API Development: A Complete Guide

What is API: Definition, Types, Specifications, & Documentation?

Assuming that you’ve heard the word ‘API’ for like zillion times while communicating with mobile app developers, today I’m going to cover everything about APIs in this article. So, put your seat belts and get ready to get into the world of APIs – the superheroes behind the functioning of the mobile apps.

Let’s begin with what are APIs?

1. API

API(Application Programming Interface) is a set of instructions, standards or requirements that enables a software or app employ features/services of another app, platform or device for better services. In short, it’s something that let apps communicate with each other.

For example, when we hit on the ‘Connect Facebook’ button on Candy Crush, it does not ask us to enter our Facebook account details. Rather, it accesses the data from the Facebook server and let us enjoy playing – all thanks to API.

An API is the base of all the apps that deal with data or enable communication between two products or services. It empowers a mobile application or platform to share its data with other apps/platforms and ease the user experience without involving the developers. On the top of it, APIs eliminate the need to build a similar program or platform from scratch; you can use the existing one of some other app/platform. Because of these factors, both app developers and business leaders focus on API development.

If you are also interested in API development or wish to gain a sound knowledge of the same, keep reading ?

Before we delve further, let’s just have a look at the basic terminologies that will make it easier to understand the concept.

2. Terminology

What is Terminology Management in Translation? - Asian Absolute Ltd, UK

a) API Key: When an API request through a header or parameter to recognize the requester, the authorized code passed into the request is said to be an API Key.

b) Endpoint: When an API interacts with another system, one end of the communication channel is termed as Endpoint.

c) JSON: JavaScript Object Notion or JSON is said to be a data format used for APIs request parameters and response body.

d) GET: The RESTful API’s HTTP method of obtaining resources is called GET.

e) POST: It is the RESTful API’s HTTP method for building resources.

f) OAuth: It is basically an Open standard authorization framework that renders access from the user’s side without directly sharing the credentials.

g) REST: REST (Representational State Transfer) is a kind of programming architectural implementation meant to enhance the efficiency of communication between the two devices/systems. It is light-weighted and based on the idea of making a particular data available only when requested by sharing references to the data instead of the entire copy of the data itself. The systems enforced on this architecture are said to be ‘RESTful’ systems, and the most overwhelming example of RESTful systems is the World Wide Web.

h) SOAP: SOAP or Simple Object Access Protocol is a messaging protocol for sharing structured information in the execution of web services in computer networks. It works with XML information set and application layer protocols (like HTTP and SMTP) for message format and message negotiation & transmission, respectively.

i) Latency: Latency is defined as the total time taken by an API in the process from the request to the response.

j) Rate-Limiting: The term API Rate-limiting refers to the process of defining the rate at which an end user can access the APIs. In other words, it means restricting the number of requests a user can hit to an API per time.

k) API Throttling: The process of regulating the usage of APIs by users during a particular time period is called Throttling. This can be used for API limiting. For example, you set the limit of 1000 API requests per day. When the user hit the 1001 request, the server will send 429 messages as HTTP status to the end user along with the message, “Too many Requests”.

For more terminology and acronym, refer this site.

Now, as you know what are APIs, are armed with the terminologies and are familiar with the anatomy of the growing API market, let’s dig deeper into the technical part – beginning with how do APIs work?

3. Working of API

What is an API? How does it work? | by Amanda Kothalawala | Medium

Suppose you opened some XYZ app/website to book a flight. You filled the form – you entered the departure and return date, city, flight, and other relevant details – and submitted. With a fraction of seconds, a list of flights appears on the screen along with the price, timings, seat availability, and other details. How this actually happens?

To provide such stringent data, the platform sent a request to the airline’s website to access their database and get relevant data via API. The website responded with the data which API delivered to the platform and the platform displayed it on the screen.

Here, the flight booking app/platform and airline’s website act as endpoints while API as the intermediate streamlining the data sharing process. When talking about communicating the endpoints, the API works in two ways, namely: REST and SOAP (see definition above).

Though both the methods bring effective results, mobile app development companies prefer REST over SOAP since SOAP APIs are heavy and platform-dependent.

To understand the API lifecycle and working process in detail, contact our experts today!

Now coming to the main part – How to develop an API? What tools and technologies to choose? What practices to adopt for an effective API development?

4. Tools for Developing an API (like a PRO..)

While there are a plethora of tools and technologies equipped into the process of creating an API, the popular tools and products for developing APIs for developers are:

a) Apigee: It is a Google’s API management provider that assists the developers and entrepreneurs to triumph at digital transformation by reestablishing towards an API approach.

