PROBLEM

When a customer visited an Adidas store or partner store searching for a product that wasn’t in stock, sales staff would use an iPad app to check the inventory across all stores. The hypothesis was that this approach would boost conversion rates and customer satisfaction by finding the desired product, rather than attempting to sell alternative, unsolicited items.

To kick off the project, the development team and I conducted a sprint planning session. Our priorities were to define the app's functionality and build an administrator area to manage its content. We also needed to identify and address critical bottlenecks, including those impacting the client experience.

Key Challenges and Solutions

Here are some interesting challenges we had to solve:

1. Limited Connectivity in Stores
   ‍Many stores lacked mobile connections, relying instead on unreliable Wi-Fi. This posed challenges for the app's performance, particularly during its initial load, which required downloading 4 GB of data.
   
   Solution: To mitigate this, all iPads were pre-configured at the office, with the app pre-installed to save managers significant time and prevent engagement drop-offs. The app was further optimized to sync with the database every morning, downloading only incremental changes instead of the full dataset.
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2. Complex Product Colors
   Products often came in over 100 different colors, many with unique and potentially confusing names (e.g., "Night Marine" and "Tech Ink" were both shades of blue).
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   Solution: A FROM-TO table was introduced, grouping similar shades under simplified categories that were easier for users to understand.
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3. Incentivizing Sales Referrals
   When sales staff referred customers to another store for an item, both the referring and fulfilling salespeople needed to be rewarded when the sale was completed.
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   Solution: We developed a feature to generate a digital voucher when the first salesperson entered the customer’s name and mobile number. This triggered push and in-app notifications for the salesperson at the other store, providing detailed product information (name, code, photo, color, size) and customer details. Bonuses were automatically granted upon sale validation.