch for search functionality, and Azure Cosmos DB for data storage.
Empowering venue owners with self-service
For venue owners, the new admin portal delivers significant time savings. User testing helped us improve the user experience so that owners can now manage multiple venues from one portal, show different content for different target audiences on different websites, and access extensive statistics to measure their performance. The result: 50% less time spent on content management. For HPL, this means they can act as an advisory partner more efficiently, seeing exactly what venue owners have filled in and how their venues perform on the platform.
Driving findability through SEO and performance marketing
A more efficient platform also enabled HPL to work more efficiently on online visibility. We implemented performance marketing, including awareness and activation campaigns and social media. For SEO, we gave HPL the ability to create virtual pages that capture search intents for specific events in specific places or regions, such as "Client meeting in Rotterdam". HPL has already created over 250,000 pages, often appearing at the top of Google's search results. Once venue seekers arrive on the platform, continuous conversion optimisation improves the conversion rate further.
A brand identity built for scale
Growth ambitions also require a visual identity that can scale. Together, HPL and iO developed a comprehensive brand architecture, including mission, vision, promise, and messaging. Based on an inspiring brand story, we created a strong visual identity applied across all websites. While every website has its own branding, it is still recognisable as part of HPL. This makes it relatively easy to add new websites in the future.
The numbers
1%
Increase in venue requests compared to previous platform
1%
Time savings for venue owners through centralised content management
1-80K
Monthly visitors to the platform
1M
Impressions per year for affiliated venues
1
Average leads per year for top 100 venues
1+
Virtual SEO pages created
1+
iO specialists involved in the project
A platform built for ambition
HPL now operates from a unified, scalable marketplace platform that serves venue seekers, venue owners, and the HPL team itself. Manageability has improved dramatically: venue owners save time, HPL can advise more efficiently, and filter options can be managed independently in the CMS. Findability has transformed: over 250,000 virtual pages drive organic traffic, and performance marketing reaches the right audiences. Scalability is built in: the microservice architecture and brand identity are ready for expansion to new markets or higher visitor volumes. The first steps are to continue optimising traffic, conversion rate, and usability. Future plans include personalisation, expanded statistics for venue owners, a search wizard, multi-request functionality, and AI-powered content translation. This partnership is just getting started.
