Mobile development for national department store chain
The Opportunity:
This client’s existing iOS mobile applications were essentially wrappers around an antiquated mobile web page. Download times were slow, navigation was anti-intuitive, and the overall user interface was suboptimal. The client wanted to delight customers with mobile interaction that was consistent between in-store and online experiences.
Specific organizational & technical challenges included:
1. No dedicated mobile team or internal mobile development expertise
2. Limited strategy and no clearly articulated documentation on how best to integrate all services and applications
3. Unstable and poorly-utilized testing environments
The Solution:
Avenue Code was asked to provide technical direction and iOS expertise. We subsequently defined the iOS architecture and also collaborated with the client to field an internal mobile development team. With our guidance, our client now has a set schedule for defining, prioritizing, developing, and releasing new features in iterative cycles; large production updates are consistently released to the App Store; all features are implemented and delivered on schedule; and unit test coverage has been raised to 60%, with further improvements to that metric anticipated soon.
The Result:
• Stable, predictable release management
• Significant code quality improvements
• Sales from the mobile platform increased 27% in the first year
• Apple App Store rating jumped from 3.5 stars to 5 stars for the first time ever
