Otto Group is one of the largest retail companies in Europe. Within the Group, the App Acceleration Center is responsible for app development and related issues. Steven has been supporting the team as a freelancer since September 2016.

The App Acceleration Center uses an internal open-source approach for app development to create new apps for the Group companies within eight weeks. Focusing on modular software and high software quality makes it possible to achieve this goal.

The apps use a hybrid approach and are built around the relevant responsive online shops. The app provides the user with a more pleasant shopping experience than a mobile browser does. Components such as search and navigation are natively implemented and therefore much more responsive than the web version. The user receives push notifications of current promotions and shares favorite articles with friends via messaging and social media. Web links (deep links) from e-mails and in the browser are opened automatically in the app, providing a uniform experience to the user. Using the existing responsive online shops is the easiest way for the App Acceleration Center to establish a reusable app platform that is (relatively) independent of the actual shop systems used by the Group companies.