Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?
While the app is already on the App Store, we haven’t started marketing it yet. We currently have close to 100 beta users generated from our network. Their feedback is very good, but we need to deepen the app’s functionality in at least one of a few different aspects, namely the whole functionality of being able to resell items.
Users are interested in being able to resell not only on eBay but also on other apps like Letgo and Close5. That capability needs to be worked on quite a bit more in order for us to enable multichannel reselling. It’s on us to keep working on it, but unfortunately, we’re not going to do that before raising seed money. At this time, we’re negotiating funding with a couple of investors and it will be another 3–4 months before we’re able to push a serious marketing campaign for the app. Adoption will not start until then.
The UX and UI are very nice. Live Typing was a strong partner in figuring this out, but we took the leading role, using another designer. Live Typing was in charge of coding, but whenever we hit a roadblock, they had an idea of how to resolve it. They were a very strong partner, and the app is working. It’s actually a very complicated onboarding process, given that users need to link all the email addresses on which they’re receiving order confirmation emails. This is not an easy thing to do in terms of passing information from the frontend to the backend for authentication and offering a pause for the user in order to pass certain tokens.
It’s a sophisticated experience which they enabled us to develop. When people start onboarding on the app, the actual success rate — from beginning to end — is 80% or more, which is amazing. Overall, the platform is working smoothly.
We handled QA on our side using a junior product manager and myself. We had little nagging to do when it came to solving small design problems or bugs, but it was definitely strong work.
How did Live Typing perform from a project management standpoint?
They were by far the better managers of the project than us. We handled much of the conceptualization around what we wanted to create; Live Typing pushed us to clarify our thinking and be on time for everything. They did a great job, and it’s because of them that we were able to deliver our own app on time.
From the outset, we decided to use Trello and set it up on our end even though Live Typing was its most frequent user. We used a number of other tools for sharing designs, like InVision and Zeplin for finalized designs. We also used Slack for communication. We continue to have their entire team on our Slack channel, and whenever we have something that everyone needs to know about, we will share it there.
What did you find most impressive about Live Typing?
They’re in it to win it and have excelled at keeping in touch, staying prepared to serve us with whatever other needs we may have. It’s clear to Live Typing that we are still bootstrapping and trying to make it, but they’ve been flexible and able to work based on our needs without necessarily jeopardizing their own revenue. I hope that Live Typing will do well in the future.
Are there any areas Live Typing could improve?
I would be pressed to find something that they should be improving. For what we’re currently working on, I would have had to spend at least 5 times more than what we spent on Live Typing had I hired a frontend engineer in the US. For that cost, Live Typing has completely blown away my expectations and I have no complaints.
The app is yet to be fully marketed but beta user feedback is positive so far with an onboarding success rate of over 80%. Live Typing delivered on time and held everyone involved accountable while being flexible with company needs and budget. They keep in touch in case their assistance is needed.