Building Anchor: What We Learned About Loyalty Apps
No7 Engineering Team
Growth Architecture Unit
When we started building Anchor Loyalty, we'd already integrated dozens of loyalty apps into client stores. Most worked fine. None felt great. So we set out to build something better.
What's Wrong with Most Loyalty Apps
Performance Impact
Most loyalty apps load heavy JavaScript on every page. Points balances, tier badges, widget pop-ups—all nice features, but not when they add 300ms to your page load time.
Generic Experience
Points for purchases, discounts for points. That's the entire feature set of most apps. It works, but it doesn't differentiate your brand or create genuine loyalty.
Difficult Integration
Getting loyalty data into email campaigns, displaying points in custom theme sections, or connecting to headless frontends—these range from difficult to impossible with most apps.
How We Built Anchor Differently
Technical Approach:
- speedMinimal frontend footprint: Core functionality loads async, doesn't block rendering
- apiAPI-first design: Everything is accessible via API for custom integrations
- codeNative Hydrogen support: Built for headless from the start
- psychologyBehavioural triggers: Rewards based on actions, not just transactions
What We're Still Learning
Building a product is different from building for clients. With client work, you build what they need. With a product, you have to decide what everyone might need—and that's harder than it sounds.
We're iterating based on feedback from early users. Some features we thought were essential barely get used. Others we considered nice-to-haves turn out to be critical.
Where Anchor Is Now
We're live with a handful of stores, refining the experience based on real usage. It's not ready for the App Store yet—we want it to be properly good, not just good enough.
If you're interested in trying it early, or just want to give feedback on what you'd want from a loyalty app, we'd love to hear from you.
Interested in Anchor?
We're working with select stores during our beta period. If you're looking for a loyalty solution that doesn't compromise on performance, let's talk.
Learn more at AnchorLoyalty.comarrow_forward