Unite Students

After a comprehensive discovery period to define the challenge and agree on a transformative product roadmap, work swiftly began to significantly improve Unite’s app. Delivery began with an in-depth discovery process, identifying the legacy app’s limitations, aligning on student needs and exploring business goals. Unite’s design team worked hand-in-hand with Apadmi’s UX specialists to embed mobile-first thinking, before building a scalable new app supported by a modern backend. Data was cleaned and restructured, enabling richer analytics and insights to allow for future improvements.

The process involved rigorous QA, onboarding students to the new platform, and continuous optimisation post-launch. Enhanced analytics now allow Unite to see what’s working and feed real usage data into the product roadmap. Throughout the project, Unite’s gaps in deep mobile expertise was supported through extensive knowledge sharing and upskilling from the Apadmi team. The project faced tight deadlines and September 2024’s peak-season deadlines demanded an agile delivery approach to ensure launch without disruption. Migration from the old app was carefully managed, with a re-engineered authentication process to replace legacy systems.

The result of the collaboration is an optimised, scalable app that can grow with the business whilst more positively impacting the student experience. The new app has a range of functionalities including the ability for students to chat with their new housemates ahead of move-in, book check-in slots and manage their initial arrival, get information about their room and property, a dedicated area to raise maintenance requests or to report being locked out of their accommodation, and more. There are also areas for lifestyle content to explore, as well as information as to where to get support for student life.

The app has already made an impact across both student experience and Unite’s operations. In-app self-service has cut call centre traffic by 21% year-on-year, with a peak of 54% YoY reduction in July, showing how Unite are better at pre-empting and meeting the needs of students before they even arrive and throughout their stay by allowing them to efficiently self-serve. Meanwhile, noise complaint calls reduced by 97% thanks to in-app reporting. Students rated their experience highly, with 81% positive sentiment in check-in surveys, exceeding initial targets.

Unite’s north star metric is +NPS which we saw rise by +12 in Autumn 2024 and +16 in Spring 2025, showing the measurable improvement in our overall customer experience. Adoption has also been strong: the app consistently maintained around 46,000 monthly active users through peak months, avoiding the 20%+ seasonal drop seen with the old product.

Performance metrics highlight the transformation: load speed of 19.7 ms (30x faster) and message delivery reduced from up to 27 seconds to 0.3 seconds. The app has achieved a 4.8-star rating on iOS (where 86% of users are based) and 4.5 stars on Android globally. Property community chat functions now connect students and staff, enabling event sharing and updates that deepen engagement and build a sense of community in Unite’s buildings beyond transactional services.

Key learnings for the work together also include the importance of embedding mobile-first UX from the outset. Equally, investing in team upskilling has created sustainable in-house capability. The project has demonstrated that real transformation comes from collaboration: Apadmi and Unite work together as one team, co-creating a product that both solves today’s challenges and unlocks future opportunities for both the business and their customers.