App Developer Case Study

From start to finish Pendigital has been fantastic. Tim and Emma worked closely with us throughout to ensure the Wylder app met and surpassed our expectations. Kate Nicholls, Wylder

Introduction to Wylder

It was exciting when the initial enquiry came through from the Wylder team. Here was a potential app leveraging nature to support increased well-being. Getting out in our local natural environment is one of our cures for solving tech problems (plus others!). It's amazing how gaining extra head-space can help you reach a solution. I never underestimate the importance of going for that 15 minute walk if I am not making headway. So, we felt immediately at home writing a proposal that aligned with this way of thinking.

So what exactly does the app do?

Wylder sets daily nature challenges that encourage people to get out and connect with nature. Helping users to reap the benefits of mother nature. The app’s community feed provides inspiration and a sense of togetherness. Think social media but super-charged with healthiness! A Challenge Bank provides extra paid-for challenges, enabling the app with a way to self-fund into the future.

We were fortunate to be one of the early tenderers and our proposal helped guide the Wylder team from a tech perspective. For example, we introduced concepts such as a serverless backend to reduce on-going costs.

Wylder selected us to go forward with. Which was amazing! Thank you Wylder.

Helpful guidance from Pendigital

Communication was always very easy and they showed great patience giving us the tools we needed to understand the process, make informed decisions and be equipped to manage the app after launch. We are delighted with the high quality of the outcome and would highly recommend their services. Kate Nicholls, Wylder

The above testimonial explains one of the key benefits of working with Pendigital. Hence its position here at the top of the article!

We take great pride in guiding our clients with their steps into the world of apps. There are many aspects to get your head around if this is the first voyage into this territory. From navigating the stores through to sending your first push notification.

We take time and attention to ensure we explain everything you need to know. Both of us have been in educational roles before and this helps.

Throughout we were there for Wylder. Helping the team to make profitable decisions. Only ever a Slack message or video-call away.

Wylder appreciated the regular updates so they knew exactly the status of progress. As well as the guidance documentation that we created for their systems.

Feature packed…

The Wylder app is packed with features - check out the feature grid above. But I'd like to focus on some specific ones, as follows:

Feature Focus 1: It looks awesome!

Wylder did an amazing job of designing their app. Already feedback has provided glowing comments on its appearance.

Flutter is known for its out-of-the-box widgets that can be used as the primary building blocks of any app. But Wylder required more than this... components that matched their detailed designs.

At times, it was challenging, especially when implementing across many different phone sizes. But we got there, and we're really proud of our efforts!

Feature Focus 2: Easy to use native in-app payments

The Wylder app provides users with an excellent range of free content. But this is balanced with the ability to add paid-for challenges allowing the app to have a sustainable financial future.

Users can buy packs of nature challenges. It all happens within the app, and uses iOS and Android native payment interfaces. It's secure, easy to use and quick too!

Wylder have full control of their range of digital products, creating, editing and publishing them via their admin system.

Further, the system we implemented is a single source of truth for all purchases on iOS and Android. This means that users can change their device and take their paid-for content with them (via restore purchases).

The system also comes with a great set of metrics allowing Wylder to see real-time data on purchases... plus more!

Feature Focus 3: Bespoke built-in camera

The Wylder team designed the layout for the app's camera. We developed the camera directly from these designs.

It's got some great features including:

• Bespoke design - as mentioned above...
• Square photo functionality, ideal for the community feed
• Branded with Wylder elements, e.g. camera leaf button and text
• Easy to use
• Takes photos and videos
• Access to the devices local media library (with permissions)
• Cropping tool (to create square images from the local media library)
• Video capture limited to 10 seconds with timer
• Image optimization
• And video compression

Feature Focus 4: Account management and security

We ensured that the app comes with all the essential functionality to allow users to manage their account. From logging in with either email, Google, Apple or Facebook through to updating all account details.

Plus all the tools that Wylder needs to manage errant users / objectionable content.

Users can:

• Change their email
• Change their username
• Reset passwords
• Update their profile image
• Delete their account
• Opt-out of analytics and/or marketing
• Block users
• Report inappropriate posts

Wylder's admin system can:

• View users
• View reported content
• Block posts, and
• Block users

Feature Focus 5: Reduced costs, scalable backend

To reduce on-going costs of maintaining backend servers we decided that a serverless approach was best.

The app's backend is Firebase: secure, fast, good value for start-ups and massively scalable. It's managed by Google so Wylder has minimal maintenance issues.

It's perfect for launching a new start-up with potential for massive growth.

Feature Focus 6: Offline capability

The content changes daily, so an active internet connection is essential. But, this is at odds with getting out in nature... which can be internet free.

The solution was a) to cache the content for the daily challenges and b) to be able to download individual cards from Challenge Banks to the device. Users can now select and download challenges they would like to do before heading out into the wilderness.

Feature Focus 7: In-app review

App reviews are an important aspect of growing your user-base. Wylder needed an easy way for users to add reviews to either App Store or Google Play.

We implemented a system for prompting for and then posting app reviews from within the Wylder app. It's configured to appear when a user is most likely to feel positive about the app thereby encouraging a review.

There are plenty more features but too many to go into detail here. But do make sure you check out the features grid at the top of this article. And of course, download the app yourself from one of the stores.

Bespoke content management system

The Wylder app comes with a bespoke content management and admin system. It allows Wylder to do many things, including:

• Block reported posts
• Block users who may be repeatedly generating objectionable content
• Create and manage daily challenges
• Create and manage challenge banks
  • Including: Free, PIN and paid for banks
• Plus more...

Check out our separate case study on the admin system - an SPA (single page application) built with Angular.

Flutter - the number one choice (for us)

We built the Wylder app using Google's Flutter framework. It allowed us to build what we would consider a large app in a smallish timeframe (5 and a half months). It's a reliable and robust tool for building iOS and Android apps with one codebase. One codebase means greater efficiencies and better value for money for our clients.

If you'd like to learn more about Flutter then checkout our app development page. Before we settled on Flutter we did extensive research and experiments with other systems; hands-down Flutter was the best. Being backed by the tech-giant also gives us peace of mind.

Read the 5/5 review

Read the full 5/5 Google review here.

A big thank you to Wylder for choosing Pendigital to build their app. We look forward to working with you again!