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We refreshed our brand and renamed our company. As part of the refresh was the website. Here's a behind the scenes on why we made certain decisions when redesigning the website.

We Launched a New Website — Here’s a Behind-The-Scenes on How and Why We Made Certain Decisions

, now is a good time to check it out. There are a lot of great things happening at Foxbox Digital, including a newly refreshed website.

Since I’ve always been a big fan of reading about other “behind-the-scenes” articles, I thought I would go ahead and share our thought process on refreshing our website.

The world of “apps” is changing and we’re getting ahead of it. So, we changed our name to “Foxbox Digital”

Yes, we still build React Native Apps. But, we’re also marketing our digital services that we never really talked about on our previous website. We are not in the business of building commoditized apps. That ship sailed a long time ago. We are, however, in the business of not only building digital experiences for our clients but also helping them be better at building web and mobile projects with Agile.

With this new website and services section at the bottom, we’re now firmly planting our seeds in helping startups and enterprise clients grow their business. This includes Agile Coaching, Continuous Delivery, and Elixir Consulting.

So, the change to Foxbox Digital was our signal to the world that we’re evolving with our clients’ needs.

We stopped ignoring our blog and published a 6,000+ word article on Agile enterprise product development

Nothing screams “we’re ready for the world” more than the longest, most valuable, blog post you’ve ever published since starting the company. Once the team started writing about Agile product development in the enterprise, it became clear we had a lot of things to say. We actually cut quite a bit to keep it on message, but it’s still a beast of a post.

Our blog is featured at the top of our navigation and you won’t be disappointed. We timed the blog post with the release of our website.

We made the website scrolling an engaging experience

If you notice when scrolling down on the home page, you get an orange progress line in the middle of the page that leads you down the page, and after you reach the next section, it moves over to the left side of the website.

We thought this was a nice touch and helped users scroll to the next section, but it also subtly lets them reach the copy for each main header. It’s too tempting to browse a website in less than 3 seconds, so we designed it in a way to increase the time on the site and give the user a little delight as they browse.

Bonus points if you see how the orange line stops on the home page. It’s little touches like this that we do for our clients that they truly enjoy, so we decided to do the same for ourselves.

We were sick and tired of other website taglines, so we did something different.

Do you know how every website redesign starts? By looking at other websites of competitors and finding the ones you really like. We noticed that a majority of them had a similar theme: They all had the tagline as the main leading in point.

And they all basically say the same thing: “We build the best apps on planet earth and our customers love us”

We thought that one of our case studies, Home Chef, was a great way to introduce our prospective customers to the type of work we do. Given our ongoing relationship with Kroger-owned, Home Chef, we decided to lead with it.

We are still only 65% done, but for the sake of Agile, we launched it anyway

We really wanted to launch with full descriptions of each service offer, but honestly, we couldn’t fit it in without significantly delaying the launch.

Give us three more months and you’ll definitely see more orange links expanding on Elixir, Agile Coaching, and Continuous Deployment consulting.

This Agile approach is what we recommend for our clients, and I think it’s important for us to share features that we quite haven’t finished yet.

Our team photos before were black and white, and adding color might not seem like a big deal, but it does add a world of difference.

Additionally, instead of paragraph-long texts about our services and our work, we instead opted for large visuals and simple, clean copy. In addition to their titles, we also added what skill sets they have. It’s a small tweak, but it added a lot more context to the type of work and team that we have.

Even though we added “Digital” to our name, we are staying true to our roots. The fox is the boss and it remains pinned at the top of the page when scrolling.

We are going to take our newsletter a little bit more seriously

If you like posts like this and want to hear from us in the future, enter your email address here and every time I send an update or the team has something interesting to say, you’ll get a nice little email in your inbox.

Lastly, I just wanted to say thank you for all of your support as we continue to grow our digital service offerings. We’re halfway 2019 and it’s clear this is our best year yet. Thank you! As always, if you have any questions or want to work with us, please visit our contact page for more information.

Foxbox Digital is growing. Here's the July, 2019 update on what's happened.

Company Update -- Here's What's Happened in the Past 6 Months

So much has happened over the past 6 months and I’m excited to share it all with you.

1 -- We changed our name to Foxbox Digital and 

! Our initial “cost-effective” model of developing apps was a great launching point. It became clear, as we grew with our clients, that our value wasn’t about being cost-effective but about helping them build better and bigger digital solutions across mobile and web. So now, instead of “Foxbox,” we are “Foxbox Digital” which also means we are 10,000 times easier to find on Google :). 

