What Separates Successful Apps From Average Apps?

What Separates Successful Apps From Average Apps?

As the smartphone market is growing day by day, a large number of businessmen are coming up with unique apps to rule the market. But are they able to do that? Are their apps successful or do they have an average app that’s placed somewhere on the marketplace? 

Well, first they need to understand the difference between a successful and an average app. So here are the points to build a successful app.

UI

UI really is the backbone of any mobile application. When the user installs the app for the first time, he/she starts to make some impressions about it form the onboarding page. The user interface needs to be as attentive as it can be. 

Play To The Strengths Of Mobile

A presentation by Nick Watt suggests that a good app “plays to the strengths of mobile”. In his eyes, this consists of five things: Spontaneous, Communications, Geo-sensitive, Short periods of use and Focused activity.

Shazam is a music discovery application that utilizes a smartphone's microphone to listen to the ambient music and correctly identify it.

When Shazam is launched it immediately displays a giant Shazam logo and asks the user to tap the screen to begin. When a song is playing somewhere, a person has no idea at what point it might stop playing, so time really is of the essence in that situation. That’s where Shazam comes to the rescue. Shazam wastes no time, elements are minimal and the main feature of the app is displayed front and center, conveying a very simple but effective call to action.

Adapt To A User Needs

Creating a successful app is one thing but to maintain that success is a real challenge for the mobile app development company. You need to release updates from time to time to keep the app in a nice and refined form. Failing that the user can uninstall your app and switch to a competitor’s app.

Avoid Jargons

Convey your thoughts in a clear and uncomplicated manner to your target audience. Clear communication is vital for the success of a mobile app. Only use what you know about your target audience to determine whether certain words or phrases are appropriate or not.

Make The Navigation Simple

App navigation should simple and straightforward so that users of all age groups could understand its flow easily. That allows users to get through the primary app functions in a really swift manner. Unfussy navigation will bring you new users when the word about app’s utility reaches them.

Make Your App Appear Fast And Responsive

Loading time is the most important part for the UX. As technology progresses, we get more impatient, and today 48% of users expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. If the app takes more time the user might get frustrated and leave the app or uninstall it soon after. 

Optimize Push Notifications

Annoying notifications is the most common reason to uninstall an app. Don’t send push notifications just because you have the access to send it. Each notification must have some values and should be well timed.

Conclusion

To make an app successful you need to understand what your user needs, the only way to interact with the user is to take regular feedback from them about the app. If one user gets satisfied you may not have to spend heavily on the marketing as he/she will suggest his/her siblings to download the app and obviously the same cycle repeat with every user. 

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Various Phases In A Mobile App Development Process

Various Phases In A Mobile App Development Process

It’s easy to judge a mobile app by the looks and its features. But have you ever thought about how mobile apps are made? Making a mobile app isn’t a rocket science but making a successful mobile app is no easy trick as it is a process involving quite an extensive pre-planning. If you find yourself with a lot of question and not a lot of answers with regards to your new app idea then this blog is for you. Here you’ll learn about the key phases of a mobile app development process. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the guide. 

Research

As we all know that it all starts with a unique idea. During this, you need to do the research and a little bit of brainstorming. After doing this you need to ask questions of yourself like for, who is the target audience of this app? What platform will you choose? Are you gonna make money from this? Having all the answers to will help you move on to the next phase.

Mental Prototyping

Once you have done the research, the next step is to do the mental prototyping of the app and you need to draw your app idea into sketches or jot it down somewhere.

Also, you can take the feedback of relevant people to get a perspective of what they think about your idea.

Assessment Of Technical Feasibility 

Now that you have clearly defined your app idea, you can think about the app development itself. But the most important question is on which platform you need to build it first? You need to choose the platform wisely as that will decide what kind of audience you are going to get.

Building A Prototype

One can not define the touch experience until he/she could actually touch and feel the app. In order to make that happen, you need to make a prototype of that app so that, you can actually see how things are working. 

Design And Development Of The App

Before moving to the coding part you need to first design your app. For that, you need to consult a UI/UX designer or simply a mobile app development company. A UI/UX designer can create the look and feel of your app and the coder will make the same design as the UI/UX designer will provide him.

Testing

This step is to check whether your app is ready to go out to the market or not. For testing, you need to get some target users to help you to test the App.

UAT Testing: 

For user experience testing you need to put your App in the hands of some users that you are targeting.

Beta Testing: 

Make your App is available for the beta testing by adding it on the marketplace as a beta version. The feedback from the beta users will help you determine if your App’s functions are working well in the real world environment.

Launch

After the successful testing its time to submit the app to the app stores for approval. However, this is not the end. You need to provide time to time updates to the users of your app so that they won’t face any problem and stay satisfied with the app.

