Engineering Review – Q1 2023

By Scott McKelvey, VP of Technology
Apr 28, 2023

The first quarter (Jan, Feb, Mar) is now behind us, and it’s been a great one for the WebCE Engineering Team. As a company, we use the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) model for high-level work planning, which assigns initiatives as “rocks” that can be completed in three months. That makes the end of the quarter the perfect time to look back and see what we’ve accomplished.

New Student Notification System

Developed internally in 2022, we launched a notification system for customers at the start of 2023. At launch, this new icon in the top menu triggers alerts for 14 different scenarios that were previously only available via email. These notifications provide real-time feedback when notable events happen related to a customer account, such as a course completion successfully being reported to the state.

Planned expansions to this system throughout the rest of 2023 include adding more triggers and events for more information and the option to receive the alerts via SMS text.

Updated Student and Manager Dashboards

We support a variety of different student experiences across the product lines we serve, as well as multiple manager and administrator features. In Q1 we re-organized these features on the dashboard to make them more intuitive. We added a toggle for switching between manager and student features since many managers have courses of their own in addition to the students they oversee. Then, we made the dashboard easier to navigate by segmenting Continuing Education, Exam Prep, and EXCEED training products. We plan to continue enhancing each product experience with additional features.

Expansion of Cart Cross Check

Cart Cross Check is a tool we built to help students meet all the compliance requirements for their state and license type during the ordering process. In Q1 we expanded this tool to include more non-standard regulatory requirements. These include features for states that allow multiple combinations of segments to meet a single requirement (such as Texas Insurance Classroom Equivalent and Ethics courses), as well as states that have different requirements based on individual criteria (such as the number of hours required changing based on tenure in Florida Insurance).

With these additions, the proprietary Cart Cross Check system is now top of the line in the industry for requirement analysis, unparalleled in its coverage and versatility.

Globally Improved Page Load Speeds

Finally, we undertook a project in Q1 to combine all our JavaScript and CSS files down into unified packages for use across all our various sites and pages. Using external tools such as website graders and Google Lighthouse for tracking performance, we were able to achieve the following improvements:

  • 15% reduction in the number of files needed to service each page request
  • 60% reduction in the total size of files that must be downloaded for each request
  • Resulting in 15% faster page load times for a snappier, more responsive experience.

Wrapping Up

Whether we’re adding entirely new systems, enhancing and adding features to existing products, or streamlining our core services, WebCE is constantly working to improve the experience for our users. We’ve already started the next set of rocks for Q2 and look forward to rolling out new features every week along the way.