What is Apigee? | Apigee X | Google Cloud

b) APIMatic and API Transformer: They offer sophisticated automatic generation tools to build top-quality SDKs and code snippets from API specific formats and transform them into other specification formations, such as RAML, API Blueprint, etc.

Transformer | APIMatic

c) API Science: This tool is primarily used for evaluating the performance of both internal APIs and external APIs.

API Monitoring and API Testing : API Science

d) API Serverless Architecture: These products assist mobile app developers in designing, building, publishing and hosting APIs with the help of a cloud-based server infrastructure.

e) API-Platform: This is one of the open-source PHP framework that is apt for web API development.

API Platform: REST and GraphQL framework on top of Symfony and React

f) Auth0: It is an identity management solution used to authenticate and authorize APIs.

Secure your React Apps with Auth0 — Part I | by Aiska Basnet | wesionaryTEAM | Medium

g) ClearBlade: It is an API management provider for embracing the IoT technology into your process.

ClearBlade - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding

h) GitHub: This open-source git repository hosting service let the developers manage code files, pull requests, version control, and commenting that are distributed across the group. It also let them save their code in private repositories.

About · GitHub

i) Postman: It is basically an API toolchain that empowers the developers to run, test, document, and evaluate the performance of their API.

Postman Surpasses 10 Million Users as API Usage Booms | Business Wire

Although the world is full of APIs and APIs, there is still a major gap in utilizing the perks of API. While some APIs make integration to the app a breeze, other turns it into a nightmare. To help you out in ensuring that you build a former one, here are some of the factors related to APIs for developers to consider:

5. Must-Have Features of an Efficient API

Web API Design: 5 Best Practices to Know | Toptal

a) Modification timestamps/Search by criteria: An API should let the users search data based on different criteria, like a date. This is because it’s the changes (update, edit and delete) that we consider just after the first initial data synchronization.

b) Paging: Many times, it happens that we do not want to see the complete data changed, but just a glimpse of it. In such a scenario, the API should be capable of determining how much data to display in one go and at what frequency. It should also inform the end user about the no. of pages of data remaining.

c) Sorting: To ensure that the end user receives all the pages of data one-by-one, the API should empower the users to sort data as per the time of modification or some other condition.

d) JSON Support/ REST: Though not compulsory, it is good to consider your API to be RESTful (or providing JSON support(REST)) for an effective API development. The REST APIs are stateless, light-weighted and let you retry the upload mobile app process if it fails. This is quite tough in case of SOAP. Besides, JSON’s syntax resembles that of most of the programming languages, which make it easy for a mobile app developer to parse it into any other language.

e) Authorization via OAuth: It is again necessary that your API authorizes via OAuth since it is faster than other methods – you just need to click on a button and it’s done.

In short, the processing time should be minimum, response time good and security level high. It is of paramount importance to put efforts into the best practices for securing your application, after all, it deals with a heap of data.

6. Best Practices for Building the Right API

a) Use Throttling: App Throttling is a great practice to consider for redirecting overflow of traffic, backup APIs and safeguarding it from DoS (Denial of Service) attacks.

Throttling Schmottling – Use Speedify to Beat Those Speed Bumps

b) Consider your API gateway as Enforcer: While setting up throttling rules, application of API keys or OAuth, the API gateway must be considered as the enforcement point. It should be taken as a cop that lets only right users get access to the data. It should empower you to encrypt the message or edit confidential information, and thereby, analyze and manage how your API is being used.

c) Allow overriding HTTP method: Since some proxies only support GET and POST methods, you need to let your RESTful API override the HTTP method. For doing so, employ the custom HTTP Header X-HTTP-Method-Override.

How to implement a DelegatingHandler for X-HTTP-Method-Override in Web API | InfoWorld

d) Evaluate the APIs and infrastructure: In the current time, real-time analysis is possible to get, but what if API server is suspected to have memory leaks, draining CPU or other such issues? To consider such situations, you can’t keep a developer at duty. However, you can perform this easily via using numerous tools available in the market, like AWS cloudwatch.

e) Documentation: Last but not the least, it is profitable to create an extensive documentation for an API that let other mobile app developers easily understand the whole process and utilize the information for offering better user experience. In other words, a good API documentation in the process of effective API development will lessen the project implementation time, project cost and boost the API efficiency.

