Mobile solutions Archives | ISDK - eCommerce development, omnichannel solutions, CRM-marketing

Mar

Prompt support of a customer with a nopCommerce e-store

eCommerceadmin

Customer

A store selling rolling bearings

LC-Wälzlager is a German company specializing in rolling bearings. They sell products of European manufacturers as well as produce customer-specific bearings themselves. The company also offers its customers professional technical support.

LC-Wälzlager already had its online shop based on nopCommerce, however, there were some issues:

it wasn’t optimized for mobile devices
the site theme was outdated, which made the store look unattractive
the site was lacking good graphical content: pictures of products, catching banners

They were also missing ongoing support from the previous site developer.

The company came across our profile and decided to contact us. They liked our availability and prompt responses from our German team. We helped LC-Wälzlager to fix a crucial problem on their website even before the contract was ready and signed. Besides, we offered flexible support conditions, so they were able to choose the service package that suited them best.

To meet the customer’s goals and requirements, the following was done:

A completely new site on nopCommerce was deployed
A new site theme was installed and customized
All the data (catalog and text data) was transferred from the previous site
Additional custom functionality was also transferred and adapted for the new site
Creation of some stylish graphical materials (banners, slides)

To test the site and show the outcome to the client before rolling the solution out to the main website, we started with the staging site and deployed all the functionality there.

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The customer also asked for further store support. During that, we helped the company to set up SSL, adjusted search options, and introduced some other useful features.

When creating an online store, we always start with a staging site, so that clients could examine how the store functions and approve when they are happy with everything. After that, we transfer the functionality developed to the official site. This minimizes bugs and helps to make all the settings and changes in a secure environment.

We also offer flexible conditions for further site support based on a ‘Team as a service’ approach. A client purchases a package of service hours. We then provide an estimate for what can be done within this package.

Along the project run or website support, we regularly inform the client about the work progress and remaining hours. This helps customers keep track of their budgets quite easily.

Aug

MVP app to test an E-Commerce business idea in 3 weeks

eCommerce, Mobileadmin

Customer

MRO parts provider

The client was looking for ways to make shopping easier, and hense, increase the conversion. One of the ideas to reach this goal was that adding items from a printed catalogue by simple scanning of a barcode will remove the barrier of cross-platform shopping and lead to more sales.

To test this idea, the company wanted to create an MVP of a mobile app through which the products would be scanned and added to a cart.

It was especially important for the customer to get this MVP as quickly as possible to be able to see first results and grow further the mobile store functionality based on these results.

To test the business idea, iOS and Android apps were created. The apps have a login screen, three onboarding screens, and the main screen. On the main screen, users may choose to scan the barcode, or to proceed to the cart on the site. When the barcode is scanned, it is automatically being added to the cart.

The apps were connected to the existing e-store of the client, built on nopCommerce platform.

For the cross-platform development we used Xamarin technology.

MVP-format iOS and Android apps to test the business idea were created in less than 3 weeks.

Jul

iOS app with Apple in-app subscriptions and purchases

eCommerceadmin

Customer

A shop selling handmade artisan products

GlobeIn, an online store of handcrafted artisan products uses 2 business models:

a membership-based shop with monthly in-app subscriptions allowing users to access the unique sales, and
subscription boxes with a separate payment model based on the set of the goods delivered to the client every month.

An app for subscription boxes was already created (view the case), following that, the company decided to create a version of the app for the shop as well.

The idea was to attract users with Facebook ads and direct them to the right version of the app depending on which ad it was, for subscription boxes, or the store.

To access the store, one needs to become a member. Users also should be able to become members and use the store without registering.

To get an idea, what the store looks like, before paying the membership fee, a user should be able to try a demo version of the store.

The membership and the purchases within the app should be paid using StoreKit framework for iOS In-App purchases. Ads Facebook and AdWords traffic to be handled by Adjust device fingerprinting technology.

To meet the customer requirements, the following was done:

Redirect from a Facebook ad to the iOS store
- Adjust is used to redirect users from Facebook ads to a corresponding version of the app
- The Fingerprint of the device is stored on the Adjust server and is used to remember the “users-app” pair and open the same version of the app next time

Preview of the store
- A demo store directing to the membership registration page once the user clicks on checkout
Membership registration
- To register their membership and download the app, users need to enter their Apple ID
- To pay the membership fee, the Apple wallet is used. For in-store purchases, the official Apple StoreKit framework is applied
- In case a user doesn’t want to register to use the store, (s)he can click “Not now” button on the sign-up page (the membership fee must be paid anyway). A “ghost” account connected to the user’s subscription is being created. When this user will decide to register, the membership subscription will be reconnected to the current e-mail.
A store app with features of the webstore

iOS application that replicates website features:

Purchase and checkout flow:
- Payment methods: Credit Cards, PayPal, and ApplePay
- Braintree technology to accept credit cards payments
- Automatic address detection at the checkout
Account functionality
- Buy items in the store
- Track shipment
- View order history
- View/update settings and billing details
- Restore purchases
- Change account data: username, password, shipping address

To track app performance and marketing metrics, the following tools were incorporated into the app:

Appsee – an app analytics platform enabling user recordings, touch heatmaps, and extensive user journey tracking to understand the reasons behind the user behavior.
Mixpanel – an analytics platform for the mobile and web, supporting businesses to study consumer behavior.
Adjust – analytics, measurement, and fraud prevention solutions for mobile app marketers.
Snowplow – a data delivery platform that collects and operationalizes behavioral data at scale.
Customer’s own server analytics

View in Apple Store

Jun

Subscription boxes iOS app set up for marketing campaigns

eCommerceadmin

Customer

A shop selling handmade artisan products

GlobeIn is an online store of handcrafted artisan products that also offers subscription-based curated boxes.

