Client

Services

UI/UX Design

React Native Development

UI/UX Design

React Native Development

Timeline

February to May 2022

Brief

A complete redesign and rebuild of Spiagge’s B2C mobile app.

A place in the sun

Every summer, as 30 million people head to the beautiful beaches of Italy, Spiagge is there to help them find the perfect spot.

Armed with new investments and ambitious plans for the future, Italy’s “Airbnb of the beach” asked Belka completely revamp their B2C mobile app for the new season.

Working with Belka was a great learning experience. We ended up adding many of their processes to our own daily routine.

João Carlos da Silva

Product Manager, Spiagge

The opportunity

Ready for the Airb’n’beach?

Everything was humming along nicely for Spiagge. Founded in 2013, the Italian startup’s white label booking app had over the years become the favorite of Italy’s beach clubs.

But in 2021 things got interesting. A group of tech-savvy investors came on board, bringing with them a big boost of ambition and capital. Their big plans included a pivot from B2B to B2C, a nationwide marketing and PR campaign, and a complete revamp of Spiagge’s mobile app, turning it into the brand’s primary touchpoint.

With their own small team busy working on the classic B2B product, Spiagge asked Belka to complete the B2C app in time for the summer season.

It's exciting to work on an app that will potentially be used by millions of people. And with Spiagge’s big ad campaign my mom finally got to see something I made on TV!

Massimiliano Bolognesi

Senior Product Designer, Belka

Strategy + design

How to get a beach body fast

It was clear from the start that the original version of Spiagge’s app had to be scrapped and completely rebuilt. With only three months to go, our team had to work fast and focus on the core functionalities.

Both budget and timeline were tight, but since we weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel, we could move design process quickly to high-level mockups without spending a lot of time on discovery and wireframes.

Sunny side up. Modern user interface design has already established basic patterns for apps like Spiagge. Instead of reinventing the wheel, our mission was rather to heighten the user experience, using fluid transitions and bouncy animations to make everything more joyful.

Lifeguards on duty. In an heroic effort to help Spiagge’s future developers and designers leave the office early, our team also created and updated lots of design system components, for consistency, simplicity and general peace of mind.

One codebase,
two apps

When our developers built Spiagge’s new app, their aim was to making it as future-proof as possible, and easy to maintain for years to come.

Their not-so-secret weapon: React Native, the versatile mobile app framework that speeds up development by using a single codebase which then compiles to both iOS and Android.

We love React Native. So much that we’ve used it on several projects, including apps for clients like Switcho, Fatture in Cloud, and Dipendenti in Cloud.

React Native is like killing two birds with one stone, I’m not joking. Once you’ve tried it, you can never go back.

Fabrizio Rizzonelli

Engineering Manager, Belka

So far, so good

Spiagge officially launched its brand new app in June of 2022 to great fanfare. It’s still early days but it looks like all the arrows are pointing in the right direction, with great reviews from users and media, and a huge jump in the number of happy users from a year ago.

App Store rating jumped from 3.5 to 4.7 after one week

Ranked among the best 10 Travel Apps in the Apple Store

105k Monthly Active Users since relaunch

With a boost of active users and double the number of bookings, the summer season couldn’t be off to a better start!

Gabriele Greco

CEO, Spiagge