Redesign, Rewrite, and Update of an Options Trading App
Case study

Redesign, Rewrite, and Update of an Options Trading App

About the Client

The client is a well-known player in the industry of trader education and options trading.

Founded in the 2010s, it is one of the fastest-growing online financial networks in the world. Client’s experts navigate the markets to provide actionable financial information and strategies rooted in research and experience to help their audience grow their investments.

Business Challenge

The client used to have a mobile app that offered trade feeds on a subscription basis. The app stopped working with the iOS 12 release and given that, since its launch, the code needed maintenance, the client was not able to update the app to support the latest iOS.

The required update was also a good chance for a redesign according to the latest UX/UI practices and guidelines.

The client also wanted to integrate the existing apps to create a single financial network application for more cohesive brand management. But they needed consulting on when and how would be the best way to undertake this challenge.

The client’s executives had already outsourced several software development projects to Devexperts and valued their expertise. They approached Devexperts and requested compatibility and design updates.

The easiest way to solve this business challenge was to create a new application. The client decided to rewrite the app from scratch.

Solution

After examining the case, Devexperts suggested the following solution:

  1. Combine the existing client’s apps into a single oneas the client planned to do it in the future, this would be the best time to do it. It would be beneficial to merge the two apps into one and only have to rewrite it once, rather than have to modernize both and then merge later. It also saved a good amount of time, as the base app architecture was written just once.
  2. Rewrite the apps from scratch natively, using the up-to-date SDKs. The benefits of the native app development, in this case, were greater UX, which is hardly achievable with non-native approaches, and ease of maintenance in the future.
  3. Update the design of the apps to match up-to-date best practices.

After solving all urgent tasks connected with compatibility, Devexperts engineers started updating customer-facing features.

Advanced filtering of trades (e.g. according to a selected trading strategy, specific symbol, or trader), and new richer trade feed were incorporated. The old trade feed consisted only of text elements, with very few visuals; the updated feed contains additional visuals and an extended number of data points (such as the probability of profit (POP), trader’s comments, etc.).

In the middle of the planned time frame, the client urgently appealed to Devexperts to release the app a month earlier than the previously set deadline. Adhering to agile practices, the engineering team pivoted fast, de-scoped the release, and prepared the apps for production, so the client was able to shut down a legacy API on their side.

Results

As a first step towards addressing the client’s needs, Devexperts released an iOS 12 compatible hotfix within a month from the start of development.

Later on, the apps for both platforms (iOS and Android) were completely rewritten using the most recent native technologies and up-to-date design.