Renewal of the Oikotie digital service

Oikotie is one of Finland’s best-known digital services for jobs, apartments, cars and other everyday needs. This renewal project was carried out for Sanoma Digital Finland, which owned Oikotie at the time. Since then, Oikotie has been sold to Schibsted, whose marketplace business is today known as Vend, but the story here focuses on the work done during the Sanoma period.

Oikotie attracts more than one million visitors every week and reaches around two million people in Finland every month. It is one of the most visited services in the Finnish online landscape and a familiar name to anyone looking for a new home or job.

Over the years, Oikotie had grown into a collection of separate services. Oikotie Asunnot, Oikotie Työpaikat, Huuto.net and Autotie all ran on their own systems, and some had their own mobile apps. Everything lived under the Oikotie brand, but for users, the experience felt fragmented, and for the teams behind it, the technology had become increasingly complex.

Sanoma decided to bring these pieces together. Together with Idean and Codemate, they set out to renew Oikotie into a single, coherent digital service that respects the existing ecosystem while feeling like a modern, unified product to the user.

The Oikotie ecosystem and the challenge

The Oikotie ecosystem consists of several consumer-focused verticals. At the time of the renewal, Oikotie Asunnot was used to buy, sell and rent homes, Oikotie Työpaikat published job advertisements, Huuto.net was an auction service, and Autotie was used to buy and sell cars.

Each vertical had its own system and its own data. They were loosely coupled and operated independently. For users, this meant that different sections behaved a little differently and moving from one area to another was not always smooth. For the Oikotie team, it meant multiple codebases, separate mobile apps and a slower pace when new features had to be implemented several times.

The goal of the renewal was clear. Oikotie wanted to give each user a personalised view of all verticals in one application and a unified oikotie.fi site. The new solution had to bring content together from all parts of the ecosystem, while still making use of existing vertical systems and handle significant amounts of traffic.

A new concept for personalised browsing

Idean, one of the leading user experience agencies in Finland, was responsible for service, UX and UI design. Together with Oikotie, they created a concept that covers both the mobile apps and the web experience.

The new concept placed personalised and intelligent browsing at the centre. Instead of asking users to always start from a search form and filters, the service should work more like a modern content feed. The team took inspiration from services where people browse visual content in short moments during the day without typing queries every time.

The renewed Oikotie learns from the user’s searches and likes across verticals. Gradually, it builds a curated feed of apartments, jobs, cars and other content that matches the interests of that user. The borders between verticals become less visible. Oikotie starts to feel like one service that adapts to the person using it, rather than a set of separate sections that the user has to manage.

One agile team, one shared goal

To deliver the concept, Idean and Codemate formed a joint agile team of about ten people. A Product Owner from Sanoma Digital joined the team to represent business goals and user needs.

Idean led service design, user experience and visual design and took care of project management. Codemate was responsible for the technical solution, backend and frontend development, testing and deployment to the cloud environment.

The team worked closely with Oikotie specialists and domain experts. Idean carried out continuous user validation during the project to check that ideas and implementations made sense in real use. For the people involved, it was a rare opportunity to improve a service that many Finns use every week to find homes, jobs and everyday essentials.

Building the new Oikotie service

Under the hood, the renewed Oikotie service is built around three main components: the mobile apps, a unified backend system and the oikotie.fi website. Together, they create a single service experience on top of several existing verticals.

Mobile apps for iOS and Android

The native Oikotie apps were built for iOS and Android using Swift and Kotlin. They talk to the Oikotie backend through a REST API and present a curated feed of apartments, jobs, cars and other content in a smooth, visual interface.

Using native technologies made it possible to focus on fast performance, smooth scrolling and small details in interaction that matter in everyday use. The apps are designed for quick browsing in short moments as well as more focused searching when the user has a clear goal.

Oikotie backend system

The backend is the heart of the new Oikotie service. It connects to each vertical system, such as Oikotie Asunnot and Oikotie Työpaikat, gathers data from them and transforms it into a unified format that can be shown in the personalised feeds.

Instead of every client connecting separately to each vertical, there is now one backend that acts as an abstraction layer. It hides the complexity of the vertical-specific interfaces and offers a single master API for the mobile apps and the website. The backend also provides a single sign-on solution so users can log in once and move between verticals without thinking about it.

The system runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and follows a microservice-based architecture that can scale with usage. Autoscaling and caching are used to handle peak traffic efficiently. The underlying technology choices are familiar on purpose, so that future development and maintenance remain straightforward.

Oikotie.fi website

As part of the renewal, the oikotie.fi website and the me.oikotie.fi user area was rebuilt. Content management is handled through a headless WordPress solution, while the user interface is implemented with a modern React front end that is delivered through a content delivery network.

This approach gives content editors a familiar environment to work in and provides end users with a fast, responsive site. The web experience and the apps both draw on the same backend, so users see a consistent service whether they are on mobile or desktop.

If you are interested in the architecture and implementation, you can dive deeper into the technical blog written by the lead developer. The article explains how the backend, integrations and cloud environment were designed to handle millions of users and a large number of vertical systems.

Dive deeper in our technical blog

Results for Oikotie and its users

With the new Oikotie service in place and the experience unified, Sanoma Digital was able to discontinue separate mobile apps for individual verticals. New features are now implemented in one shared platform and become available across all verticals at the same time. This has made development faster and more predictable.

Maintenance is simpler as well. Instead of several parallel systems, the team works on one foundation. Effort can be focused on improving the service rather than repeating the same work in different places.

For users, the change is even clearer. The service feels like one Oikotie. People move naturally between jobs, apartments, cars and other content without thinking about which section they are in. Personalised feeds make browsing more enjoyable and relevant. Vertical areas that attract the most traffic now also help users discover other parts of the service, so the whole ecosystem benefits.

Eager to learn more?

Watch the video case to see the renewed Oikotie in action and hear Oikotie, Idean and Codemate walk through the concept, the project and what changed for users.

FAQ

What did Codemate do in the Oikotie renewal project?

Codemate was responsible for the technical solution in the renewal of the Oikotie service. We implemented the new backend and frontend, handled integrations with the existing vertical systems and deployed the new service to the cloud.

How does the renewed Oikotie digital service benefit users?

Users now have one coherent service and a personalised feed that brings together content from different verticals. It is easier to move between jobs, apartments and other content without switching between separate services.

Where can I learn more about the technical solution?

Check out this technical blog post written by the lead developer. It explains the architecture, integrations and cloud environment in more detail.