British football fans going to away matches have a unique problem. They may well be visiting a town for the first time and want to find a real-ale pub where they’ll be welcome and which is somewhere en route from transport links to the stadium.
Stedders Guides were already a popular series of hard-copy town guides which real-ale and football fans could buy before their trip, but owner Richard Stedman could see that the guides could be much more effective as a mobile app…
ABOUT THE APP
Bearded Hen created a free-to-download app giving basic town guides and maps, with carrier billing (transactions billed to the user’s phone bill) to activate guides to a single town for only 50p, or for every town in the division or league at higher price points.
The virtually frictionless (single-click) purchasing process made possible by carrier billing makes it the perfect checkout method for this type of low-value ‘impulse’ purchase. Once the user has purchased a guide they’re given detailed pub reviews, mapping and navigation information via Google Maps as well as the ability to sort pubs by distance from the user, the nearest station or the stadium. Purchased guides are saved on the phone so the app can act as an offline app when the user has no signal.
As well as designing the Android phone app Bearded Hen also created a complete web-based content management system so that the guides, football teams and leagues can be updated in real-time by the reviewers. The system also allows the creation of free subscriptions for particular users and real-time transaction monitoring.
ABOUT THE CLIENT
Already established as the only specialist guide of its type, Stedders Guides had already sold many thousands of paper guides when they came to Bearded Hen for help with their mobile app.
Their unique content aimed specifically at solving the problem of football away-fans finding suitable meet-up venues before and after matches was crying out to become a mobile app. Not only that but doing so would enable instant updates and eliminate printing and distribution costs.
Owner Richard Stedman agreed that the larger and faster-growing user base of Android phones compared to other mobile operating systems in the UK meant that Android was the natural place to start the progression of his business onto mobile devices.
Now the content management system designed by Bearded Hen is in place, Stedders Guides are perfectly placed to roll out the app to iOS and other operating systems.
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