The client needed to rapidly expand its development capabilities to boost flexibility and accelerate modernization, adoption of innovations, and delivery of new apps. And the company needed a reliable software development partner to help them

At first, the key goals we faced were to help with building mobile apps, while managing high traffic spikes during critical sales events, and ensuring the maintenance of code quality. But now, 40 ZoolaTech teams help the client solve a wide range of tech challenges and build a variety of solutions across various areas of expertise (from mobile to cloud and ML).

ZoolaTech has evolved into a strategic software development partner for our client. Our teams, both at ZoolaTech and in the United States, share equal rights and responsibilities. This collaborative effort ensures proactive leveraging of technical expertise, implementation of standardized processes, and proactive proposal of innovative solutions to optimize costs and mitigate potential risks.

ZoolaTech emphasizes team composition and scaling with a focus on achieving the best cost-value ratio for our clients’ businesses. Our approach is centered on building teams that are not only skilled but also adaptable to evolving project requirements.

Our solution architects and principal engineers play a pivotal role in offering technical solutions aligned with the client’s functional needs and overarching their business goals. Their expertise ensures the development of scalable and sustainable solutions. They are invested in the long-term success of the products they help build, delivering solutions that go beyond meeting immediate needs to contribute to sustained success

With each new tool, technology, and team member added, ZoolaTech is committed to operational excellence and proven cost-efficiency. Our aim is to continually enhance the value we provide to our client through strategic choices focused on long-term results.

ZoolaTech adheres to established team management practices, ensuring that our client is consistently informed, engaged, and aligned with project progress. Experienced Delivery Managers ensure seamless execution and client satisfaction.

Our areas of responsibility:

1. Consistent monitoring of critical business KPIs, dashboards, and alerts.
2. First responders — spot issues and respond to ServiceNow incidents.
3. Monitoring steward: implementing new alerts, dashboards, and standards to improve monitoring capabilities further.
4. P1 and P2 Incident Response.
5. Operational Reporting.
6. Help to drive operational excellence.
7. Admin owners of the PagerDuty tool — alerting system.

With the help of PagerDuty, the Operations Center can work with engineering teams and leaders to organize separate work tracks for each and provide regular status updates.

Our areas of responsibility

1. Maintenance and refactoring of automation infrastructure
2. Working closely with the development teams on feature requirements
3. Improvement of test runs speed and stability
4. Velocity tracking and proactive reporting
5. Creation and maintenance of up-to-date test suites
6. Creation and verification of test plans
7. Responsible for signing off the final version of the product for release

We heavily rely on sprint/team/personal metrics to make only balanced and data-driven decisions when it comes to performance and headcount. These metrics include:

• Automated tests in numbers by various categories
• Automation test coverage (%)
• Sprint and average velocity for quarterly planning together with the dev team
• Bugs/defects found per release statistics with exhaustive filters for retrospective

• Payment systems integrations:

The integration of multiple payment systems, such as PayPal, AfterPay, and ApplePay, allows users to select their preferred payment method, increasing the number of purchases.

• Loyalty program:

Implementation of a “Rewards” module and introduction of a customer loyalty program for our client’s end-users help retain existing customers and attract new ones.

• Dynamic components and layouts:

Development of a dynamic homepage with components and layouts that can change daily without requiring app updates. This influences users to visit the app more frequently as they are constantly greeted with fresh and personalized content.

• Purchase History Module:

A user-centric module was created to offer order tracking, return initiation, and a comprehensive view of past purchases, enhancing the overall customer experience.

• Push Notification Enhancements:

Various push notification features, such as price drop alerts, in-stock notifications, and personalized feeds, were developed to boost user engagement and satisfaction.

• Looks Module:

An AI-powered “Looks” or “Outfits” module was implemented to help users curate coordinated ensembles, personalizing the app and making it more engaging.

• Visual Search:

A visual search feature utilizing machine learning algorithms allows users to search for products using images, improving the user experience and engagement while offering an efficient way to find preferred items.

• iOS Widgets:

The development of iOS widgets enhanced user convenience and engagement, contributing to increased user interaction with the app.

Guest Checkout increased the average revenue rate from purchases by 12% on Android by allowing non-authorized users to purchase goods. It came right on schedule, just in time for one of the busiest traffic events. To accomplish this, the ZoolaTech team developed considerable enhancements for each module with which users interact:

• Product Page: Guests now can add items to their shopping cart.
• Shopping Bag: A user-friendly shopping bag with editing and shipping options for guests.
• Guest User Recommendations: Enhanced product suggestions for guest users.
• Checkout Experience: Streamlined checkout steps for guest users.
• Payment Process: Improved payment flow for guest users.

• ZoolaTech helped to deliver a cost management module, which allows the company to deliver on some of their strategic goals: being able to present unowned inventory to their customers,as well as introduce additional controls for inventory management.
• Our team completed the migration to the v2 version of a critical service. The Zoola team completely owned the design, implementation and roll-out of the complex service over the course of the last 1.5 years. As a result of the migration, the cloud costs were reduced by 4 times and the client received a high-load, scalable, and reliable service working 7 times faster than the previous version.
• The new, microservices-based order management system helped to improve order visibility, logistics, and customer self-service.

• The solution showed exceptional performance during Anniversary events. The system experiences significant load during the Anniversary, so it’s super important for everything to work smoothly. All our teams maintained an impeccable record making sure things ran well and adding extra value for the сlient.
• Redesign of the product details page.
• Integration with the third-party service to try out products against the portrait photo of the customer.

ZoolaTech played a pivotal role in helping our client achieve a two-fold increase in development velocity and time-to-market. We helped to improve scalability, prevent downtime during peak periods, and significantly enhance user experience and engagement time.

The apps we helped to develop achieved remarkable milestones, reaching 10 million downloads on both iOS and Android platforms, with 179k monthly downloads. The Android team, in particular, doubled app revenue in just three years, concurrently increasing user engagement time by over 40%. The result was not just revenue growth but a competitive edge in the market.

For a Fortune 500 retail company, we facilitated the establishment of an Offshore Delivery Center (ODC) comprising 185 people and 40 teams. This ODC not only provided the flexibility to scale the team as needed but also granted access to a diverse talent pool, fostering innovation and swift problem-solving.

Legacy modernization and the resulting improvements in digital shopping experiences and customer satisfaction were accompanied by substantial cost savings in software development and IT operations.

ZoolaTech’s solution architects and principal engineers consistently provide tech solutions aligned with our clients’ functional needs and overarching business goals. This ensures that our technological interventions are not just innovative but directly contribute to the achievement of business objectives.