Urban: booking home massages in minutes with a premier iOS app

Vention's iOS expertise helped Urban support a fast-growing user base with improved service offerings.

About the client

Urban is the UK’s leading platform for on-demand massage and wellness treatments at home. Since 2014, it has delivered over 1.4 million treatments to 200,000+ customers across London, major UK cities, and Paris.

The app connects users with trusted, self-employed professionals for massage, beauty, and physiotherapy, all bookable in just a few taps.

Challenge

With a rapidly growing user base, Urban wanted its massage-on-demand app to keep pace with the company’s fast expansion.

After a discovery session with Urban’s in-house team to explore how we could help manage the influx of new customers, Vention engineers realised that simple fixes would only serve as a short-term patchwork. Instead, we took a long-term approach to massage app development.

Our solution

Our experts commanded multiple technologies to drive the project’s success, delivering state-of-the-art applications for both customers and therapists.

Complete iOS apps with UI/UX design overhaul

We kicked off the development phase by modernising Urban’s twin apps: first, a comprehensive redesign of the iOS app that allows customers to book home massages, and then an enhancement of the app used by massage therapists to manage their appointments.

Multiple implementations for a seamless shopping experience

The newly updated massage-on-demand apps were supported by a range of features designed to enhance the customer journey. These included additional shopping cart services, a customer loyalty program, and a quick order system for regular customers.

Furthermore, we supported their migration to a new platform to accommodate mandatory upgrades required by their payment gateway, Checkout.

The results

Constant communication, weekly syncs, and biweekly sprint planning were the cornerstones of our collaboration with Urban’s in-house team.

And it paid off: after we completed the first stage of our work, the number of users experiencing crashes on Urban’s platforms was reduced to less than one per cent.

Moreover, now empowered by robust platforms and acquiring a record number of customers, Urban could expand its operations to new cities, including Edinburgh and Glasgow.