Rebuilding a live investing app is not a redesign. Parrot Finance runs a social investing platform: a social trading app where users copy trades from vetted influencers. We rebuilt it for web and mobile. Copy trading adds one hard constraint: users act on the price the moment they see it. This post covers the order that work has to run in. The full project story sits in our Parrot Finance case study.
Why Parrot’s original platform needed rebuilding
Three systems carry an app like this: the screens users tap, the market data behind them, and the code that runs on the servers. Parrot’s three had drifted apart. Pages were slow to load, prices arrived late and alerts came after the move rather than before it. The rebuild had to fix all three together.
- Outdated screens that users found hard to use
- Features that had fallen behind current standards
- Performance below what users expected
- Real-time features that could not keep up with the market
Parrot needed a rebuild, not a restyle.
Latent’s solution
We rebuilt in a set order. The hardest screen comes first, because it decides the design system and the data model for everything after it.
- Draw the hardest screens in Figma, for web and mobile, before any code is written. That screen carries the most state, so it decides the components and the data shape everything after it reuses.
- Connect the live feed next, because the feed constrains the screens. The Front API supplies prices and alerts, so nothing waits on a nightly job.
- Build on one stack: ReactJS and Node.js for the web, React Native for mobile, both on AWS. One stack across both clients is what keeps it one product to maintain.
- Hand over last: the repository, the deployment steps and the documentation. Handover is part of the order, not a task tacked on at the end.
The results
The rebuild left Parrot with one product to run instead of three systems that had drifted apart. Prices and alerts come from the live feed, so nothing waits on a nightly job, and web and mobile run on one stack rather than two. Parrot took full ownership of the rebuilt codebase at handover, the repository and the deployment steps included. The Parrot Finance case study sets out what the rebuild changed and what Parrot holds now.
Key takeaways
- A rebuild earns its keep at the screen users complain about most, not at the home page.
- On a copy-trading platform a late price is a product fault. The live feed is part of the product.
- Fix the order of work before you start: design, data, build, handover.
- Take the repository and the deployment steps, not just the running product, so you can move without us.
If you are planning this work, list every system your platform touches and pick the one that hurts most. Start there. The rest gets easier once the hardest screen works. For the stack and the kinds of app we take on, see fintech app development.
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