February 2019 - anteelo

Best Practices for Mobile App Onboarding in 2020

Posted on 28/02/201921/06/2021 by Tushar

You might remember the days before the brilliant concept of onboarding was introduced.

How puzzling it was to figure out an app on your own. As if it was a game of guessing about which option directs to where, what it does, how to do certain things, etc. – the list runs long.

In a hurry? Jump directly to –

Table of Content:

What is Mobile App Onboarding?
How many types of Onboarding are there?
Benefits of using App Onboarding
Mobile App Onboarding Best Practices Checklist [2020 Updated]
Live Examples of App Onboarding Done Right

However, the ordeal was over when mobile app onboarding started to gain momentum. It assisted users in navigating through the app with ease and explored its features and functions. Almost all the industry-giants are having a sip of this elixir of a concept and are obtaining remarkable conversion rates.

Wait, did we just lost you there?

No problem, let’s take it from the top, starting from what is on-boarding to what are the best onboarding practices for 2020.

What is Mobile App Onboarding?

App Onboarding is an efficient method used by organizations to enable users to comprehend your app and its functions. It is a walkthrough process or a tutorial that is meant to help users interact with the app and easily figure out what that particular app does and what they can achieve by continuing to use it.

Essentially, it is a series of screens that guide users through the app’s interface. Now, the mobile app onboarding screens typically have three purposes for which they are being used rigorously:

To enlighten the users about the utilitarian functions and benefits of the app.
To enable the users to register on the app via a login option.
It is aimed to gather useful profile data of the users, later used to offer personalized notifications and content.

How many types of Onboarding are there?

There are essentially three types of best mobile app onboarding that help fulfill these distinct objectives.

1. Progressive

This is one of the app onboarding best practices that displays new information on the screen while users progressively navigate through the app. It is in a way a step by step process directing and encouraging the users to take actions. The information depicted is relevant to the specific page.

2. Function-oriented

It is a mobile application onboarding approach that is typically focused on app functionality and explaining users the ways to operate the app. The function-oriented approach ensures the demonstration of common and rudimentary actions performed in the app to the users.

3. Benefits-oriented

As the name clearly states, this approach is employed to showcase the benefits of the app or the value the users are expected to gain by using the app. The basic aim of this approach is to increase conversions. It helps in describing what the app does without elaborating on how to use the app.

Now as you know the types of mobile applications onboarding prevailing in the market, let’s take a look at the benefits they offer before moving to the core part of the article. Aka, Mobile application onboarding best practices checklist.

Benefits of using App Onboarding

1. Positive User Experience

You wouldn’t want your app to just lay there in the user’s phone not being used for months, or worse yet, being uninstalled. To ensure active users on your app, onboarding comes in handy. As the first user interaction plays a pivotal role in deciding whether the user will use your app again or not, you need to give them the best app onboarding experiences.

Guiding the users via onboarding on how to use the app and what features it possesses, will help them navigate with ease and they won’t feel lost. They get a fair idea of why they should use the app and most importantly how to use it efficiently.

Once you get this right, you will see how amazing the benefits of onboarding are.

2. Proper utilization of features

It is a given that it takes some time for users to get used to your app and figure out their way around it. Sometimes, users are unable to make themselves familiar with certain features on their own, which is a great impediment in our view for your app to increase conversion. Practicing the best onboarding approaches resolves this issue before it has a chance to arise.

3. Increases App Retention

Onboarding is highly crucial for making your app an absolute favorite of the users. You ask how it does it? Well, when you provide users with insights into your app and direct them towards effectively using its features and functions, the users are inclined to stay with your app. Hence, it improves the app retention rate by multi-folds.

Mobile App Onboarding Best Practices Checklist [2020 Updated]

Here are the top app user mobile onboarding best practices that will point the scale in your direction.

1. Prioritize Value Proposition

It is a belief that by displaying all the right cards to the users, you can convert them into active users. Meaning, by showing all the best features of your app you can entice users into using your app. However, it will be more effective if you first highlight the value proposition of your app.

Rather than flaunting your app’s features first, start with explaining what the user will gain by using your app. It will not only encourage them to use your app in the future but also will assure them that the app is useful and serves what it claims.

After this, you can go on with showing the prominent features and functionalities of your app that will assist in completing the tasks the users plan to accomplish.

2. Request Only Mandatory Information

It wouldn’t make sense if your app is about, say learning languages, and you are asking questions about their favorite books, would it? In this case, you would need to ask for relevant and most crucial information. A report supports this statement as it shows almost 60% of the users do not install an app or uninstall it later once they feel the app is asking for too much personal information.

Also, make sure not to bombard them with excessive questions. In short, try to make your question’s list as concise and precise as possible. This is one of the most effective onboarding techniques to boost app user engagement.

3. Compact Onboarding Screens

A tediously long and extensive user onboarding process may overwhelm the user to an extent that they might not use your app or end up finding a substitute. You neither should use text-heavy explanations nor add a foray of screens.

What you should do is to employ progressive onboarding approach and use app screenshots and illustrations to convey the message. Also, see the fact that you only introduce a single feature on each screen. In fact, you can use coach marks to help users understand how the app works and how to steer in it.

You can also make this approach more attractive by placing tutorials and gamifying the whole user experience.

4. Concise and Simple Sign-Up Process

No one likes to spend excess time on the application onboarding process which is also mentioned in the report by The Manifest. So, the more concise your login process, the better.

Providing the options of logging in with other accounts such as Facebook or Google is a major time saver and a popular strategy among the users. It decreases a significant amount of friction in the user onboarding process introduced by the sign-up mandate.

5. Request for Permissions

Asking for permission is an important part of business ethics, especially when it is about users’ personal data and information. Now, if you have an app that requires a camera or microphone facility, then instead of just taking things into your hand, it should be a mandate to first ask for the consent.

If the user trusts your app or wants to continue using its features, they will agree. Moreover, users are more likely to respond positively to permissions requests if they understand what they will gain by doing so.

6. Promote App Content Preview

Promoting app content preview is also one of the onboarding app best practices to consider in 2020 and beyond. This is because a sign up option can act as a barrier between your app and the user. And therefore, it is always better to give the users access to the features of your app before flatly asking them to sign up.

For instance, if you own an eCommerce app, then let the users go through the products offered on your website, and when they want to make a transaction, they can simply login then. Or, you can enable the login option after the users have discovered your app.

7. Make Use of Empty States

Empty states refer to the screens which show when users have not performed any activity or no content has been added yet. You can use these empty states to your advantage by making them encouraging. Instead of leaving a blank space, you can educate, guide, and promote users to take action.

For instance, Instagram displays “No posts yet” instead of just leaving it blank. This way it encourages users to initiate any action and use the app further.

8. Use Visual Hints for Guidance

Instead of hand-holding customers, while helping them explore the app you can employ progressive visual hints. All you have to do is strategically place the hints on the places where you predict users may get stuck while browsing the app. This way, you not only avoid tedious and monotonous instructions but save the time of users in reading them, which can rather be spent on using the app.

9. Preach Personalization

Why wait to show your personalization to customers in your app’s features, when you can give them a taste of it in the onboarding process only. Many popular apps personalize the content of their app based on individual preference in the starting.

Let’s take Spotify for instance. No wonder it is huge among the users as

it provides them with choices based on language, genre, artists, etc. to start personalizing the content referred to them since the start.

10. Take advantage of Success States

Just like the Empty States, Success States prove to be a great leverage for engaging the user on your app. They create a positive impression of your app in the users’ minds. These states refer to the screens or popups that show appreciation after a task is performed.

For example, pop-ups including emoticons or animations congratulating the users once they achieve something in the app or complete an action for the first time.

11. Test before Final Implementation

Anything is the sum of its whole. Your app will be considered remarkable when it is perfect overall. How different elements seem together once integrated is what makes an app great and appealing. In which case, it is crucial to test and measure the user onboarding flow for your mobile app on different screens and monitors to make sure the transition to each screen is seamless and smooth.

12. Include A Balanced Mix Of Multiple Channels

Using several channels to enhance the effectiveness of your onboarding procedure is an ideal way to encourage users to come back to your app, especially in the case of Retail apps. You can use channels like emails, push notifications, and in-app messages to remind the users of any incomplete action on the app like an unattended cart or simply send gentle reminders.

13. Monitor and Track (liquid state)

Keeping tabs on app usage and analytics is an incredible way to determine where users are facing problems in the onboarding flow and app.

Tracking these problems will provide you insights on where you need to improve in order to provide a smooth app onboarding experience. One should not ignore it as it is one of the prominent deciding factors whether your app is preferred by the users or not.

14. Provide CTA

Once your onboarding is about to complete, it is recommended to incorporate a CTA at the end. It provides a natural step for users to take the next step. A contextual and well-designed CTA would ensure the involvement of the users in the app.

15. Offer the choice to Skip

Providing different and alternate choices is what users around the world appreciate the most. Some users might like to skip the whole app onboarding process for some reason, so giving them this choice will instantly improve your app’s reputation and they might continue to use it in the future.

Live Examples of App Onboarding Done Right

1. Slack

Slack is an app designed specifically to facilitate communication between teams of small and large enterprises alike. It displays its features right when users open the app. Slack practices value-oriented onboarding which can be seen in the four walkthrough screens. It allows users to see how they can establish communication and share data among teams via the app.

2. Reddit

Reddit is one of the most famous QnA apps ever. Its onboarding process is exemplary – the reason why the app is here in our list.

It provides the “Skip for now” option which allows users to skip the process of account creation and login, immediately allowing them to explore the app and have an amazing user experience.

Moreover, Reddit also performs another one of the onboarding process best practices, which is asking for permission for sending notifications.

