Poq platform release: Atlas is here | Poq App Commerce

Atlas has arrived! Our latest platform release, Atlas, will provide clients with more app control, Apple Pay in web checkout, enhanced app experiences, and increased product storage flexibility.

So, what’s new with Atlas?

Empowering retailers to self-serve their apps

In line with our roadmap goal of placing app management control in the hands of our clients -making set-up and in-live app configuration quick and easy -we have launched version 1 of our App Styler. This new tool enables clients to configure the style of their apps across key screens such as home, shop, product listing page, product display page, bag, and more, by using a powerful web tool built from the foundations of our intelligent design system, App elements and components such as the colour of buttons are customisable through the web tool with a few clicks of the mouse.

Click here to learn even more about the App Styler.

Retailers will gain even more control of their apps through the ability to set up push notification deep linking. With this capability, retailers will be able to increase the effectiveness of their push notifications. The retailer’s user of the Poq Content Management System (CMS) will be able to specify targeted screens that the push message will open within the app. This feature does not require any special implementation and is available ‘out-of-box’. However, if interested in doing even more with push notifications, check out the push layer integration from our last release.

Optimise web checkout with Apple Pay

Due to the high levels of complexity and customisations it carries, the ecommerce checkout experience can often be susceptible to UX issues, bug, and latency. However, with the implementation of enhanced communicating channels and some re-architecting, user frustrations can be avoided.

In our last release, Nebula, we improved our web checkout by implementing WKWebview and a new JavaScript library. As a result, web checkout has become much faster and more flexible. Additionally, we also re-architected the web checkout to make it more extensible and customisable. This re-architecting also paved the way for us to implement native Apple Pay flows within web checkout in the Atlas release.

Due to the hard work done to build an innovative communications bridge between web and app, Poq clients can now reap the benefits of Apple Pay on web checkout. A solution only available to customers from a tiny handful of companies worldwide. Clients who already have Apple Pay on their ecommerce websites can easily enable the feature on their app. With this capability, retailers can easily comply with the upcoming Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) double authentication rules, while increasing checkout conversion.

For more on Apple Pay and the ground-breaking communications bridge developed by the Poq iOS team, check out “Communication is key: App payment made easier”.

Enhanced app user experiences

As a result of the Nebula release -where we enabled modular architecture on our cart and wishlist screens — we opened up the capability to add enhanced user experience to those screens in this release. At Poq, we are constantly considering implementing advancements whenever possible.

As we discuss in one of our more recent blogs, “Create an engaging app experience using sensory appeal”, animations can drastically improve the user experience by providing users with in-app reactions that awaken the senses. With the launch of Atlas we have implemented a new animation for adding to cart. When the user adds a product to cart from the product details page or wishlist screens, the selected product will move to the cart icon with a smooth visual transition. This visualisation brings the user’s attention to the cart’s location on the screen, clarifying the next steps of the shopper journey towards conversion.

To provide users with a second level capability of saving desired items for purchase, we have implemented adding to wishlist from cart. Everyone loves to save for later items we want to buy and with this new feature, users will be able to do just that on our clients’ apps by easily moving products from wishlist to cart.

A more extensible product storage architecture

As previously mentioned, we are constantly looking for opportunities to implement enhancements and provide exceptional user experiences. While this next advancement is not as flashy as the others, it will yield best-in-class future results.

Underneath the hood, we are currently working on creating a lot of extensibility around product related screens such as the product display and product listing screens. Our first step towards this has been releasing a flexible new product data storage system. This new system can support additional and more varied product schemas. For example, clients will be able to add their industry specific data into schemas such as sleeve length, fabric pattern, TV resolutions, dimensions for furniture, and more. Meaning, our platform will be even more empowered to handle and surface complex, industry specific catalogue data for any retail business. This newly developed flexibility will also pave the way for improved search and the implementation of dynamic filters as we deliver more on the product SDK improvements in our future releases.

Find out more

To discover how the Poq platform can deliver you an optimised app, enhanced user experience, and increased loyalty, please get in touch.

Originally published at https://poqcommerce.com on April 24, 2019.