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3 Ways To Analyze Your Mobile App’s Usage

3 Ways To Analyze Your Mobile App’s Usage

In today’s world, we are experiencing new business entrepreneurs who are running mobile apps as a business by developing some useful and unique smartphone apps. The work doesn’t end here, the real work is to manage the app as per user needs and giving him/her time to time updates. But the real question is how do you find out what problems the users are facing and more importantly how can you solve them through the app? Well, I have the answer that might help you in analyzing your mobile app usage: 

Know Mobile App Performance

It is easy to find a bug in the development phase, but it may have a negative impact on the user who finds a bug after installing it for the first time. In such conditions, some in-app analytics solutions can help the app owners and mobile app development companies. Before launching your app to the market you need to keep in mind some of the things which I am sharing down below:

• App Start-Up

How much time your app takes to start up? It is the first performance parameter evaluated by the user. As a thumb rule, after the first tap on app icon the first screen should be shown in 1-2 seconds.

• App crashes

It is normal if an app is getting crashed because an app usually crashes on 1-2% crash rate. To calculate the app crash rate you need to find average app crashes per app load/launch of the app.

• App load per period

It is related to a number of transactions or calls over a definite period so an app can bear load changes without slowing down.

• End-to-End App Latency

It is used to measure end-to-end response time to applications, which are powering API. 

• Network Errors

It is HTTP error or service provider errors occurring when the app is interfacing to the network service.

In-App Feedback

You have seen that some users have shared their reviews in the marketplace. But do you really think that app store rating can do the trick when it comes to insightful techniques? Not really. Because we are not sure that the person who is giving the feedback is using the app in reality or not. For this reason, only there is a need for In-app feedback. We will get only the honest review of those users who are using the app.

Tools To Measure Mobile App Performance

• Robotium(Android)

It is just like Selenium for Mobile Apps. The tester can record and play frequent steps that are required to perform testing.

• Monkey Runner(Android)

Monkey Runner can run tests on the real devices which are connected to a PC or emulators. It has an API, which allows controlling a smartphone, a tablet or an emulator from outside of Android code.

• Automator (Mac)

Automator is an application developed by Apple for Mac OS devices. It implements drag and drop creation of workflows for automating repetitive tasks into batches for quicker alteration. 

Final thoughts

When it comes to analyzing a KPI as nuanced and qualitative as usability, freelancers and product managers of a mobile app development company need to go beyond the surface level, so that they don’t miss any bug in a smartphone app and can give a seamless experience to there users.

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3 Ways to Kickstart Your Mobile App Development Business With Low Investment

3 Ways to Kickstart Your Mobile App Development Business With Low Investment 

The mobile app development industry is growing at a rate of 43% per year and shows no signs of slowing down. This represents a huge opportunity for business persons bigger than it's ever been before. Whether you know how to code or not you can definitely try your luck in an industry that’s said to involve a mammoth 16 billion dollars on the mobile app development services. What’s interesting is that this gig may not involve all your time. You could try app development for part-time or full-time, and go on to build an awesome portfolio.

Sign up as a developer:

This is the first step towards the mobile app development business. As there are two major platforms through which the user can download the app i.e Google Play store and iOS AppStore. Upon app submission to the App store, you’ll be entitled to approximately 70% of the selling price, while the rest will be kept by the Store as the operating fee. In order to get into the game, you need to enroll in the Apple iOS developer program which will charge 99$ per annum and for Android, you need to sign up for there Developer Console, which will cost $25 as a one time fee.

Build your app:

If your coding skills are not good and you want to develop an app that will feature on the app store, then here are some tools I am sharing with you to build an app:

Appry.io: Appery.io is a cloud-based application development platform that provides integrated visual design, development, deployment, and integration services at one place. It’s one of a kind platform that provides both the front-end tools and also back-end services. 

Good barber: Good barber’s basic plan starts at $15/month. It has some great looking, original templates, but the fact they are highly customizable, with tons of fonts and feature layouts in it means you can truly create an app to call your own. 

Appy pie: Appy pie gives you an option to add 56 types of features or pages to your app. These are listed in categories such as Social, eCommerce, Contact, and information. Most of them are straightforward, for instance, adding a quiz or an about us page. Its basic plan starts at $15/month.

Submit your app to the AppStore: The moment you finish the development process and the testing of your app, you need to upload it on the AppStore. In Google Play, it can take 30 min to 4 hrs minimum to upload an app and in case of an AppStore, it can take 1-2 days or maybe even longer.

Conclusion:

You might have thought that it will be hard to develop an app without the knowledge of coding but that’s entirely true. After reading this blog I can guarantee that you can easily build a mobile app using all the given tools and start an app development business with low investment. If you’re still confused, you could contact a top-notch mobile app development company for more information.

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Outsourcing Mobile App Development Company

Reasons To Outsource Mobile App Development

New startups are emerging all over the world almost everyday. No wonder why the app market is flooded with mobile apps that serve nearly every business vertical. To cater this growing demand for mobile applications, we are also seeing a great number of mobile app development companies coming up. But when a business decides to finally develop a mobile app that would help them scale, the first question they need to answer is : whether they should develop their mobile app in-house or outsource it? 

