2021, a GoodBarber year in review

2021 marked a few milestones for us. 
Amid dealing with a world that is still having to learn how to go about with the COVID-19 pandemic, we've worked hard to provide you with a more and more powerful tool to help you run successful businesses. Both the Shopping App and Classic App platforms welcomed new features and improvements. 
We've also celebrated a big birthday and brought new talents to our team :) 

Let's see our key 2021 events. 

On November 14th, we celebrated our 10th anniversary. A lot has happened since the official launch of GoodBarber in 2011. From the first steps with Webzine Maker and Duo Apps to going international in 2013, GoodBarber has evolved along the way.
During these past 10 years, as pioneers in the no-code domain, we've constantly been upgrading our platform, adapting to the new needs of a society more and more digitalized (new features, eCommerce apps, etc). 

We've also spent time on passion projects. Amongst these projects, Roboticamp, robotics and coding classes on Lego Mindstorms Ev3 robots for young Corsican children. The idea being of creating an interest in technology and programming in future generations. 
Another goal motivating our founders is to create and promote a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem in Corsica. Campus Plex, our headquarter in Ajaccio created in 2009, was one of the first co-working spaces in France, and a new Campus Plex 2.0 is underway. 

We look forward to the next ten years and to continue bringing the best technology available on mobile and desktop to everyone who wants to be part of this expanding digital world. 

With still the idea of providing you with a powerful and intuitive tool to make the best mobile and web technologies accessible to you, we've created various content such as online help and video tutorials to guide you in the creation of your app. 
But for us, it's important that you succeed in creating your project easily, but it's also crucial that this project is a success and that it brings you a real added value. So we decided to create a platform that will give you the keys to make your app a success: the GoodBarber Academy. 

GoodBarber Academy is more than just tutorials. It offers courses on Shopping `and Classic apps, but also in design, business, project management or even communication. You'll find courses and quizzes to develop and validate your GoodBarber expertise. 

If you haven't done so yet, you can register to the Academy here:
https://academy.goodbarber.com
 

Today, the CampusPlex houses mostly GoodBarber and a few digital companies, but there is a demand for more players to be grouped together in the same location. Thus, the construction of a new workspace, called CampusPlex 2.0 is underway. It was launched in the form of a call for projects aimed at young Corsican architects. The idea, true to GoodBarber's DNA, is to offer young architects an opportunity to express their talent on a large-scale project. CampusPlex 2.0, which is scheduled for delivery in 2023, will bring together a critical mass of actors involved in the development of the digital sector in Corsica on nearly 2,000m2 in the heart of Ajaccio.

Our offices will be expanding also to house our growing family. New team members have joined us this year in every department  (developers, social media manager, SEO specialist) in all our locations. Some are brand new to GoodBarber while others joined us after successfully completing their internship with us. 
We were also lucky to be able to have all of the teams and their new hires from NYC, Lisbon, and Coimbra come visit us in our Headquarters in Ajaccio. Perfect time for some fun team building activities :) 

In 2021, we published a total of 98 projects for both the Shopping and Classic platforms. These new features or improvements are the result of your feedback (thank you!) and new developments planned by our teams. 
For example, the option to enable or disable the autoplay and auto-loop in your podcast sections and the integration of a WordPress blog to your shopping app come directly from your suggestions to our support team. 

One of the most popular features published this year is without a doubt the Zapierconnector for both Shopping  and Classic apps. 
Zapier is the perfect no-code automation tool that will help you save time by delegating repetitive tasks to external online services. 

For our Shopping App:

• Along the lines of Zapier and providing tools to facilitate the management of your shop, developers were delighted to see the arrival of our Public API.  This offers endless possibilities to optimize logistic management or increase their online presence.  You can find examples of solutions used by some of our clients in this article. 
• My GoodBarber Shop Companion  is a completely different tool to help online shop owners manage their orders directly from their smartphones. This brand new app allows you to manage all your orders without having to connect to your back office: push notifications to alert you of all new incoming orders, change the status of an order, view all the order and client's details. All done from your smartphone. 
• Another very popular feature: importing and exporting a catalog with images. Perfect If you're transferring your products from other eCommerce platforms and or have a large catalog, this update to our existing import/export add-on gives you a quick way to import your product images.
• On the admin side of your admin, we updated thetax management settings . This advanced settings option is for our clients located in Europe mainly. It allows you to manage your tax rates by products and per region in addition to the global country rate. 

For our Classic Apps:

• A design update  for the Header with 3 different navBar heights.   Small for a classic header or when the need to emphasize your brand is not your primary goal. Medium offers a slight design variation, perfect if your logo is larger or if you want to lighten the overall visual of the app. Finally, the large option offers the possibility to add a short description under the title of your app or your logo. You can also "unhook" the headers of each section to add different texts for each section if needed.
• The latest update to our Live+ add-on is the addition of the Sleep Mode.  A very popular feature amongst podcast listeners, it allows your users to set a timer to shut down the streaming. It's the favorite feature of one of our clients, Radio Marca Barcelona.
• Already available on Shopping Apps, Universal Links  are now also available on Classic Apps. Introduced in 2015 with iOS 9, Universal links are Apple's method of launching apps on iOS  when linked from a website. Android App Links are Google' s equivalent to Apple's Universal Links. They work in a similar way and immediately open the corresponding content in your Android app or web page. 

With the GoodBarber Academy live, we also wanted to make some of our already existing resources more accessible. This is why we added our Video tutorials and online help to our website. 
Our tutorials were previously available on our YouTube Channel ( and still are) as well as in our help guide. This online guide was accessible from a GoodBarber app back office, but now it can be consulted directly on our website too. 

 We've also recently launched the German  and Dutch  versions of our website. Our large community of users in Germany and the Netherland was already enjoying having their back office and apps in their respective languages, and now our website follows. 
GoodBarber's website is now in 7 languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Dutch. 
 

To round up our year in review, here are your 3 favorite blog posts published this year:

• It starts with finding a name. It's not easy to name an app and especially finding a name that will represent your brand and make you stand out in the crowded Stores. This article gives you all our tips and best practices to choose the perfect app name for your app .
• Once your app is complete, it's time to start the publication process. This article explains exactly how to publish your app on Google Play and the App Store 
• Let's not forget about monetizing your app and more specifically how to display your own ads in your app