London-based scaleup, Butternut Box has been putting the food back into dog food since 2016.
Their business model has been a mastiff success because they believe dogs deserve better. Butternut Box makes freshly prepared dog food, cooked like you would at home and delivered in perfect portions to dog owners around the U.K, via a monthly subscription. With a rating of 4.9/5 on TrustPilot from over 10,000 customers, Butternut Box has provided a fresh new take on dog food.
We rapidly designed and built a Stripe Terminal-enabled, sales-ready iPad app, enabling instant customer contactless subscriptions.
The app provided the company’s sales reps with a unique and engaging ecommerce experience to convert dog owners into customers. The fun, friendly user interface encouraged a conversational tone and the Stripe Terminal made taking payments effortless.
To feed the nation’s canines better-quality food, you need to speak directly to dog owners. The Butternut Box Brand Ambassadors convert dog owners into loyal subscribers in streets, parks and events (like Crufts!) around the UK.
Originally a web app, the previous solution wasn't able to accept contactless payments and a significant number of sales were getting lost due to two factor payment failures. The conversion rates required a ramp up. Butternut Box needed a faster, more engaging way to interact with (and convert) potential customers.
In a discovery session we worked with the Butternut Box stakeholders to understand the existing solution. We mapped the customer journey, pain points and opportunities, and created a detailed user flow of the new solution.
With the iPad identified as the tool of choice, we created a road map and associated timelines. The aim: to create a native iOS iPad app that incorporated Stripe Terminal for seamless ecommerce functionality.
Using Stripe Terminal meant Brand Ambassadors could collect payments faster when in the field. Moreover, it provided a familiar payment method for customers post-Covid, and improved sales handling and stability.
The existing brand language of Butternut Box was full of fun, friendly and approachable design elements.
For the app’s user interface design we adopted patterns and components from their Design System. We contributed new, native iOS patterns and animations to the Design system. Throughout the design process we engaged the Brand Ambassadors to learn from their experiences. The result: a new-and-improved, optimised and fun user experience.
Our developers used an agile approach, starting at the same time as design to ensure progress at pace. Using a Storybook component library for a component-first approach, the app came to life in React Native. We used Expo Application Services (EAS) for automating new QA and client builds - perfect for sharing work-in-progress with all stakeholders throughout the project.
"We found ASquared fantastic to work with. They threw themselves in as true partners on our project, deeply understanding what the goal of the project was, and helping contribute solutions to issues."
Working as a unified ASquared & Butternut Box team was a great example of inter-teamwork. We incorporated Butternut’s developers into our processes and workflows for mutual benefit. As a result they had greater exposure to the project to aid future development, and helped reach an aggressive deadline.
The component-first approach allowed us to design and develop in a modular way. This will make feature additions and localisation in future phases of work easy and straightforward.
The app is currently active in the field, with a private leaderboard for easy tracking of sales numbers between Ambassadors.
If you're a dog lover and get approached by a Butternut Box Ambassador, good luck! It's paws-ible you'll walk away with a subscription to healthy dog food!
