Loyalty mobile apps offer powerful ways to foster long-term relationships and reward customer loyalty. Yet, developing a mobile solution can often involve significant financial commitments and resource constraints.

As a loyalty manager, imagine a situation where you must ramp up brand exposure and add another communication channel. The choice of a mobile app becomes essential, as, nowadays, reaching people on their phone is not a trivial add-on but rather a requirement for most businesses aiming to enhance customer engagement.

‍The cost of implementing a customer loyalty mobile app may be overwhelming… (read more about the true costs of developing loyalty software in-house).

To bring such a solution to life, you need a complex loyalty app development team of developers, testers, project managers (PMs), designers, and so on. Even more, to accommodate a wide user base, such a team must often work on developing both Android and iOS versions simultaneously. This means you might need to double the development costs and hire two specialized teams!

Sounds daunting, right? However, this daunting scenario doesn't have to be your reality if you choose the right tech stack.

Along comes Flutter, Google’s revolutionary cross-platform development framework, which has become a breakthrough in the mobile app creation arena, especially for customer loyalty app development. Flutter enables businesses to build stunning, feature-rich loyalty apps for the Android and iOS platforms all at once while greatly reducing development project costs.

In this article, we'll explore Flutter's transformative potential for loyalty mobile application development, focusing on revealing practical strategies and insights for using this technology to maximize cost efficiency without compromising app quality and functionality. 

Key takeaways

• Flutter allows you to build mobile loyalty solutions for both iOS and Android platforms using a single codebase. This means creating and maintaining a single app for multiple platforms reduces development time and effort.
• Flutter provides a rich set of pre-designed widgets and allows for easy customization to create visually appealing and brand-specific mobile and custom loyalty app interfaces. The framework offers extensive support for animations, transitions, and effects, enabling you to create smooth and engaging user experiences.
• Google, Alibaba, BMW, Philips, and eBay are just a few companies that have embraced Flutter for their mobile app creation. The adoption of Flutter continues to grow across various industries due to its versatility, efficiency, and cross-platform capabilities.

What's Flutter?

Flutter is a popular open-source user interface (UI) toolkit developed by Google, which has become an essential tool in the loyalty app development process. It allows a development team to create natively compiled mobile, web, and desktop applications from a single codebase.

This feature is particularly beneficial for businesses aiming to develop mobile loyalty apps that offer basic rewards and are accessible across multiple platforms.

Since its initial release in 2017, Flutter has gained immense popularity among experts globally due to its ease of use, high performance, and capacity to produce visually impressive and adaptable apps.

The use of Flutter in developing apps enables companies to gather customer feedback directly through the application. These opinions are crucial in understanding user interaction, allowing businesses to tailor their solutions effectively. Moreover, the ease of updating and maintaining apps developed with Flutter means that companies can swiftly respond to users' input, enhancing the overall customer experience.

Flutter's flexibility and efficiency streamline the development of any custom loyalty app, making it possible for developers to focus on creating engaging and user-friendly interfaces. These interfaces seriously influence customer behavior, as they determine how easily users can navigate the app.

Note here that the success of mobile loyalty apps often hinges on their ability to engage users and encourage regular interaction, which is facilitated by the thoughtful application of Flutter's extensive UI toolkit.

Key characteristics and benefits of Flutter

Building an app for a loyalty program can often be an expensive undertaking, with soaring costs and budgets stretching thin. To overcome this challenge, savvy organizations actively seek ways to reduce costs without compromising the quality or functionality of their solution.

And here's Flutter, which reduces app development time and costs by almost half and cuts maintenance costs.

With Flutter, you only need one team of developers to roll out the app. Be aware that the actual savings may vary depending on the complexity of the application and specific project requirements.

Now, let's browse some of Flutter's characteristics and benefits that can significantly reduce your financial and time investment in developing a mobile app for your loyalty program while providing an outstanding user experience. Whether you have limited resources or an optimized budget, Flutter will allow you to achieve your own loyalty app goals more efficiently while keeping costs in check.

1. A single codebase to manage them all

Thanks to Flutter's versatility, the development team can create cross-platform apps that run natively on multiple devices, including those for loyalty programs. It makes the apps look and feel native, meaning they blend well with the operating system and have a familiar user interface, which is crucial for maintaining the engagement of loyal clients.

