Exploring and developing innovative ‘beauty services on demand’ app

The main feature of the WellmeTime app is to allow users to book hairstyling, a manicure or other services delivered specifically at the customer’s location. WellmeTime is taking the first steps in Poland but in the future will be brought to other markets.

Orbico Beauty contacted codequest after conducting market research in 2018. The data proved that there is a promising niche for beauty services on demand app. They needed help in designing and developing an app to answer potential customers expectations and growing wellness market needs.

WellmeTime removes logistic barriers that customers may encounter by offering quickly delivered beauty services available to book via a web app and in the future, via a mobile app. Most importantly, WellmeTime saves customer’s precious time which is an extremely important benefit. According to OECD research, Poland is the 7th nation in the whole world that works the longest hours! Correlating these statistics with growing consumption of beauty services amongst Poles - this is a perfect country for a test launch of such an app.

The customer has the possibility to choose, book and pay for the service directly from the app. On the other hand, the stylist gets all the information on the planned visits and manages them via the app.

Orbico Beauty needed to create an innovative app to introduce an innovative business model on the market and secure a leadership position in the industry. The challenge was to introduce the app with its own team of highly skilled stylists who work only with professional cosmetics and tools. As research showed, Poland was the perfect country to validate the project idea and therefore, give a solid base to develop the app on other markets.

To create a comfortable, reliable and timesaving solution, Orbico Beauty had to replicate and improve the traditional beauty salon logistics. The challenge was to create a possibility to book a custom service that is not listed in the offer or add another service while the first is not completed yet. The app needed to connect flawlessly three types of users: the customer, the stylist, and the salon manager position who in this version became an admin. Additionally, as the human consultant or salon manager in no longer in the equation, there was a significant need to create a solution for custom services.

Orbico Beauty and codequest started the project with the Discovery Phase workshop - exactly describing value proposition canvas and planning UX and UI in detail. The set of services and the model of delivery was then exactly determined. codequest team designed a fully interactive prototype that was then internally tested. Those testing sessions gave codequest valuable feedback on the usability of the app and helped the Product Owner to validate the planned user experience path and address all the design challenges. The positive feedback and success of the Discovery Phase inspired Orbico Beauty to move to the Development Phase.

codequest started to build the WellmeTime using React framework on the frontend and Ruby language on the backend. Accordingly, to all the needs identified in the Discovery phase, codequest provided the web app infrastructure that allowed to access three types of control panels and the unique possibility for admin and customer to manage all the specific corner cases that might appear.

The first version of the web app was released in February 2019 and its full version was launched in July 2019. It allows managing all the special cases that might happen like stylist’s unexpected unavailability or possibility to add another service to customer’s order during the course of another service.

The WellmeTime goal is to change the paradigm of delivering beauty services and enable people with a choice of how they want to plan and spend their time. The web app leads to improving the quality and reliability of online beauty services on demand.

codequest is proud to be a part of the WellmeTime app creation and support the client in expanding to new markets. Let’s grow together!