Here is a detailed update on the website changes

2 -- We acquired a new enterprise Fortune 100 healthcare client. From initial meeting to closed deal, it took 6 weeks, which is an extremely short sales cycle. I would love to tell you who it is, but due to obvious restrictions in our contract, I can’t spill the beans. However, I can tell you that it’s one of our biggest contracts and it’s a long-term agreement. We’re pumped.

We’re looking for engineers and project managers

4 -- I’ve been working on this 6,000+ word blog post for the past 3 months. It’s 

about how to build Agile products in the enterprise

. It’s funny how life works itself out. I started my career working at Accenture/Avanade doing work for large companies, then moved to found and run several startups as a CTO. Now I help big companies build products like a startup does. I’ll take it.

5 -- We moved to a new office in Wicker Park. Come and say hello. Our address is 

1720 West Division Street, Floor 2, Chicago IL 60622

That’s all for now. Thank you for your continued support!

Many stakeholder ideas sound amazing in the moment, but deciding which ones move forward and which ones do not can give you a panic attack. Here are a few ways we keep quality ideation without being overwhelmed by quantity.

How I Prioritize Product Features From the CEO & Founder

A Simple Way to Prioritize Product Features

It was like clockwork. The CEO would message me daily, if not hourly, on new feature requests, slightly changing product direction each time. He messaged me on every communication channel you can think of: Slack, iMessage, WhatsApp, and email. Whenever it was the most convenient for him, regardless of time of day, he would send me these requests.

These emails contained not only vague future ideas, but small tweaks and non-critical bug fixes, etc. Essentially, anything that came up mid-sprint, he would send me a quick note with his ideas.

A big reason why I enjoyed working with him was his excitement about the product we were building, and he was constantly thinking of new ideas. However, that came at a cost. I was drowning in new things to build, and I didn’t know how to focus these requests.

I appreciated his willingness to share his ideas, but at the same time I had to make sure we were building the right things. I wasn’t necessarily in a position to say no to these new features, even when I was only halfway done with the features we started weeks prior. I actually did care about what he wanted to build, I just didn’t think many of these features were the right decision.

I needed to ruthlessly prioritize our feature requests.

 But, again, who was I to decide what feature was right or not? So, I thought of something to help me alleviate this pain.

After a few panic attacks, I created what I called the inbox system. This was a place in our project management board where I collected all of his, and the team’s, ideas. It gave me a chance to say, “Great idea! Let’s discuss later.” He knows that his idea isn’t lost, and I don’t feel the pressure to act immediately.

In the next sprint planning meeting, we would go through all of these ideas, weigh them against all of the other issues (i.e. features, bugs, cards) in the backlog, and prioritize the things that will have the biggest impact towards achieving our company’s objectives.

The inbox system aims to solve the problem of changing the plan mid-sprint and allows you to slow down and consider your next steps. You don't want a reactionary engineering team where the latest ideas from the stakeholders are implemented over things that have been planned for weeks.

CEO sends feature request (and wants it built ASAP).

Acknowledge her feature idea and document the request in your project management board (AKA, the “inbox”) before committing to building the idea.

During the sprint review meeting, instead of asking the validity of the idea ad nauseum, discuss the priority of this request compared to everything else that needs to be built or fixed.

It was a small tweak, but it made a substantial impact. I was heard. He was heard. And together, we made the best decision for the product and the company.

Some Features Just Aren't Worth Building, Regardless of How Genius It Is

Every feature can certainly not be a winner.

This isn’t 3rd grade where everyone gets a participation trophy and feels like a winner at the end of the soccer match.

Implementing the wrong feature can significantly impact the trajectory and traction of your app. Not just because users don’t like it, but for simply how much effort and time it took to complete.

As a Product Manager or Project Manager, you’ll get a lot of input from your stakeholders. For us, it’s our clients. For businesses, it could be your CEO or boss. It used to give me anxiety when I heard all these lofty feature requests: I felt like I needed to implement all of the ideas my CEO threw at me over email, text, or Slack.

Many ideas sound amazing in the moment, but the luster wears off quickly. If it’s still a great idea during the next sprint planning, then consider implementing it. If not, then discard it—that’s okay to do, it’s part of innovation. All ideas can’t be winners!

LocalVR approached us to help them modernize their property management systems. With our help, LocalVR became one of the premier property managers in Colorado.

How We Helped a Leading Rental Management Company Increase Revenue and Occupancy Through Custom Data-Driven Software

 a full-service rental management company, oversees hundreds of short term rentals across the country. As they grew, they began outpacing their systems and needed to search for a new technology solution to match their ambitions. As the short term rental space became more crowded, they knew leveraging custom-built technology was the answer to remaining competitive.

LocalVR approached us to help them modernize their property management systems. With our help, LocalVR became one of the premier property managers across several markets including Breckenridge, Park City, Lake Tahoe, Vail, Telluride, Aspen, and Chicago. They helped their clients increase occupancy and revenue all while automating their property management and financial reporting.