As a result, developers can write code once and easily use it across multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, macOS, Linux, web, desktop, and others while ensuring a unified and highly engaging user experience. This approach empowers businesses to reach a wider audience, boost development efficiency, and deliver polished apps, such as loyalty program apps, that flawlessly run on various devices and operating systems. 

Note that using a single code base for both iOS and Android platforms can reduce costs by 50% and speed up development. Flutter's pre-built UI components further increase budget savings and speed up time-to-market for solutions such as loyalty programs, making it easier for companies to launch and maintain a scheme that effectively engages their members.

Also, by selecting Flutter, you not only streamline the development workflow but also minimize the overhead associated with maintaining and updating separate codebases. With Flutter's code reusability, maintaining separate development teams for different platforms can finally become a thing of the past. Instead, a unified codebase allows one team to work together seamlessly, supporting efficient cooperation and rapid development cycles. Such a unified approach will enable experts to focus on writing unique code without wasting valuable time duplicating efforts for each platform, especially when developing features for loyalty program apps.

Implementing any changes, fixes, and updates with a unified codebase becomes a breeze, as they can be effortlessly applied to all supported platforms simultaneously. This commitment to consistency minimizes the likelihood of platform-specific errors or discrepancies and ensures that loyal users receive the same high-quality treatment regardless of device.

Another advantage of reusable code in Flutter is the ease with which you can incorporate new functionalities. The development team can swiftly introduce exciting enhancements by writing code once and integrating it seamlessly across multiple platforms. This speeds up the development process and guarantees that all users, especially loyal clients across different platforms, can enjoy the latest features at the same time, fostering inclusivity and user satisfaction.

Ultimately, harnessing code reusability in Flutter simplifies the development workflow, enhances code maintainability, and optimizes costs associated with cross-platform development.

2. Pre-designed widgets and tools

Flutter is built upon a programming language called Dart, which Google also developed. Dart focuses on making it easy to create user interfaces — it has features specifically designed for building visually appealing and interactive parts of an app.

Flutter offers a wide range of extensive collections of pre-designed widgets and tools, as well as a rich selection of libraries and packages, making it simple for development teams to create beautiful and responsive apps. These widgets serve as building blocks that can be easily combined to create the visual elements of an app, while the tools provide additional capabilities for enhancing the app's functionality. Flutter packages enable developers to access device-specific components, interact with databases, and support networking.

Flutter's extensive and versatile widget library is an invaluable resource for developers. These pre-designed widgets can be smoothly integrated into loyalty apps, accelerating development while maintaining customization options. The library covers a vast array of UI requirements, ranging from basic components like buttons and text boxes to complex layouts and dynamic animations. By leveraging these widgets, developers can save time by avoiding the creation of UI components from scratch and focusing on the application's core functions, such as implementing loyalty programs to engage loyal users.

Moreover, Flutter's widget library empowers app creators with extensive customization options. The widgets can easily adapt to specific design guidelines, ensuring a consistent and visually appealing user experience. This is particularly beneficial for loyalty program apps, where a distinct and engaging interface can significantly contribute to a brand's identity and customer loyalty. The flexibility of widget styles, themes, and animations allows development teams to create interfaces that fluidly adapt to branding and user expectations, making the loyalty program more appealing to users.

The app's performance improves when Dart and Flutter are used together. Dart ensures efficient code execution and early error detection, resulting in a more reliable app. Additionally, Flutter's optimized widgets and tools enable fast rendering and smooth animations, delivering a seamless interaction design. For loyalty program apps, this means that users can enjoy a fluid and engaging experience, encouraging them to continue participating in the loyalty program and becoming even more loyal clients.

3. One click to reveal the progress 

Another of Flutter's remarkable features is its hot reload capability. This feature allows developers to immediately check out the impact of code changes on a running app without restarting or recompiling the entire project. 

This feature greatly increases productivity by enabling developers to experiment, troubleshoot, and adjust the look and behavior of the solution in real time. 

The effect? A fully streamlined development process that encourages iteration and experimentation with different designs and features.

