Regional Convenience Retail Web and Mobile App

Our Approach

Rather than approaching the web and mobile applications as separate products, we treated them as two experiences within a single product ecosystem. To support that vision, we established a monorepo architecture that centralized shared code, streamlined reviews, and ensured updates could be implemented consistently across both platforms. This approach informed key architectural decisions from the outset and enabled a single team to maintain alignment between the web and mobile experiences as the product evolved.

1. Monorepo with Turborepo

Both applications live within a single Turborepo monorepo alongside shared packages, including the shared UI library. This structure created one source of truth for the product, allowing updates to shared functionality to flow efficiently across both experiences. Turborepo manages the build graph, caching, and task orchestration, ensuring that only impacted areas are rebuilt as the codebase grows and helping the team maintain fast, reliable development cycles.

2. Shared UI library

The shared UI library serves as the foundation for consistent design and interaction patterns across both applications. Components, design tokens, and reusable elements such as buttons, forms, cards, and layouts are maintained in one place, ensuring that design updates are implemented consistently across web and mobile. A change made once can be delivered across both experiences on the next deployment.

3. Next.js on both surfaces

Both the web application and mobile application are built on Next.js, allowing the team to work within a consistent framework while creating experiences optimized for each platform. Server-rendered pages support SEO-sensitive content on the web application, while both applications share the same data layer to ensure customers see consistent catalogs, pricing, and promotions regardless of how they interact with the brand.

4. The mobile application: installable, always current

The mobile application is an installable web app built on the same Next.js foundation as the web experience. Customers can add it directly to their home screen for a full-screen, app-like experience without visiting an app store.

This approach created meaningful advantages for the client:

• No app store dependency: Releases can ship on the client’s schedule without submission processes, approval queues, or delays that could impact promotions or seasonal campaigns.

• Always up to date: The mobile application deploys through the same pipeline as the web application, ensuring customers always access the latest version without outdated installs or forced-update interruptions.

• A more efficient product strategy: A traditional native approach would typically require separate iOS and Android codebases alongside the web experience, each with different teams and release cycles. The installable approach delivers a mobile experience from the same product foundation the team already maintains.

• Built for convenience-focused customers: The mobile experience was designed around quick visits, touch-first interactions, smaller screens, mid-range devices, and real-world usage scenarios where customers are often shopping on the go.

5. Feature parity enforced at the design and QA level

Every user-facing feature was defined with both surfaces in mind, with acceptance criteria that explicitly addressed behavior across the web application and mobile application. This approach helped ensure both experiences evolved together and maintained the consistency customers expected.