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Move Shanghai

A cross-platform fitness app aggregating sports venues in Shanghai city. Fitness app with more than 150 activities.

Technologies

Ruby on Rails, React, Swift

Industry

Health & Fitness

Engagement Model

Dedicated Team

Platform

IOS, Android

Team

5 members

Timeline

4 years

About the project

The idea of the “Move Shanghai” app was to create a platform to manage the active lifestyle in Shanghai city of China by connecting the most famous and best sports venues. It was inspired by the other project, called “Move”, which was based in the UK and had nothing to do with the new app.

Among other solutions, the project renders the following service:

Transferring most of the existing logic and the database structures written in Perl from the original application;
Integration of the local notification system;
Integration of the communication channel nodes of the "WeChat" messenger for user communication;
Full integration and adaptation of the original idea of "Move" to the local market in Shanghai.

Challenges to overcome

The analysis of the application development process allowed us to identify a few compelling challenges that we highlighted below:

Unification with the API system of applications for both iOS and Android OS

The challenge to bypass “The Great Firewall” of the China network because it would block all potential clients and services by default

Implementation of local Chinese systems for working with notifications and accepting payments

Ensuring the integration of third-party services with a difficult system, such as "Paymentwall and "MindBodyOnline"

Our work

The “Move Shanghai” platform already existed and therefore, we decided to utilize only some core structures and features. It has allowed us to reduce the development time and budget cost.

We adjusted the Twilio notification system to a local adaptation, which is called YunPian. The application can send an SMS for any “sign-in” or “sign-up” confirmations to Chinese phone numbers through its service. At the same time, the phones numbers that are registered abroad will be notified with Twilio.

As most global social services are not supported in China, our team has specifically integrated “WeChat” communication channel nodes. The chat solution was improved with elegant functionality to allow users to communicate with each other.

The payment system was completely replaced with the “Paymentwall”. It was a challenging task to set it right within the app and the final integration fully meets an original purpose.

What made the business succeed

The startup project, which began with just a simple idea, had successfully bloomed into a fully-fledged product in Eastern Asia. As of now, it is available in more than 150 countries.

96% of its active users belong to iPhone fans. Since the first release, there’ve been more than 11,000 downloads of the app.

The application is growing in popularity, gaining millions of views every year. With over 200+ different variations, it allows users to use the most trending, beautiful, and functional sports outlets.

Now “Move Shanghai” is a personal fitness management tool and an online platform solution for any daily physical activity.