3. Calm

Calm is a popular meditation app helping users around the world with problems such as stress, irregular sleeping patterns, anxiety and more. The first onboarding screen in the app familiarizes users with its features and value-proposition such as sleep stories, breathing programs, guided meditation and so on.

Then it smoothly takes the user to another screen which allows them to set goals, for instance, choosing the top areas of improving, developing, building, learning, etc. It is after two screens that it asks users to signup via different platforms and asks for permission.

Higher conversion and retention rates of your app are certain once you hone these best app onboarding practices for 2020 and successfully implement them in your app. By imbibing incredible features along with the onboarding flow into the app, you double the chances of your app’s popularity.

The Digital Port: Transforming an ancient economic hub without disrupting workers’ lives

Posted on 27/02/201921/06/2021 by Tushar

Today’s ports are struggling to manage the massive volume of containers arriving on giant vessels. Industry leaders are looking for new ideas to cope, but it’s hard to find answers that satisfy everyone.

The roots of the problem are multifold. Most obvious is the logjam that’s created when a modern ship laden with tens of thousands of containers arrives in port. Finding a spot to stack the large cargo is a problem. But the bigger issue is a matter of velocity. One-by-one, thousands of trucks enter and exit congested urban locations to drop off empty containers or pick up new loads. While freight rail is beginning to move an increased share of containers, the majority still arrive and leave the land-side of the port one or two at a time.

In an effort to reduce wait times and move containers faster, some container terminal operators are turning to waterfront robots to increase capacity and velocity while reducing cost. This type of automation has great potential, but we need to apply the same design thinking to the systems around the automation to realize the full potential of digital transformation.

A better way

So how do ports fully realize the goals of automation while optimizing the work environment and productivity of today’s port workers? First, we should consider all the parties involved:

Truckers who assume the costs for delays in picking up loads and dropping off empty containers.
Dock workers’ labor unions who want their members to participate in the benefits of automation and upskill the value of their members.
Terminal managers who want to maintain a lean staff for profitability but also need to increase capacity and velocity of operations.
Manufacturers and receivers who want lower demurrage and detention fees that result when there are delays in picking up freight and returning containers ready to ship.
Consumers who want faster deliveries.

Fortunately, there is a way to satisfy all parties and it begins with a modern Port Community System (PCS). A PCS can digitally tie together the Coast Guard, maritime shipping agents, port authority, freight forwarders, Customs, dangerous goods clearance, port and terminal gates, and many of the other entities in the port community.

As each party electronically completes its part of operations—declarations, permits requests, inspections, goods authorizations and more—the PCS immediately moves the filing, declaration, request, or approval to the queue of the next party, notifying them of updates specific to their work queue. Items they need to complete or adjust are noted, and wherever possible turned into drop-down lists. Ideally the workers can be notified and fill out forms from any device —at their desk, on a tablet at the docks, or on their phone in the truck.

Greasing the skids

The terminals, which are separate business entities, are tied together in the PCS under the supervision of the port authority. Any insufficiencies in the permits, requests, or declarations are immediately identified, and the sender is automatically notified for quick updates and resubmission. Eliminating the communication hurdles — paper documents, point-to-point (rather than end-to-end) filings, loading and unloading orders – can save significant time and cost for all parties. Furthermore, a PCS provides time-definite delivery commitments to shippers and sellers while reducing ship and container time in port.

For exports, freight forwarders who consolidate loads into containers will know when empty containers will arrive, reducing the number they need to keep on hand. For imports, freight forwarders and consolidators will know when to expect the containers they need to break down and repack for shipping to final destination. Maritime agents can get their ships out of port faster as they will be able to communicate the location of containers ready and approved for loading to terminal operators. Once a PCS is implemented, other steps can be taken to increase the efficiency of trucks moving in and out of the port.

At Anteelo, we’ve given this a lot of thought as we increasingly focus on the ports business and our own PCS solution, Port Logistics Accelerator. We’ve come to recognize that connecting people and automating the processes those people use every day will have the largest impact on costs and hence, profitability.

Anteelo’s Intermodal Appointment System (IAS), when integrated with the PCS, can notify truckers when their loads are ready, setting a specific appointment for pick-up and delivery agreed to by their trucking company (or themselves, if freelance). Further, our Intelligent Truck Parking (ITP) system can interface with the IAS, monitoring parking lots and assigning parking spots and timeslots. These systems make pick-ups predictable, smoothing the flow of traffic around and inside the port and terminals. They also save time and fuel while reducing pollution and congestion.

Enabling operational flexibility

A PCS can also help integrate the shunting operations required for full integration of freight rail into intermodal seaport logistics. This gives port operators flexibility to use the best value transportation method for each shipment while maximizing the traffic flow into and out of seaports.

There’s no doubt that robots have their place and that, over time, ports will manage a greater share of shipments using automation. It’s also true, however, that digital solutions like port community, appointment, and intelligent parking systems can help everyone achieve the aims they seek.

In 2020, the Top 10 Cross-Platform App Frameworks to Consider

Posted on 26/02/201921/06/2021 by Tushar

Cross-platform app development has its own merits which plays a major role in its current popularity. With the expansion of its reach, several cross-platforms app development tools and frameworks started to float in the market; slowly, and then all at once along with every other mobile app development company trying their hands at this interesting and one-of-a-kind technology.The result – We now have a sea of such tools and frameworks which you, as a developer, may find overwhelming. To help you out in your quest of finding the most ideal and exemplary cross-platform framework, here is a list of top 10 cross-platform app frameworks 2020 that are a sure thing.There are certain benchmarks that need to be cleared to declare something as “best” of that domain or category. In the same manner, while determining the best cross-platform frameworks, there were several prominent aspects that were considered, in order to truly see how every choice under inspection performed.However, before jumping on to the list, let’s get the basics out of the way.

What is a Cross-Platform Framework?

To be concise, cross-platform is a type of software that has the ability to run on multiple computing platforms i.e., Android, iOS, Windows, Blackberry, etc. The apps built on this framework do not require separate coding for each platform, rather coding once will create the foundation for the app to run as efficiently on all platforms. It is one of the most popular methods in the app development domain today, which almost all the top mobile app development companies swear upon.

Note: To gather an in-depth view, read this guide on cross-platform app development.

1. Ionic

Ionic is one of the most remarkable and popular cross-platform app frameworks, based on AngularJS. It allows developers to use a combination of many languages i.e., HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS and Cordova wrapper to access native platform controllers.

Ionic enables developers to create an impeccably creative user interface along with adding user-friendly features into the app. Apps developed with this framework are highly interactive and native-like, making Ionic a perfect candidate for PWA development as well.

Features

1. It is an open-source front-end framework meaning it allows alterations in the code structure, suitable to each developer and saves a lot of time. This gives hard competition to its contender Ionic, in the battle of Ionic vs React Native.

2. Ionic is based on a SAAS UI framework designed specifically for mobile operating systems. It provides numerous UI components for developing robust applications.

3. Another one of its most-appreciated features is that it is based on AngularJS, making it easy to offer extensions to HTML’s syntax, core functionalities to imbibe useful yet attractive features and components into the app.

4. This framework uses Cordova plugins which allow access to devices’ in-built features including Camera, GPS, and Audio Recorder, posing as one of the major benefits of cross-platform tools.

5. The fact that Ionic gives a native-like feel to the apps is what makes it a favorite of developers. It helps develop cross-platform apps and allows them to perform perfectly on various platforms.

2. React Native

When talking about cross platform app frameworks, it is hard not to include React Native. It is a framework built on JavaScript and is used to write real code and give the native-like feel to mobile applications that work both on Android and iOS. Due to its remarkable features, it is not only a preferred choice of developers but businesses also trust React Native as the right platform for their apps.

React Native integrates the benefits of JavaScript and React.JS along with providing the advantage to developers to write modules in Objective-C, Swift, or Java languages. Moreover, by using the native modules and libraries in the React Native cross-platform apps, developers can also perform heavy operations such as image editing, video processing or some other operations which are not part of the framework APIs.

Features

1. It is a good thing that React Native is an open-source cross-platform app framework, the same as Ionic. Because of this, it has a large community to support it and improve it by fixing bugs, improvising and introducing features.

2. One of the advantages of cross-platform development is that it requires one-time coding (WORA) for developing apps for platforms as diverse as Android and iOS. This solves one of the biggest challenges of other frameworks – requiring developers to code separately twice for the same app on different platforms.

3. One-time coding instantly reduces the development time of the app along with keeping the React Native app development cost to its lowest.

4. Impressively, React Native is highly compatible with third-party plugins, such as Google Maps.

5. React Native focuses on UI to a great extent rendering a highly responsive interface. What it means is that the React Native environment eliminates the time taken in loading and delivers a smooth interface to the applications.

3. Flutter

Google introduced an impressive cross-platform app framework named Flutter back in 2017. It is a software development kit designed to assist in the expeditious Android and iOS app development. It is also a fundamental and primary method for developing Google Fuschia apps.

Flutter offers apps that easily and effectively run on multiple platforms with uniformity and dynamicity.

Here are some of the remarkable features that make Flutter an ideal cross-platform framework among developers.

Features

1. Flutter promotes portable GPU, which renders UI power, allowing it to work on the latest interfaces.

2. Flutter does not require updating the UI contents manually, as it possesses a reactive framework. Flutter app Developers are only required to update the variables and the UI changes will be visible after that.

3. Flutter cross-platform app framework poses as a perfect choice for developing Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as it initiates an expeditious development process and is also cost-efficient.

4. Xamarin

Xamarin cross-platform app development framework is significantly different from the frameworks we have discussed so far. It is a streamlined framework used for developing apps for Android, Windows, and iOS with the help of C# and .Net, instead of JS libraries and HTML. It allows the developers to use 90% of the code for building an app for three distinct platforms.

