Bookvoice

To bring the product to market, Bookvoice outsourced product and technology development to an external agency. The agency relied on Shopify and a Canadian white-labeled audiobook app. This setup quickly showed its limitations: the app was unstable, poorly integrated with Shopify, and plagued by outages and long loading times.

Key issues included:

• Unexpected outages: Architectural errors frequently brought the system down.
• Fragmented data: Audiobooks synced every 24 hours across multiple systems with manual interventions required.
• Excessive loading times: Home page load times of up to 40 seconds due to multiple API hops.
• No unified account system: 15% of purchases had to be manually recovered by support due to mistyped emails.
• Slow implementation: The outsourced team made every change expensive and time-consuming.
• No UI/UX design process: Apps and website were developed without dedicated design input.

After Bookvoice acquired TapeTales, I joined the team to lead product management and design. We agreed to start by decommissioning the native apps and rebuilding from the ground up.

Cross-Platform App with Passwordless Authentication

We rebuilt the mobile experience using Flutter and implemented passwordless authentication to eliminate account fragmentation and lost orders without forcing users to recreate accounts.

One Backend to Rule them All

We replaced three fragmented systems (Shopify, Backend 1, Mobile App Backend) with a single unified backend handling authentication, payments, content delivery, and business analytics. This meant fully decommissioning Shopify.

Custom Website

We built a fully custom website integrated with the new backend, enabling flexible commerce for both à la carte purchases and subscription plans.

The Migration

On the night between July 31st and August 1st, we executed a true "big bang" release—replacing all legacy systems, launching new apps and website, and migrating infrastructure to Microsoft Azure. By morning, Bookvoice was running entirely on its new foundation with zero disruption to customers.

• 0 outages after launch
• 95% reduction in support tickets
• 50% cost reduction in technology and product costs
• €250k ARR from new subscription plans
• 40s → <1s loading time improvement
• 3.4 → 4.2 app store rating improvement

Most importantly, the seamless cross-platform experience rebuilt customer trust and positioned Bookvoice as the leading audiobook platform in Greece.