With a website already in place, the company decided to create an iOS app to increase the number of subscribers.

The founders wanted to check their assumption that sales in the app would be higher than on the website. The main task for the app was to clearly and in a very attractive way convey the main value of the subscription to users so that they would opt for it.

The company was also planning to actively use the app for its marketing campaigns. Thus, another important requirement was to implement analytic tools to measure traffic and track user journeys and overall user activity. The client wanted to use these analytics to find ways to increase conversion rates.

For the app to fulfill its main goal, the following was done:

Account’s interface with very simple and quick access to its sections and subscription upgrade benefits
Various upselling feature, including an engaging onboarding process aiming to motivate users to spend extra on upgrading their subscription and/or purchasing add-ons
User feature to manage subscription settings like box theme and some others (1-10 days of each month)
User feature to redeem subscription exchanging the box for the credits in order to buy add-on items instead
VIP sales (12-18 days of each month) for extra funds

To track app performance and marketing metrics, the following tools were incorporated into the app:

Appsee – an app analytics platform enabling user recordings, touch heatmaps, and extensive user journey tracking to understand the reasons behind the user behavior.
Mixpanel – an analytics platform for the mobile and web, supporting businesses to study consumer behavior.
Adjust – analytics, measurement, and fraud prevention solutions for mobile app marketers.
Snowplow – a data delivery platform that collects and operationalizes behavioral data at scale.
Customer’s own server analytics

Features of this iOS mobile application:

Subscription description start screen (for new users)
Subscription purchase and checkout flow:
- Payment methods: Credit Cards, PayPal, and ApplePay
- Braintree technology to accept credit cards payments
- Automatic address detection at the checkout. This functionality is estimated to increase the conversion by 4%
New subscriber’s welcoming flow (5 steps)
- Congratulation screen, “Thank you for subscribing”, Step 1…Step 5, conclusive “Thanks screen”
“My subscription” account functionality
- Choose box theme
- Track monthly shipment
- Upgrade to higher subscription tiers
- Collect credits and redeem boxes (exchange for credits)
- Within a given period, buy add-on items in the internal store (not Artisan Shop):
  - Pick any add-ons (items) from an internal catalog: Jewelry, Accessories, Home, Kitchen, Beauty, Food
  - Items will be added into the monthly shipment along with the regular box
- Participate in monthly VIP sales
- View order history tracking
- View/update settings and billing details
- View subscription timeline of the current month
Zendesk chat incorporated into the app

Other functionality or static content incorporated into the app but implemented using incorporated web view or external browser links:

Artisan shop and its order history tracking
Maven reward points
Subscription purchase and checkout flow
Help and FAQ information
“Impact” public files

View in Apple Store

Apr

E-Commerce Omni-Channel

eCommerce, Integration, Mobile, UI-designadmin

Customer

GLOBAL PRODUCER OF WELL-BALANCED NUTRITION, WEIGHT CONTROL AND BEAUTY GOODS

Herbalife, a worldwide-known producer of nutrition, weight control, and beauty goods, together with Filuet Group, its logistic partner, expands into Eastern and Western Europe.

Entering CIS and Baltic countries’ markets, the customer wanted to introduce a new strategy for market expansion, which proposed an intense use of modern e-Commerce tools. They wanted to create a system of sales channels that would include a single web-store for all new business regions, mobile applications for popular platforms (iOS и Android), and a network of automated self-service kiosks (touch screen terminals). All solution components were supposed to use a single data source as well as centralized content administration tools, and configuration settings pool.

The planned online operations needed to be fully integrated with the existing offline business process of orders processing and delivery.

See customer feedback

The Omnichannel solution required a combination of several external and internal corporate tools, integration with Herbalife ERP system and Filuet Group logistic applications. nopCommerce, a leading Microsoft .NET based solution, was chosen as an e-commerce platform as its plugin-extendable architecture using Dependency Injection pattern provides almost unlimited system integration capabilities.

The following tasks were completed within the project:

design and development of an online-store;
design and development of mobile applications delivering full cart and order sync with the online-store;
integration of the e-commerce channel with the existing offline architecture of order processing, pricing, warehouse stock tracking etc.;
Filuet Group shipping widget embedding;
integration with payment systems, addition of new payment methods using online banking;
integration of e-commerce with vending channels (kiosks, automated sales stores);
implementation of chat bots for customer support.

The system is fully hosted on Microsoft Azure using one of the standard cloud service plans which ensures good stress resistance. This helps the system to show adequate performance: in peak times the site auditory might go up to a few thousands.

Herbalife users got a completely integrated shopping environment. This allowed to increase the number of customers and the average sum of their orders significantly. Customers now can access their carts from all devices, order history is centralized and shows all orders, including offline. For example, an order can be put together in the mobile application while final checkout can be done later via web-store personal account or vice-versa.

The company saw increased customer loyalty, boost in sales revenue and endless opportunities of using marketing technologies – retargeting, upselling, cross-selling, CRM marketing etc.