The Flower Factory Goes Mobile

Los Angeles-based flower retailer The Flower Factory has launched an in-store rewards program powered by a new iOS app developed by the Sunrise Integration mobile team.

Here's a quick rundown of how it works: The app allows customers to earn reward points for every purchase and redeem reward codes for discounts. The mobile app tracks the customer's rewards and provides insights into featured products.

We worked directly with their team to provide a custom solution that rewards customer loyalty using an in-store iPad and app.

In-store Kiosk for Rewards

To go the extra mile for their customers, The Flower Factory wanted to reward customers for their loyalty by providing discounts based upon earned "punches".

Every time a customer makes an in-store purchase, they register a new reward at the sales counter. Their in-store kiosk tracks these customer purchases.

After five successful orders, the service generates a unique code that allows the customer to unlock a discount on their next order. Customers and store staff can manage rewards from the custom-developed iPad portal.

In this portal, customers can see their totals and determine which purchases are required to unlock the discount. When the customer isn't in the store, they can use the accompanying mobile app to access their rewards and loyalty codes. By rewarding its customers, The Flower Factory is growing a loyal and satisfied customer base. With so many opportunities throughout the year to send flowers and gifts, the rewards program has become a popular asset to dedicated customers.

Behind the scenes, there is a lot of tech that powers the app and in-store kiosk. Our development team needed a clear picture of the required workflow to ensure the data gets to the right place.

The Flower Factory wanted customers to use their phone numbers to easily track their rewards and not rely on email as some in-store people didn't want to use (or provide) their email just to make a purchase. Once we understood the business needs, we created a prototype to get approval from The Flower Factory's management team. From there we were able to start our development process.

Multi-platform Development

Part of our process is to ensure we're giving our clients the best bang for their buck. It's important to review all possible technologies and choose the correct path forward. In today's development landscape, using a modern cross-platform framework is the best way to get the most for your money. The ability to use a single codebase and share it across platforms means development time is cut in half!

For the Flower Factory app, our mobile development team used the React Native library. React Native is one of the most popular cross-platform development libraries and allows us to speed up development time. The core mobile development used React Native while the kiosk portal uses React.js components. The mobile app and kiosk are cloud-enabled and communicate in real-time with AWS for a powerful backend service.

The backend of a mobile app is more important than many people realize. Without a powerful cloud engine, an app will have limited capability and reach–and the whole point of being mobile is to reach everyone from anywhere. Because a phone on its own is limited, we need a backend system to power the app. A cloud backend opens up the data exchange and allows for global communication.

We used a multi-region AWS configuration to ensure The Flower Factory app could handle customer traffic quickly. Furthermore, the deep power of AWS gives us the headroom to scale with the future plans of the business.

Now Live in The App Store

The Flower Factory app was successfully launched in Apple App Store within a few weeks of approval by the client. Since we used a great cross-platform development, the project was cost-efficient, and scalable to grow with The Flower Factory's needs.  

For a future phase of the app, our team will add more features and notifications to make it a valuable companion for anyone looking for the perfect gift-giving platform.

Mobile App Development Customized to Your Business

If your business has customers, then you need a mobile app. Today's consumers are extremely tech-savvy and expect high-caliber shopping experiences directly on their phones. That's where the Sunrise Integration team–with our 22+ years of experience–can help.