Project snapshot
Sometimes it takes a failure to make a success, and City Plumbing’s mobile app is a good example. When the company introduced a simplified mobile application for their B2B customers, the plan didn’t work. Designed to help plumbers and trade professionals make quick purchases, the app was too much effort for associates with too little reward. However, City Plumbing didn’t give up. Instead of a simplified app, the retailer wanted to extend the benefits of their eCommerce platform to their mobile app. City Plumbing consulted with Intellias because of our decades of retail development experience.
We designed and developed a dynamic mobile application for City Plumbing with a powerful UI that provides customers with the store’s complete catalog, each store’s inventory, and checkout options. Users who signed up for an account also participated in the retailer’s rewards program. The opportunity to earn rewards enticed many users to sign up for an account, which also helped City Plumbing get to know their customers.
Located in Crick, Northamptonshire, City Plumbing employs over 4,500 associates at 360 locations across nine different businesses throughout the UK and Ireland. Part of the Highbourne Group, the plumbing, heating, and bathroom retailer uses many digital technologies to offer expert advice and supply products to plumbing professionals and DIYers.
Business challenge
Competition drove the development of the first mobile app that we created for City Plumbing. When another plumbing and bathroom retailer advertised delivery within 30 minutes, City Plumbing decided to join the delivery program rather than compete against it. We built a simplified mobile app so plumbers who needed on-the-job supplies could place delivery orders quickly. The competitor’s delivery service then would pick up the merchandise from a local store and deliver it to the customer’s job site.
However, after deployment, City Plumbing realized the app was too limited. Among its limitations, customers could not place large orders through the mobile app and associates had to manually enter an order into the retailer’s order management system, which cut time from customer service in the store.
The app’s limitations led to its downfall. Soon, it became difficult for associates. They started hiding tablets in drawers and ignoring customer alerts because it was taking too much time away from their other duties. City Plumbing decided that they needed a robust mobile app to provide a similar and engaging experience to its website.
City Plumbing asked us to redesign the mobile app and extend it with real-time capabilities.
Solution
In just three months of development time, we created a fully functional mobile app for City Plumbing’s customers. Available on iOS or Android, the app uses an efficient combination of Dart and Flutter for its platform. Biometrics offer greater login security. When users open the platform:
- A GraphQL API fetches data in the store’s backend using microservices that query a response from a PostgreSQL database storing the catalog items
- Customers can then search the catalog using an Algolia search engine, which provides a fast response for real-time data and the ability to filter, such as by a store’s available inventory
- To help manage the user’s sessions, a Hive NoSQL local database in Dart keeps track of items in a customer’s catalog, offers offline inventory snapshots, and lets them see recently viewed products, which then sync back to the platform via a GraphQL API when the customer returns online
- During checkout, postal codes are checked and reformatted using QAS Pro On Demand
- Once a customer’s order has been placed, the order is saved as an entry in the PostgreSQL database
Business outcomes
Customers enjoyed having a single platform for placing orders, and associates liked using a single system for receiving them. As a result of City Plumbing’s new mobile platform, customers could personalize their sales experience, and marketing could target customers more accurately.
Furthermore, the company offered incentives to customers who created an account through the mobile app. This led to the company getting to know 70% of its customers better, which helped City Plumbing provide them with greater customer service.
Technologies used: Dart, Flutter, GraphQL | Backend: PostgreSQL | Mobile local storage: Hive | Integrations: Algolia, QAS Pro On Demand
KPIs 500+ unique active daily users 150+ orders per day 70% of customer information retained