Overview
I recently became the CTO (Chief Technological Officer) of Apprentadream, which is an organisation helping people to get into the best apprenticeships in the UK.
Apprentadream currently has a large WhatsApp community, with over 2,000 members, and my first project was to create an online sign-up form to help understand the users within our network.
The data we aimed to collect included:
- Contact Information (for mailing list)
- What types of Apprenticeship levels they were interested in
- Industries of interest
- Motivations, current qualificaitons and confidence levels
Therefore, this would allow us to personalise the network more, understand the demographics of our users and deliver a better experience for everyone.
Links
Tech Stack
Overall, I used a modern tech stack for this web application, utilising Supabase for a backend database to store user's responses securely with accordance to GDPR, and a modern frontend experience with tailwindcss utility classes and ShadcnUI-based UI components.
Frontend
- TailwindCSS
- ShadcnUI
- MagicUI
- React
- Lucide React Icons
Backend
- Next.js
- Supabase
- Cloudflare
- Vercel
- Google Search Console
Features
- Two seperate forms (Apprentadream & Company Hub)
- Client-side and Server-side data verification
- User referrals
- SEO optimised for #1 place for query on Google
- Comprehensive privacy policy in accordance with GDPR
- Mobile friendly website
Future Improvements
In the future, I would like to implement a theme toggle as the website is currently only available in dark mode.
I would also like to improve the logic of the referral scheme, and potentially introduce a leaderboard to encorage more referrals.
What I learnt
I initially used Google Sheet's API to connect to the website, however, the loading times were long for form submission. Supabase was faster and more maintainable in the long term.
I also learnt a lot about how to keep user's data safe in accordance with GDPR and ensuring we provide a way for users to export their data, delete their data or modify their data with a clean terms / privacy policy.