Hello giffgaff friends,
As some of you may know already, we have been working on rebuilding our app for quite a while now. I’m pleased to announce that as of today, the new app is now available as a beta for our members to install and start testing.
The new app is being released as a separate “beta app” which will run for a short period of time, side by side with our current my giffgaff app. We’ve made the decision to release the app as a “beta” as we want to make sure that it meets the expectations of our members first. Therefore, we want you to tell us when it’s ready to go.
WHY DO WE NEED A NEW APP?
The current giffgaff app has been used by our members for many years now, and it’s been doing a cracking job. However, we identified one problem: as giffgaff started building more fabulous features in the web, the app started to fall behind.
This happened due to the underlying technology used to build the current app. We therefore have invested a significant amount of time trying to find a technology framework that will allow us to keep the app relevant as we grow and evolve the journeys our members go through. After many months of building the foundations, we have adopted a new tech framework within our app that will allow us to deliver experiences to iOS and android devices more often, which works a lot better with the giffgaff technology model, and will allow more engineers within giffgaff to start building app experiences, leading to more frequent updates for our members.
WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM THE BETA APP?
The team have worked extremely hard to make sure the new version has the key features our members use, although we’ve also added a few extras we’re curious to test.
The main features in this new version of the app are:
- Buying and recurring a goodybag
- Buying and setting up auto top up
- Making payments with a saved card
- Enabling/Disabling WiFi extra
As a brand new feature, we are excited to introduce:
- Switching accounts capability which allows our members to add multiple accounts into the app and switch between them.
Next on our pipeline is adding a few key features from the current giffgaff app such as biometric login and voucher payment, which the team is working on as I type.
HELP US MAKE THE BEST APP POSSIBLE
We want as much feedback as we can get from you all and we’re really keen to find out:
- What do you think about the beta app?
- Are there any bugs you notice from using it?
- Are there any key features you feel are crucial and are missing?
- Plus any other app-related suggestions you might have floating around
The plan is to make sure our members are happy with this version of the app before we update the current one and move to the new technology framework. Therefore, we’re looking to work closely with you and incorporate as much of your feedback as possible.
LET’S GET STARTED
Are you an Android user? Head over to the Play Store and get the giffgaff beta app on your phone.
Apple fan?
- Please install TestFlight (on your phone) please enable push notifications for test flight, so that you be instantly updated when we push a new feature
- Once downloaded - click on this link
- Install the giffgaff beta app
Once it’s downloaded and ready to go, start testing. If possible, try to use it as your day-to-day way of managing your giffgaff account. You can leave feedback directly within the app which can be accessed within the feedback tab in the app or if you wish, feel free to drop your thoughts within this thread and we will do our very best to pop in as often as possible and talk to you about it.
Thanks in advance for all your help and I hope you’re as excited as we are about this new chapter.
The apps team
@sasi4 , @venkat1128, @will_edw , @jaz_deol, @jeeves95, @nat_5000 @kevinmforde @mattlingwood , @riikka_gg @holyp67 @reachravs
