Mobile Apps Revamp
Company: Getmyboat (biggest marketplace for boat rentals with 150K listings in 184 countries)
Role & team: I joined GetMyBoat in 2018 as a Product Designer and acting Product Manager for the mobile apps. My main objective was to improve the user experience and reviews of the apps.
Timeline: 2018 - 2020, 2 years
Result: The redesigns of the app led to the App store rating going from 3.6 → 4.9 in 2 years.
2018 - Finding Priorities
Led the mobile app research to discover priorities.
Upon joining, I noticed the apps had usability and design issues, but more concerning was the lack of strategy and focus. The mobile team is swamped with feature requests. They attempted to replicate all web functions without clear priorities, resulting in constant delays due to their smaller size than the web team, which frustrated them.
Looking at the apps usage data and user feedback, I discovered that:
80% of all owner replies came from the apps
Owners relied heavily on the apps messaging, booking, and notifications -> we should invest in messages.
From previously conducted research, I found out that:
The booking rate was directly dependent on the speed of the owner's replies in sending offers and messages to the renters.
The understanding that the mobile apps were primary platforms for owners and their importance to the Getmyboat business let our team to understand the key area of focus and guided our priorities during the app revamp.
Overcoming Resource Constraints in Mobile Development
Identified the mobile team needs, covered the most urgent, and advocated for more resources.
In 2018 Getmyboat was a bootstraped startup. The development team was very small. And since the majority of bookings came from the web platform the bulk of resources were directed there, leaving the mobile team with practically no support from design & QA teams.
To overcome this limitation initially I worked both as designer, PM and partially as QA specialist. I made sure we covered as much as possible the needs of the mobile team.
I took all the opportunities to constantly communicate to the executive team the crucial role of the apps. Over time it led to more resources allocated to the mobile team.
Scoping Out the Problem and Finding Strategic Approach to Improvements/ Scope-Driven Strategy
Defined the scope of the project and collaborated with the team to find the correct approach to tackling it.
After forming a better understanding of priorities and limitations, I proceeded with the research:
Feedback analysis (Apps Store and Google Play reviews, internally collected reviews, reaching out to users who submitted reviews to get a better understanding of the context)
Apps regression testing.
Competitor analysis.
Heuristic evaluation of the main flows.
The app's speed and responsiveness were below expectations for this type of app. The main functions were very hard to find (E.g., the chat was hidden four clicks away from the main screen). All parts of the apps required urgent attention in terms of UI improvements.
Bugs and usability issues accounted for the majority of excessively bad reviews Apps Store reviews. And while running regression tests on the apps I kept on logging new and new bugs.
Looking at the scope I realized that even with better priorities we won’t be able to tackle and the urgent issues at once.
We had several discussions and a brainstorming session with the team and came up with the strategy:
Concentrate on stability over excessive features.
Fixing major bugs in frequently used features is a first priority.
Go with an opportunistic approach, improving the UI and usability of sections as we add new functions to them.
Focus on owner features.
Improve productivity and responsiveness for the critical and frequently used areas.
Rethinking Apps Navigation
Redesigned apps' navigation.
As part of this strategy, I looked at how we could rebuild the app’s navigation. App navigation presented one of the biggest usability issues. Hamburger menus are generally easy to miss. In the case of GetMyBoat, the hamburger menu made crucial content both hard to discover and access. One of the most frequently used features, chat, was hidden five clicks away from the main screen.
Old Navigation
Easy to miss
Hard to access
New Navigation
Good visibility of all important sections
Easy to access
The main two goals of the navigation redesign were to make content easy to find and easy to access by reducing the number of clicks required to reach important functions.
Together with navigation, we took the opportunity to update our landing screen to improve the way we talk about Getmyboat and its offerings.
Serving Core User Needs by Introducing Real-Time Messaging
Communicated the importance of the real-time messaging feature to the team, facilitated finding the solution.
As we know from analytics, messaging and notifications are the core, most frequently used features of mobile apps. User feedback revealed issues with needing to refresh the screen to see new messages. This experience was a big obstacle to effective communication, falling short of user expectations. However, the back-end team when asked estimated this feature as super hard to implement.
After presenting these findings, the apps team brainstormed a temporary solution: connecting chat updates to push notifications. With some limitations, this approach functions almost like real-time messaging, effectively addressing most user concerns.
This feature proved crucial for our mobile team, illustrating that extensive resources aren't the sole requirement. Instead, a profound understanding of user needs, unwavering focus, and resourcefulness are uppermost.
Empowering Owners with Calendar Introduction
Designed a new app section - Calendar.
In addition to improving existing features, the team successfully added new ones, most notably the calendar section.
Initially, maintaining real-time calendar updates was difficult, especially during the busy summer season, leading to either outdated information or user interruptions. After brainstorming with the mobile team, we devised a solution that addressed these issues.
Enabling owners to track and manage their availability directly through the mobile apps made a significant impact on their business operations, earning us highly positive feedback from owners.
"The Best App in the Business" – Michael, Getmyboat Owner
During two years of revamping the app, the mobile team:
• Tested for bugs, accessibility, and usability issues and updated designs of all screens and transitions between the screens (40 screens, 35 inbox thread states)
• Found and fixed around 700 technical and usability issues.
• Overhauled navigation and search experience.
• Added new features: Calendar section, custom offer expiry, and new inbox navigation.
• Boosted the loading times.
• Increased app responsiveness. Added real-time messaging. Improved error handling and added offline mode.
• Updated the content for both the website and the apps to make them more accessible for users new to the boating industry.
• Added infrastructure to diagnose technical issues.
As the team continued with improvements work, we started seeing the first results reflected in internally collected user feedback.
The team saw significant improvements in app ratings, with the Android app rising from 3.5 in 2019 to 4.8 in 2020 and the iOS app from 3.6 to 4.9. In 2021, the App Store named us 'Best App of the Day.'
By 2021, 70% of owner interactions occurred via mobile apps, up from 45% in 2018. This higher adoption rate improved response times and boosted booking conversion rates.
Fully developed mobile apps were one of the key factors contributing to Getmyboat's market leadership, enabling owners to track bookings and communicate with renters seamlessly, enhancing their business operations.
Average rating value on App Store
5.0
4.5
4%
4.0
3.5
Jul 2018
Jan 2019
Jun 2019
Jan 2020
Jul 2020
Jan 2021
Copyright © 2025
Anastasia Zolotova.
Contact:
zoloto.anastasia[at]gmail.com