French Connection Launches Transactional iPhone App
- Friday, March 11th, 2011
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Fashion retailer French Connection has launched a transactional iPhone app. The app, created by mobile technology firm, Answer, enables users to browse goods, consult a ‘Look Book’ for outfit combinations, share opinions with friends via Twitter and Facebook integration, and buy items.
The app has been developed using what Answer describe as a “cloud-based model”, in which the core functionality of the app is available in the cloud. According to Answer’s head of design and innovation, Steve Dobson, this has a number of advantages. The first is that French Connection can add new features to the app without having to ask users to download an update.
“We have pulled elements of the objective application, the iOS, and thrown it in the cloud, so if decide they would like a mail blog with video, they don’t need a new app, it just pushed out new code to the app which tells it what to do.”
The second advantage, says Dobson, is that it makes it easy to port the app’s functionality to other platforms – Answer’s technology currently supports Android, Blackberry and the latest version of Symbian, in addition to iOS – since all that’s needed is the skin. It also supports Facebook and YouTube integration, and push notifications. And it makes the experience of using the app very fast; the only time the app needs to reach out is for real-time stock checks when a customer wants to order something or check on stock availability.
“Mobile commerce was the next step in our multi-platform digital strategy,” says Jennifer Roebuck, digital director at French Connection. “The cloud-based app model from Answer means that all data is in one place to power real-time functionality for our customers and overcome potential integration issues. For example, someone can start browsing online on their computer in the morning, try on in store at lunch and then checkout on their mobile to avoid queuing at the tills.”