According to a survey, 90% businesses cited that outsourcing is crucial to their growth. Let’s dive into the reasons one may or may not opt to outsource their mobile technical project.

Outsourcing App Development

Pros

1. Cost:

Outsourcing your mobile app development to an established mobile app development company can save you a great amount of initial setup costs including recruitment, training, licensing, infrastructure and so on. Hiring an expert for your project offers the ease of starting the process that too at an affordable price.

2. Efficient Delivery: 

When you work with an experienced company you can be assured about the results since they have an established workflow and communication process. This results in higher productivity and better efficiency making sure your mobile application is robust and is delivered well on time.

3. You get to focus on actually running your business:

From strategizing the project workflow, to delivering it to the market, an experienced app development company frees up your schedule and makes sure you have one less thing to worry about.

4. Save Time:

Time is one of the most important assets for every entrepreneur. Outsourcing your project to a team of experts saves you a lot of time that you might end up spending on tasks like developing a strategy for your project workflow, finding the right developers for your team etc. 

Cons:

1. Control:

Since you are outsourcing your project, you may not have a complete control over it as you are working with a third-party. Nevertheless, knowledgeable and accomplished companies make sure they communicate everything well with you and be clear of your vision and expectations.

2. Privacy and Idea Protection:

You may be worried about your trust being breached by a company that does not share the same ethos as you. Idea protection is one of the major concerns especially for startups that thrive to bring an innovative idea to life. But a professional mobile app development company would go an extra mile to protect your idea, by implementing steps like signing up a non disclosure document with you before they proceed with anything. You must make sure you confirm these things before you decide who to outsource your project.

With “mobile-first” economy booming, mobile applications are becoming an inevitable part of modern businesses and outsourcing projects has time and again proven beneficial for them. The decision to entrust a technical firm may work out great for you as you will get to work with experts of the industry and learn a lot from them. But do not forget to do your share of research to find out the mobile app development company that is the right fit for your business.

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Tactics To Market Your Mobile Apps

Tactics To Market Your Mobile Apps

The revolution of mobile apps has revolutionized the entire world since the start of it. The breadth and the speed at which mobile apps have penetrated the industry has created mountains of revenue with every surpassing feature it offers every day. 

 

With hundreds of apps being launched every day in the market, only a few manage to stand out. Mobile apps could easily get lost in the digital vines if not marketed with proper strategy and implementation. Marketing in recent times has helped mobile apps to extend the company’s presence by a making a place of its own. Through marketing, customers get an easy and convenient way to access the products. Therefore, out of all the things combined, its the marketing strategy of the mobile app that provides a unique edge in the market. 

In this blog, we are going to give various proven marketing tactics that will reshape the marketplace of your mobile apps. 

PRE-LAUNCH:

• Right Mobile App Developer

Despite all the budget you set aside in marketing your mobile app, if your app is not able to keep the users glued to the app then all the efforts are worthless. To find the right expert mobile app developer is important to overcome the technical and design glitches.

• Make your app Social

Social media has quickly become an open door to every marketing strategy. Social media over the years have provided incredible benefits and growth opportunities by targeting the right audience. The regular updates through social media increase awareness, build loyalty and increase traffic. Therefore, social media is the easiest and convenient method to outreach audience. 

• Focus on the On-going trends

Nothing in this market is permanent. Neither are the trends. With the changing trends, it is important to chase the trends to stay ahead of the public. Monitoring the trends can help you understand the trends to connect with the market more easily. 

LAUNCH:

• Engage the Potential Customers- Influencers Outreach

Reaching out to the influencers of the respective genres is the new and successful method of marketing. The mix of the right influencer and the right product can help take your marketing strategy to the next level.

• Encourage Referrals

There is no other strategy that works better than the word of mouth. Referrals always have a positive effect on the bottom-line. It encourages the sales number that helps you reap benefits in the future.

• Paid Strategy

Because of the overcrowdedness of content on social media, it has become important to make a different strategy, which directly reaches the steps of the targeted audience. Well, paid strategy gives an extra edge with features like Facebook ads and campaigns etc too. 

POST-LAUNCH:

• Focus the KPI’S

KPI acts like a compass managing all your business strategies. KPI’s are used to determine how well your company is performing in the market. It acts as an elixir to work on the improvements required. 

• Improve from the feedback

Once you have launched the mobile app in the market feedbacks works like a lifeline. Through the customer's feedback, one can work on the weak elements and rectify them. 

Closing Thoughts:

The ultimate goal of any mobile app is to generate revenue, this is when the role of marketing comes into play. Therefore, to understand the working and growth of mobile apps, mobile app development company should marketing the respective product is important to meet the set goals and objectives. From these strategic metrics, one can keep track of the acquisition, engagement, retention stages and conversion rates of the mobile app. 

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