● Mobile app for Android and iOS platforms

● Used to book exercise classes and racquet courts

● Required high quality of visual finesse

● High peak time demand when booking opens for classes

● PhoneGap, HTML5, CSS3, KnockoutJS, Dropwizard

At A Glance

Softwire were commissioned by David Lloyd to create a bespoke mobile app to allow their members to book exercise classes and tennis courts.

The app had to be compatible with both Android and iOS platforms and David Lloyd wanted to be able to roll out other platforms in the future without incurring any great additional cost.

David Lloyd wanted to launch the app before their busy September season to attract new customers, but they also understood that their specification was too fully-featured to be delivered by this deadline. A crucial challenge for Softwire was to develop a minimum viable product that we were sure we could complete in time, whilst also creating an app that David Lloyd could be proud of.

Quality was crucial for this app. Research from current members at the clubs captured a desire that it “felt like an app” rather than just a mobile web experience. So the team at Softwire also needed to deliver a product that was fun to use, had smooth transitions, and capable of supporting a high level of load.

The Challenge

We built the award winning, cross-platform mobile app for David Lloyd’s members to book courts and classes on the go.

The Outcome

The SolutionSoftwire adapted quickly to the client’s business requirements through using PhoneGap, which allows mobile apps to be built cost effectively across platforms, and breaking the project down allowing a phased approach.

Softwire suggested PhoneGap as a platform that could enable a visually impressive app and cut out the timeconsuming demand of writing separate native applications for Android and iOS phones. PhoneGap combines familiar responsive web technologies with access to native phone features, so that a single application can rapidly be built once to run on multiple platforms. It does this by building an app which is a web-view onto a website hosted within the app.

Although the use of PhoneGap was effective in the rapid development of the application, the iOS app still hadto meet specific requirements in order to be listed on Apple’s App Store. One of the requirements wasthat the product “felt like an app, not like a website.” We addressed these concerns by using a single-page architecture, which meant that all the code is bundled into the initial download - that way, all our pages load instantly, without having to wait for any code to be downloaded once in use and also provides a good user experience even when offline.

It was imperative our team delivered an MVP to the client on time. In order to achieve this Softwire split the requirements into many small components in order to make the work as parallelisable as possible for the larger team. It was important to David Lloyd that extending the MVP with additional features would be easy to do in the future, Softwire ensured this would be possible through architecting the product in a flexible, modular way and including a comprehensive regression test suite.

Softwire delivered the new mobile app on time and on budget demonstrating our ability to fully understand the technical requirements and how to deliver them. The team at David Lloyd are universally happy with the quality of the app we delivered and the app has received positive reviews on Google Play and the App Store.

Since the launch of the mobile app David Lloyd has seen the desired shift in their business that they wanted to achieve. The workload of reception staff has decreased due to class bookings being made through the app meaning staff are free to spend more time providing excellent customer service.

Stats:• 67,000 downloads on iTunes / 7,500 downloads on Google Play over

3 months• 22,000 class bookings per day / 40% of all bookings made through app• Gold Winner at the “UK [app] design awards” in the Leisure category

“Well done to all involved. These are v. encouraging results and reviews.”

Glenn Earlam, CEO “I can honestly say, no other project team would have been able to do such a fantastic job.”

Amy Kerr, Project Manager

Testimonials