Javascript Code Documentation - My Approach to Documenting Project

Now as you have gained an in-depth knowledge of what are APIs and what factors to consider while developing one, are you interested in API development? If so, reach to our experts.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT API DEVELOPMENT

1. What is REST API and SOAP API?

REST (Representational State Transfer) API is a software architectural style that describes a complete set of constraints to be employed for building Web services.  Whereas, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a protocol much complex by adding more standards than REST, such as security

2. How do I make a good RESTful API?

Making a good RESTful API is easier when you follow these practices:-

  1. Use Throttling
  2. Considering your API Gateway as Enforcer
  3. Allowing overriding HTTP method
  4. Making a proper documentation
  5. Determine the APIs and infrastructure

3. What is API and types of API?

API (Application Programming Interface) is a collection of instructions, and requirements that let a software or mobile application utilize the features/services of other applications, platform or devices for exceptional services.

There are basically different types of API:-

  • Web service APIs
  • WebSocket APIs
  • Library-based APIs
  • Object remoting APIs
  • Class-based APIs
  • Hardware APIs, etc.

4. What is JSON API?

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is an encoding scheme created to eradicate the need for an ad-hoc code for each app to interact with servers in a particular manner.

Learn to coding with the help of the best App Developers in the world

Learn to code with the help of the best App Developers in the world
Coding has placed itself as one of the most secure jobs in the current world. The demand is set on a high priority mode for a number of years to come.

This is the reason why more and more people who are even mildly interested in technology are preparing to become coders.

However, even among this stable demand in the job market and the passion to follow the path, a number of people are still thinking twice before getting into it, solely because of the misconception that it would need a degree and years of practice to become a coder and join some glorious app development company.

If you too are the one restricting yourself from realizing your code dream because of this misconception, we have listed down ways that you can learn how to code. A list that has been curated by our team of skilled coders.

Before we get into the ways you can learn how to code, let us look into some of the reasons that are motivating people to learn how to code.

1. What is prompting our generation to take up Coding courses

a. It will be around in the future

Learn to code with the help of the best App Developers in the world

When one takes up a course, the idea is to not go with the one whose demand is short lived but go with one that is least replaceable. And, when we talk about the job trends, the one that is going to be around for the foreseeable future and beyond, it is Coding. The tech industry is only going to grow (with many more programming languages coming up) and the only way to grow with it is by joining the club and becoming technical.

b. Demand is much more than supply

Learn to code with the help of the best App Developers in the world

The demand for coders is much higher than the number of coders in the industry – a scenario that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.

Having much more demand than the supply comes with its own set of perks. You get to earn much higher than your years of experience and the chance of finding a job irrespective of the geographical boundaries is also much higher.

c. A lot of career options at the back of a strong foundation

A great career strategy relies on strong foundations By IIBM Institute

If you work on your code foundations today, you will have in front of you a series of career options. Even if you are preparing yourself to be a flappy bird developer, with time you will be able to branch out in coding involved with a number of disruptive technologies like AR/VR, Blockchain, or even AI.

Now that we have seen the reasons that are motivating people across the globe to become coders, let us now look into the ways you can learn how to code, even without a programming language experience or a computer science degree. These are the ways that have been suggested by our team of developers who themselves have developed over 500 apps belonging to a range of different disruptive technologies like Chatbots, AI, and Blockchain, amongst others.

Let’s begin.

2. Ways You Can Learn How to Code Without a Computer Science Degree

Okay, a slight detour again.

Before we get into this journey of learning how to code let me help you finalize a programming language first, the one you should start with.

The basic programming language that I would suggest to start with is JavaScript. The language comes in very handy when you are developing an app – one that can be of any type, no matter how complex. The industry demand for JavaScript developers is extremely high. No matter what job portal you are looking into, you will find a listing for JS developers there.

Also, the JavaScript developer community is an ever growing one. New tools are always coming up in the JavaScript industry, giving you, a beginner, a chance to join the league of developers who come with years of experience in the domain and are yet to explore the new batch of tools.

Once you are adept with JavaScript, expand your learning to a more platform specific language. The present and the near future belongs to Kotlin for Android app developers and Swift and iphone app developers. So, choose a platform that you are even remotely passionate about and invest in its specific language.

Now that you must have gathered an idea of what programming language you would like to delve in further, let us now look into what we gathered here for – to learn how to code when you do not even know its basics.