Here’s how we helped them achieve their goals:

We built a data-driven dynamic pricing model, increasing revenue by nearly 25 percent

LocalVR struggled with their strategy to find the optimal daily price for hundreds of properties across a calendar year. Their existing software did not allow them to implement customized or market-based pricing, thus leaving thousands of dollars on the table.

We set up a data feed to analyze live data sets across their markets

 that determined an optimal daily price for every single property on the platform. This allowed LocalVR to compare and adjust rates on a daily basis across the entire market and for the next 365 days to ensure they remain price-competitive.

 to account for daily adjustments to supply and demand. This gave LocalVR more control over how conservative or aggressive they wanted to be with their prices for each property.

We update pricing on multiple booking platforms for 365 days all at once, every single day.

 We eliminated the frequent headaches of manually setting prices and adjusting rates across their hundreds of properties. With automation, LocalVR can determine the strategy and never worry about the daily manual hours required to adjust their rates. We integrated directly with Guesty, Rentals United, Airbnb, HomeAway, and Booking.com among other platforms.

We increased occupancy by implementing smart and flexible booking rules

Increasing occupancy is a goal for any short term real estate owner, but is really difficult to monitor across a large portfolio of properties. Inevitably, the bottom performers start feeling left behind.

 — We put the power back into LocalVR’s hands by letting them configure their own dynamic rules. Each property can be configured to a different pricing and availability strategy.

 — Other software solutions allow owners to set static minimum stays across their entire calendar. We changed that by implementing several new features, all customizable by LocalVR, including the following:

 depending on the season and holiday schedule. LocalVR can require higher minimum night stays for in demand dates, and allow one night stays over slower seasons.

. If LocalVR could not secure a 5-night stay over Christmas break, their tool now allows them to reduce those restrictions to ensure occupancy still remains high.

 to allow LocalVR to sell nights they wouldn’t normally sell. Even if a range of dates has a 5-night minimum, and two reservations have a gap of 3 nights in between, our tool recognizes the inefficiency and assigns a 3-night minimum accordingly. Yay for back-to-back bookings!

We automated customized financials and accounting

If you’ve ever tried to produce a monthly financial report for a single property, you know how difficult it is. Now, imagine managing hundreds of properties and clients alongside thousands of reservations, adjustments, property expenses, and refunds. Simply put, a simple accounting software for Property Managers does not exist.

LocalVR’s finance team handles this manually, which causes quite a bit of inconsistency. Here’s how we made the process easier for them:

 — Previous reports were consistently inaccurate due to the nature of up to 20 reservations each month for each property with several listings across several different platforms with different commissions, sales tax, and payout rules. We streamlined this process and built safety checks along the way to ensure the accuracy of every single reservation.

Reduced hundreds of spreadsheets to one single click

 — The finance team was producing each accounting report individually and manually. Our engine instantly generates and emails reports for any month and any owner with a single click of a button. We saved hundreds of hours and a lot of Tylenol.

Automated the distribution of payments monthly

 — As part of the streamlined generation of reports, the system automatically sends monthly ACH payouts to each owner. We used Stripe Connect to facilitate secure and reliable payouts with less development effort. Reducing banking pains and delays, allowing owners to receive their money sooner!

In the end, we took a traditional rental management company and empowered them with modern tools to compete with the emerging tech players in the market. We continue to help them grow their tools with our strong engineering team.

If you enjoyed this case study and you’re looking for a product development agency that can help you the same way we helped LocalVR, feel free to 

Home Chef partnered with Foxbox Digital to rebuild their mobile app with React Native and help them increase ratings and conversions.

How We Increased HomeChef's App Ratings

, a subsidiary of Kroger, is the third largest meal kit company in the U.S. As Home Chef was scaling their business, and providing new offerings to their growing customer base, they were looking for a modern framework with extensibility to support their new service offerings. They brought in Foxbox Digital to rebuild their mobile app with 

, a modern cross-platform app framework, to help them achieve their ambitious goals.

Through our engagement with Home Chef, we developed and published iOS and Android apps using React Native. This helped them significantly increase app store ratings, meal kit conversions, and user engagement rates.

We focused on building a great experience from the ground-up

We knew that re-platforming to React Native was only one part of the solution. We worked closely with the CTO & Head of Product to deliver an experience that delighted their customers.

Here are three of the core activities we focused on:

 - We provided early architectural recommendations based on their future technical and business goals. This included a revised roadmap that better fit their goals to maximize customer impact.

 - We seamlessly collaborated with the UX team to ensure the app was instantly responsive to the end user.

