Project
Background

The Customer is a large Germany-based provider of IT services and solutions in the e-commerce domain. They create innovative software for mobile commerce, such as mobile payment, Scan & Go, vending machine output, self-checkout, customer analytics, and more. The high-tech solutions produced by the company are highly popular among retailers and have a reputation for bringing higher sales, accelerating the checkout process, and increasing customer satisfaction.

Goal

The key objective of the mobile development project was to redesign Android and iOS mobile apps to improve user experience. In particular, GP Solutions had to solve a couple of problems, including:

Implementation of a new backend
Adding new functionality
Enhancing the UI
Solving navigation issues

The Customer decided to engage GP Solutions for the project because of its strong reputation for successful mobile development projects. Our developers demonstrated high proficiency in the
required mobile technologies and proved they could easily adapt to the Customer’s workflows and
processes.

Challenge

A chain of stores selling household goods turned to the Customer for services, and hence they needed to quickly upscale their development team. The Client relied on native mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, and an online store to make shopping faster and more convenient.

The Customer asked GP Solutions to help with redesigning the outdated mobile apps for their Client. They were looking for experts who would both excel at the needed technologies and manage to efficiently work together with their team. Among other factors to choose our developers, the Customer mentioned English language proficiency and reasonable pricing.

Solutions

Once the project started, our mobile development team quickly dived into the project. The provided solution consisted of two parts: fixing existing app issues and introducing new functionality.

New features

New search functionality

Following the Client’s requirements, our team incorporated a more powerful search engine into the Android mobile app. The Client had a new website backend, which wasn’t connected to their app yet. This caused discrepancies between the website data and the data available in the app. We created an API to enable smooth communication between the new website backend and the native mobile app and keep the data accurate.

Barcode scanner

To further enhance search functionality, GP Solutions came up with a barcode scanner and deployed it to the Android mobile app. App users now can quickly start looking for the needed goods even without launching the app thanks to the implemented dynamic shortcuts leading directly to the barcode scanner.

Integration with a 3D catalog

Later on, the Client asked to add a 3D catalog of items for its users. It could make the app catchier and encourage more sales. The Client has already chosen the library, but the backend was completely different from the technologies used in their other software. GP Solutions successfully built a smooth connection between the Client’s app and the 3D catalog and made the catalog items available through the upgraded search tool.

Privacy features

Our mobile experts also helped the Client to make their app compliant with the recent law changes. We introduced the necessary enhancements and made it possible to delete all account data by user request in the Android app. Also, our experts enabled the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompt for the iOS app to make it compliant with AppStore requirements.

Performance improvements

Bug fixing

Our team did code refactoring and introduced more advanced technologies to solve issues caused by outdated versions. GP Solutions also tested the app and fixed the bugs that we found on the go.

UI enhancements

The Android app had a serious navigation problem as clicking on the properties tab restarted the search, and users lost their browsing data. Mobile experts at GP Solutions fixed the issue and tested the UI. We also implemented other UI improvements, added custom labels, tweaked the layout, converted images to CVG, and more, to make the app equally attractive and functional on any device.

Results

As a result of all the app enhancements there’s been a major improvement to the user experience. It helped a lot in gaining more loyal customers. After all the effort put in by GP Solutions team the app users can now enjoy:

A much more convenient search functionality and navigation thanks to the tweaks done to the backend, API, and UI.
A new barcode scanner, easily accessible via a dynamic shortcut, which lets users quickly find the needed goods in the catalog.
Compatibility with a wide range of external devices.

Overall, the project ran smoothly, productively and in line with the Customer’s expectations. The allocated team was increased a couple of times. It is quite likely there will be more common projects in the coming future.

Technology:

Android: Java (Android 7-11.0), Kotlin (1.3-1.5.31), FasterXml, STAX, Moshi, AndoridX, OkHttp3, Volley, Ingenico, Firebase, Google Play Services, ZXing, Blaetterkatalog.

IOS: Swift 5-5.5, UIKit, Combine, Firebase, GoogleAppMeasurement, GoogleDataTransport, GoogleUtilities (Network, Logger), FlexibleRowHeightGridLayout, InAppSettingsKit, KeychainAccess, MBProgressHUD, MultiSlider, nanopb, SwiftGen.