Technology is at its best when it’s fulfilling a real need. For businesses, there’s no more important need than raising revenue. In this case study, we take a look at how Develocraft helped a large cosmetics company boost customer loyalty with a custom web application.
Bravehearts: A Confident Vision
When interactive marketing agency Bravehearts began working with the cosmetics brand Oceanic, they had a clear goal in mind.
Increase customer loyalty for their client through an interactive web application.
But to deliver on this vision, Bravehearts needed developers. They were soon referred to us and we began discussing the scope of the project.
While Bravehearts had a clear ide of what they wanted to achieve with the app, it was in our discussions with them that the requirements of the project were defined.
Defining a Development Project
Whether it’s the founder of a tech startup or an established company with a new project, the goal of the planned digital product may be clear, but the specific features and specifications required unclear.
As part of our early discussions, it’s Develocraft’s role to find a path from an idea to a specified list of functions and non-functional requirements, a broad plan to deliver them and, ultimately, a final product.
That often means drilling down into the objectives of the project with the client and asking questions they may never have thought of.
During this process, we try to bring any assumptions or unvoiced expectations out into the open so they can either be consciously integrated into the project specs or discarded.
Once we have a firm understanding of what the product will need to do and how well, we can lay out a clear roadmap for development.
In this case, working with Bravehearts, we determined a set of critical features to be included:
Account creation and management
Viewing, adding, and redeeming reward points
Uploading receipts to add further points
Market research activities users could voluntarily participate - such as quizes - in for points
As Bravehearts business focus is marketing and they aren’t specialists in IT development, we provided consultations on how the project would be managed and other key considerations - such as what was possible with the time and resources available.
Developing a web application from the ground up is always an exciting challenge, as it enables the Develocraft team to exercise the full range of their skills and creativity.
In this case, we had the opportunity to work alongside a successful and dynamic marketing agency - making this project a collaborative effort between companies, each contributing their own expertise.
Bravehearts were responsible for setting the overall vision, communicating with their client, and the cosmetic graphic design work that would appear on the web app.
Maximizing Potential Users
To achieve the greatest possible impact, we wanted to do everything we could to maximize uptake. This meant:
Building a teaser website to raise awareness of the upcoming app among potential users
Developing two mobile applications, one for iOS and one for Android, to maximize the potential user base
Developing English and Polish language versions, as the multinational community working at the OBC includes large numbers of people for whom English is their preferred language.
Delivering Loyalty
We began work at the start of 2019. The web app, L4LFriends, launched that September. We went from zero users to 16,500+ users in less than five months.It’s clear from the response of users, uptake, and direct feedback from our client, Bravehearts, that the web application L4LFriends has been well received.
We believe that one of the reasons for this was our focus on optimizing the platform for use in mobile browsers.
Although the project constraints made building standalone mobile applications in addition to a web app impractical, we were convinced that our key demographic - women aged from 16 to 25 - would expect to be able to access the platform from their mobile devices.
By ensuring that the web app looked great and worked flawlessly on mobile, we dramatically increased its appeal to our client’s target market and kept users active on the platform.
With a customer loyalty product, this is especially advantageous as ongoing engagement increases the likelihood that the user will become a repeat customer, fulfilling the key objective of the project.
Takeaways
The key lessons of this project are:
Bringing in experienced developers who have managed similar projects can help you define your goals and prioritize essential features.
Specialist help from quality software development agencies like Develocraft doesn’t just result in a more reliable product. It allows you to focus your time where you can add the most value. In this case, that was marketing and graphic design.
Paying attention to the preferences of the end user increases the appeal of your digital product and can lead to increased uptake and more activity on the platform.
