Digital

Mobile app development supercharged – the learnings of thousands of hours worked on enterprise level applications

by

Klára Pálossy and Gergely Békési

4 min read

December 9, 2021

An article series made out of a half-decade’s experience, pitfalls to sidestep, gainful tips and design tricks, actual examples, and mostly, a well-saved budget in the end.

When tens to hundreds of thousands (so basically, a lot) of people use your mobile application on a daily basis, you ought to be extra thoughtful about what you hand them. If it has some inconvenient features that frustrate your customers, or some occuring issues that yet need to be fixed, you will end up in the same wretched situation. You lose customers and / or time – and by those, you lose money. And who would possibly want that?

If you are about to spend a significant sum of money on creating a business-critical app, instead of cutting corners, you ought to start by stepping up your game. Including trying to avoid common as well as – and here comes the tricky part – less common pitfalls at any cost, as they would certainly cost you more in the long run. And have no doubt, pitfalls arise in projects at such scale. As a digital vendor with six years of experience in enterprise-level mobile app development, believe us, we know that firsthand. Some we have learned the easy, and some the much harder way.

At Mito Digital, we have been designing and developing clever digital solutions for various industries all over the world, be it telco, retail and hospitality, finance, or aviation. The common denominator in them is the fairly high business criticality. We have just rebuilt the loyalty app of La Cage, one of Canada’s biggest sports restaurant chains, which has 50K monthly active users. We delivered a retailer app both for Germany’s SLV / Lotto Bayern, and later for the Hungarian National Lottery Company, Szerencsejáték Zrt., actively working on further improving them. Deutsche Telekom’s next-generation self-care application, the One App was launched in five countries across Europe (now used in nine), being an industry best practice ever since. And every year, millions of users complete their post-booking journey along the mobile timeline we created for Wizz Air, the best performing ultra-low-cost carrier in CEE.

If there is one thing we have learned is that big numbers of any kind usually mean there is a lot at stake. But we have also learned so much more than that – among them, a lot about critical factors we all wish we had known before jumping into a mobile project.

By way of example, how can you really and truly save time and effort with automated release management, making sure nothing misfires in the first place? Do you need to block the whole release of your app because one of the many scheduled features is still dysfunctional? How can you make the rollout a rapid, failsafe and smooth transition, even though its nature says otherwise?

On the customer’s side, have you ever wanted to use your membership card to claim that much-deserved discount, only to have an endless spinning wheel await? Frustrating, we know. So, is your application actually up and running when going offline? Should it be? Apparently, a lot can be done to improve – or on the other hand, to worsen – customer experience (CX). The size of the app can just as well be a bottleneck for users, thus easily leading to lost opportunities for you. And speaking of frustrating, what is it with deep links that they never open the way and where they should? Mainly, how to set them up correctly? Also, why is having an analytics expert on your design team so beneficial?

You might think that managing localization is not rocket science, but really, typos in hard-coded texts are costly and set nerves on edge in no time. Even a smaller app includes at least 500 translation terms, just imagine how many base words that implies, all in different contexts. Yes, a lot. And as we said, big numbers equals being a lot at stake.

Check out our case study on La Cage’s loyalty app. Sure it is worth being loyal to!

The result of this past decade’s work was a dozen amazing apps for our clients and even more takeaways for us. In the following months, we will be covering the weightiest topics from caching through remote control and analytics to release management. From unforeseen challenges through essential tips and tricks to real-life examples on how we use(d) top-notch, or even in-house developed digital solutions. 

Mobile development at scale is not a walk in the park, and we can’t promise pitfalls will not arise along the way. But by sharing those we fell into, we can show you how to avoid some of the most crucial ones so that they will consume neither the success of your app, nor your budget. Well, nor your or your customers’ patience.


Our article series on mobile development will be published every now and then here, at Mito Digital Blog. For our next piece on force update, be sure to subscribe below, or you can always contact us.

 

Mito Digital is a business unit of Mito, a unique powerhouse of creative & digital experts with a passion for clever things. We have been working with our clients around the globe for more than ten years, in numerous industries from aviation through lottery and retail to telecommunications. Our goal is to design and deliver human-centered and best-in-class digital solutions that meet and exceed the business goals of our clients as well as the demands of their clients.

The author(s)

Klára Pálossy

Content Writer

Klara writes about digital for people who love digital stuff, mostly in digital form. Be it aviation or lottery, design or mobile development, she is on the lookout for good stories at Mito Digital, and has a genuine interest in how to make the digital world a better place for users. Sometimes, she writes analog style too – shopping lists and haikus, mostly.

Gergely Békési

Mobile Program Manager

Gergely had led enterprise-level mobile development projects in his past 5 years at Mito Digital across multiple industries, such as telecommunications, retail, aviation or entertainment. He has significant experience in high complexity mobile app development – and is always happy to share his knowledge and learnings with fellow people.

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Kosárlabda szabályok

A kosárlabda csapatok 5 fős felállásban játszanak. A nevezett csapatokat csoportokba osztjuk, a sorsolást a tornát megelőző héten minden csapat részére kiküldjük. A mérkőzéseket hivatalos játékvezető vezeti. A mérkőzések egy pályán zajlanak. A csoportok első két helyezettje az egyenes kieséses szakaszba kvalifikálja magát. Az egyenes kiesés szakaszban a csoportmérkőzések során első helyezett csapatok a másik csoport második helyezettjével játszanak, ezt követően a vesztesek a harmadik helyért mérkőznek meg egymással, majd a győztesek vívják a döntőt.

