Here’s How Lowe’s and Google Cloud Services Are Supercharging App Development
In the ecommerce world, we all know how important a great smartphone app can be when determined success or failure. While many people are happy to use their browser to access ecommerce platforms, the major preference is to engage with brands via a bespoke app.
In fact, research has shown that 90% of mobile usage time is spent in apps, with only 10% spent browsing the rest of the internet. When we turn our attention to the ecommerce space specifically, the contrast is even more stark with mobile app users spending an average 201.8 minutes per month shopping, compared to just 10.9 minutes/month for those shopping via bowser/website.
Of course, not every brand has the talent in house to create every piece of technology necessary for a fantastic smartphone app, which is why an increasing number of retailers are turning to third party providers for some, if not all, of it.
Lowe’s
As one of the country’s largest retailers of DIY and building materials, Lowe’s fully understands how important it is to provide a seamless shopping experience for its ecommerce customers. However, it knew it needed outside help to make sure its app experience was the best it possibly could be.
"If you need a washer and dryer, hardwood flooring, or a pallet of bricks, you can visit Lowe’s website or launch Lowe’s mobile app," said Director of Information Security Architecture at Lowe’s, Kyle Amboyer. "You can see your options, compare prices, and order what you need. You can even let Lowe's know if you’re going to pick up the item, if you want it sent to your home, or if you need a truck delivery. But have you ever thought about the technology it takes to offer you this convenience?"
Lowe’s had historically taken a buy over build attitude to software architecture, but decided it wanted to bring more of its app development in-house but would still require a third-party provider to ensure it could deliver an exceptional app in the timeframe it had set for itself.
Lowe’s settled on a microservices architecture with containers and your goal is to improve velocity, speed, and reliability and began talking with Google about its plans and how best a partnership between the two brands could help bring them to fruition. Google has a well-earned reputation for cloud services and Lowe’s knew this is where it wanted to host its new architecture.
Cloud-based
"As part of our new "build" approach, we wanted our development teams to be in control but still have a frictionless path to production," continued Amboyer. "That’s how we concluded that we needed a platform layer for integrating multiple tools and promoting best practices for CI/CD, security, and operations. It could stitch together logging and monitoring and tracing, so that the development teams that were building these microservices could use this platform while still really focusing on their business logic and their business goals."
A new internal platform dubbed Carbon was developed which incorporated several of Google’s technologies including, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Google Cloud's operations suite, and a host of other open-source plugins.
Bootstrapped with Lowe’s Google Cloud tenant, the brand-new platform would soon face the ultimate stress test – Black Friday.
"Black Friday ecommerce on Carbon was a success its first year — its second — and its third — with record sales and traffic, along with needed stability," added Amboyer. "The first Black Friday changed things for Carbon, and for Lowe’s. After reducing ecommerce and mobile app development and deployment time from weeks to hours, word got out."
Following these successes, all of Lowes.com was converted to run through Google Cloud and the Carbon platform. Higher availability, continuity, and multi-region functionality means Carbon can now deliver exceptional shopping experiences in East and Central regions and has been scaled to act as the enterprise platform for software delivery – on-premises, in-store, and in the cloud.
"Carbon has been an amazing success story," concluded Amboyer It has grown beyond our expectations in unlocking our technical transformation in addition to serving as a key enabler of our evolving culture toward DevOps. For everyone at Lowe’s who has a workload and is looking for the path of least resistance, Carbon is there.
Final Thoughts
App development is a tricky beast to master, and it often takes a great deal of transformation to change from a buy to a build mentality. However, when two powerhouse brands such as Lowe’s and Google come together to create technology-based experiences, the results are bound to impress.
Ecommerce app development is sure to be a hot topic at eTail Canada 2022, taking place in September, at the Hyatt Regency Toronto, ON.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.