Behind the scenes
Our app team is going full throttle – with the Community by their side
by Catherine Barth
App and away!
7.1.2020
Translation: Eva Francis
Pictures: Manuel Wenk
They help you brush your teeth, pay for shopping, track your pregnancy, walk your dog or even measure your furry friend's ideal paw pressure. There are apps for pretty much everything. And there's a Digitec Galaxus app, too. Team Isotopes has spent the last months fixing bugs and improving the user experience (UX) of our app.
Today, every fourth purchase on digitec and Galaxus is made via smartphone. Shop visits coming from smartphones have just overtaken visits coming from PCs. Black Friday proved this once again, as twice as many orders were placed via smartphone than last year. With this in mind, apps are likely to become even more important in the future.
Digitec Galaxus customers can use the mobile browser or our own app to shop via smartphone. But since we launched our apps, a lot of time has passed and relatively little has happened – at least in comparison to all the work we’ve done on our online shops. Mobile devices have changed over the last few years. This has created new requirements that the old versions of the apps no longer met. The ratings in the app stores reflected this.
A task force fixed the major bugs
During the past months, a task force with members of the online shop area and brand management teams worked on evaluating three possible app concepts. The result? We see the greatest potential in an update of our webview. Why this simple? Why doesn't the app have its own, additional functions? Good questions. Optimising the webview makes sense for pragmatic reasons: developing specific features for Android or iOS would require our own specialised teams. We’ve decided to focus on website features that benefit all customers.
Today, our app boasts:
• increased performance (much more speed, much fewer bugs)
• leaner and streamlined UX
• iPhone X support (finally😉)
• Google sign-in
• Native sharing
A sharpened app strategy
We didn’t only improve the technical features, we also defined the responsibility for the app: team Isotopes is in charge of the apps and our Customer Service team answers questions about the apps in the stores.
If you like apps, try them out and give us feedback. We’re looking forward to your comments and ideas. Find the apps here:
• Digitec (Android)
• Galaxus (Android)
• Galaxus DE (Android)
• Digitec (iOS)
• Galaxus (iOS)
• Galaxus DE (iOS)
Zara Hegemann
Head of Product
Zara.Hegemann@digitecgalaxus.ch
45 comments
later