Bestyn – All-in-one Solution App for Local Businesses

01 The Challenge

The story of the current project dates back to the COVID lockdown back in 2020. Local interactions became a great challenge. The project initially started as a mobile application that aimed to connect neighbours, enabling them to keep in touch with the community, build up a friendly and safe local environment, and stay updated with all the news and events. The initial version allowed users to share videos, chat, use maps to find neighbours and businesses and subscribe to other users.

After clarifying all the individual business needs and project objectives with the Client, we have launched the process. The team was inspired to do their best in solutions, project planning, and implementing new features.

Big things take time and effort to be done. Our team faced several challenges but managed to successfully overcome them, demonstrating even better results than were expected from us at the outset.

02 The Solution

Scope management in the fast-changing environment

Keeping up with the trends and market needs is associated with constant changes and adaptations in the logic of the existing features and project architecture. The team has reached the right balance of the scope, budget, and timelines thanks to appropriate project planning.

Introduction of complex features

We understand how much delivery speed could mean for a business, so the complex feature set was broken down into smaller increments, implemented, and released separately.

Work with a live project

The project started as MVP and has already been released to production after 5 months of active development. The team set up the staging environment and a production copy, as well as verified the scope of work there before every release to catch and resolve critical issues.

Designers’ competition

To bring a fresh view and new ideas for UI/UX and introduce recent trends to the project, we have organised a competition among our designers to create the best possible screen design and marketing materials.

Cooperation with the third-party teams

Complex communication was another challenge, but different time zones and risk factors are never barriers to success. Exact coordination, regular synchronisation meetings, and keeping all stakeholders up-to-date helped to avoid time and money losses.

Design

Through the competition, we chose the best designer from the whole team, with the most interesting vision and out-of-the-box ideas, to create a unique interface that attracts the end user.

Modern colour scheme

We used black as the main colour in the application. At the same time, the backgrounds were made with light gradients – in line with the current trends.

Light design and transparency

The whole design is minimalistic and light. The navigation panel hides when users start scrolling the post feed. Moreover, the navigation elements could be hidden so nothing could distract or divert attention from the content.

Feature-oriented design

Our goal was to find the best way to represent the information so the users could distinguish the type of information in the blink of an eye. The most important info is visible right away.

03 The Result

Map with the profile pointers

We have started implementing new unique features to Bestyn, so now it’s possible to:

• See the accounts within a certain mile radius of your location
• Review the detailed users’ public page by tapping on the profile pointer
• Pay to get access to a wider radius and gain more audience

Post feed

The post feed is one of the key instruments in Bestyn. Any local business can publish posts of the ‘Offer’ type, which will become visible to the users in the local community. The users who “follow” the business profile can respond to those posts if interested.

Besides this type of post, Bestyn users can also:

• Share the news with the people around them.
• Inform the community about crimes, events etc.
• Share media files with neighbours. Create posts with attached videos, pictures, photos, and up to 10 audio files – recorded with the integrated recorder or uploaded from the phone’s memory.

Private chats

If you’d like to talk over the deal or event or share any other information privately, you do not need to use any separate messenger as a built-in one is available in Bestyn!

Users can quickly get in contact from almost all the application screens, making your audience even closer to you.

Stories list with advanced story-editor

Stories list with short videos, always catching the audience’s attention by telling the world about your product, the best deals, and discounts you offer. It is visible to all app users from local communities.

The application has an integrated video editor that allows you to get your marketing video prepared with no additional applications. Here are some of the functionalities in the editor allowing the user to:

• set the duration of the video
• select images and/or videos, glue them into one video
• record the video with your camera
• trim the whole story or each recorded part separately
• add a text label and customise it
• apply popular audio from the app’s library
• select the cover image of your story and much more

User’s profile

By signing up for the application, you automatically create a Basic profile. However, if you want to represent your businesses, you can add up to 5 Business profiles and customise them separately.

Add the information about your business, configure the profile, upload the content showcasing your products and services, and get ready to gain more potential customers with Bestyn!

A simple and fast switch between all the profiles lets you keep tabs on everything without extra effort.