Remote Web and Mobile Development for the Global Fitness Leader, MyFitnessPal
Service
Cloud & DevOps, Product Development
Client
MyFitnessPal
Industry
Healthcare & Life sciences
Platform
iOS
Android
Web
MyFitnessPal is a popular health and fitness app that allows users to track their exercise, nutrition, and overall wellness.
As of 2023, the app had over 200 million registered users worldwide, making it one of the most widely used fitness apps on the market today.
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What MyFitnessPal Said
We really appreciated the ability to work with a partner that helped us to get up the speed very quickly and allowed us to continue to grow our team for the long term. For me, a lot of it had to do with the attention to detail that they all provided from the beginning of the relationship, helping us to source the right candidates for the right roles... As our business needs changed, they were all very willing to change along with us very quickly. It seemed very clear that it was less about billable hours and more about outcomes and results.
Vice President of Product Engineering at MyFitnessPal
$12
million
of in-app revenues as of March 2023
4.6
million
downloads in the United States alone in 2022
1.81
billion
user sessions a year (the largest amount compared to other health and fitness apps in 2022).
Our Client’s Goals
- Develop revenue-related features
- Grow media revenue through yield optimization and product enhancements
- Enhance the tracking and logging experience within the MFP app
- Improve the platform’s code health and encourage deeper user engagement
- Integrate the settings of user permission for data processing to make the app GDPR and CCPA compliant
- Deliver DevOps activities: automate the process of deployment with Kubernetes & Flux
Duration
February 2019 - Present
Effort
14 team members
Technologies and Tools
Swift
SQLite
Java
Kotlin
ReactJS
Obj-C
EmberJS
Ruby
Omnigon
Storybook
Business Needs of MyFitnessPal:
- Grow subscriptions revenue
- Optimize the internal development pipeline
- Research and standardize the ads selection and display processes
- Improve the user experience on searching food and nutrition analysis
- Attract new customers during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Optimize server costs and stabilize horizontal scaling of system and services
Personnel
- 5 iOS Developers
- 5 Android Developers
- 2 Web Developers
- 2 DevOps Engineers
Solutions
- Working with legacy code, migration to Swift and switching to MVVM
Despite the existing app being initially created with Objective-C, the requirement was to use Swift when implementing new features. Resolving incompatibilities and refactoring legacy code sections, our developers have done a tremendous job to keep on schedule. The keys to succeeding with migration were the ability to handle ever-shifting objectives and high responsiveness from both sides. - Slow interaction between graphic designers and developers
By integrating with Storybook, we solved the issue of re-developing frequently used items for the web GUI. Later on, MyFitnessPal Storybook expanded and became relevant for other products, which were of the same brand. - Implement a new tool to simplify and speed up the old way of modifying public ads files
The MFP team was unsatisfied with the long and expensive procedure, which required the input of both managers and developers. Sometimes what should be a simple and quick update took R several days to be applied. We introduced an admin panel for the ad specialists who don’t work with code. This allows the specialists to instantly modify public ad files without having to involve the developers. - Remote teams and time-zone difference
We used the “Game Plan” concept, which included an in-depth discussion and evaluation of the current and planned features before embarking on the implementation stage. It allowed us to achieve mutual understanding with the MFP team and actively resolve problems in the early development stage. Our “Context- message-options” request composition approach made it much easier to avoid the frustrating “ping-pong” communication model and reduced time delays.
Results
Within a year the MyFitnessPal brand became an undeniable force in a fierce fitness app battleground. Since February 2019 our team’s engagement in their projects has grown twice. We successfully implemented onboarding screens, native upsell screens, price tests and many other features, which led to a rapid and steady increase in trial subscriptions and as a result - premium users. We achieved ad efficiency by implementing a 30-sec refresh rate for each impression, which boosted their revenue by several times.
The cooperation between our teams in software development and DevOps services has been a resounding success. Together, we have created an enhanced user experience, streamlined deployment processes, and fostered a culture of innovation. We look forward to continuing this partnership and exploring new frontiers in the realm of fitness technology.
Vice President of Account Management at Solvd