Röplabda szabályok

Csapatlétszám: 6 fő max. 2 cserejátékossal
A játék időtartama:
  • A mérkőzés egy csapat által nyert egy játszmáig tart. 
  • A játszmát az a csapat nyeri, amelyik előbb ér el 25 pontot legalább 2 pont előnnyel. 24-24-es egyenlőség esetén a játszma addig folytatódik, amíg valamelyik csapat el nem éri a két pont különbséget. 
  • Mérkőzésidő max. 20 perc, ha ezen belül a fentiek alapján nem dől el a meccs, a 20 perc mérkőzésidő leteltével előnyben levő csapat nyeri a mérkőzést.
A csapat létszáma a pályán nem csökkenhet 6 fő alá. Azt a csapatot, amelyik nem tud az összetételi előírásnak megfelelő 6 főt a pályára állítani, a játékvezető “hiányos”-nak nyilvánítja.

Labdarúgás szabályok

Csapatlétszám: 5+1 fő.

Játékidő: 2×10 perc (szünet nélkül térfélcserével)

A mérkőzéseket 3×2 méteres kapukra játsszuk.

  • A mérkőzéseket a kispályás labdarúgás szabályai szerint bonyolítjuk le.
  • A mérkőzéseken csak hernyótalpas, terem- vagy edzőcipőben lehet szerepelni, fém, vagy gumi stoplis cipő használata szigorúan tilos! 
  • Ha bármelyik csapat létszáma a kiállítások, sérülések következtében 3+1 fő alá csökken, a mérkőzést be kell szüntetni. 

Introducing Nokia to website performance measurement through page speed measurement

Business background

Page speed has become an important factor for website owners and SEOs since Google began focusing more and more on user experience factors. If companies don’t adapt to this new mindset, they will lose their organic power.

Nokia has experienced an extensive page load time on most of its pages, but lacked proper measurable information about the performance of the website. It is challenging to adapt site-wise technical modifications without understanding what is really behind the curtain.

Our solution

Mito introduced a multifactor, multi locational-targeting page speed measurement and reporting system across different devices.

Our focus was to develop a measurement system from scratch that is able to report on different page speed KPIs so we can better understand what additional analyses are needed to increase the pages’ performance. We did not only focus on a page level measurement, but also grouped pages to page types that assists us in making more educated assumptions.

We paid attention to location modularity in order to extend the number of analysed locations to additional countries by adding new Virtual Machines to our framework.

We are able to measure different KPIs on both mobile and desktop so we can see how the site performance is realized across devices.

Our measurement system and dashboard provided us insights on what type of elements of the different page types might cause low speed performance and it helped us to further analyse the loading curve, just as the opportunities in Google PageSpeed Insights recommendations for the different page types.

Results

We set up the measurement system and the dashboard that reports on website performance and opportunities.

Through properly tracking the page speed improvements, Nokia becomes a more powerful organic participant in the telco market in Google search, while they provide a better user experience for their visitors.

End to end measurement solution for Nokia

Nokia is an innovative global leader in 5G, networks and phones.

An international business of this size requires a comprehensive measurement strategy including responsible data collection, consistent management of tags and measurement codes, personalized website tracking and purposeful conversion rate optimization (CRO).

We kicked off Analytics projects from January, 2020, beginning with extensive Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics audits. Besides inspecting the different system settings, we also optimized the measurement and pixel implementation processes within Nokia in order to increase efficiency and reduce implementation periods.

After the key adjustments and process harmonization, we have moved forward and started to work on the website and landing pages’ efficiency, including several conversion rate optimization tasks such as heatmap analysis and A/B testing.

Results

Nokia is receiving continuous support from our analytics team to ensure the client’s measurement and data is reliable. Due to streamlined processes, implementation periods are shorter and we eliminated unnecessary website tracking codes which cause longer loading times.

Nokia Allwhere - Private Wireless - Global digital media campaign planning & execution

Building brand awareness and creating demand for Nokia Private Industrial Wireless in new vertical markets

Nokia launched a digital campaign to educate the market that their industrial-focused LTE solutions are the key in accelerating the ultimate benefits of digital transformation and realization of the fourth industrial revolution.

The goal: to build brand awareness and create demand for Nokia private Industrial Wireless solutions in new vertical markets, especially infrastructure or asset-heavy industries where digitization has been mostly restricted to point solutions without general network connectivity.

Our approach

We’ve developed a multi-touch global digital media campaign, which covered the entire user journey of business leaders, from education to making a business decision.

Our main goal was to make Nokia visible on a large scale through automated solutions and smart targeting to reach people when they are reading, talking, learning about or searching for private wireless networks.

To archive this, we’ve utilized the combination of digital media platforms, including industry specific content sponsorships, social media ads, paid search, programmatic hyperlocal and Digital out-of-home ads in front of target company HQs. We’ve made sure that when our key audience is browsing the web, using social media on their phones or just walking outside of their offices, they see a relevant Nokia ad.

Results

The campaign has reached over 80 000 business decision makers and influencers in 3500 target companies, across 5 industry verticals globally.

Private wireless solution specific brand search volume increased by 70% during the campaign period (YoY). In Q2 and Q3 2020, Nokia Enterprise had a double digit year-on-year growth in net sales and new customers.

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Mesi is searching for minds and souls, loves a good CV and to chat with new people. Go ahead and find out!

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Mesi is searching for minds and souls, loves a good CV and to chat with new people. Go ahead and find out!

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