4. A vibrant and supportive community of experts

Flutter benefits from a thriving community of creators who actively contribute to its growth and advancement. 

This robust ecosystem offers a wide range of packages, libraries, and resources, providing app creators with ready-made solutions and accelerating development. The community's support, knowledge-sharing, and continuous improvement efforts contribute to the overall strength of the Flutter framework.

5. Greater availability of qualified experts 

Flutter's reactive framework and widget-based architecture make it easy for developers to build complex user interfaces efficiently. The declarative nature of Flutter allows the development team to focus more on app logic and must-have functionalities rather than dealing with low-level platform-specific code. 

For Flutter app development, the hourly rates of skilled and reliable developers can be as low as about $30 per hour but can go as far as $200 per hour. Indeed, freelancers can be cost-effective for mobile app development with Flutter, especially for low-complexity projects. However, relying on a single freelancer may not be cost-effective if your mobile loyalty project requires many programming hours.

6. Development resources

One of the remarkable strengths of adopting Flutter for your mobile loyalty app development is its ability to optimize resources, leading to significant cost reductions.

In the traditional approach, building apps for iOS and Android requires separate teams, each specializing in their respective platforms. But Flutter changes the game's rules by enabling cross-platform development so that you can achieve the same results with a leaner, more cohesive development team.

Taken this way, a single team proficient in Flutter can seamlessly share code and handle the development for both platforms concurrently. Any updates or bug fixes can be implemented in parallel, saving valuable time and effort. This unified resource allocation approach translates into significant savings and improves team collaboration and coordination.

Long gone are the days of duplicating efforts or managing separate codebases for each platform. You can allocate resources precisely with a nimble team, ensuring an agile and streamlined development process.

7. App performance optimization 

Delivering a smooth and high-performance user experience is paramount when developing applications. Luckily, Flutter equips you with powerful techniques to optimize your app's performance. By implementing them, you can boost your loyalty app's efficiency while reducing infrastructure costs associated with hosting and maintenance.

One of the first techniques Flutter offers is code minification. By whisking away unnecessary characters like whitespace and comments from your source code, code minification reduces the overall size of your app's codebase. The result? Faster load times and improved performance. The smaller code size makes the application lightning-fast and contributes to lower bandwidth usage, which benefits users with limited data plans or slower internet connections.

Flutter also empowers you with the mighty technique of tree shaking. This technique optimizes business apps by meticulously analyzing the code and removing unused or redundant segments. This streamlines the loyalty solution, leading to improved runtime performance. Also, it eliminates overhead, resulting in quicker execution and reduced memory consumption. 

But Flutter doesn't stop there! It has an extra feature called ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation. This feature takes the developed code and translates it into a language that the devices can understand directly. This happens before the app is even run on the device. Think of it like translating a book from one language to another before you actually start reading it: you don't have to spend time interpreting it in your head. By doing this beforehand, Flutter can make the app start up faster and use less memory. It's like having a book that's already translated.

By optimizing your customer loyalty app's performance using available Flutter techniques, you can enhance its performance, skyrocket user satisfaction, and boost retention rates. Additionally, optimizing performance will alleviate the strain on your app's infrastructure, resulting in lower hosting costs and decreased maintenance efforts.

8. Integration with cross-platform analytics apps

When it comes to tracking and understanding the performance of your mobile loyalty solution, investing in separate analytics tools for iOS and Android can be a hassle, not to mention costly. But fear not! Thanks to the emergence of cross-platform analytics solutions that effortlessly integrate with Flutter, you can streamline the process and gain valuable insights into user behavior, app performance, engagement, and the effectiveness of your loyalty solution — all without incurring additional expenses.

By embracing cross-platform app analytics, you can consolidate your data-tracking efforts and effortlessly gather comprehensive metrics from both iOS and Android users. Such analytics tools are tailor-made to work fluently with Flutter and are incredibly beneficial for monitoring the success of loyalty apps. They provide a holistic view of your app's performance across various devices and platforms, empowering you to make data-driven decisions that enhance loyalty program strategies.

