BACKGROUND
Abilene is a small town in the state of Texas. It wasn’t uncommon for residents of Abilene to reach out to businesses in neighboring towns for services that were easily available within the town. Because of this, businesses in Abilene were losing out on local business and residents were paying a premium to get businesses from out of town to provide the same service that was available in town.
Our client, a lifelong resident of Abilene, Texas, had an idea for an app. He saw an opportunity to promote local businesses in his town while saving money for customers at the same time.
He wanted to create a custom mobile application where people of Abilene could purchase products at a discount while also supporting local businesses in the community. This was a win-win situation as it allowed the town locals to benefit from purchasing products and services at an attractive price and allowed local businesses to connect directly with their consumers. Before this app launched, there were only a few options for businesses to market themselves and get listed in directories. Companies relied on billboards and other traditional advertising avenues to reach new customers and generate revenue.
While the client was considering several firms for the project, they were most impressed by our team’s knowledge, communication, and professionalism.
SOLUTION
To develop the solution, we assembled two teams. One team was in charge of developing the mobile app while the other worked on building the backend engine and admin portal.
Admin portal (for business use)
- ✓The admin portal is where business owners can register their business and update personal information such as inventory, offers, and deals.
- ✓They can then add, modify, or delete deals.
- ✓They can also easily activate or de-activate deals at the click of a button.
- ✓We also added a reporting module that showed financial summaries and deal usage reports, which were highly helpful to both the client and the registered businesses.
- ✓The admin portal and the backend engine were developed using Node and MySQL.
Hybrid Mobile application (for customer use)
- ✓The mobile app is where consumers can redeem offers & deals.
- ✓Consumers can see the deals available to them locally or using certain search filters.
- ✓After redeeming the offer, consumers can rate the local businesses from whom they purchased and promote them within the community of Abilene.
- ✓The hybrid mobile app’s front-end was developed using Angular as well as React Native technology that gave us the ability to develop the app once and deploy on both the Android and iOS platforms.
- ✓Geocoding - Our team used Google services Geocoding API and Distance Matrix API to get the Geolocation of businesses and calculate the distance between them and the users so that users could find businesses closest to them.
- ✓AWS - We also used AWS services to host the app, Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) to send emails, and Amazon S3 to store all static images.
- ✓Closed Test Modes - We ran closed test modes simultaneously on both the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store. This was to ensure end-users could download and use the app across several different devices.
Once the application was up and running, the initial set of users started making suggestions to incorporate enhancements such as ‘Like a busines’ and ‘Boost a business’. The client, who was thrilled to see his community getting involved, obliged, and requested our team to add these features.
Post-implementation, our team provided, a detailed walkthrough of the mobile app and functionalities, and additional support as needed.
RESULTS
Our team delivered to the town of Abilene a smart, clean mobile application that enabled residents to seek services of local businesses in the community at discounted prices.
Due to excellent community adoption and keen interest shown by local businesses in Abilene, the mobile app is a huge success. Even the authorities at the City of Abilene ran promotions on the app (i.e; IBuyAbilene) which only demonstrated their keenness to endorse a platform that supported internal business.
BENEFITS
Businesses:
- ✓Promote deals through the app directly to customers and increase revenue.
- ✓Grow a loyal client base by acquiring new customers.
- ✓Test the desirability of certain products before ordering from the supplier.
Customers:
- ✓Support local businesses by buying from them.
- ✓Enjoy a richer catalog of products and services with greater availability.
- ✓Get updated in real-time on new deals and products from favorite stores.
- ✓Save money on through the many deals and discounts offered on the app.
- ✓Save time searching for products that are required or desired.
