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Software Development Case Study
Shopourturf is a startup based in Worcester, UK. Shopourturf wanted to build a WIFI analytics system for the brick and mortar stores in the Worcester council. While most WIFI analytics SAAS applications come with additional hardware equipment that needs to be kept in the stores, Shopourturf wanted to eliminate the additional hardware and have everything done through the custom software that they wanted us to develop for this system. The software was to help the brick and mortar stores send more targeted campaigns to customers while they were in the store and have an analytical engine at the backend to do high-end analytics based on which the stores could build their campaigns.
Objectives
- Build an app that will show shoppers the nearest available WIFI based on location.
- Shoppers can log onto any of the displayed WIFI and start enjoying free WIFI provided by one of the shops close to their location.
- Shops will be able to collect the information of the shopper using their free WIFI.
- Shops will use this information to send targeted campaigns and offer to the shopper while they are close to their shops through the custom developed software.
- The shops will be able to analyze the data related to the different KPI that they report on from the backend.
- One of the key asks was for the shoppers to get automatically connected to the WIFI of the store without having them to key anything in their app.
- The custom software for the stores and the app developed for the shoppers had to have minimal user interaction.
- Data security and encryption was important to put in place during exchange of information to ensure GDPR guidelines were met.
PHASE 1
Prototyping
While most of the WIFI analytics products come along with dedicated hardware, one of the main criteria of our client was that he was not willing to invest in expensive hardware because that would add an additional financial burden on the shops. Hence the entire thing had to be built using custom software development and a mobile app for the shoppers.
The key things to prototype were how shoppers could connect to a WIFI network of a store only the first time and then from the next time the app would smartly connect to the WIFI of the store whenever the shopper came in the range of the WIFI network. One of the important aspects of the project was to provide the shopper with an experience that required minimal interaction with the app and still be able to get the offers and discounts on their app when they visited the store.
PHASE 2
Development of SAAS component
Once the prototyping of the app was complete, it was time to develop the custom software that would run inside the stores and collect information of the shopper inside the store and send it to the SAAS platform for detailed analysis of the customer. This custom software was the component that would perform the tasks performed by the expensive hardware of similar companies providing WIFI analytics.
PHASE 3
Bringing it all together
Once the custom software and the app were developed, it was time to tie it all together on the SAAS platform through which the stores would register themselves, do customer segmentation based on the data received from the software running in the stores, create campaigns for different types of audience and be able to check the effectiveness of the campaigns by analyzing the sales made at the store. While eCommerce stores have different mechanisms of reaching the target audiences through sophisticated campaign methods provided by companies like Google and Facebook, the shopmyturf application was developed with the idea of helping the brick and mortar stores have access to a platform through which they can also target their ideal customers.
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