The 5 Ways React Native is Helping Us Build Apps for Global Brands

At Appbrew, our primary challenge was to choose a framework that could help us build thousands of mobile apps for brands across the world.

Each brand has its own unique identity. It uses different e-commerce features (powered by 3rd party integrations) to get high conversion rates.

So, while deciding on the framework, we came up with these five non-negotiable to help us build an uncompromising user shopping experience:-

1) Flexibility:

Our platform needs to reflect the brand’s true identity. It should be able to scale with evolving content and commerce requirements of the e-commerce brands. Now with RN, our apps adapt to the brands’ look & feel on both iOS and Android with a single configuration change.

2) Development time:

One of our key product metrics is the time taken to build native apps for a new brand. Hence code re-usability and time to ship (and maintain) are critical aspects. Our integration time is also quicker because of a single codebase for Android and iOS.

3) Over the Air updates:

Pushing new features or bug fixes via the App Store or Play Store is problematic. It relies on users to update the app regularly to experience the latest version. We removed this dependency by enabling over-the-air updates. We’re able to push updates over the air using Microsoft CodePush.

4) Easy access to world-class talent:

One cannot build a product that customers love without a talented team. A team with the ideal combination of skill, experience, and drive. With an evolved framework like React Native, there is no shortage of talented software engineers.

5) Developer productivity:

By using React Native, we’re able to have a Javascript-based full stack which has taken our developer productivity to the next level. All members of our engineering team can work on any part of the end-to-end setup whether that’s the mobile app (React Native) or the platform (React) to build and customize that app or the backend services which are powering both the app as well as the platform.

There have been a few challenges as well. For example, the time required to optimize the app size or the animation performance is high. But these seem like a fair tradeoff in comparison to the value we’re getting. Overall we feel confident in our choice of React Native to help us build a multitude of apps.