Xamarin delivers applications with aesthetics like a native app with the help of its amazing APIs, something which makes the decision making a lot harder between Xamarin vs React Native. Here are Xamarin’s features explaining why it is one of the best choices of cross-platform frameworks for Mobile Development.

Features

1. Apps developed on the Xamarin framework are built using C# – a modern language having leverage over Objective-C and Java.

2. The developers get native-level app functionality with Xamarin. It reduces hardware compatibility problems to a great extent with the help of plugins and specific APIs, that work with common devices functionality.It also promotes linking with native libraries, allowing customization and native-level functionality. The feature alone, makes it one of the top Android app development framework.

3. Xamarin supports a direct inclusion of Objective-C, Java and C++ libraries. This allows developers to reuse many third-party codebases encrypted in Java, Objective-C or C++, making it one of the considerably preferred cross-platform frameworks.

4. Xamarin reduces the time and cost of mobile app development for it supports the WORA ( Write Once, Run Anywhere) and has a humongous collection of class libraries.

5. Xamarin offers robust compile-time checking. Because of this facility, developers witness fewer run-time errors and get well-functioning apps.

6. Xamarin has an astounding native user interface and controls assisting and allowing developers in designing a native-like app.

5. NativeScript

NativeScript passes as an amazing free cross-platform framework based on JavaScript. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that NativeScript is a preferable choice of developers looking for WORA functionality.

NativeScript also offers all native APIs, rendering an ability to the developers to reuse existing plugins straight from NPM into the projects.

Features

1. NativeScript renders beautiful, accessible, and platform-native UI, and that too without the WebViews. Developers are only required to define once and let the NativeScript adapt to run everywhere. They can even customize the UI to specific devices and screens.

2. As opposed to React Native, NativeScript provides developers with a complete web resource that comes loaded with plugins for all kinds of solutions. This inevitably eliminates the need for third-party solutions.

3. NativeScript gives the freedom to easily access native Android and iOS APIs, meaning developers don’t need any additional knowledge of native development languages.

4. It uses Angular and TypeScript for programming purposes.

6. Node.js

Node.js is an incredible framework for developing cross-platform apps. Essentially, Node.Js is a JavaScript runtime framework built on the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine. It is an open-source environment that supports the development of server-side and scalable networking apps. Node.js cross-platform apps are inherently highly efficient and responsive.

The framework is capable of handling several concurrent connections together. It also comes loaded with a rich library of numerous JavaScript modules that help in simplifying the development of web applications.

Features

1. All of the Node.js APIs are asynchronous, signifying that they are non-blocking in nature, meaning servers based on Node.JS do not essentially wait for data from APIs. It immediately moves on to another API after calling it. A notification mechanism for Node.js allows the server to get a response from the previous API call.

2. Node.js library is impressively speedy in its code execution process, for it is built on the Chrome’s V8 engine.

3. Node.js cross-platform apps do not buffer, instead, the applications output the data in chunks.

4. To deliver smooth and perfectly functioning applications, Node.js uses a single-threaded model with event looping functionality. This event mechanism enables the server to reply in a non-blocking way, making them scalable.

7. Appcelerator Titanium

Appcelerator is one of the many cross-platform app development tools designed to assist in smoother and easier mobile app development. It is a great way to create cross-platform apps with just a single code base. Its primary focus is on streamlining the app development process with the help of native components present in JavaScript code.

Features

1. Appcelerator offers various tools for rapid application development. This indicates that a prototype can be created with much less time and effort to evaluate user interaction with UI.

2. It has ArrowDB- a schema-less data store that allows developers to deploy data models with no additional efforts for setup.

3. It enables the integration of existing continuous delivery systems such as SCM solutions and more.

4. Appcelerator possesses pre-built connectors available for MS Azure, MS SQL, Salesforce, Box- the list is tediously long.

8. PhoneGap

Phone Gap (Cordova) is one of the impeccable cross-platform frameworks for mobile development that makes use of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML5. It also offers a cloud solution to developers providing them the choice to share the app in the development process for feedback from other developers.

It develops impressive apps by leveraging existing web technologies. Another great advantage of PhoneGap is that it entirely supports in-built device features such as GPS, Camera, Phonebook, Storage, and so on.

Features

1. PhoneGap is considered an impeccable cross-platform framework as it enables developers to create cross-platform apps using existing web technologies such as HTML 5, CSS3 and JavaScript.

2. Being a cross-platform framework, PhoneGap supports the use of a single code base to create apps for different platforms namely iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, etc.

3. It follows an architecture that is plugin-able in nature, meaning it is possible that the access to native device APIs can be extended in a modular way.

9. Sencha Touch

Introduced nearly a decade ago, Sencha Touch helps in developing web-based cross-platform apps and is typically used to create efficient applications that use the hardware acceleration techniques. By using Sencha Touch, developers are able to create well-tested, securely integrated UI components and libraries.

In fact, it is possible to develop large business apps and maintain them effectively and easily. Some of the remarkable features of it are:

Features

1. It is famous for providing built-in native-looking themes for all of the major platforms like Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, etc.

2. It comes with an effective agnostic backend data package for working with data sources.

3. One of the most celebrated features of Sencha Touch is that it supports Cordova integration for the native API access along with the packaging.

4. It offers code compatibility between new and old ones.

5. It comes loaded with customizable and 50+ built-in UI widgets. It also has a collection of rich UI like lists, carousels, forms, menus, and toolbars, etc., created specifically for mobile platforms.

10. Corona SDK

Corona SDK enables programmers to develop 2D mobile applications for all the major platforms, including Kindle and Windows.

It proffers to give 10X faster mobile and game app development. The framework le delivers remarkable results at the back of its backend framework’s reliability on Lua which is a lightweight and multi-paradigm programming language. The language focuses on the main elements of the development which are the speed, portability, extensibility, scalability, and last but not least, the ease of use.

What is more, it is a free-of-cost framework working both on Mac OS X and Windows while supporting real-time testing.

Features:

1. It has over 1000 APIs that give developers the ability to sprite animations, audio, and music, Box2D physics, object tweening, texture management, native elements, data- the list can go on for pages.

2. It responds to the code changes almost instantly while giving a real-time preview of the app’s performance as it would on a real device.

3. It supports almost 200 plugins including in-app advertising, analytics, media, and hardware features.

After considering all of the best options that a competent cross-platform app development company is looking for in this domain, there is nothing left but to wait and see how these frameworks compete with each other to stay in the competitive market, and how well they bode against the new frameworks entering the market as we speak.

Apple Arcade: A Way To Revolutionize The Mobile Gaming Industry

Posted on 25/02/201921/06/2021 by Tushar

Apple finally released its most-awaited iOS 13 yesterday only.

From the myriad of features, it is loaded with, we couldn’t help but notice one of the significant contributions it made to the app world – Apple Arcade.

Apple Arcade is a full-fledged gaming hub that is entirely going to change the way how apps are developed and how users buy them. Based on a subscription-based business model, Apple Arcade is an avenue for indie game developers to create impeccable games worth discovering and playing.

The subscription priced at $5 per month will provide the users with access to 100+ new games which are no cast-offs, whereas more games might be available at the launch. The games offered in the subscription plan are high-quality fare from renowned and established studios like Annapurna Interactive and Ustwo Games of Monument Valley fame. The games belong to genres ranging from strategy and fantasy to absurdist golf.

The wild thing about Apple Arcade is that at such low priced subscription, you get facilities like playing unlimited games, syncing of your games between Apple devices like iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, and download the games to play offline. In fact, the one subscription plan can be shared among five family members. If this isn’t the full value of your money, we don’t know what is.

Besides everything, the one that has made Apple Arcade revolutionary, without a doubt, is the elimination of elements like ads and in-app purchases – the very backbone and major contributors to the gaming app economy. Though the notion of one subscription to play all games may sound preposterous to other organizations, it can be seen as a positive nudge to direct the gaming industry towards something more salutary rather than just cash draws.

Pay once and Play Many Games

If you look at the top-performing apps in the App Store, you will find that 50 grossing games have in-app purchases: out of 50 most downloaded free games, forty-one have them. In fact, among the games, you pay for upfront, the top 50 still try to accumulate more money as you play the games.

The in-app purchases are a major source of revenue for the app economy, and has been for decades. The free-to-downloads games also entice users to spend money on the app be it in the forms of Pokéballs in Pokémon Go or other digital widgets. This buying of rewards and digital widgets have come under scrutiny as critics have started to consider this trade as gambling.

Apple had been a major part of all this as it has been taking 30% cut from all in-app purchases. However, Apple has also been active in promoting apps that do not offer in-app purchases. This is evident from the fact that in 2015, Apple dedicated a whole section of the App Store to the games that were “Pay Once and Play”. Apart from this one generous act, these games had to face a lot of competition as their freemium contenders seemed more promising to the users, though they later started to ask for in-app purchases.

Ryan Cash, the founder of Snowman, the indie studio behind the popular Alto’s Adventure series said that “There was this wave of indie games in the last five to 10 years that had a bit of a surge, but it seemed like in the last two or three years that market was starting to fall apart a little bit,” and “It just became harder and harder for those indie developers to make money doing experimental things. There are many developers I heard say they’ll never make a mobile game again, or if I do it’s going to be free to play.”

This exodus is now low in numbers. As per SensorTower, in August 2014, 37% of the App Store games were paid. This amount dropped to 13% last month. The amount of paid games released on the App Store this August was as low as 5.5%. In fact, last month, the revenue generated by the paid apps was only 1.4% of the total App Store game revenue. This shift might be considered as a reaction to the changed Apple guidelines on in-app purchases.