One of the tremendous benefits of using cross-platform analytics solutions is their ability to track and decipher user behavior, including how they interact with loyalty program features. These tools offer invaluable insights into the preferences and behaviors of loyal customers, shedding light on the features they engage with the most within the loyalty app, the paths they traverse, or their actions. Armed with this knowledge, you can uncover patterns and trends, allowing you to tailor your loyalty programs to better meet the needs of your loyal members.

Moreover, cross-platform analytics solutions enable you to closely monitor your app's performance across a diverse range of devices and platforms, including how effectively it supports your loyalty program app. You can keep track of metrics such as app crashes, loading times, or network latency, enabling you to identify and resolve any issues that may hinder the user experience. By proactively addressing performance bottlenecks, you can ensure your loyalty app operates flawlessly on both iOS and Android devices, increasing loyal customer satisfaction.

In addition to understanding user behavior and optimizing app performance, cross-platform analytics solutions also provide valuable insights into user engagement within loyalty programs. You can measure user retention, session duration, and conversion rates to gauge how effectively your loyalty app captivates users and encourages desired actions. 

This wealth of data can help you refine onboarding procedures, fine-tune marketing strategies, and implement features in your loyalty program app that amplify engagement, thus ensuring your loyal customers remain engaged and rewarded.

What brands are using Flutter in their mobile apps?

Flutter's efficiency and flexibility have attracted various leading brands, demonstrating Flutter's versatility and robustness. Companies such as Google, Alibaba, Tencent, BMW, Square, Philips, Realtor.com, Reflectly, Grab, and Open Loyalty leverage Flutter to enhance their mobile app experiences, highlighting the framework's broad applicability and role in transforming industry standards and user engagement.

Google

Flutter, developed by Google, is an open-source UI software development kit for crafting beautiful, natively compiled mobile, web, and desktop applications from a single codebase. This framework allows developers to build high-performance, high-fidelity solutions that feel natural on different platforms. Leveraging its own creation, Google integrates Flutter into several of its internal projects and consumer-facing products.

Here's a closer look at how Google uses Flutter.

Google Ads

Flutter is utilized within the Google Ads platform to enable a seamless user experience across different devices. By using Flutter, Google can maintain a consistent look and feel for its advertising platform while ensuring that the application is responsive and easy to navigate, regardless of whether users are accessing it from a mobile device or a desktop computer.

‍

Google Assistant

For Google Assistant, Flutter helps create engaging user interfaces that are visually appealing and highly functional. Flutter allows for smooth interactions and transitions within the Assistant, enhancing the overall user experience by making it more intuitive and responsive.

Google Pay

Flutter is also crucial in developing Google Pay, ensuring the app works seamlessly across iOS and Android devices. This is particularly important for a financial application where security, performance, and reliability are paramount. Flutter enables Google Pay to offer a unified experience with quick, smooth animations and transitions while making it easier for developers to implement new features or simultaneously make changes across all platforms.

Google's adoption of Flutter for these key products demonstrates its confidence in its capabilities and commitment to the framework. Also, this business move benefits Google and serves as a powerful endorsement of Flutter, encouraging other developers and companies to consider using the framework for their projects.

Alibaba

Alibaba Group, recognized as a leading multinational conglomerate, has strategically adopted Flutter, Google's UI toolkit, to develop and enhance applications across its diverse ecosystem. This decision underscores Alibaba's commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technology to refine and optimize the user experience on their platforms. 

By integrating Flutter into the development process, Alibaba can streamline the creation of visually appealing and highly functional applications for both their shopping and e-commerce platforms. This approach facilitates a consistent and high-quality user experience across different devices and operating systems and accelerates the time-to-market for new features and updates.

The adoption of Flutter reflects Alibaba's proactive stance on adopting innovative technologies to maintain its competitive edge in the global market, ensuring that their vast array of platforms remains accessible, user-friendly, and at the forefront of digital commerce innovation.

Tencent

Tencent, one of China's premier technology conglomerates, has increasingly adopted Flutter to engineer and launch various applications. Among the applications developed using Flutter are "Now Live," a dynamic live-streaming platform that caters to a broad audience with its interactive and engaging content delivery, and "K12 Education," an educational app designed to provide comprehensive learning solutions for kindergarten through 12th-grade students.