3. Online Courses to Learn Coding From

The Ultimate Guide to Coding for Beginners - Skillcrush

  1. Code.org – Their courses are majorly designed for the K-12 students, but anyone who is looking to start fresh in the coding industry can enroll in these courses.
  2. Codecademy – It is a free resource for learning every major web programming language out there in the industry.
  3. Khan Academy – They have a range of topics to meet the learning needs of coders irrespective of their learning level
  4. Learn Swift – If iOS App Development is what you wish to do, the site is your Meccah. It has pages and pages of data that would help you learn Swift.

4. YouTube Channels That Will Help you Code

11 Best YouTube Channels for Coding and Programming | IE

  1. Learn.code Academy – Topics it Cover – Responsive Design, Sublime Text, Node.js, Backbone.js, Angular.js, Deployment Strategies, etc.
  2. Thenewboston – Topics it Covers – C programming language, Android development, Python, MySQL, etc.
  3. ProgrammingKnowledge – Topics it Covers – Java, C, Python,  Android programming, JavaFX, Bootstrap, etc
  4. Derek Banas – Topics it Covers – Java, PHP, Ruby, HTML, C++,  Python, Android, Assembly language, etc.

5. Blogs you should Follow to Become Better Coders

Top Programming Blogs and Websites Every Programmer Must Follow — agile actors

  1. SitePoint –The blog continuously keeps getting updated with new topics ranging from everything – HTML, CSS, Swift, React.JS, amongst a lot of others.
  2. David Walsh – Managed by Mozilla’s senior developer, David Walsh, the website has a lot of information specific to developers, presented in how-tos, demos, and tutorials.
  3. A List Apart – Have tons of articles for coders irrespective of their expertise level.
  4. SoftwareHow – The blog is a go to the website for anything related to software tools. It comes with a huge collection of guides, tips, and software reviews.

The list would help you immensely at becoming better coders over time. The one thing that you should do though before you drop the idea of learning how to code is at least try one other method of learning, irrespective of what your current mode of learning is.

How Do You Make Loyal Customers Out of Website Visitors?

10 Proven Ways to Convert Your Abandoned Cart Website Visitors Into Loyal Customers

In the next 5 minutes, you will gather all the knowledge about repulsing potential customers with the help of your website. But if you continue reading after that, we will let you in the secrets of how not to do that.

Every smart marketer knows what kind of impact a good website can have on a business’s conversion rates – A Big One. And this magic wand becomes an even more crucial key to conversions for startups and small businesses.

There are two major kinds of mistakes that can sum up a Bad website – Design mistakes and Usability mistakes.

Well, the good news is, mistakes can be corrected. However, if you’re one of those businesses who have altogether skipped bringing your business on a website, then it is just bad news for you.

Without procrastinating a day more, you should start working on building a website for your business but before that, read on, to find out the dos and don’ts of business websites and how they make you money.

Mistakes Made in Creating A Website

What is the most basic function of a website? Delighting the visitors What is that the website should not do? Annoy the Visitors.

It is that simple. But only for a more elaborate discussion, let us take into account that what are the mistakes made by developers and designers in creating a website that might end up annoying visitors, aka Potential customers, instead of helping them.

A. Purposeless Pagination

How to Convert Website Visitors into Loyal Customers?

Pagination is the process of splitting up the contents of a web page into multiple pages because displaying too many articles and images on a single page make it bulky and hard to load. It is often done for web pages with a long list of articles or items and it makes sense.

Although, there is another reason for which the process of Pagination is being used for a purpose which is plain annoying for users. Some websites divide a single article into multiple pages in order to increase page views. More than a few websites and blogs earn their revenues with the help of advertising and getting page views.

While this may look like an easy way to earn extra bucks but besides being irksome for users, it also poses a serious problem. That is, search engines analyse the content of each of your website pages and indexes these pages according to the content of those pages along with keywords. If each page is divided into multiple pages, it dilutes the content and thus it will negatively affect the page ranking of your website.

B. Broken Links

Finding (and Fixing!) Broken Links to Prevent 404 Errors

One of the most annoying things on any website is seeing the “404” error pages. These are the hyperlinks that lead nowhere. For the best way to avoid these best links, you need to thoroughly test your website as regularly as possible. For a little help, you can even include a “contact the webmaster” link at the end of your web pages so that if a user finds a broken link, they can quickly inform you and they can be fixed immediately.

C. Having Multiple Font Styles

10 Beautiful Font Combinations For Your Design In 2021

Any web page or all the web pages of a single website need to have a uniformity in terms of style, colour theme and typography. This helps the website in having an acquired consistency but what most novice website developers do not understand is that using multiple font styles does not add to the site aesthetics, instead, they make it look like a mash-up of an immature website.