However, the biggest publishers won’t give up on in-app purchases instantly. Sensor Tower cofounder Alex Malafeev said- “Free-to-play will continue to be the dominant model by which the majority of mobile game revenue is generated,” and “It has proven to be the ideal method of monetizing the type of ‘drop-in, drop-out’ experiences the majority of casual players want from their mobile devices.”

Nevertheless, Apple Arcade will definitely help indie developers in developing original and ambitious games that will get the deserved recognition. Moreover, it rewards games that are originally developed keeping the iOS platform in focus, rather than knock-offs and extended versions of games originally created for other platforms, increasing the UX.

Arcade Fire

An Apple Arcade launch game named “Where Cards Fall”, had been in the making for a decade. Sam Rosenthal, the creator, first thought of it as a student project at the University of Southern California. He initially thought of the puzzle game as an iPad-only encounter, which can still be sensed even from the trailer.

Rosenthal created Snowman almost four years ago, expanding his vision to the iPhone and Apple TV.

Cash remarked- “The last few years, we’ve been thinking about this dilemma where we want everyone to experience it, but it’s certainly not a free-to-play game. It would be absolutely destroyed with ads,” and “We knew it was going to be a premium game. And the problem there is that Where Cards Fall is the kind of game that would probably be $20. Or if we made the game 99 cents, for example, it cheapens the value of it, and we’re still not going to reach the kind of people you would reach with a free-to-play game.”

Apple Arcade for both Cash and Rosenthal is a boon, for they can now launch their game “ Where Cards Fall” on it, as it poses as a sustainable business model for the game. In fact, on Apple Arcade the game has a higher possibility of being found by a broader audience.

Cash further says “Apple Arcade may get them in with a golfing game or another action game or a racing game, and then stumble upon Where Cards Fall and try it, whereas they wouldn’t necessarily have spent that money upfront on their own,” and that “It’s a new way for people to discover gaming.”

Nonetheless, Apple Arcade comes with its own pitfalls. It is a curated experience which means that developers may feel left out. Because the subscription is so affordable, it makes users question the quality of games or at least stops them from spending any extra money in the app.

After considering everything, what can be surmised is this – Apple Arcade will encourage developers to create fun and more engaging games in their own right along with exploring structures that are different from the free-to-play category.

Well, there is no saying that every developer will do so, for they may be paid out in part based on the time spent on their games. This means that they will try to keep the users on their apps for as long as they can. This is the strategy that Apple follows in its News Subscription. The only difference is that the users will not have to pay any extra buck outside their subscription, no matter how long they play the games for.

Besides, not only indie but big hitters like Ubisoft, Konami, Square Enix have also contributed and played their part in the Apple Arcade launch lineup. As far as we can see, Apple Arcade is going to be a positive influence on the gaming industry and who knows, might inspire other major providers to follow its example.

A Quick Guide to Successful Mobile App Launch

Posted on 24/02/201921/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

The mobile market has gone so competitive that there are endless apps offering the same functionality. In such a scenario, waiting for users to come to your application on their own, rather than putting efforts into an app launch strategy is a sin.To ensure that you do not commit this mistake and get no outcome from your investment in terms of cost to make an app, we will be discussing the right way to launch your application here.

1000 downloads, $100 millions of revenue – All such metrics pop in our mind, whenever we think of taking our months of hard work to the final stage, i.e, mobile app launch. We expect some miracle to happen that makes our app go viral, and get into the list of TikTok, Uber, and Pokemon Go.But alas, not everyone lives this moment.

[In case you haven’t decided when to take this big step, check the blog: What is the right time to launch your mobile app? ]

But, before we look into the right way of launching an app, it is necessary to be familiar with the fact that mobile app launch strategy does not come into play when you release your app. Instead, it comes into being right from the day you take the first step to make an app.

So, to get higher success numbers and earn more money from your app, here are the list of steps to take – categorized under Pre-launch and Post-launch strategy.

What Pre launch marketing ideas you should consider?

Any application who has not prepared a market for its launch can’t drive higher revenue. So, it’s imperative to invest in pre launch mobile app marketing. Something that can be possible effectively by following the pointers given below:

1. A thorough mobile app market research

When you launch an app without knowing who your target audience is, it is likely that you end up making an application that no one likes and face other potential threats. So, one thing you need to do before starting with different stages of building an app is market research.

By doing so your app will be prepared for whatever situations arise post-launch.

2. Market your app now

Marketing of the app is done way before the actual launch app. Some app owners start the app promotion even before the mobile app development is finished. Early marketing creates a positive image for the app and also creates awareness about the app.

So, how to market an app successfully? To muster support for your mobile app reach out to friends, communities, influencers, or create product videos and share online. You can also create a blog or a website which will act as the landing page for your app.

[To know other such methods, refer to our comprehensive guide to promote a mobile app.]

3. Create a buzz with social media

Social media can blow up things faster than a bomb. So many apps have gone viral and all the credit goes to social media. Reddit, Facebook and Instagram are great platforms for promotion before you actually launch mobile apps.

4. A press kit

A press kit is basically a resource for journalists and publishing houses to convince them to review your app. The kit includes all the information about the app such as screenshots, images and other details. You can also include videos by uploading it on YouTube.

5. Reach out to beta testers

Beta testers are registered testers for apps on the App Store or Play Store. They can be the best source for honest feedback for your app. Make sure you take the advice from the testers and use it to improve your app further.

Now you may ask how to come across these beta testers to execute a perfect mobile app launch. For that, you can find many websites that provide beta testers. Make a choice as per your requirements.

6. Focus on a better App store listing

Your app store page is also your landing page which means it’s the first place your customers visit.

Including images, videos and screenshots of your app will showcase the app quite well. Getting featured in the Play Store or the App Store is a big hit for any app. The aim is to get more downloads from all these factors. The key focusing points are:

The name of the app
App description
App visuals (images, videos, etc.)
Targeted keywords

So this is all about how to prepare your app before you submit an app to the app store.

Now you might be thinking, “What to do once the app is launched?” and the answer follows in the next section which has all the steps of post-mobile app launch.

How to Plan Post-launch App strategy?

1. Ask for referrals such as word of mouth

The best practices of launching an app involves word of mouth promotion. It is said that word of mouth is the most effective form of promotion and brings in genuine users. Reaching out to your friends, communities, colleagues and family members to spread a good word about the app would create awareness among a large group.

2. Link your app

Vigorously linking your app everywhere is another strategy that you can follow. When you launch an app, link the app on your email, comment sections, other blogs or social media. This way the link will become visible all over the internet and would bring in some curious users who might even stay forever.

3. Go for the paid ads

Once you’ve gone as per the app launch timeline, the next thing to go for is to consider paid ads on Facebook, Instagram or any other online platform. These ads, when reflecting on the news feed of every person present on that platform, increases the chances of getting clicks on the application and drive higher revenue, alongside app awareness.

4. Approach to Apple’s editorial team

If you have partnered with qualified iOS mobile app developers to enter the Apple market, pitching the Apple’s editorial team and that of App review sites will also be helpful. When listed in the Top lists, your application will get more attention from the users looking for such apps, which will ultimately result in better outcomes.

5. Map user journey

Another thing to look for after mobile app launch is to keep an eye on user journey. When you, with the help of some metrics, identify what users are liking the most on your platform, what is irritating them, why and who are abandoning your app, etc., you can easily plan your perfect mobile app retention strategy and drive higher profits.

6. Maintain real-time communication

Communicating with end users is not something that ends up while you reach the final stage of the mobile app release process. It must be continued even after the launch of the application. This is because when you maintain a real-time communication with your customers, they feel heard and share their pain points as well as leisure pointers, which makes it easier for you to plan the next app update.

Now, while these were some of the strategies to consider before and after mobile app launch, let’s wrap up this article by looking into some of the mistakes you should avoid committing.

Pitfalls to avoid when you launch a mobile app

A poor working app can be the cause of the failure of a company. Once the app is launched in the market, there is hardly any chance to undo mistakes immediately. You will have to wait until the first app update is launched but by then the app would have lost too many users.

You can totally prevent this scary situation by avoiding these common mistakes made during app launch.

1. Generalizing

Many businesspeople consider the whole world as their market. They hope that this practice will enable them to get the attention of a wider audience and reap higher benefits. However, the reverse happens.

When your application is installed by the wrong target audience, they feel confused and irritated while using it and leave a negative feedback. This prevents various right users from tapping on the ‘download’ button as well as prompt developers to introduce various unnecessary functionalities.

So, rather than generalizing the market, one should run a survey, accumulate market data, and target potential customers to drive better results.

2. Poor onboarding

Another common mistake made by app enthusiasts while app launch planning is overlooking the essence of an effective onboarding.

A mobile app onboarding is not simply a way of introducing the app to the users, but it is the method to create an unforgettable first impression of the app. Meaning, if you create one without following the right app onboarding practices, you might fail to touch the hearts of the target audience and encourage them to go further.

3. Launch full-fledged app

Last but not the least, launching a complete application at once is yet another mistake that can lower down the benefits of mobile presence.

When you design and launch a full-fledged app at once, it demands higher time, effort, and cost. Also, the risk of failing entertaining the right audience due to change in their needs and market trends is also high.

But, when you develop an MVP(Minimal Viable Product) instead, it not only saves the time and money associated with the development plan. But, also helps in validating your app idea, gather adequate user data, and make the best of the mobile app launch. So, look ahead to it.

A 2020 list of the best local databases for developing React Native apps.

Posted on 23/02/201921/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

React Native has established itself as a prime choice of startups and establishments looking for a mode to enter the app domain in a cost and time-efficient manner. And with this establishment, the focus has once again shifted on the incorporation of the platform in the app development process, especially when entrepreneurs are looking to build cross-platform applications.Increasing with this full-grown demand for React Native app development is the pressure on React Native developers to develop high-performing offline first apps that can be scaled whenever required.

