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Brompton Bike Hire

Making the iconic Brompton bikes available for both short and long term hire.

A bespoke app with an enhanced mobile experience and built in fraud prevention, guiding customers through the entire process from registering to hiring a bike.

The Challenge

We’ve worked closely with iconic British folding bicycle manufacturer Brompton Bicycles for over five years. This has involved undertaking a number of projects including firmware programming support, a website for their accessible cycle hire scheme and an iOS/Android app. 

With the mobile app being a key part of the hiring process for many users, Brompton approached us looking to enhance the mobile experience. Where the current app had limited functionality and was aimed at existing users, they wanted to move this forward with a new app that would guide the user through the entire process from registering to hiring a bike.

A key focal point of this project was to overhaul the registration process to prevent fraud and make sure only legitimate users could hire a bike.

Brompton Bikes
Brompton App

What we did

The app was designed and developed to revolutionise the current registration and hiring experience.

Delivery of these features was facilitated by cutting edge technologies, including libraries such as React and Redux, which can also be seen within Magento PWA Studio.

Boasting a number of enterprise features, these included:

  • Automated verification process with a focus on rapid onboarding and fraud prevention
  • A globalised solution allowing international verification
  • Integration with dock firmware to facilitate live reservations
  • A tailored experience for users that utilises location services
  • Bespoke tariff based payment experience
  • Multi platform support utilising React Native with platform specific native integrations
  • Enterprise level integrations including Experian, Sage Pay and Facebook.

Design

We undertook a detailed design process, working with Brompton’s internal marketing guidelines to create a slick new UI, which focussed on the user journey. Utilising Sketch, Zeplin and Invision we produced over 50 screens allowing us to rapidly provide Brompton with a fully interactive prototype of the journey. This approach allowed us to quickly measure, learn and iterate at an early stage without any development being undertaken. 

Using interactive prototypes allowed Brompton to feedback on the exact journey they would experience once the app was developed. This meant we could tailor the experience to their customers’ exact requirements and make sure every detail was captured during the design process. This removed any uncertainty and made sure any changes were captured early in the process. 

Development

The development was undertaken using React Native to produce apps for both iOS and Android from a single codebase while reducing the development overhead and timelines of developing individual native apps for each platform. 
As Brompton already had an existing user base and API from the previous mobile app and website development we were able to utilise these. This meant returning customers could simply update their existing app and use the new features straight away. 

Registration/Verification

As fake identification was flagged as an issue, fraud prevention is a key metric of success for the new mobile app, and was the main focus for the registration process. This included creating a stepped process, integrating automated checks such as verifying that the phone number and email address supplied belongs to the user registering.

A solution was developed, which allowed the user to capture a selfie and photograph of their ID during the verification process. Working with Brompton and integrating services from Experian we were able to capture this complex journey in a number of simple steps. This allowed new users to register and verify their identity in just a couple of minutes. 

Throughout the process a number of forms were required to facilitate this process and capture the users details. To keep the user journey as simple as possible we integrated inline validation. 

This validation was integrated to prompt the user on the specific field where any data had not been provided correctly, giving details of the required input and assisting the user with the process.

Payment

To make hiring quick and simple we set up payment during the registration process. This was developed on a tariff based system, utilising Sage Pay and integrating a bespoke promotional model. 

Once set up, this allows users to simply hire a bike while on the move without requiring a time intensive payment process for each individual hire.  

Hiring

To give the users as much access as possible, multiple levels of access were created. Once the initial registration is complete, Brompton’s users are able to browse an extensive network of docks available and access limited features of the app. 

Users are prompted to verify, which is required, to gain full access to the app’s features including the hiring process and help & information section, which includes journey aids such as demos of folding bikes. The hire process allows the user to undertake the whole process of reserving, collecting and returning a bike to any of the docks on the network. Again, this process was optimised to make it as intuitive as possible, the finished process allows the user to complete a reservation within a few clicks, in just a matter of seconds. 

We utilised native device features, such as location services, to display the user's distance from a dock, making sure they can quickly find the dock that matches their journey. For each dock we included a detailed dock view page with integrated Google map, allowing the user to quickly see the dock’s location. 

Marketing

To tie in with a marketing drive, we integrated Facebook Pixel, creating bespoke events to capture specific points in the user journey.

Keep an eye on the Brompton app over the coming weeks, as more features are set to be released shortly. This includes enhancements throughout, including the user journey and reservation process.

Read about the latest updates we've made to the Brompton Bike Hire App in 2020

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