Solve IT Labs has developed and integrated a solution with a custom iPhone app, company website and web-based administration tool. This tool has specifically been designed for book publisher ‘Happy About’ to help expand business and reach a wider audience.
The publisher wanted to expand customer base for the THINKaha book series, which is targeted at readers constantly on-the-move. Each book delivers timely, cutting-edge information from relevant experts in an entertaining Twitter-like format. Solve IT Labs had two reasons to partner with Happy About on this project. Firstly, they wanted to maximize revenues and visibility by accessing mobile traffic. Secondly, they wanted to make it easier for the publishers and authors to update content, run reports, gather user data and track sales.
Rafael Soultanov, Director of Project Management office remarked that, “With the iPhone ebook app, the client can make changes in response to changing market conditions. They can instantly add new books, feature books for promotions and test the results. They can also follow up with customers to develop an ongoing relationship. All of this leads to fine tuning their marketing and ultimately getting their books in front of more people.”
While, Happy About CEO Mitchell Levy looks at the entire project as a good way of reaching out to audience who read on the go. The books may help users realize the ‘aha moment’ in their life and may improve lives and careers. He feels that by endorsing books through the THINKaha app, they can reach an audience they have not been able to tap as yet.
With the content update completed, the THINKaha iPhone application and the website are ready to go live in real-time. Solve IT Labs used the following programs to develop the app. These were iPhone SDK including Xcode, iPhone simulator and performance tool, PHP and MySQL.
The books can be added, modified or even removed from the web-based CMS and the application gets updated as well. The content and images can even be added in the back-end CMS for each specific book. All the changes are reflected on the application almost with immediate effect. This helps in managing book inventory, promotion of books and setting up sales and discounts for books.
The eBook iPhone application can be downloaded from the iTunes Store alongside a sample book. Users can download up to 3 ebooks for free and if they like what they read, they can always go back to the site and download a few more.