Creating a consistent digital experience for Fitshaker, the largest fitness community in Slovakia

Being in charge of a product, which is used by tens of thousands of women in different age categories, on different devices and platforms with the idea of long-term growth.At the time when the market is full of online fitness training, trainers or influencers; it is essential to keep moving forward and offer something that users will not find anywhere else. At GoodRequest, we create tailor-made products based on user, client and market standards.

Goal:

The Fitshaker website was created on wordpress, which is a good tool for smaller projects. From a certain point, we were not able to grow and implement user requirements anymore. The solution was a tailor-made website.

Goal:‍

At GoodRequest, we think of the needs of all Fitshaker users, including users of the admin interface. Adding blogs, recipes or exercises on a daily basis is time-consuming. Based on the requirements of the Fitshaker team, we therefore created an Admin environment, which simplified this process and significantly shortened it.

Goal:

After the stabilization of the website and the creation of the Admin, nothing prevented us from continuing the project. Based on the needs of the users, we started to create a TV android app with the client. We used a web application to ensure the consistency of key functionalities across all the platforms. At the same time, we had to think about the native elements of the TV interface.

Challenge:

We had no experience with the design and development of TV applications, development is not easy, there is no standard language, each manufacturer has its own coding language, its own operating system, and we had to choose.

We learn from mistakes:

Unfortunately, at the beginning of the process, we spent more time learning new skills at the expense of more market analysis. As a result, a TV application was developed and it covered only 10% of the market. We learned quickly, and the active cooperation of the entire team of project managers, analysts, designers and developers ensured the successful delivery of the product on time.

Goal:

At GoodRequest, we strive to meet the needs of all users and provide the best user experience. As the number of users grew, so did the number of requests for mobile applications.

Website, TV and mobile application have demonstrated the great scalability of the project. It includes a database of videos, live broadcasts, a blog, an e-shop and an admin interface for each of these platforms. All of these platforms use a common API - an application programming interface created at the beginning of the project. As a result of creating one quality API, each change is reflected on each platform. In this way, we have achieved the consistency of the Fitshaker ecosystem. However, with each small change, we think about what the platform is capable of, and how it will affect the entire product.

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The goal of GoodRequest is to satisfy users, clients and market standards. Before developing, we need to make sure that our solution provides the best user experience. We try to ensure that each new functionality is tested with users before development. User testing is a suitable method to verify hypotheses and decisions. By testing the prototype, we find out how it is used, how users perceive the proposed changes, and what problems they have in use. We will then incorporate the findings and continue development.

At GoodRequest, we use modern workflows and adapt them to the needs of the product. The condition for achieving high product quality is a correctly chosen work procedure.

At the beginning of the cooperation during the development of the new website, we worked with SCRUM. We have long considered SCRUM to be a first-class project management tool. Scrum is an agile project management process where people can solve complex dynamic problems while delivering products with the highest possible value to the user productively and creatively. We worked in 2-week sprints, where we focused primarily on one goal. While working with SCRUM, the pressure in the project environment is much lower, the people in the team know what their role is, and the client knows how the process works, and does not give us new tasks.

Immediately after the release of the new website, the number of people in the team decreased to less than 6, we switched to SCRUMBAN. SCRUMBAN does not have a time limit, it is a kanban style process that offers us much more flexibility. It is an open, smooth process in which all added tasks have their order of priority. Thanks to Scrumban, we are able to respond and implement changes at any stage of the project.

We consider the stabilization of the new website to be the greatest success of our cooperation. The data is collected correctly, thus obtaining valuable data on the use of the website and its functionalities. Pressure on Fitshaker customer support has dropped significantly. When deploying new features or deploying a subpage about the new Fitshaker challenge, most employees don't even notice that something is going on.

Another success is certainly that by going to a tailor-made website, we did not spoil the position of the page in the search, which is decided by SEO (search engine optimization). Wordpress is ideal for setting up SEO, but that can't be said for a custom website where it's more challenging. We did not manage to fall one position lower in the search.

There is no stagnation, we must continue to grow. From the beginning, we make sure that all user data is stored correctly for the future Fitshaker ecosystem. It will provide an individual exercise plan for each user based on their characteristics and needs, such as health or leisure time. With the growth come other peripherals such as smartwatches. We want the user to be able to practice with Fitshaker anywhere on any device.