Your website should be able to ensure the visitors of your stability, maturity and reliability and not otherwise. It is also important to test your aesthetics over a number of devices and learn how to create a high conversion website.

D. Bad Navigation

6 Ways Bad Website Navigation Can Tank Your Marketing

A website should allow the users to seamlessly navigate through the website without the need to ask another person about the whereabouts of any particular section. Users must be able to find their way around as easily as possible and not struggle to find a certain information on the website.

For getting over a bad navigation, textual descriptions can be used for all the links. Always remember that users are impatient for any new website and if they cannot find their way around in 3 clicks or less, they will leave immediately.

E. Complicated Registration Process

30 tips for signup flows (so that users stop cursing you) | by Maxim Stepanov | UX Collective

Registration pages are a tricky business. Many a time, websites ask for information that they do not need and it becomes a hassle for the users to fill in the entire form and not to mention if they mistakenly reload the page and then are asked to fill in the whole information again. This is a recipe for driving users away at first glance. Gone are the days when users used to fill out a long form for every registration process.

SO even though you make your registration process mandatory, you need to do a research on the form details and choose the mandatory details only. After all, for signing up for a newsletter, users do not need to fill their Father’s name.

After going through the major mistakes most website designers end up making, we ought to learn about the corrections of these mistakes which do nothing other than driving the users away. Therefore, let us take a look at how to convert website visitors into customers.

Ways to Make Your Website A Conversion Magnet

In order to build a conversion focused web design, there are certain things to take care of and not to let the big mistakes of website design come into your way to convert traffic into sales. In fact, let us move forward and see how to make your website a customer generating machine.

In order to attract more traffic in a way that they’ll be interested in doing business with you and your company, you need to take care of the following things with the utmost importance.

1. Work Upon the Readability

Clarity and Readability Checklist for Content Creators | Meet Content

There are very simple ways to enhance user experience with the readability for your website visitors. It can be done in two ways: Always compare your website’s colour schemes with that of other websites of the same business domain as yours and understand how they are able to portray their seriousness and maturity through their website. And also, how can you apply their methods to improve the readability of your website.

Use a more readable and clear font for your website typography. The best to use is Sans serif typeface since it allows easy reading on the web.

2. Work Upon an Organized Content Layout

The Best Content Calendar Template to Get Organized All Year

Let’s face it – any website’s content is the driving force of traffic. Therefore to increase website conversions, paying extra attention to the content is what is required of the website developer and designer. It is highly crucial to know that the structure of website content can either make it a success or a failure.

In order to organise content on your website, use HTML and CSS while designing the paged of your website. Apart from that, there should be enough whitespace between the images and text with the use of margins.

Also, it is very important to regularly update your content and website pages. And updating the content does not mean adding more content but rather to find out and correct past mistakes.

You can also look forward to hiring a “web gardener” in your content team who will basically root out old mistakes and keep the web content up to date.

3. Consistency in UI Design

Why Design Consistency Matters for Your Website | Web Design MI : build/create

Some new designers take the UI design to the next level and put excessive elements of design without a theme to work with. Sometimes they even go far enough to apply a different theme for every page of the website. It does not matter how wonderful the individual design elements are if the overall consistency of the website is missed, converting the website visitors to leads can turn into an unachievable dream.

For avoiding this inaccuracy, the website designers should use a consistent design template for every one of the web pages along with embedding the links to the main page of the site.

Aesthetically, simple design is the key to creating a conversion focussed web design.

4. Having a User-Friendly Screen Resolution

I can say with certainty that we all have, at some point of the other, visited a website where we had to scroll horizontally or zoom out to get a full look of the page. This happens because the screen resolution is not tested among multiple devices.

A good website designer will always take care of the fact that his/her website should fit the devices and screens of all sizes and resolutions. Unarguably, this is a difficult task to include all the different devices in the design but still, we can use different tools that can help the designers to learn how to optimise your website for more conversions for the majority of the devices.

Services such as Google Analytics can help you in gathering information about the various monitor resolutions of your users and this information can be used in the design update of your website.

5. Careful Usage of Graphics

The 7 Elements of Good Graphic Design

For a big customer conversion Idea – Never use too many graphics/images/animations on your web pages. Although, it is true that images can gain the user’s attention but it can also work as a distraction from the main content of the website. Instead of stuffing the website with as many images as possible, they should be used at subtle guides for helping the user to understand the content and navigate through the website.

The appropriate use of Graphics and animation is how to boost conversions on your website, so use them wisely.

