Maximizing user engagement for Eatrytte

Eatrytte is a health-based app that comes with several features. However, when we first came across it, we had its founding concept and a reference app for the developers. Our team diligently handled its development, although some parts posed challenges like the ones below.

• The app was to have a lot of products/recipes. The users would search from these and, Laravel was making it slow. So we had to rewrite it using MySQL.
• We needed a custom calendar for each user that would change as per their daily calorie intake and activities. After rigorous research, we used PHP integration to achieve this.
• Also, we were to count the daily calories burnt by the users as per their daily physical activities and exercises. The client provided us with the formulae that we efficiently implemented.

After in-depth research and understanding the requirements, we started contemplating the technologies that would do justice to Eatrytte.

We used Swift for its flawless functioning on iOS and Laravel as the coding language. Since it was also offering premium and paid plans, we needed a payment gateway as well. Braintree proved to be an effective solution for this.

Moreover, since it was dynamic, we also needed an easy-to-navigate admin panel for which we had to resort to API integration. We also decided to use WebSocket for integrating social media handles.

Eatrytte would primarily focus on mobile users, so the design had to be clean and clutter-free. We used rapid prototyping and wireframing in search of a design that is both engrossing and supports all the functionalities. These also helped us to brainstorm different ideas for the design.

Eatrytte is a robust application with some interesting functionalities. As part of the implementation process, we built the following functionalities.

Payment System

The app has in-app purchases where the users can buy subscription plans. This would be true for both Android and IOS users. Our developers were successfully able to achieve this on both the android and IOS platforms.

Android:

We provided three payment options viz PayPal, Credit or Debit Card, and Google pay. Along with these, we also used the Braintree payment gateway. Additionally, it also sends a push notification to the registered email and phone number on successful payment.

IOS:

‍The app is available on iOS as well. For the in-app purchase, we used apple’s in-app purchase.

In addition to this, in both versions, the users are also given 30 days free trial. However, this would be available only if they journal for 30 consecutive days and is toggled from the admin panel.

Food Items

Eatytte has an extensive database of food items. The users can search for these to calculate calories in recipes. There also had to be an option to add custom meals for calories calculation.

This list had to be dynamic and would be constantly updated. So we added the functionality that would enable the client to upload new items directly through the excel sheets.

Moreover, on the back-end, we made it easy to manage this food list with some easy options like:

• Food Image
• Food Name
• Brand Name
• UPC Barcode
• Category
• Serving size
• Nutrients

These let the user search for food items and apply filters based on type, brand, and brand name. The brand name depends on the filter brand. Also, if no brand is chosen, all brand names are shown.

Subscription Plans

The application also had subscription plans. These had to be managed by the admin panel. This was made easily accessible via Manage plans module in the admin panels sidebar.