Flutter's ability to enable smooth and aesthetically pleasing user interfaces across multiple platforms has made it a preferred choice for Tencent. This aligns with the company's ambition to provide superior user experiences and innovate within the tech industry.

Also, Tencent's use of Flutter reflects a broader trend within the technology sector towards cross-platform development frameworks. By utilizing Flutter, Tencent benefits from faster development cycles, reduced costs, and the ability to rapidly deploy updates across all platforms simultaneously. This strategic move also positions Tencent to readily adapt to evolving market demands and technological advancements, maintaining their status as a leading innovator in the global technology landscape.

BMW

BMW, a globally acclaimed automotive manufacturer, has embraced the innovative capabilities of Flutter to develop their BMW Connected app. This strategic move underlines BMW's commitment to integrating cutting-edge technology to streamline vehicle management. The BMW Connected app serves as a pivotal platform for BMW car owners, offering a comprehensive suite of digital services that facilitate a seamless connection between the driver, their vehicle, and the surrounding digital ecosystem.

The app is designed to provide an array of functionalities aimed at improving convenience, safety, and the overall driving experience. It includes features such as remote services, which allow users to lock and unlock their cars, view their vehicle's status, and pre-condition the vehicle's temperature before driving. 

Additionally, the app offers real-time traffic information, route planning, and navigation assistance, leveraging BMW's ConnectedDrive services to ensure an optimized and efficient driving journey.

‍

Moreover, the BMW Connected loyalty app integrates personalized services based on the user's habits and preferences, enhancing the interaction between the owner and the vehicle. For instance, it can suggest departure times based on traffic conditions and personal schedules, ensuring timely arrivals. The app also supports integration with smart home devices, enabling users to control certain home functions directly from their vehicle, further extending the connectivity and convenience offered by BMW.

By leveraging Flutter, BMW enhances its digital service offerings and positions itself as a leader in the automotive industry's digital transformation. The BMW Connected app exemplifies how traditional car manufacturers are evolving into providers of comprehensive mobility solutions, embracing technology to meet the changing needs and expectations of modern drivers.

Square

Square, the prominent financial services and mobile payment company, has effectively utilized Flutter to develop and enhance its suite of applications, including the widely used Square Register or Cash App. 

The Square Register app, designed for business owners, simplifies the process of managing sales, inventory, and customer interactions. On the other hand, the Cash App allows individuals to send, receive, and invest money with ease, highlighting Square's commitment to providing secure and user-friendly payment solutions. The use of Flutter in these solutions ensures a smooth, rapid, and reliable performance, enhancing overall user satisfaction and engagement.

Also, Flutter's extensive library of widgets and tools has enabled Square to create visually appealing and highly functional apps — the ability to customize and animate UI components has allowed Square to offer a unique and engaging user experience, setting its apps apart from competitors.

Philips

Philips, a globally recognized conglomerate in health technology, has strategically leveraged Flutter to enhance its digital health solutions, particularly with the Philips Sonicare app. This move underscores Philips' commitment to merging cutting-edge technology with user-centric design. 

The Philips Sonicare app, developed using Flutter, serves as a pivotal element in Philips' oral healthcare strategy, providing users with personalized dental care guidance and real-time feedback on their brushing habits to improve oral health.

By adopting Flutter to develop the Sonicare app, Philips ensures consistent and efficient performance across iOS and Android and highlights the company's dedication to innovation in the healthcare sector. This approach facilitates swift updates and a unified brand experience, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. The app itself, equipped with features like tracking brushing time and offering customized dental care tips, reflects Philips' broader vision of improving lives through meaningful innovation.

Realtor.com

Realtor.com, a leading entity in the online real estate space, has made significant strides in enhancing user experience through technological innovation. Realtor.com has positioned itself at the forefront of digital real estate services by adopting Flutter for their mobile application development.

Beyond the technical advantages, Realtor.com's use of Flutter reflects its brand philosophy of innovation, accessibility, and user-centricity. The platform offers a vast array of listings, comprehensive property details, interactive maps, and advanced search filters, all designed to make the home buying, selling, or renting process as smooth and straightforward as possible.

By prioritizing a powerful yet intuitive app interface, Realtor.com enhances user engagement and satisfaction, reinforcing its position as a trusted source of real estate information and services.

