Case study: How we built “Text a Letter” – the app for sending letters

– Johny, be a good boy, send a letter for grandma.
– Please don’t say I’m gonna have to be waiting in line at the post office.
– Well, you don’t need to. Just download “Text a letter”.

Preface

Have you ever received a letter? Not an email or a message but a real physical letter! In an envelope! Well, if you have you probably know how it feels. You can’t wait to find out what’s inside! When you finally get the precious letter out of the envelope and read it, you probably imagine the person, who wrote the letter uttering those words. Doesn’t work with emails, does it?
Thanks to “Text a letter” sending physical letters from phones became a reality. An awesome reality! Let us introduce how we built it.

Requirements to the app

First things first. Well defined and clear requirements is the basis of every successful project. Our handwritten letters app development is not an exception. Here’s the list of requirements we formed cooperating with the client:

1. Make great UX. The process of creating a letter should be straightforward and provide users with the best experience.
2. Develop an outstanding user interface.
3. Make it possible to pay for the ordered letters right from the app.
4. Create a web-panel for the client to review and process ordered letters.

What we did

Elaborate Design

In order to meet all the requirements described in the previous paragraph, we put a lot of thought into the app UI design. For more details on the development process check out here.

Below you can see one of the wireframes we created to get perfect UI.

Amazing animations

We are sure that user experience is one of the most important things in app development. No doubt animations are a really good way to make an app more lively and interactive. In order to provide a pixel-perfect UI our developers created custom animations.

Below you can see key animations from our app.

1. Choose letter format

First thing you see is the screen that allows you to choose a letter format. We provided users with two options. They can send either a personal or an open letter.

For that animation we used a ScrollView with M34 transformations.

2. Creating

We are not the kind of guys who just use standard components. Great user experience and pixel-perfect UI are our main focus. That’s exactly why we created custom animations for writing a letter.

3. Checkout

We like calling ourselves perfectionists. Especially when it comes to user experience. For that reason we didn’t just go with the standard Stripe interface. Instead we developed our own checkout screen.

Read also:

• How to develop a marketplace application
• How we develop text field animations for mobile apps

Other features

Handling payment with Stripe easier than ever

App payments have never been easier! To deliver the best experience to users we’ve integrated Stripe SDK to our iOS app. Thanks to that checkout process in “Text a letter” is straightforward and secure.

Reliable BackEnd

Handling big flows of data can be challenging for the BackEnd. We got it all figured out! Even when we get tons of users the app will work smoothly delivering the best experience.

We built our BackEnd using Node.JS and PostgreSQL. This is the best match for getting fast and reliable connection with the server.

Convenient and User-friendly Web-panel

We all know how important it is to have control. People love control. That’s exactly why we put a lot of thought into our web-panel. Our goal here was to make reviewing and processing of ordered letters as easy as possible. In order to achieve it we developed a web-panel with an outstanding UI using BootStrap.

100% customized letters

The whole idea of building an app for sending postal letters from smartphones is bonding with your loved ones. Of course, we all want to make our letters special and personal! Say, make the letter handwritten or even draw an awesome picture on the envelope!

Using “Text a letter” you will be able to customize pretty much everything! You can get your letters handwritten or printed (and even choose a font you like). We got different kinds of papers, envelopes and even custom seals! You can get what you want and it will cost you much less time and trouble then if you would be running around, picking the right stuff. Besides the list of templates options is constantly growing.

On top of all that, you can add a photo or an image that will be hand drawn by actual professional artists on your envelope or paper! That will turn your letter into a masterpiece!

“Text a Letter” mind map

It’s no accident that we listed user experience as the first requirement for the app. We did our best to make navigating through our app easy as pie. The thing is we don’t want the user to get lost in tons of useless screens and panels. That’s exactly why we designed the UI the way we did.

Below you can see the so-called “mind map” of “Text a letter”. It depicts all different steps user can take to get where they want. After finishing this map, it allowed us to develop app for sending letters.

Conclusion

At first developing app for sending letters seemed as a tough task. However, we all put a lot of effort to deliver exactly what the client wanted. Now thanks to “Text a letter” people can share this amazing experience of receiving a letter from a loved one with the most precious: friends, parents, grandparents. You don’t have to wait in lines at the post office anymore! All you need is an iPhone or iPad.

Now you can put more time and effort into the actual celebration of the holidays!

Do you have any questions about building an app for your business? Just need help in creating an application?

Write us in comments below or challenge us, we’ll be happy to help you!

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