To sum up, the above-mentioned mistakes and the ways to correct them are not limited to these elements. All the good website designers and developers are aware of the power a website holds over the conversion rate of deals and that’s why, we, at Anteelo, build a website as an extension of the mobile app for our clients.

There are delicate methods that we apply to the websites that we build to ensure converting website visitors to leads as much as possible.

To know how you can improve your website and get more customers, head on to our Product Design service section to know what we do to make websites a conversion magnet.

Ways you can guarantee Your Enterprise App Chances of Failure

Why Your Company Needs an Enterprise App Store | PCMag

*Disclaimer*: The Blog Is Meant to Wake you Before You Make Grand Enterprise Application Mistakes. We don’t want you to fail.

While it takes a lot of effort to build an app into success, it’s fairly easy to plan its failure well in advance. The chances of pushing your app towards making it a failure is not difficult. All you have to do is miss out on things that the employees need or you can simply keep users out of the enterprise app development process.

If that was not enough, here are the five ways you can guarantee your enterprise app failure

1. Wrong Problem Identification

innovate.d - A key reason for failure: Solving the wrong problem

In your typical corporate setup, there can be over 500 different functions, when the primary ones are broken down to different processes. Identifying which ones of those functions would benefit and become more efficient when mobility is introduced to them, is a crucial decision to make.

There can be many work process issues which might seem crucial and long term right now, such as managing mass recruitment processes, but they might be seasonal in nature. So, wrong identification of which problem actually needs to be solved or which process needs to be changed is your shortcut to enterprise app failure.

2. Poor App UX

5 Reasons Why a Bad UX Can be dangerous for your App

If it’s getting too difficult to navigate within the app, if the app is filled with functionalities that are not important for moving a task from point A to Point D, or if your enterprise app asks users to sign in with different credentials to view a report, or by simply not allowing them to leave your app to perform even the basic of their device’s functions, they won’t stay for long.

The second employees realize that they were better off before there was even an app to “ease” their processes, your enterprise app is doomed.

3. No Access to App Analytics

Google Analytics - Wikipedia

You develop an enterprise app that was meant to streamline the teams, make them more efficient, and enable better tracking and you see it working right in your favour. You see evident changes in team’s performance. But when the management asks you to show numbers, you are lost.

While you see the positive changes, there is no way to translate them into numbers. This happened because you missed out on adding app analytics in your enterprise app development process.

By missing out on adding features that would showcase how employees are working inside the app and what are their pain points, you close down all scope of further improvement.

4. Lack of Marketing

Half of small business owners lack a marketing strategy for 2019 - Agility PR Solutions

While the top management knows that you are creating an enterprise app that will be floated down to the concerned team once done, but the team doesn’t have an idea. They have not been given any heads up on how their working process is going to change, how it is going to save their time and make them more efficient.

What do you expect the first reaction would be when one day suddenly, the team is asked to move their reports on ABC Enterprise App?

I know I would have not taken it easy nor I would have invested my time in knowing the app’s functionality and plus points.

If you are not following the golden rule of greater the marketing efforts greater the acceptance rate, your enterprise mobile application development process is going to fail, massively.

5. Not involving the Team Seeking Change

Collaborative leadership: moving from top-down to team-centric | Slack

Imagine you are developing an app for streamlining the offshore and in house sales team. So you meet up with the management team who give you a basic idea of the issues that are there and just at the back of that discussion you start developing the app.

You don’t bother to sit with the offshore and the company’s in house team to understand exactly what issues they are facing, if it’s on site network issue or lack of a platform where the reports are present.

If that was not enough, you don’t involve the team when deciding the app’s functionalities as well. You straight away go to the deployment stage even without passing the app across the team for review and feedback.

So here are the ways you would be preparing your enterprise mobile app for not just your failure but also for the failure of company’s efficiency.

To prevent yourself from making these app failures, contact our team of enterprise app developers today.

Elements That Are Making Your Food Technical: AI, AR, and VR

5 Technology Trends That Will Shape 2017 and Beyond — AI, AR/VR, Analytics, Cloud and Data Science | by Hari Gottipati | Medium

The Ways Artificial Intelligence and Augmented, Virtual Reality Are Impacting the Food and Beverage Industry are too many and too omnipresent to ignore. From inside the kitchen/ store to the food production chain, the three technologies have found their place right at the center of the industry.

While in one restaurant, diners are analysing their calorie count that has come attached with their order using Augmented Reality, on the other side Food brands are using AI based chatbots to send out messages to users according to their eating behaviour.