Reflectly

Reflectly has positioned itself prominently within the digital wellness space as a personal development and mental health application. The core of Reflectly's brand revolves around its mission to help individuals navigate their emotions and thoughts through journaling and positive psychology.

By utilizing Flutter, Reflectly has been able to design a visually appealing and intuitive application that encourages users to engage in self-reflection and mindfulness practices. The app's design and functionality are geared towards making personal development accessible and engaging, with features such as personalized journaling prompts, mood tracking, and insightful analytics that help users understand their emotional patterns over time.

Moreover, Reflectly's brand identity is closely tied to its user-centric design and innovative use of technology to promote mental well-being. The application's aesthetic, characterized by its calming color palette and minimalist design, further reflects the brand's ethos of creating a serene and supportive space for self-exploration and growth. Through its Flutter-based app, Reflectly continues to make strides in making mental health practices more accessible and engaging for users worldwide.

Grab

Grab, an eminent brand in Southeast Asia, revolutionizes the way millions access transportation, food delivery, and digital financial services. Originating as a ride-hailing service, Grab has exponentially expanded its offerings, firmly establishing itself as a multifaceted platform that caters to a myriad of everyday needs.

By seamlessly integrating Flutter into its consumer mobile application, Grab has significantly enhanced the user experience across its services, including ride booking, food ordering, and the accrual of loyalty points.

Moreover, Grab's utilization of Flutter allows for quick iteration and deployment of new features, ensuring that Grab can swiftly respond to evolving market demands and user feedback. This agility has been instrumental in Grab's ability to introduce innovative services and maintain its competitive edge in a fast-paced digital ecosystem.

From introducing new payment methods in their digital wallet, GrabPay, to rolling out real-time health and safety updates, Grab leverages Flutter to stay at the forefront of technological innovation, enhancing their platform's functionality and user engagement.

Open Loyalty

We used Flutter to develop the white-label mobile loyalty app framework. This innovative approach allows brands to deploy personalized mobile applications tailored to their unique needs swiftly. These applications come fully equipped with a range of loyalty and gamification features designed to engage and retain clients effectively.

The platform's flexibility and adaptability make it an ideal solution for businesses looking to enhance their loyalty programs and strategies. By utilizing Open Loyalty, brands can introduce a variety of loyalty mechanisms, including point systems, personalized rewards, and personalized offers, all of which can be easily integrated into their mobile apps. This enables businesses to foster a stronger connection with their target audience, encouraging repeat transactions and enhancing satisfaction.

Moreover, Open Loyalty's use of Flutter for app development ensures a seamless and efficient process, allowing brands to go to market quickly with a high-quality mobile experience. This strategy saves time and resources and provides brands with a competitive edge in today's fast-paced digital landscape, where engaging customer loyalty programs are key to securing a loyal customer base.

Want to discover the market-proven mobile loyalty mechanics used by top brands to connect with their clients? Get inspiration from our recent article on high-performing mobile loyalty programs!

Summary

To sum up, choosing Flutter for your mobile loyalty application development offers a strategic advantage by consolidating efforts, streamlining the development process, and achieving significant savings. Flutter's prowess in creating customer loyalty apps for both iOS and Android, as well as web platforms, using a single codebase, minimizes development time and resources. The ability to maintain a singular loyalty program app across multiple platforms eliminates the need for separate codebases for each, saving valuable resources and increasing capacity.

Flutter's extensive library of pre-designed widgets can be customized to craft visually appealing and brand-specific interfaces for loyalty program apps, ensuring they stand out in a competitive market. The framework's support for animations, transitions, and effects allows for the creation of smooth and engaging user experiences, crucial for fostering customer loyalty through loyalty programs.

The increasing popularity of Flutter among leading companies, including Google, Alibaba, BMW, Philips, and eBay, highlights its effectiveness. These corporations leverage Flutter's cross-platform capabilities for their loyalty apps, reaching a broader audience while minimizing development costs. The framework's efficiency and versatility make it an ideal choice for businesses looking to develop a loyalty program app.

---

Your complete guide dedicated to planning, setting up, and launching a successful loyalty program is waiting. Get our mobile loyalty implementation checklist now!