Barcode Scanning App for Ziffit

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Ziffit is a new brand from one of the world's largest secondhand book resellers

Generate cash from unwanted media with Ziffit

Riding the tide of popularity of Ebay, Amazon Marketplace and more recently Music Magpie, Ziffit allows you to generate cash from unwanted media. By keying in barcodes of unwanted CDs, DVDs, games and books you can receive a buy-price, offload your media and get paid for it.

Scan your books, CDs, DVDs & games and sell them to the world’s largest secondhand book reseller World Of Books. Simply use the iPhone app's barcode scanner to build your order and obtain a price. Then arrange for Ziffit to collect your items and pay you via PayPal or direct into your bank account.

As an appealing concept that clearly lends itself to the mobile platform, we were excited that Ziffit chose us to create their first mobile app.

The brief

Ziffit wanted to build an attractive app that would be extremely easy to use. In terms of functionality it should replicate what is already provided by their website, with one crucial addition - barcode scanning.

Timescales formed a critical part of this project, in order that the app be delivered in good time for a run of TV advertising spots which had been scheduled to support the brand.

What we delivered

Together with Ziffit we scoped out the entire app and created wireframes of each required screen. We then worked with our design partner to come up with the look and feel of the app, to match the existing branding.

Because of the tight timescales for the project, we started development in tandem with design, in order to progress more quickly.

We created an iOS app to accompany the website, that makes it much easier for customers to scan in items they wish to trade. A customer can download the app and begin scanning their items immediately, without the obstacle of creating an account.

Once they have scanned the required number of items to begin trading, the app prompts them to create an account, sell the items and instructs the customer how to despatch them or have them collected.

How we did it

The app was developed for iOS and is the first app we designed to work natively in iOS 7.

Barcode scanner and API integration

The app's chief function is the barcode scanner, which we built using a third party library. We then used an API to connect the app to the the website which provides the price look-ups for each item scanned and allowing for instant valuations.

Account creation and payment

Once a customer has scanned sufficient items either by volume or value, the app provides an onscreen-prompt that to create an account in order to begin trading. Once an account is created, the customer's cart is stored and is accessible on both the website and app. From here, they can can choose to be paid via Paypal or via bank transfer - the payment itself being handled by the website.

Measures of success

When Ziffit approached us, they had clear ideas of what they had in mind, a timescale and a fixed budget and we delivered the app both on time and within budget.

The initial adoption of the app was contingent on us finishing, testing and releasing the fully-featured app before Ziffit's scheduled advertising, which we successfully delivered.


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