Although, it’ll be difficult to find case studies on the exact implication of the three disruptive technologies in the industry, but here are the use cases of Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality that have started surfacing over time.

In this article, we will talk about how the industry is transforming with the advent of the technologies.

Let us first look at the implications of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in the modern F&B industry

IoT use cases for food and beverage industry | IoT in Retail Industry

1. Educate Diners of Nutritional Components

With the help of Augmented Reality, restaurants can give their diners a detailed information of the ingredients and their corresponding nutritional value, which is present in the dish that they have ordered.

Using Virtual Reality, restaurants can also create a virtual chef and introduce him to the diners as they look at how their food is prepared in action.

2. Adding Gamification Elements to the Waiting Time

The long waiting time once the food order has been placed, is one of the biggest turn off points for a diner. In fact, it is also the number one reason behind diners not coming to the restaurant twice. To solve the non returning customer issue, restaurants have started introducing the power of virtual reality in their everyday process.

As customers wait for their order, they can join the kitchen and become a sous chef, or they can take a deep dive in the oceans with seals and dolphins in the ocean themed restaurant, all through the advancement of virtual reality.

Also, while the customers wait, Augmented Reality game where they have to look for hidden spoons on the table or count the cherries in the dish can be introduced.

3. Making Chefs, Bartenders, and Waiters More Skilled

With the help of Virtual Reality, Food and Beverage industry would be able to elevate the learning process. The technology can be used to impart skills related to anything – making impressions on cappuccino, carrying four plates at a time to diner’s table, and the art of mixing showman’s skills into bartending.

Real life simulation of tasks using Virtual Reality would lower both learning time and on the job mistakes.

While Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are more focussed on the experience part of the diners, Artificial Intelligence looks into the Food and Beverage system from the business or backend front.

Here are the ways Artificial Intelligence domain betters the Food industry –

AI in Food Manufacturing - FutureBridge

1. Slash Food and Drink Production Cost

An AI system, which closely monitors the level of dirt on cooking equipment to make sure that they are clean, holds the power to save over £100m in UK food industry.

The AI system, which is being built by the Derbyshire-based Martec of Whitwell uses optical fluorescence imaging and ultrasonic sensing to measure the exact dirt levels present in the equipment. The AI system is expected to save over 20 – 50% of the cleaning time and energy that the food industry puts behind this part of the production chain.

2. Assortment Management

By studying the buying behaviour of local purchasers, Artificial Intelligence will help in better management of Food Shelves in the supermarket. By giving the owners detailed information on which product is most in-demand, in what quantity, and in what season, the businesses would be able to concentrate on specific items, while cutting down on filling of shelf space with those that are not in demand.

3. Planned Menu

By analysing the diners’ order request is not just your restaurant but also in those that they otherwise frequent, Artificial Intelligence will help you plan your menu according to diners food preferences. It would also give you an idea of their taste preferences, whether they like their food spicy or have a sweet tooth.

When broken down to a more atomic level, AI would also get you insights on diners’ food preference when there is a football match on or when they are nearing end of month with their salary level now standing at single or early double digits.

4. Lesser Food Wastage

The current Food and Beverage Industry is marked by a series of strict rules and policies related to food quality that is expected to be maintained in restaurants and fast food chain. The rules around quality of tomatoes that can go as slice in burger might lead to a lot of wastage in case they don’t meet the criteria.

With Artificial Intelligence, the actual expectation bar would be raised. The technology would give information on exactly what the users expect and the room they can work around when it comes to tomato slices size and french fries length.

5. Development of new Food Items

By reading the users’ reviews on what taste they are developing, what combination they would like to be introduced, and what they need as a blend of their health and taste preference, the world will start looking into more and more food items getting developed at the back of AI insights.

IntelligentX is one such brand that has developed a series of premium beers according to the users’ feedback collected with the help of AI, and so long the brand is seeing a huge success.

While these are just some of the ways Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Artificial Intelligence hold the power to alter and revolutionize the Food and Beverage industry, the time to come will look into more application of the technologies.

Technology Trends to Watch in 2021 and Beyond

Top 10 Technology Trends in 2019 | HP® Tech Takes

There are some technology trends that fizz out over time and then there are the latest technology trends that stay on the sidelines and then gain traction after it either gets major funding or an industry suddenly integrates it in their process.

There are many such technologies that have already made their prominent mark in the previous years and are only a few more advances away from becoming mainstream. These technologies are the ones that we have listed as the latest and upcoming and latest technologies that would be setting a global trend in the coming years.

