Inflooense

Problem Domain

The client had an idea of creating a fun and simple way to earn cash for doing what they love: shopping and sharing. That is, a performance based referral program for retailers, who want to utilize the selling power of their consumers who have a social media presence and are passionate about their products. The product will enable consumers to become influencers for each time they shop, and thus offering an affordable and more effective way to utilize influence marketing.

The requirements included an iPhone app for consumers, a plugin for eCommerce software for retailers, an admin panel for platform owners, and a brand website. Featuring in-app cash earnings, brand analytics, Shopify and Magento integration, and so much more, it’s a brand new way to enable online retailers to leverage using the social media presence of their customers. Thus it makes an easy, risk-free, hassle-free way for retailers to market their brands and expand their customer base while collecting important analytics, all in one place

Solution

Once we understood the mission and challenges, after the preliminary discussion, we committed to roll out MVP version 1.0 in iPhone platform in 3 months time period.

We assigned a dedicated team of Developers and QA to work closely with the Client. The key features covered in the App for 1.0 includes Social Login, Retailers List, Hypes done list, Rewards earned and Request Withdrawal. The Shopify partners who wish to be in the platform could get listed, so that they can directly sell from this platform. Also, there was an option for Shopify customers to see which store products are available for hypes. Customers can create hype by uploading a picture and providing a few lines of description of their experience and then sharing it using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. When their friends make a purchase using these links, reward points will be awarded. The accumulation of reward points can be converted into US Dollars, and that can be redeemed and transferred into the bank account

Process

Due to geographical and time zone difference we identified communication as one of the key elements for the success of this project. To ensure transparency and to avoid any expectation gaps, we communicated with the client on a daily basis regarding the status of the work through “Redmine”, Skype and Slack. We raised issues and suggestions through the portal and categorised, prioritised and finally we rolled out the first version.

We delivered Beta release in 2.5 months time and the Appstore approved the build in exactly 3 month duration. The client highly appreciated the way we collaborated with them by adjusting ourselves with the difference in timezone, and delivering great quality output on time.

Social media integration for iOS 11

It was a challenging part of development when the app had to be migrated from iOS 10 to iOS 11, as Apple removed social accounts from settings of iOS 11. We were using the default settings information of facebook and twitter for signup/sign-in process, and due to the removal of settings from iOS 11, we had to make a complete change. Thus for Facebook integration, we used FB SDK and Graph APIs, and changed the entire flow including the share operation inside the app. For Twitter, we had to go with OAuth for integration. And for this, we had to go through the complete OAuth working process, as there wasn’t any predefined tool or library available as open source to get the understanding at that time.

Sharing the hype through instagram

At the time of development, instagram stopped providing support of share APIs. Instagram introduced new privacy and usage policies in sharing the content. Thus the App couldn’t share automated contents via instagram. The client decided to remove the instagram share option from the app. But our team came up with an alternate approach - instead of removing the share via instagram option, the idea was to implement it with a minor user interaction.

To implement this, the content to be shared is already copied to the clipboard programmatically and the image to be shared is already available in the photos (aka gallery). While tapping on the share via instagram option, the inflooense app will open the instagram app and open the post creation screen of instagram. Now the user just needs to paste the content and select the picture, which is the last saved picture (hyped picture). The client was so happy that we could come up with a solution, so that this useful feature can be included.