Project Overview

We handled the redesign of the "Business Operator Search Service" provided by Japan Information and Communications Technology Center (JIPDEC), the coordinating body of the Privacy Mark system.

This project had three major themes: "preserving the existing fast search experience," "mobile responsiveness," and "significantly improving the update workflow."

Background and Challenges

While the legacy system had strong search performance, updating business operator information required significant manual work. The process of exporting data from the business system, processing it locally, and then uploading it was time-consuming and labor-intensive, creating operational costs and risks.

System aging had progressed to the point where reducing maintenance burden and establishing an efficient operational structure were essential. Additionally, supporting diverse devices, including smartphones, had become a critical requirement.

Why We Selected Kuroco

After comparing and evaluating multiple architectures and confirming feasibility, Kuroco demonstrated clear advantages in the following areas.

1. High-speed search performance

   Even when handling large-scale data searches, Kuroco delivers extremely fast response times, maintaining comfort equivalent to or exceeding that of existing sites.

2. Automated updates through API integration

   Data from business systems can be synchronized via API and update operations can be fully automated.

3. Simplified and accelerated frontend deployment

   Since Kuroco provides KurocoFront, a CDN-based static content hosting service, there is no need to separately contract or manage additional hosting services or CDNs, significantly reducing infrastructure management burden.

4. Flexible extensibility with Smarty

   Kuroco is a headless CMS that allows API behavior customization using Smarty, enabling flexible integration with external systems and various domains. The ability to process search results and implement custom display logic concisely is also valuable for developers with backend expertise.

While there is no arbitrary program execution environment like Lambda, Cloudflare Workers, or Edge Functions, Smarty comes with a rich set of plugins, making it possible to call APIs, save JSON, and handle typical use cases with sufficient capability.

Development of a mobile search UI

Even in traditional PC environments, the search interface was already user-friendly. To deliver that usability on smartphones, how modal screens for switching search conditions are displayed and how the interaction flow is organized are critical elements that directly impact user experience.

By refining these aspects and optimizing for mobile environments while considering web accessibility, we created a search UI that is intuitive and comfortable to use even from smartphones.

Though a challenging undertaking, we were able to deliver consistent usability across both PC and mobile platforms.

Results and impact

We achieved ideal implementation using the initially selected architecture.

• User experience

  Sustained fast search enables users to instantly retrieve the information they need from numerous business listings. Built a highly searchable UI accessible from smartphones.

• Operational efficiency

  By automating the update workflow, we eliminated manual work and the risk of human error.

• Extensibility

  Through customization using Smarty, we can flexibly adapt to future feature expansion and external integrations.

Summary

In this redesign, we successfully achieved what was previously a trade-off: improving operational efficiency while maintaining high performance.

1. Business system data automatically syncs to Kuroco via API
2. Batch processing keeps the site information regularly updated

Administrators are freed from burden, and users continue to enjoy a comfortable search experience. This project demonstrates how the right technology choices directly drive results.

This project was also supported by the high expertise of the JIPDEC team and the reliable technical capabilities of the vendor managing the business system, enabling smooth and positive progress throughout.

It was a highly satisfactory project for us as well.