Accelerated Mobile App Development for a Leading Solar Company

LaunchPad Lab partnered with a leading solar company in New England to enhance its services and customer experience through innovative technology.

The Client

Founded by two industry veterans, this leading solar company has been delivering comprehensive residential and commercial solar solutions throughout the New England area. The team is known for its exceptional service, deep local relationships, and commitment to giving back to the community.

The Challenge

Despite becoming the preferred provider of solar roofing solutions in New England, the company lacked a branded technological solution to enhance its service offerings. Their clients were reliant on third-party technology for monitoring solar power production, presenting a significant opportunity for improvement in customer data access.

With a limited number of branded customer touchpoints, the company sought to leverage its growing popularity by developing custom technology solutions, prompting the search for a skilled Salesforce partner to address these needs.

Our Process

Bring a Mobile App to Market in Under 4 Months

  • Blueprinting Workshop

    Our initial sessions aimed to grasp the company’s existing business model and the specific challenges they faced. This deep dive revealed unique aspects of their business and how potential app features could benefit their customers.

  • Roadmap Creation

    We then created a technology roadmap to swiftly bring a minimum viable product (MVP) to the market, aiming to re-engage customers efficiently.

  • Design

    Upon approval, we embarked on the project in February, focusing on crafting a modern and engaging mobile experience. The resulting app offered customized access to solar energy production metrics through an intuitive and visually appealing interface.

  • Develop

    The MVP was submitted to the app store by May 10th, allowing customers to quickly access their energy metrics, manage accounts, and submit referrals upon download.

The Architecture

The project's architecture was designed with a focus on rapid development and an enhanced user experience, utilizing a suite of technologies each chosen for their specific strengths:

  • Heroku

    Heroku is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) that enabled us to focus on creating the application without being bogged down by the complexities of server management or DevOps. Its use of world-class engineering support ensured our app’s performance, availability, and scalability were top-notch.

  • Heroku Connect

    Heroku Connect is a bridge between Heroku and Salesforce CRM, this tool streamlined the synchronization of data, improving the efficiency of our backend development by ensuring a seamless flow of customer data and interaction records.

  • PostgreSQL Database

    Chosen for its reliability, PostgreSQL Database stored essential data, including customer information from Salesforce and transaction records from the app, ensuring secure and scalable data management.

  • Salesforce CRM

    A pivotal element of our tech stack, Salesforce CRM integration was crucial for maintaining a unified view of customer data, enabling personalized customer engagement and service.

  • Ionic Framework

    Ionic allowed us to develop a cross-platform mobile app efficiently, significantly reducing the time to market by enabling code reuse across iOS and Android platforms, ensuring a consistent user experience on any device.

  • Ruby on Rails

    Appreciated for its developer-friendly environment, Ruby on Rails facilitated rapid development and easy maintenance of the app, thanks to its convention over configuration principle that promotes code consistency and scalability.

  • React.js

    React.JS was utilized for its extensive community support and flexibility, allowing us to develop a dynamic and responsive front end quickly, ensuring a seamless and engaging user interface.

  • SolarEdge Integration

    Direct integration with SolarEdge‘s API provided users with real-time access to their solar energy production and usage metrics, offering a tailored and informative user experience.

  • OneSignal

    Selected for its robust capabilities in managing mobile push notifications and in-app messaging, OneSignal enabled us to deliver personalized communications and alerts, significantly enhancing user engagement and retention.

Mobile App Features

Enhanced Communication via Mobile Push Notifications

The leading solar company utilizes Salesforce to craft and manage Push Notifications. These can be automatically enrolled through Salesforce Process Builder or manually set up, enabling targeted communication to customers based on specific criteria.

User Authentication

The app allows customers to sign up using their email, which must be verified through a link to ensure it matches the Salesforce customer record. For added security, users can log in with a password or email verification if needed.

Customized Energy Production Dashboard

The integration with SolarEdge enables a detailed view of solar energy production and consumption within the app. Customers can adjust the timeframe of the displayed data (day, week, month, quarter) for personalized insights.

Access to Account Documents

Documents related to customer accounts are accessible within the app, with the company’s team managing uploads and updates via Box. This ensures all relevant documents are easily available to customers.

Referral Program

The app includes a built-in referral feature, allowing users to easily share referral information using any messaging app on their device or a unique link. This system lets customers track the progress of their referrals directly within the app.

  • “I was REALLY IMPRESSED with the first version of the app. For a first run, I’m wicked happy.”
    —Managing Partner

The Results

Leveraging highly efficient and user-friendly technologies, we successfully launched the mobile app within 4 months. The project’s next phase will focus on in-app notifications and messaging to further enhance the onboarding experience and customer engagement. The app has shown promising growth in user adoption, with plans to continue evolving the user experience to meet the needs of the solar company and its clients.

  • 85%+

    Average User Retention

    High engagement with over 85% of users actively using the app after 3 months.

  • 2 Min

    Average Session Duration

    Users actively engage with their solar production data daily.

  • 2.5x

    Increase in Referrals

    A significant boost in referrals following the release of a new app version after the initial launch.

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