The Problem
1-800-Flowers is one of America's largest gifting e-commerce brands, and the iOS app needed to deliver a premium shopping experience that matched the emotional nature of gift-giving. The existing app had a dated UI, a clunky checkout flow with 6 separate screens, and poor product browsing performance — image-heavy catalog pages stuttered on older devices and the search experience returned irrelevant results.
Seasonal traffic spikes were a major pain point. During holidays like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, the app experienced 10x normal traffic. The existing architecture couldn't handle the load gracefully — API timeouts cascaded into blank screens, and the cart would occasionally lose items during high-traffic checkout, leading to customer complaints and lost revenue.
Approach
I redesigned the checkout flow from 6 screens down to a streamlined 3-step process: recipient details, delivery date, and payment. Each step used inline validation with real-time delivery date availability checks, so customers never reached the payment screen only to discover their chosen date was unavailable. The UI used custom UIKit animations to create a smooth, premium feel appropriate for a gifting experience.
For the product catalog, I implemented a prefetching strategy with a multi-layer image cache (memory, disk, and CDN-optimized thumbnails). Collection views used compositional layouts with self-sizing cells, and I built a custom search engine integration that supported natural language queries like 'birthday flowers for mom under $50' with faceted filtering.
Challenges
Handling seasonal traffic required the app to be resilient without degrading the experience. I implemented a circuit breaker pattern for API calls — when the backend was under heavy load, the app fell back to cached catalog data and queued non-critical requests. Cart state was persisted locally with Core Data and reconciled server-side, preventing item loss during connectivity hiccups.
Push notification campaigns were critical for driving seasonal revenue, but the existing implementation had poor opt-in rates and generic messaging. I built a rich notification system with inline product images and actionable buttons (Quick Reorder, Track Delivery), along with a smart timing engine that analyzed user timezone and past purchase patterns to deliver prompts at optimal moments.
Results
The streamlined checkout flow increased conversion rates by 22% and reduced cart abandonment by 18%. Average order completion time dropped from 4.5 minutes to under 2 minutes. The app maintained smooth 60fps scrolling across the entire product catalog, even on iPhone 6s and SE devices.
During the Valentine's Day peak, the app handled 10x normal traffic with zero downtime and no reported cart loss incidents. Push notification opt-in rates improved by 40% with the rich notification redesign, and targeted campaigns drove a 28% increase in repeat purchases during the holiday season.
Interested in working together?
I'm available for senior and lead roles, freelance projects, and technical consulting.
Get in touch