Shop Direct Limited MyVery App

Objectives

Shop Direct Limited is the UK’s leading multi-brand digital retailer, which is comprised of brands such as Very.co.uk and Littlewoods.com. With a digital shift, more and more customers are browsing and purchasing on their mobile devices. Seeing an opportunity to engage with its customers on different platforms, Shop Direct Limited wanted to create a mobile solution to enhance the customer’s existing retail experience.

Very.co.uk’s existing iPhone app had been in the market since December 2014, which provided an enhanced and tailored shopping experience for users. The app was so well received by its strong customer base, it earnt an average of 4.5 stars from customer reviews. On review of web analytics, Shop Direct saw that mobile web traffic for MyVery, from Android users, was matching traffic from iOS devices. As a result, the company decided it was important to provide Android users with an app to provide a tailored end user experience, in the same way it had done for iOS users to such success.

The user interface was developed based on the highly successful iPhone app, with Google’s Material design language. Mubaloo worked with Shop Direct to develop an Android version of its iOS app.

Solution

An intuitive and clever user experience is key for achieving customer adoption. Seeing positive results from the iOS app, Shop Direct Limited wanted to be sure to replicate its engaging user experience with the Android version. Mubaloo helped to ensure that designs were suitable for use and development on Android and worked as Shop Direct Limited’s development partner.

The app displays a walkthrough on the home screen, explaining the various features that enhance the user’s experience, to help users navigate around the app as easily as possible. Acting as a style guide, the app displays ’Hot’ items on the home screen, allowing users to easily view popular products. In addition, ‘Snap & Match’ functionality allows customers to find an item of a desired style more easily, within its selection of 40,000 products. Using Cortexica’s findSimilarTM image recognition technology, customers are able to take a photo within the app which will match the image to similar products in Very.co.uk’s database.

To facilitate the highest quality user experience, with slick transitions and integrated functionality, a native development approach was adopted. However, certain web elements are integrated within the app. By developing the app with web elements, Very.co.uk’s internal teams can easily manage the ever changing product information and product listing, via its internal web portals.

Results

The MyVery Android app has allowed Very.co.uk’s Android users, both in the UK and worldwide to shop, browse and manage their accounts whilst on the move. No longer having to access Very.co.uk via a web browser, Very has given its users a quicker, easier and more interactive platform to engage with its brand. Focusing on driving Visit-to-Purchase conversion, Shop Direct has seen a 9% conversion rate from the MyVery Android app.

Launched in August 2015, the app has received an average rating of 4.3 stars and has had 30,000 downloads in the first month.