 - Customers added their first item to the shopping cart 20% faster than with the previous app.

Foxbox Digital’s deep technical knowledge of React Native helped us move quickly through technical roadblocks.

 In early stages of the development, they guided us through architecture decision and foresaw many of the issues we would run into with our current development setup. If you’re looking for React Native developers, I can’t recommend them enough. 

With thousands of paying customers on the platform already, and owned by a large subsidiary, speed-to-market is often not feasible. Our deep knowledge of React Native and our philosophy of tight product and engineering coordination allowed us to build the new iOS and Android application 

Here’s a breakdown of how we were able to move so fast.

 - Our engineering team is focused on the React Native platform. This allows us to provide deeper recommendations and build a modern architecture best suited for React Native.

Strong Relationships and Coordination With Engineering, Product, and Design

 - We know that developing an application isn’t just a list of requirements. We start every project by determining the specific goals of each team and work closely with each stakeholder to build the best product possible.

- We were instrumental through the beta testing phase ensuring a fast feedback loop from their most valuable customers, prior to launch. We quickly iterated to implement the feedback, which led to a successful launch.

I think the app is easy to use as well as navigate.

 I’ve tried other meal services and this was the best! 

We enabled them to build better features based on data

Prior to engaging with us, Home Chef was having a difficult time experimenting with mobile features. Here’s how we resolved that.

Embedded Customer Behavior Data Analytics

 - We knew that to improve the experience of the app, we had to collect data at every major customer interaction. We worked directly with their executive marketing team to implement Amplitude to track key user data points and define the events they needed to track.

 - We implemented A/B Multivariate testing functionality. Now, instead of guessing which functionality makes the customer happier, it is simple to deploy A/B Testing for both iOS and Android.

 - With React Native and Expo, they're able to publish weekly updates with the push of a button. Allows them to collect fast feedback from customers.

Simply put, Foxbox Digital was amazing from start to finish.

 Their maturity in understanding our product, engineering, design, and business needs was exactly what we needed. They were proactive and intentional in every decision they brought forward. This product is core to our experience and we couldn’t have imagined a better partner than Foxbox Digital. 

- Julian Rockwood, Head of Consumer Product, Home Chef.

If you enjoyed this case study and you’re looking for a React Native development agency that can help you the same way we helped Home Chef, feel free to 

How We Helped Home Chef, the Kroger-Owned Meal Kit Delivery Service, Increase App Store Ratings and Meal Kit Conversions

When you set out to build a product, there's a disconnect between what you think people need and what they actually need.

How to Define your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

When you set out to build a product, whether it's a mobile app, website, or a physical product, you'll envision how people will use your product and what qualities they need of your product. What often happens when building products is 

If you take the Lean Startup approach to designing and building your first product, 

, you're more likely to build exactly what your users need, and eliminate waste from building features they don't need.

), and when you're building a startup company, you have real constraints with how much money and time you have to build something. These constraints force you to be smart about what you spend time building; any wasted effort could put you out of business.

The classic model to create a product is called Waterfall, and it doesn't work. With Waterfall, you start by defining all requirements, then design the product, then build it then launch it. This sounds completely logical, but problems arise if requirements change at any point in the process. 

 When this happens, your project goes way over budget and you blow past the deadline.

With a lean approach to building a product, the idea is you take the steps in Waterfall and repeat them many times over. You divide up the problem into several product phases, where each phase fully delivers on a set of objectives.

 objectives of your project. People start using your product early on in the development cycle, 

 People tell you what's working and what isn't, and you can respond by altering the product roadmap.

Think of it this way: if you set out to build a car to get people from here to there, you don't start by building a wheel. That doesn't get you to where you need to go. You could start by building a bike. From there you could build a scooter, then finally a car. At each phase of the project, people are able to use your product to achieve the main objective: transportation. They'll give you feedback along the way ("it's too slow!"), and you'll incorporate that feedback and iterate the product.

This process allows for changes in your product roadmap during active development. Changing requirements doesn't mean pushing back your delivery date - because the process accounts for change. After people use your MVP, you might decide to cut entire features, and improve other features that they actually use.

After the MVP, you'll continue iterating the product in mini releases - every week or so. The product takes shape, change by change, until you've achieved all of your objectives. The product is tested in realtime during active development, so at the end, 

you'll have confidence that you hit the mark.

At Foxbox Digital, we take a lean approach to building mobile apps. We tap into our entrepreneurial experience of building startup companies, and apply that experience to how we build products. We'll help you 

build your product with a lean, agile approach

At the end, you'll have a product that meets your objectives, has the features you need, and eliminates the features you don't actually need. 

This is how you build a product that hits the mark and deliver it on time.