This, in turn, has led them to look back at the technology stack and choice of platform to build React Native applications off of. Especially the backbone of the application – React Native database.

In this article, we are going to look into names that are fit for React Native app development today and are worthy of being in the list of top React Native databases for 2020.

Let us start in a full disclosure mode, though.

Let’s highlight the factors we looked into when curating the list of the top react native databases for 2020 and for some more years to come.

Table Of Content:

Factors to Consider When Choosing React Native Databases for Your Project
The Best React Native Databases for App Development
Realm
Firebase
SQLite
PouchDB
Async Storage
Watermelon DB
Vasern
BerkeleyDB

Factors to Consider When Choosing React Native Databases for Your Project

Complexity of the Data

A key-value storage is default option for a number of server-side and client-side scripting languages. Mainly, both – values and keys – have to be serialized in strings, either by a React Native developer or through the library itself. Now although necessary, serialization can bring serious halts and issues in how your application performs, especially when it operates in a limited resources environment of smartphones.

So, ideally a react native development company chooses a database which helps you store more complex data compared to the key-value pairs like full documents and objects and comes with complex data types.

Number of Line of Codes

If you take more than 20 lines of code to write a simple CRUD operations, any advanced database should be your last choice. Because, not only an advanced DB would make coding complicated but it would even affect the database performance heavily and the overall React Native app development cost. Additionally, processing of so many code lines would slow down the application greatly.

So do not make use of a database that comes with advanced functionality if it carries the chances to lower your app’s user experience and delay the release speed.

Synching of the Offline Data

If you are developing a low complexity application which does not offer multiple-user collaboration, you can use a simple database that would work well with a simplified synchronization functionality. These app types can sync with server whenever an internet connection is established.

With collaboration being the primal feature of an application, syncing functionality demands the database to be complex. Applications like Trello, which cannot show different versions of a document or project, however, requires a react native app development company to achieve perfect synching even when the network conditions are patchy.

Handling Data Conflicts and Concurrency

The more collaboration related features you add inside your application, the more would be the possibility of data conflicts.

You should look for databases, which share the conflict-handling policies on website or the repository pages. Dig into the database documents to get aware of how they handle syncing and conflicts or look into the trade-offs that are made and the effect it would make on the application.

Memory Management

Inefficient database memory handling practices can lead to app crashes.

Compaction is one of the proactive processes of memory management in which the documents or data that are not going to be of use are deleted from the memory.

The process is like the ‘garbage collection’ part of programming, which ensures there is free memory available at any given point in time.

On the basis of these five factors we have identified the local React Native database options which would be best suited for your react native application development process.

The Best React Native Databases for App Development

Realm

The Realm database has been brought into existence for development of real-time and offline applications which run on both wearable and mobile devices. The database has proved to be equally beneficial when you create React Native mobile apps for iOS and Android. It is not built on ORM or on top of SQLite, so it comes with own database engine and does not rely on the key value stores.

This is one of the reasons why React native developers use Realm as one of the chosen local react native database options to handle large data or for the development of high performance applications.

While there are other databases for simple apps, the combination of Realm and React native is best suited for large sized apps.

Benefits of Realm and React Native:

Realm Sync – the sync services operate in the background and records, saves all the user interactions and the service requests locally.
Offline friendliness through Redux Offline – for those looking for a solution to implement offline-first architecture through Realm for React native apps, Redux offline can be a great option.
Security – It uses multiple encryption standard for every different mobile platform.

Pricing:

The Realm is a local database in react native app that is completely open-source and free. The pro version, though comes with a cost. But if you purchase the platform for creating react native apps it would cost $1750 per month.

Firebase

Firebase supports the real-time NoSQL database for the development of react native applications. It is chosen mainly for its offline data change and data synchronization practices. The reason why Firebase for Startups is such an in thing is because it is completely capable of handling the requirements of the M and C of the MVC needed for react native based applications.

Benefits of Firebase for React Native App Development

Real-time syncing of data – with Firebase for React Native, the data is synced in real time for all clients, at the same time. This becomes very important for when an app goes offline unannounced because of the unavailability of internet connection.
Low setup efforts – Firebase offers a cross-platform API which calls for minimal setup when it is being used inside an application. Additionally, you won’t need an application server for accessing the data as it can directly be accessed through a mobile phone.
Offline persistence – the combination of Firebase and React Native gives the developers an ability to develop real-time apps with offline persistence capabilities. This consists of marking users’ presence online or offline and storing timestamp whenever users get disconnected.

Pricing:

Firebase is free to upto 1GB data storage. However, it does offer a $25 for 2.5 GB data storage minimal price in addition to a pay as you use package.

SQLite

It was designed to offer local storage to mobile applications. The prominence of the word Lite in the database name implies that it is a lightweight library and that it requires minimal setup. It can also be directly integrated within the mobile application for directly accessing the database.

Benefits of SQLite for React Native based Application Development

ACID compliance – it is an ACID compliant database which implements SQL standards with some omissions. The architecture of the library is file-based and there are some tools that can handle all the data types with simplicity and ease.
Offline persistence – In order to enable the offline persistence via SQLite, developers can use a react-native-SQLite-storage plugin for managing data within application.

Pricing:

SQLite, being in the public domain is free to use and open source. However, if you want to obtain license for copyright infringement, you would have to pay one time fees of $6000.

PouchDB

PouchDB is an open source Javascript database that stores data in JSON format and enables developers to take advantage of using React Native in the easiest manner: by developing, reading, updating, querying, and deleting queries with a single JavaScript API. The database is compatible with MySQL, CouchDB, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB.

Benefits of PouchDB for React Native App Development

Because the PouchDB stays inside a browser, the need to perform queries over network is not there. This, as a whole, leads to faster queries’ execution.
Developers can sync data with any supported server and thus can run the applications both offline and online.

Async Storage

Async storage is a local storage system that gives developers the capability to store data locally and persist data between the app reboots. The database comes in-built with React native so it can be used without any additional deployment.

Benefit of Async Storage for React Native Apps:

It comes in handy when you have to save the data which the app need to use even after the user has closed the app or the device.

Watermelon DB

Built on SQLite, it is a high-performance reactive database for React Native which comes with the potential of scaling hundreds to thousands of records without losing its speed. The database has been well optimized for building complex applications in React Native with a focus on real-world performance.

Benefits of Watermelon DB for React Native App Development:

In addition to scaling over 100 – 10000 records, Watermelon DB also supports developers to take full advantage of using react native through:

Offline first system
Static typing with Flow
Building apps on SQLite foundation

Vasern

It is one of the most lightweight, fast, and open-source databases for app development using react native. The Vasern API is used not just for local data storage but also for cloud storage and syncing across the app’s clients. Vasern’s design and structures are inspired by various open source databases.

The Benefits of this Inspiration from Multiple Open Source Database Include:

It is open source
Developer friendly end-to-end database syncing
Focus on consistency and performance
Fast operation

BerkeleyDB

Berkeley DB is an open source, high performance backend for React Native which allows developers to handle data in multiple ways. It offers an API for multiple languages which includes iOS and Android.

It can handle data in multiple ways: a relational way like how SQLite does or through the Key/Value pair data as byte arrays and supports multiple data items for a single key.

While these are the top React native databases of the current and the speculated time there are a number of other backend tools that developers and react native app development companies use to create their application.

Blockchain Consensus Method: What You Need to Know

Posted on 22/02/201921/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Blockchain consensus is a decentralized distributed network that offers higher transparency, security, and immutability.

We all know that.

But, have you ever wondered how it is able to achieve all this?

Who governs this network and verifies every transaction, provided there is no centralized authority?

Well it’s Blockchain consensus algorithms – The core part of Blockchain development world that we will be talking about in this comprehensive guide.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Definition of Blockchain Consensus Algorithm
Objectives of a Consensus Mechanism
Properties of a Good Blockchain Consensus Mechanism
Consequences of Relying Upon a Bad Consensus Protocol
Blockchain Consensus Algorithms that are Popular in the Market
1. Proof of Work (PoW)
2. Proof of Stake (PoS) and Its Variations
3. Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) and Its Derivatives
4. Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG)
5. Proof of Capacity (PoC)
6. Proof of Burn (PoB)
7. Proof of Identity (PoI)
8. Proof of Activity (PoA)
9. Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET)
10. Proof of Importance (PoI)

What is Blockchain Consensus Algorithm?

The simplest answer to what is Blockchain consensus algorithm is that it is a procedure via which all the peers of a Blockchain network reaches to a common acceptance or consensus about the real-time state of the distributed ledger.

A consensus mechanism enables the blockchain network to attain reliability and build a level of trust between different nodes, while ensuring security in the environment. This is the reason why it is one of the vital parts of every Blockchain app development guide and every dApp project in the distributed ledger environment.

These algorithms operate on the ground of different objectives, a few of which we will be covering in the next section of this article.

Objectives of Blockchain Consensus Mechanism

1. Unified Agreement

One of the prime objectives of consensus mechanisms is attaining unified agreement.

Unlike centralized systems where having a trust on the authority is necessary, users can operate even without building trustin on each other in a decentralized manner. The protocols embedded in the Distributed blockchain network ensures that the data involved in the process is true and accurate, and the status of the public ledger is up-to-date.

2. Align Economic Incentive

When it comes to building a trustless system that regulates on its own, aligning the interests of participants in the network is a must.

A blockchain consensus protocol, in this situation, offers rewards for good behavior and punish the bad actors. This way, it ensures regulating economic incentive too.

