Every Monday we invite you to join us for a wonderful adventure with Mobile App Success Stories. We must confess that we created this series with the purpose of presenting you the most effective ingredients for a successful app. Speaking of which, it would be a great moment to discuss Yummly, an amazing recipe app which helps users to solve the everyday dilemma of what to cook.
Brilliant Idea
Like in most of the cases, everything started with a simple need. We all love to eat delicious food but in the same time, we all have our likes and dislikes. David Feller and Vadim Geshel understood that all customers want to share their own preferences and this is the reason why they created in 2009 a food platform which allows users to gather their favorite recipes from the most prestigious culinary sites and blogs in a single place. Not only that, but during this period they worked very hard for improving the app in order to provide the best experience for their customers, amateurs, and foodies. You can find more about the evolution of this food startup from the press releases published over time. We will focus only on the techniques applied to the app.
Image Source: http://about.yummly.co/about/
How Yummly Did It
A great recipe app requires more than the necessary steps for creating the wanted dish. Let’s discover what made Yummly stand out of the crowded markets filled with hundreds of food apps.
Image Source: http://about.yummly.co/advertisers/
Artificial Intelligence
Yummly is based on machine learning algorithms which can reveal the recipes you need based on the ingredients you have in your fridge. For example, if you come home in an evening and you notice that you have a big bowl of Bartlett pears, Yummly will tell you what to do with them for a delicious dinner. Besides that, it is programmed to memorize your favorite tastes. The entire process completed by the semantic search engine is described on the official site of the company.
Image Source: https://dish.yummly.co/labs/data-science-yummly/
Personalization
But what differentiates Yummly from the rest of similar apps? Well, Yummly shows you only the recipes you want to see. If you are allergic to nuts then you won’t receive any dish that contains this type of fruits. In case you want to lose weight you won’t be tempted with appetizing pictures of heavy steaks with fries. On top of that, the entire app is created for allowing users to save time. When they search for healthy meals, when they follow the steps required for cooking it and also in the moment they share their thoughts about how good that food was, everything is simple and intuitive, tailored on customers’ needs.
Image Source: https://www.yummly.co/how-it-works/
Social Elements
From beginners to great chefs, everybody is encouraged to share their culinary adventure and their opinions about different dishes. In the same time, Yummly shows you how to pay attention to what you eat and how you eat it. One thing is to throw something on your plate and a really different situation is when you try to match the aspect of your food with the one found inside the app. Not to mention that great advices and improvements come from the comments published for every recipe.
App Invites
An effect of the social aspect is the possibility to build a referral program for your app like we explained before. Having the chance to search through more than 1 million recipes, users can also recommend the app to their family and friends. In a case study published by Google you can observe the effects provided by the fact that the team behind Yummly integrated App Invites, for creating the right landscape for customers to bring the people they know inside the app. Additionally, the results were visible due to the detailed reports displayed by Google Analytics.
Image Source: https://developers.google.com/app-invites/case-studies/Yummly.pdf
Cross – Promotion
A method to improve your app and also to increase your user base is to associate your brand with other startups that provide the same type of services. In this case, Instacart was a good match for Yummly, in 2015, because almost all the time users discover that they need some more ingredients for completing the dish. On these terms, the app allows them to create their shopping list and in less than an hour, Instacart delivers the items required. You can find all the details described at that moment by TechCrunch.
Image Source: https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/05/instacart-teams-up-with-yummly-to-deliver-recipe-ingredients/
Advertising Platform
With over 20 million users, Yummly provides advertising solutions for different types of brands to promote their products. With standard units related to the content displayed for users, big and small companies have the opportunity to attract customers on their favorite culinary platform. It is very difficult to compete with big players like Pinterest where the food category is one of the most popular. But a company like Yummly focused only on providing the needed services for customers when it comes to creating the most interesting dish for a family dinner, could be seen like the perfect targeting technique for all the persons interested in the cooking process.
Image Source: http://about.yummly.co/advertisers/
Bonus Tip: Think About The Future
After discussing the influence of Internet of Things for the mobile world you probably know how challenging is to implement this type of technology but in the same time, the results received are so rewarding. This is the reason why Whirpool Corporation, the giant company focused on creating smart kitchen appliances acquired Yummly this year, in May. Yummly will continue its activity from California as a subsidiary of Whirpool, as TechCrunch relates. Now, being part of a great empire, a plethora of opportunities appears for the growth of this cooking app. Instead of fighting alone with great competitors, it is better to take their weapons from powerful partners such as Whirpool.
Image Source: https://excitingcommerce.de/2017/05/07/whirlpool-ubernimmt-yummly-fur-connected-kitchen-vision/
FINAL THOUGHTS
We just presented you another recipe for a successful story, Yummly. Feel free to take these ingredients and to add your personal touch for creating your own version of an attractive app. Keep in mind that each user has its own taste when it comes to the interface but they all want the same thing: functionalities that follow the highest quality standards.
