Vestum

The Vestum mobile app is one of our favourite projects. In this case, we make sure that one task can have several solutions. But everything is in order.

The first acquaintance

Kit Global received a request from an electrical lighting company to create a mobile application that would provide users of mobile devices with Android and iOS operating systems with a user-friendly interface to interact with the company’s product catalogue.

Portrait of a client

Vestum has been involved in the complex supply of lighting products for twelve years. It operates in the B2B sector and has partnerships in many regions. During its existence, the name Vestum has become a recognisable brand.

As a result of the analysis of the company’s activities, we have noticed a reasonable approach to the development of internal business processes and an attentive attitude to the organisation of interaction with customers. Vestum’s specialists are always ready to provide customers with professional advice and quality products.

Goals and objectives

Through dialogue with the customer, we identified the key issues and objectives that needed to be addressed in the application.

Objective 1. Attract wholesale customers and increase sales. The application should be easy to use and have an intuitive interface. The user of the application must be able to register or log in to the system, search the product catalogue, place and pay orders, and specify their location. Authorised users get access to wholesale prices.

Goal 2. Image. Developing mobile applications takes the company to a new, higher level of process. Contributes to the creation of a market leader image and emphasises the customer-focused approach of the organisation.

Goal 3. Quality of service. This application helps to stay in touch. To improve the service, it should be possible to chat with a company specialist. The user should be able to leave feedback on the product, rate the manager’s work and set up to receive messages.

The global mission of the programme is to help the company’s customers and employees perform Vestum-related tasks quickly and efficiently.

Resource

We understood that the scale of the project required significant resources, so we included the number of senior and mid-level professionals assigned. The following people worked on the project:

• Business Analyst
• Chief Designer
• UX Specialist
• UI Specialist
• CTO (Chief Technical Officer)
• Front-end developers – 2 professionals
• QA Engineer

Stages of application development

The process of working on the project can be presented in the form of successive stages:

• Creation of a technical specification describing the application screens and the operation of the back end. Application API architecture development.

The first stage of the project involved the development of the mobile application design – UI / UX design. The system architecture was designed, as well as all stages and options of the user’s interaction path with the application. The result of the work is presented graphically and filled with content.

The team actively communicated with customer representatives. Each area has its own characteristics and it was important for us to consider all customer requirements and the interests of potential users of the product.

• Development of the front section.

Once the application design has been approved, the client part of the application is developed, which includes a user interface on React Native.

1. Connect the front part to the web version back-end using the designed API.
2. Testing.
3. Publishing in marketplaces ( Google Play / App Store).

Tools

The architecture of the application is represented by a client-server structure, the client part of which the user installs directly on the mobile device. The client application communicates with the server-side of the application using web services (API).

It was decided to use CLI React Native \ TypeScript \ HTML5 \ CSS3 \ StyledComponents technologies as tools for developing the front-end part.

This stack of technologies has reduced development time and the customer’s budget, as the development is performed on iOS and Android operating systems.

The result of development

Mobile application functionality:

• user registration and authorization
• user account
• product catalog
• product card
• ordering
• user cart
• news page
• multilingualism
• push notifications
• barcode scanner to add items to cart.

Achieving goals

Today, the mobile application provides effective interaction of wholesale customers with the online store and Vestum specialists, increases the productivity of managers, and is a contribution of the company to the future of its business.

According to the management of Vestum, the application has become an important image component of the company and has significantly improved the service for existing customers. At the same time, against the background of the global economic downturn, which also affected the trade-in of electrical goods, it is difficult to assess how much the development of the application has affected the dynamics of sales.

The Vestum mobile application is a valuable contribution to Kit Global’s portfolio as an example of a complex project with extensive functionality that has been successfully implemented and has become an integral part of the client’s software.