Commerce · Mobile · 2024
A native shopping app handling 2M monthly users
A fast-growing D2C brand had outgrown a legacy native iOS app and an Android stub. We re-platformed onto a single React Native + Expo codebase with native modules where it mattered, doubled their conversion rate, and cut release cycles from quarterly to weekly.
- Industry
- Direct-to-consumer
- Duration
- 16 weeks
- Team
- 5 engineers + 1 designer
Headline result
+34%
conversion
The challenge
What needed to change.
The brand's iOS app was three years old and slow; the Android version was a thin wrapper that customers complained about in app store reviews. Conversions were leaking and the team couldn't iterate quickly because every change required two separate native releases.
They needed a path that wouldn't compromise on the polish their iOS customers were used to, and a release process they could ship from on any given Tuesday.
Our approach
How we built it.
We rebuilt the entire app on React Native with Expo, paired with native modules for the bits that justified them — AR try-on, Apple Pay, secure storage. Everything else moved to a shared codebase, halving maintenance overhead.
Performance was treated as a feature, not an afterthought. We held a hard cold-start budget of <2s and instrumented every screen with real-user metrics.
Highlights
- Single codebase shipping iOS + Android
- Native modules for AR try-on and Apple Pay
- Offline-first cart with conflict-free sync
- EAS over-the-air updates for rapid iteration
- Lighthouse-equivalent perf budgets enforced in CI
Outcome
What changed.
Conversion lifted 34% in the first quarter post-launch, with a crash-free session rate above 99.9%. The team now ships meaningful improvements weekly instead of quarterly — and their app store reviews moved from 3.6 to 4.7 stars.
- Conversion lift
- +34%
- Cold start
- 1.7s
- Crash-free sessions
- 99.92%
- Release cadence
- weekly
Booking the next quarter
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