3. Fair & Equitable

Consensus mechanisms enable anyone to participate in the network and using the same basics. This way, it justifies the open-source and decentralization property of the blockchain system.

4. Prevent Double Spending

Consensus mechanisms works on the basis of certain algorithms that ensures that only those transactions are included in the public transparent ledger which are verified and valid. This solves the traditional problem of double-spending, i.e, the problem of spending a digital currency twice.

5. Fault Tolerant

Another characteristic of Consensus method is that it ensures that the blockchain is fault-tolerant, consistent, and reliable. That means, the governed system would work indefinite times even in the case of failures and threats.

Currently, there are a plethora of Blockchain consensus algorithms in the ecosystem and many more are heading to enter the marketplace. This makes it imperative for every Blockchain development company and enthusiastic Entrepreneur to be familiar with the factors that defines a good consensus protocol, and the possible effect of going with a poor one.

So, let’s begin with determining what makes a Blockchain consensus a good one.

Properties of a Good Blockchain Consensus Mechanism

1. Safety

In a good consensus mechanism, all the nodes are capable of generating results that are valid according to the rules of protocol.

2. Inclusive

A good consensus mechanism ensures that every particular node of the network participates in the process of voting.

3. Participatory

A consensus mechanism where all the nodes actively participate and contribute to updating database on Blockchain is called a Good consensus model.

4. Egalitarian

Another trait of a good mechanism is that it gives equal value and weightage to every vote received from the node.

With this attended to, let’s find out what happens when you do not consider these factors and introduce a poor consensus model to your development process.

Consequences of Choosing a Bad Consensus Protocol

1. Blockchain Forks

Choosing a poor blockchain consensus method increases the vulnerability of the chain. One such vulnerability that is faced by the blockchain enthusiasts and developers is Blockchain Forks.

Blockchain forks, in a layman language, is a situation or circumstances under which a single chain diverges into two or more. A detailed explanation about Blockchain fork and its types is available in the video embedded below.

When a Blockchain fork occurs, the application begins operating in an unpredictable manner, creating two or more diverged nodes ahead.

2. Poor Performance

When a bad consensus mechanism is considered, either the node gets malfunctioned or suffer from network partition. This delays the process of exchanging messages between nodes and increases the latency of the application, which ultimately lowers down the performance level.

3. Consensus Failure

Another effect of incorporating a bad consensus mechanism to your business model is consensus failure. In this situation, a fraction of nodes fails to participate in any process and thus, in the absence of their votes, the consensus fails to deliver accurate and desired outcomes.

With the basics of Blockchain consensus methods now covered, let’s dive deeper into the topic and look at the popular types of consensus mechanism.

Blockchain Consensus Algorithms that are Popular in the Market

1. Proof of Work (PoW)

Developed by Satoshi Nakamoto, Proof of Work is the oldest consensus mechanism used in the Blockchain domain. It is also known as mining where the participating nodes are called miners.

In this mechanism, the miners have to solve complex mathematical puzzles using comprehensive computation power. They use different forms of mining methods, such as GPU mining, CPU mining, ASIC mining, and FPGA mining. And the one that solves the problem at the earliest gets a block as a reward.

However, the process is not that easy. A puzzle can be solved only via trial and error method. Additionally, the level of complexity of the puzzle increases with the speed at which blocks are mined. So, it becomes mandatory for one to create a new block within a certain time frame to cope up with the difficulty level.

The Proof of Work mechanism is used by multiple cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, ZCash, Primecoin, Monero, and Vertcoin to name a few.

In terms of its implementations, the Proof of Work (PoW) has not only influenced the financial industry, but also healthcare, governance, management and more. It has, in fact, offered the opportunity of multichannel payments and multi-signature transaction over an address for enhancing security.

2. Proof of Stake (PoS)

Proof of Stake is the most basic and environmentally-friendly alternative of PoW consensus protocol.

In this blockchain method, the block producers are not miners, but they act like validators. They get the opportunity to create a block over everyone which saves energy and reduces the time. However, for them to become a validator, they are supposed to invest some amount of money or stake.

Also, unlike that in the case of PoW, miners are provided with a privilege to take their transaction fees in this algorithm for there is no reward system in this consensus model.

This, as a whole, encouraged brands like Ethereum to upgrade their model from PoW to PoS in their Ethereum 2.0 update. Also, it helped various Blockchain ecosystem like Dash, Peercoin, Decred, Reddcoin, and PivX to function properly.

Now, while PoS solved various issues earlier associated with PoW, there were many challenges still undusted in the market. To mitigate those challenges and deliver an enhanced blockchain environment, several variations of PoS came into existence.

The two popular variations of Proof of Stake (PoS) are DPoS and LPoS.

Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)

In the case of Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), the participants stake their coin and vote for a certain number of delegates such that the more they invest, the more weightage they receive. For example: if user A spends 10 coins for a delegate and user B invests 5 coins, A’s vote gets more weightage than that of B.

The delegates also get rewarded in the form of transaction fees or certain amount of coins.

Because of this stake-weighted voting mechanism, DPoS is one of the fastest blockchain consensus models and highly preferred as a digital democracy. Some of the real-life use cases of this blockchain consensus mechanism are Steem, EOS, and BitShares.

Leased Proof of Stake (LPoS)

LPoS is an enhanced version of PoS consensus mechanism that operates on the Waves platform.

Unlike the regular Proof-of-Stake method where each node with some amount of cryptocurrency is entitled to add the next blockchain, users can lease their balance to full nodes in this consensus algorithm. And the one that leases the bigger amount to the full node have a higher probability of generating the next block. Also, the leaser is then rewarded with a percentage of transaction fee that has been collected by the complete node.

This PoS variant is an efficient and safe option for the development of public cryptocurrencies.

3. Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT)

Byzantine Fault Tolerance, as the name suggests, is used to deal with Byzantine fault (also called Byzantine Generals Problem) – a situation where the system’s actors have to agree on an effective strategy so as to circumvent catastrophic failure of the system, but some of them are dubious.

Learn more about the Byzantine Generals Problem through this video:-

The two variations of BFT consensus model that are prime in the Blockchain arena are PBFT and DBFT.

Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT)

PBFT is a lightweight algorithm that solves the Byzantine General’s problems by letting users confirm the messages that have been delivered to them by performing a computation to evaluate the decision about the message’s validity.

The party then announces its decision to other nodes who ultimately process a decision over it. This way, the final decision relies upon the decisions retrieved from the other nodes.

Stellar, Ripple, and Hyperledger Fabric are some of use cases of this blockchain consensus mechanism.

Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (DBFT)

Introduced by NEO, the Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance mechanism is similar to DPoS consensus model. Here also, the NEO token holders get the opportunity to vote for the delegates.

However, this is independent of the amount of currency they invest. Anyone who fulfills the basic requirements, i.e, a verified identity, right equipment, and 1,000 GAS, can become a delegate. One among those delegates is then chosen as speaker randomly.

The speaker creates a new block from the transaction that is waiting to be validated. Also, he sends a proposal to the voted delegates who have the responsibility to supervise all the transactions and record them on the network. These delegates have the freedom to share and analyze the proposals to check the accuracy of data and honesty of the speaker. If, then, 2/3rd of the delegates validates it, the block is added to the blockchain.

This type of Blockchain consensus protocol is also called ‘Ethereum of China’ and can be a helpful resource in building a ‘smart economy’ by digitising assets and offering smart contracts on the blockchain.

4. Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG)

Another basic yet prime blockchain consensus model that every mobile app development services company working with Blockchain must be familiar with is DAG.

In this type of Blockchain consensus protocol, every node itself prepares to become the ‘miners’. Now, when miners are eradicated and transactions are validated by users itself, the associated fee reduces to zero. It becomes easier to validate transactions between any two closest nodes, which makes the whole process lightweight, faster, and secure.

The two best examples of DAG algorithm are IOTA and Hedera Hashgraph.

Though these are the prime consensus models in the development environment, many different blockchain consensus mechanisms have slowly and gradually starting gaining momentum, such as:-

5. Proof of Capacity (PoC)

In the Proof of Capacity (PoC) mechanism, solutions for every complex mathematical puzzle is accumulated in digital storages like Hard disks. Users can use these hard disks to produce blocks, in a way that those who are fastest in evaluating the solutions get better chances for creating blocks.

The process it follows is called Plotting. The two cryptocurrencies that relies on PoC blockchain consensus protocol are Burstcoin and SpaceMint.

6. Proof of Burn (PoB)

Considered an alternate solution to PoW and PoS in terms of energy consumption, Proof of Burn (PoB) consensus model works on the principle of letting miners ‘burn’ or ‘ruin’ the virtual cryptocurrency tokens, which further provides them with a privilege to write blocks in proportion to the coins. The more coins they burn, the more are the chances of picking the new block for every coin they get.

But, in order to burn coins, they are required to send it to the address where it couldn’t be spent for verifying the block.

This is widely employed in the case of distributed consensus. And the finest example of this consensus mechanism is the Slim coin.

7. Proof of Identity (PoI)

The concept of PoI (Proof of Identity) is just like that of the authorized identity. It is a piece of cryptographic confirmation for a users’ private key that is being attached to each particular transaction. Each identified user can create and manage a block of data that can be presented to others in the network.

This blockchain consensus model ensures authenticity and integrity of the created data. And thus, is a good choice for introducing in smart cities.

8. Proof of Activity (PoA)

PoA is basically a hybrid approach designed through the convergence of PoW and PoS blockchain consensus models.

In the case of PoA mechanism, miners race to solve a cryptographic puzzle at the earliest using special hardware and electric energy, just like in PoW. However, the blocks they come across holds only the information about the identity of block winner and reward transaction. This is where the mechanism switches to PoS.

