Mobile Solutions - Build vs. Buy

7/30/2019 Mobile Solutions - Build vs. Buy

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Mobile SolutionsBuild vs. Buy


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CTO of HauteLook

Oversee all technology, infrastructure, development, etc

Major focus on customer experience based applications

Utilize Agile SCRUM and Lean Kanban SDLC

Build web apps for Desktop, Mobile and Tablet (from here out I will referto Mobile as inclusive of tablets)

Build native applications for iPhone, iPad and Android

Who am I? Kevin Diamond

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Private sale, members-only limited-time sale events

Premium fashion and lifestyle brands at exclusive prices of 50-75% off

Over 20 new sale events begin each morning at 8am PST

Over 10 million members

Acquired by Nordstrom in 2011

Who is HauteLook

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iPhone (Oct 2010), iPad and Android(Sep 2011) apps now available, with

experience tailored to each device

Over 1.1M app downloads

Mobile now represents up to 33% of

weekday logins and 42% on weekends Mobile now represents up to 25% of

weekday revenue and 33% on weekends

Sometimes our core member prefers

using her phone to shop HauteLook,

even when near a computer

HauteLook Mobile Is

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Increased speed in latest version of our app increased conversion by 10%

Faster performance also led to 15% more PV/sessions, but decreased

session time by 25% (it was that much faster!)

Buyers spend 3x the time per session as viewers, and look at 3x the

number of products

iPad sessions last 2x iPhone but same number of PV

Bugs are costly! A buggy version had 10% lower engagement and 20%

lower conversion.

Fun facts!

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Is mobile commerce

strategicfor your business?

The biggest question

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Then the core development of your app

MUST be done internally

Yes?

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Great! Lets outsource this sucker

Still testing the water?

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Mobile Web or Native Apps

Where are your customers?

If all over the place, definitely Mobile Web

If almost all iOS only or all Android only, then go Native immediately

If a good split, start with Mobile Web and then go Native as quickly as you can

But HTML5 doesnt perform nearly as well as Native (for now)

Picking a platform

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Hybrid is building it in HTML5 and then wrapping it for native app store

Performance is nowhere near Native

Especially if you have a mix of older devices

Worst things are: infinite scrolling, access to hardware

Newer devices with big processors closing the divide New JS Frameworks working towards making it better

What about hybrid?

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Outsource does not have to mean offshore! Look at both.

Have they built an app/site you love or competes with you?

No? Then keep looking!

My two rules of how outsourcing works:

Staff augmentation

Complete project hand-off

Picking Your Outsourcer

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Get a skill matrix of actual resources

Pick a resource (or a few) and interview them like you would an employee

Integrate them into your Agile/Lean process

Dont have to work your hours, but have to attend the stand-up

Assign them tasks to do

You have to manage the project, they are now just additional employees

Pay an hourly rate, not project base

Monthly commitment, but terminate anytime if not living up to

expectation

Staff Augmentation

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They must have a project manager on their side

Best to use same group that does wireframes

Set up standards (style guide, code standards, etc) in advance

And then sit back and make them manage, develop, test it all

Project based bid with budget guidelines Deadlines clearly discussed and penalties for missing them

Dont increase scope!

Be happy with whateverthey deliver, it will not be perfect, but it is done

Project Hand-off

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Biggest challenge is hiring the RIGHT people

If it is your first time, be wary of setting deadlines

Building for mobile is harder than building for desktop

Prototyping is essential for the staff to learn the right way to do something

and how long it takes

Leave prototyping out of your Agile process so you can adequately

timebox when in it

In-house Instead

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Memory Management, Multi-threading, Small Processors, Speed

Constraints, are likely new problems

Simulating bad/lossy connections (try it when on the elevator!)

Understanding standards of device platforms and how to appropriatelyuse those requires good UX and UI people

Simplicity is key for a successful experience, almost opposite from the

desktop web (drop shadows and rounded corners eat away at processor)

Need APIs that bring all major functionality to the new platform, so

double the building for all new functionality

Building for Mobile is Hard

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The rest of your team needs to become dedicated to maintaining yourAPIs and their up-time (hard if nothing else uses them)

Testing must be extreme

Native takes weeks not minutes to get new releases out to all customers, sobugs are very costly (add in Upgrade alerts from the start)

Even web doesnt act like you would expect

Automated testing is almost a must have, which means more initial dev time Beta test internally with employees to find bugs the average person might

see, but your developers will miss

Native app Beta testing internally is not easy to get the app on to peoplesdevices, often have to use tools like TestFlight

If development isnt in-sync, new features will come to desktop web first,

and later to Mobile which requires a lot more communication internallyand externally

What versions of what devices will you support? (iOS 4-6, Android 2.1-4.1,Touch-based Smartphones, etc)

Supporting Mobile is Harder

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Very public reporting of all issues people have with the app

Also people will evaluate your business

Business Practices

Business Model

Try to encourage people in your app to reach out with their problems directlyand not through the Reviews

Android requires you to be a Top Developer to respond to reviews, but littlevisibility into what makes you a Top Developer

Apple has no way to contact or respond to complaints, even if its with a fix(hopefully this will change)

Little to no way to identify the user to look internally at what problem theymight have had

Apple App Store is also very finicky (if it isnt broke, dont fix or change it!) Changing App Icon Name can mean a blank icon on release

Removing and re-adding your app can result in 100k of members seeing This itemhas been removed from the store

App Store Reviews

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Push and Alert messages are to mobile as email is to the desktop, exceptreads are above 90%!

Push messages are sent through Apple/Googles protocols and arent easy

to setup

Push is great for transactional messages (you got a credit or your item

shipped)

Alerts are setup within the app while it is running and are easier to setup

Alerts are great for regular, schedulable events (like our 8am new sale

alert)

Or an event off of an action they took while in the app (remind me button

for a specific sale happening in the future)

Alerts you can build yourself, for Push, use a third party like Urban Airship

Push vs. Alerts

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Dont reinvent the wheel! If you want a cool feature, see if it exists already:

Card.io for camera reading a Credit Card

Red Laser for barcode scanning

This industry is expanding fast and more and more tools are being developed

Crash reporting is not built-in

Crittercism, BugSense, Crashlytics are a few that give you the feedback you

need to figure out the cause of crashing, but are really new and not 100%

Apple + Android report some crashing and give stack traces in their admin

systems, but only report a limited number

Analytics

Whomever your web analytics partner is probably already has an SDK for

mobile

Third Party Add-Ons

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If you have questions, please email me [email protected]

Thank you!

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mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]

Mobile Solutions - Build vs. Buy

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