The validators (shareholders appointed to validate transactions) test and ensure the correctness of the block. If the block was checked many times, the validators activate to a complete block. This confirms that open transactions are processes and are finally integrated into the found block containers.

Besides, the block reward is divided so that validators gain shares of it.

The two real-world implementation of this mechanism are Espers and Decred coins.

9. Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET)

PoET was introduced by Intel with an intent to take over cryptographic puzzles involved in PoW mechanism by considering the fact that the CPU architecture and the quantity of mining hardware knows when and at what frequency does a miner win the block.

It is based on the idea of fairly distributing and expanding the odds for a bigger fraction of participants. And so, every participating node is asked to wait for a particular time to participate in the next mining process. The member with the shortest hold-up time is asked to offer a block.

At the same time, every node also come up with their own waiting time, after which they go into sleep mode.

So, as soon as a node gets active and a block is available, that node is considered as the ‘lucky winner’. This node can then spread the information throughout the network, while maintaining the property of decentralization and receiving the reward.

10. Proof of Importance (PoI)

Introduced by NEM, PoI is a variation of PoS protocol that considers the role of shareholders and validators for its operation. However, this is not only influenced by the size and chance of their shares; various other factors like reputation, overall balance, and no. of transactions made through any particular address also plays a role in it.

The networks based on POI consensus model are expensive to attack on and rewards users for contributing to the network’s security.

The information shared so far would have helped you in differentiating the varied Blockchain consensus protocols.

However, to simplify it for you, here’s a blockchain consensus algorithms comparison table.

How Can Mobile Apps Help Your Company’s Digital Transformation?

Posted on 20/02/201921/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Irrespective of which industry you look at, you will find entrepreneurs hustling to kickstart their digital transformation efforts which have been lying in the backdrop since several business years. While a considerably easy move when you have to alter your digital offering according to the customers’ needs, things become a little difficult when you start planning digital transformation for your business. A difficulty that mobile applications can solve.

There are two prime elements which businesses need to focus on when planning to digitally transform their workflow and workforce: adaptability and portability. And by bringing their processes and communications on mobile apps, they are able to hit both the targets in one go.

Here are some statistics looking into why enterprises need to count mobile application in, in their digital transformation strategy –

Although the above graph should be a reason enough to take mobile apps seriously, there are some other numbers as well.

57% of the digital media use comes in through apps.
On an average, any smartphone user has over 80 apps out of which they use 40 apps every month.
21% of millennials visit a mobile application 50+ times everyday.

While the statistics establish the rising growth of mobile apps, what we intend to cover in the article is the pivotal role mobile applications play in digital business transformation. To understand it from the entirety, we will first have to look into what is digital transformation and what it entails.

What is digital transformation?

Digital transformation means using digital technologies for changing how a business operates, fundamentally. It offers businesses a chance to reimagine how they engage with the customers, how they create new processes, and ultimately how they deliver value.

The true capabilities of introducing digital transformation in business lies in making a company more agile, lean, and competitive. The end of the long term commitment results in several benefits.

Benefits of digital transformation for a business

Greater efficiency – leveraging new technologies for automating processes leads to greater efficiency, which in turn, lowers the workforce requirements and cost-saving processes.
Better decision making – through digitalized information, businesses can tap in the insights present in data. This, in turn, helps management make informed decisions on the basis of quality intelligence.
Greater reach – digitalization opens you to omni-channel presence which enables your customers to access your services or products from across the globe.
Intuitive customer experience – digital transformation gives you the access to use data for understanding your customers better enabling you to know their needs and delivering them a personalized experience.

Merging mobile app capabilities with digital transformation outcomes

The role of mobile applications can be introduced in all the areas which are also often the key areas of digital transformation challenges that an enterprise faces.

Technology integration
Better customer experience
Improved operations
Changed organizational structure

When you partner with a digital transformation consulting firm that holds an expertise in enterprise app development, they work around all these above-mentioned areas in addition to shaping their digital transformation roadmap around technology, process, and people.

In addition to a seamless integration with the digital transformation strategy of an enterprise, there are a number of reasons behind the growing need to adopt digital transformation across sectors. Ones that encompasses and expands beyond the reasons to invest in enterprise mobility solutions.

The multitude of reasons, cumulatively, makes mobility a prime solution offering of the US digital transformation market.

How are mobile apps playing a role in advancing businesses’ internal digital transformation efforts?

1. By utilizing AI in mobile apps

The benefits of using AI for bettering customer experience is uncontested. Through digital transformation, businesses have started using AI for developing intuitive mobile apps using technologies like natural language processing, natural language generation, speech recognition technology, chatbots, and biometrics.

AI doesn’t just help with automation of processes and with predictive, preventative analysis but also with serving customers in a way they want to be served.

2. An onset of IoT mobile apps

The time when IoT was used for displaying products and sharing information is sliding by. The use cases of mobile apps in the IoT domain is constantly expanding.

Enterprises are using IoT mobile apps to operate smart equipment in their offices and making the supply chains efficient, transparent. While still a new entrant in the enterprise sector, IoT mobile apps are finding ways to strengthen their position in the business world.

3. Making informed decisions via real-time analytics

In the current business world, access to real-time analytics can give you a strong competitive advantage. Mobile applications are a great way for businesses to collect users’ data and engage with them through marketing transformation messages designed around the analytics based on their app journey.

You can use real-time analytics to know how your teams are performing, analyze their productivity, and get a first-hand view into the problems they are facing in performing a task and how it’s impacting the overall business value.

4. Greater portability

Portability in an enterprise ecosystem enables employees to work as per their convenience. While it shows less impact in the short term, in the long run, it plays a huge role in how productive a team is.

By giving employees the space to work as per the time and location of their choice, you give them the space to boost their creativity fuel and in turn productivity. One of the results of using software that enabled our employees to work according to their terms and conveniences for us was greater business expansion ideas and an increase in overall productivity of the workforce.

Tips to consider when making mobile apps a part of the digital transformation strategy

If at this stage, you are convinced that mobile applications are a key part of digital transformation efforts, here are some tips that can help your strategies for increasing the ROI on your enterprise app –

Adopt mobile-first approach – the key factor that separates enterprise apps that are winning is how they don’t treat apps as the extension of their websites. Their software development process is strictly mobile-only. This in turn shapes their entire design, development, and testing processes.

Identifying the scope of mobility – the next tip that digital transformation consulting firms would give you is analyzing the operations and workflows for understanding which teams, departments, or functions would benefit from mobility the most. You should not start reinventing a process which works okay, you should look for areas which can be streamlined, automated, or valued through mobility.

Outsourcing digital transformation efforts – when we were preparing An Entrepreneur’s Guide on Outsourcing Digital Transformation article, we looked into several benefits of outsourcing digitalization to a digital transformation strategy consulting agency. But the prime benefit revolved around saving businesses’ efforts and time which goes into solving challenges like – absence of digital skillset, limitations of the agile transformation process, or the inability to let go of the legacy systems.

Organizational Online Security: Brand Protection

Posted on 19/02/201921/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

A Brief on ‘What is Brand Protection?’

Just like Rome was not built in a day, successful business takes days of hard work and challenges to reach a paramount height. Many enterprises that fall under Fortune companies today, took years to build their business and create an eminent brand image in the market. However, the reputation of any organization relies upon its brand and its presence on various platforms. One of the biggest platforms that majorly impacts an organization’s reputation is the ‘online platform’. A brand is a valuable asset of an organization, especially over the digital landscape. Therefore, organizations must ensure brand protection online in the same fashion as they protect their other valuable assets. Failure to do so may not only reduce the value of your brand in the market but also can completely damage the reputation of your business.

A brand is more than just a front face of an organization. It is an intangible perception in the mindsets of consumers that concerns the quality and attributes of a product or service of the business. Moreover, developing any brand requires significant time and investment, but it would take only a matter of some time for cyber threat actors to destroy a brand’s image completely online. Hence, due to the widespread usage of the internet in the business world today, it has become essential highly to protect your brand. Brand protection is basically the act of preventing the brand against counterfeiting and copyright infringement activities. It is the process of securing a company’s intellectual property (IP) and their associated brand from copyright pirates or imitators from violating trademark rights, legitimate website content, designs, patents, etc. In short, brand protection prevents the brand from being abused in the digital landscape.

Why Does Your Brand Reputation Matter Online?

Today people are bombarded with various online advertisements of ubiquitous brand names. Even though renowned brands are easily recognizable, there are several other websites or applications present online that counterfeit brand names for malicious use. There are many reasons for the importance of brand protection. For instance, imagine your potential customer searching online for a service or product of your business. But rather than coming across the legitimate website of your company, your customer happens to fall for a fake website that has impersonated the content of your website and looks highly convincing. What would be your take on this? Without your knowing, your customer would fall for it and there would be a high possibility that after finding out the illegitimacy of the fake websites, a major bad impact on your brand reputation would arise. While it is just a scenario of one customer, imagine the number of other customers who might unknowingly fall victim to such websites that are impersonating your business online!

Follow the image below to understand the problem more clearly:

From the above image, it can be clearly seen that phishers can easily trick users with fake websites using convincing content and make it look like the original one. Although this practice of brand infringing comes in various forms such as copyright piracy, social media impersonation, trademark squatting, etc., the phishing of website and application tops among them all. The malicious motive of phishers to create an impersonated website or application is to get most of the traffic redirected from official to fake platform. By doing this, they get to trick customers into submitting their personal information and later these cybercrooks misuse the provided information. In fact, recently in the two weeks of the survey, it was discovered that 94% of COVID-19 related cyberattacks were phishing attacks and it included fake websites with domain names as “Corona” or “COVID”. Also, it was reported that 51,000 Coronavirus-themed domains were registered at the beginning of 2020, between January and March!

Moreover, in February 2020, the banking sector was used as a bait in the phishing attack campaign. The cyber attackers targeted mobile banking users by sending phishing links that redirect users to fake websites impersonating well-known banks in North America. Nearly 4,000 users fell victim to the phishing attack where the cyber threat actors were able to capture their sensitive information and login credentials. In a threat research report, it was discovered that in every 20 seconds a new phishing website goes live! This means that 3 new websites per minute are specifically designed to target users to steal their personal information. These statistics are the call for organizations to understand how vulnerable their brands are online. Today, organizations without online brand protection hold higher chances of having phished pages of their legitimate website online.

Brand impersonation

No matter what kind of industry your business comes under, be it manufacturing, healthcare, food, or BFSI, phishers won’t spare you if they find your brand vulnerable online. They would not only create a fake website but would also get the power of risking your business’ brand reputation in phishing scams, including other malicious activities. This is why brand protection is the most critical aspect of every industry today.

What Types of Brand Protection Strategies Should Organizations Follow?

An organization must implement proper and adequate brand protection strategies to keep a watch on the online activities taking place against their brand. Amidst the complexity of evolving online threats, stringent monitoring, and security measures are highly recommended for every firm. Knowing how cyber threat actors can infringe your brand and forge your company’s website, it is necessary to enforce your rights to maintain the integrity of your brand. Here are the best brand protection strategies that every CISO and CIO must implement in the organization:

Stringent Brand Monitoring:

Regular and stringent brand monitoring ensures that your brand is not being negatively publicized on the internet by phishing web pages or applications. It is the best way to identify fraudulent practices taking place against your brand and maintaining the brand’s reputation in the digital landscape. With proactive brand monitoring, it becomes easier to detect website forgery and manage the domain.

Instant Take-down Tool:

Implementing brand protection software not only detects counterfeiting of websites and applications effectively but also ensures to instantly take-down phishing domains present online in the name of your brand. Only regular tracking won’t stop cybercriminals from impersonating your website but implementing an instant take-down tool will help in removing all phishing domains within a matter of seconds from the web browser.

Dark Web Monitoring:

Hackers can go beyond the regular surface web to exploit an organization’s brand reputation while creating phishing websites or applications. You may never know how your brand is being misused in the other hidden world of the web called the dark web. The dark web is an infamous part of the web where the confidentiality and legitimacy of brands is exploited. By implementing and using dark monitoring techniques, organizations can detect the copyright infringement activities taking place on the dark web.

Implementing these above-mentioned following types of brand protection strategies, organizations can secure their brand online and mitigate the chances of website forgery.

How Does the Price of Cryptocurrency Change in the Market?

Posted on 18/02/201921/06/2021 by Tushar

If we had to make a list of some of the top volatile elements of the world, the one name that would top even Mercury is Cryptocurrencies.

Ever since their launch in 2009, cryptocurrencies have found themselves being counted as one of the most fluctuating and volatile topics of the world seeking to get to the bottom of what is cryptocurrency.

There is hardly any investment enthusiast who has not tried to crack the code of why cryptocurrencies fluctuate and how to take that understanding and convert it into insights that would make the investment successful.

While the industry has managed to make itself one that is extremely difficult to gauge in terms of cryptocurrency price movement, let us try to decipher how the price of cryptocurrency changes in the market by understanding how and why the cryptocurrencies move.

But let us first start by drawing parallels between Cryptocurrencies and Fiat Money.

Cryptocurrency vs Fiat Currency: How the Two Compare Against Each Other

The biggest comparative factor that stands between the cryptocurrency vs fiat currency debate is their backing. The fiat currencies are backed by the central governments and its value are derived from the fact that central government states it has value and then the parties transacting in the value are putting their trust in them. In the case of fiat currency, central banks control the entire supply of money and thus inflation.

Cryptocurrencies, on the other side, was brought into existence to not let central government have the autonomy to regulate the funds of an individual. And because they have a fixed supply, the devaluation through inflation is next to nonexistent.

Apart from this, both cryptocurrency and fiat currency come with similar characteristics: they both can be used as the medium to exchange services and products and they can store value.

Why Does Cryptocurrency Prices Fluctuate So Much?

A single statement answer to the question of what drives cryptocurrency price movement would be – because it is still a nascent stage.

Being a market that is yet to find its set of logical use cases, cryptocurrencies are still at a very nascent stage. And the result of this newness is the high volatility in the industry, which is majorly driven by the heightened experiments that investors make to get a sense of how the prices fluctuate.

Factors That Affect The Changing Cryptocurrency Values

The factors affecting price of cryptocurrency could range from the scope of cryptocurrency application in the present day to the future uses of cryptocurrency coin and a series of other linked elements falling in the development of the cryptocurrency space. Here are some of those reasons that bring about a cryptocurrency price movement in the market

1. Utility of the Coins

Any sound Blockchain development company would tell you that a cryptocurrency should have a strong use case in order to incentivize people to hold the coins.

Let us look at Ethereum as an example to explain it further. For executing the commands and developing applications on the Ethereum blockchain, one would need to have ETH to convert into gas and represent the ‘fuel’ of Ethereum.

Thus, the more the people who execute transactions and develop applications, the more would be the demand for ETH and greater would be the prices. In short, the bigger role of cryptocurrencies, the greater would be the cryptocurrency market cap.

2. Scarcity

Scarcity denotes the finite mechanism of cryptocurrencies.

In economics, a stable supply of any item increases its value in the long term for it is assumed that the demand would also increase. This, in turn, creates a scarcity for there are only a few coins in circulation. Some brands even use a burning mechanism, which means destroying a part of the coin supply. This in turn, increases the coin value for there is lesser coin supply.

3. Assumed Value

A cryptocurrency can only be as valuable as the market deem fit and the market values it on the basis of factors which are at the center of the project development. Here are some factors that determine the value of projects –

One that constantly achieve the milestones mentioned in its whitepaper
Partnership and collaboration with credible companies
Launch of MVP or beta version
The growth of the cryptocurrency market

4. Deflation of Fiat Currency

When the price of fiat currency declines, the price of cryptocurrency would automatically go up with respect to that currency. This happens because you would be able to get more currencies with your cryptocurrencies.

5. Mass Adoption

Driven by the sentiment that the more a product is demand, the greater would be its cost, the cryptocurrency price movement goes up with greater adoption that it sees in the market. This one formula has been the core reason behind the rise in prices of Bitcoin. So the more use cases a coin will see (like in case of Bitcoin) the greater would be its overall cost.

6. Whales

As the term denotes, Whales are those Bitcoin wallets that have around $1 billion in them. They make it very difficult to put any price target on the cryptocurrency. Per Wimmer, the founder of Wimmer Financial LLP, explains: “The crypto market is dominated mainly by ten big whales or privates. They are massive in the market and take up a lot space and volume so if you take the top 10 or even 50 you will have a lot of the volume covered already. It is too easy to manipulate the market so far”.

One way these ‘whales’ fuel price manipulations is through the rinse and repeat trading technique. Under this approach, a whale carrying huge crypto holdings begins selling them at lower than the market rate, which in turn causes a panic situation where small-time traders start selling off their holdings. The whale, meanwhile, waits through the panic state till the cryptocurrency value reaches rock bottom. And just when the price is low, they swoop in and buy more cryptocurrencies.

Besides these factors, if there is one thing that is and would continue to affect the cryptocurrency price fluctuations greatly is the regulations’ set. Presently, the speed at which governments are passing out regulations are limited to a huge extent, thus keeping cryptocurrencies reaching their mass adoption potential. But the more regulations, the greater would be the adoption and thus the rise in cryptocurrency prices.

What is Mobile App Onboarding?

How many types of Onboarding are there?

1. Progressive

2. Function-oriented

3. Benefits-oriented

Benefits of using App Onboarding

1. Positive User Experience

2. Proper utilization of features

3. Increases App Retention

Mobile App Onboarding Best Practices Checklist [2020 Updated]

1. Prioritize Value Proposition

2. Request Only Mandatory Information

3. Compact Onboarding Screens

4. Concise and Simple Sign-Up Process

5. Request for Permissions

6. Promote App Content Preview

7. Make Use of Empty States

8. Use Visual Hints for Guidance

9. Preach Personalization

10. Take advantage of Success States

11. Test before Final Implementation

12. Include A Balanced Mix Of Multiple Channels

13. Monitor and Track (liquid state)

14. Provide CTA

15. Offer the choice to Skip

Live Examples of App Onboarding Done Right

1. Slack

2. Reddit

3. Calm

A better way

Greasing the skids

Enabling operational flexibility

What is a Cross-Platform Framework?

1. Ionic

Features

2. React Native

Features

3. Flutter

Features

4. Xamarin

Features

5. NativeScript

Features

6. Node.js

Features

7. Appcelerator Titanium

Features

8. PhoneGap

Features

9. Sencha Touch

Features

10. Corona SDK

Features:

Pay once and Play Many Games

Arcade Fire

What Pre launch marketing ideas you should consider?

1. A thorough mobile app market research

2. Market your app now

3. Create a buzz with social media

4. A press kit

5. Reach out to beta testers

6. Focus on a better App store listing

How to Plan Post-launch App strategy?

1. Ask for referrals such as word of mouth

2. Link your app

3. Go for the paid ads

4. Approach to Apple’s editorial team

5. Map user journey

6. Maintain real-time communication

Pitfalls to avoid when you launch a mobile app

1. Generalizing

2. Poor onboarding

3. Launch full-fledged app

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Factors to Consider When Choosing React Native Databases for Your Project

Complexity of the Data

Number of Line of Codes

Synching of the Offline Data

Handling Data Conflicts and Concurrency

Memory Management