Without further ado, here are the ten technology trends for the future years –

1. Artificial Intelligence

Technology Trends

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is constantly making its place in the list of top tech trends since quite some years. It has found a place in the future technology trends 2021 technology predictions as well.

AI is already known for its superiority in image and speech recognition, voice assistants, navigation apps, automation, and whatnot.

In the artificial intelligence trends 2021, we hope to see tremendous demand and rapid development of AI and modern industrial automation technology. As manufacturing and supply chains are getting back to full activity, labor shortage will turn into a serious issue. Automation with the assistance of AI, robotics and IoT will be a key solution to operate manufacturing.

Other than that AI development companies will be utilizing AI further to analyze interactions to decide basic underlying influences and insights to predict demand for services such as healthcare sector empowering specialists to make better choices about resource use, and to identify the changing ways of customer behavior by dissecting data in near real-time, driving incomes and improving customized experiences.

Its present-day tasks of enabling computers to read (studying messages and reports), see (through facial recognition), listen (by enabling Amazon Echo to answer your command), speak (Siri being able to give you an answer), and even record emotions (through affective computing), will help AI become a technology that no longer needs human intervention to aid its learning. The mass usage of AI in the world is leading to its adoption in a number of sectors: Customer Experience, DesigningHealthcare, Fintech.

2. Voice search

A Healthcare Marketer's Secret Weapon in the Voice Search Battle

The trending technologies in 2021 will remain incomplete without voice search technology. The time is long gone when the only relation between voice and technology was to talk using our mobile devices. The importance of voice search in today’s time cannot be ignored, as this emerging technology trends 2021 uses speech recognition to identify what a user is saying with high accuracy. As a reply, it delivers the message to the user through voice.

While Google Action SDK and Integration of Siri into apps have already acquainted us with the power of voice in conducting everyday tasks, the applications have still remained very limited. But the future that it has set for itself, has placed voice based applications in the list of top technologies in 2021.

The near future with a set of upcoming new tech trends will find itself conducting more operations with a voice command. In only a matter of time, every device that we have surrounded ourselves with will be able to function and perform actions with a command of our voice. Mixed with Natural Language Processing, AI, and Machine Learning with voice-based applications will find a greater place in users’ everyday activities.

3. Natural language processing

Technology Trends

In a year or two, Chatbots would have reached their market potential, with the majority of the businesses employing them to redefine their customer engagement policies. However, the new technology in software development would reach a whole different level through the integration of Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Presently NLP is broadly utilized in financial marketing. It shares a thorough insight into market sentiments, tender delays and closings, and obtains data from huge repositories.

The requirement for a semantic search is another top tech trend to affect NLP in 2021. This search would draw both NLP and NLU (Natural Language Understanding) requiring a granular perception of the central thoughts contained inside the text.

E-retailers would utilize NLP and Machine Learning methods to build customer engagement, analyze their browsing patterns and shopping trends.

A report by Business Insider predicts that the chatbot market which was worth $2.6 billion in 2019 will reach US$9.4 billion by 2024.

4. Blockchain

Will 2020 Be The Year Cryptocurrency And Blockchain Becomes Operational?

The rate at which Blockchain is growing has placed it at a pivotal point in the list of latest trends in technology. While prevalent with cryptocurrencies currently, the world will see its mass adoption in the coming years, and Blockchain technology trends will definitely stay here.

Cryptocurrencies, the important Blockchain element, will also find itself divided in a number of currencies and would be floated in the market just like fiat currencies. People who are currently unaware of what Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies are and where they can spend them, will start doing their everyday transactions with them. The future will see Blockchain development solution being explored beyond cryptocurrencies.

In 2021, the technology will scale with updates and better implementations of smart contracts. When it comes to securely exchanging data, the updates to Blockchain tech may mean that it can be used whenever and wherever there is a case of secure, immutable data exchange. For that people can opt for companies like blockchain development company in USA to avail the benefit of this technology.

According to reports by Markets and Markets, thglobal blockchain market size is expected to grow from USD 3.0 billion in 2020 to USD 39.7 billion by 2025, at an impressive CAGR of 67.3% during 2020–2025.

5. Internet of Things

Technology Trends

Internet of Things (IoT) has been finding itself in the list of latest app development trends 2021. Our homes that already have a series of smart products such as TVs, water heaters, microwaves, yoga mats, and the voice-enabled personal assistants like Amazon echo, etc., will find a series of new entries in only a matter of time.

The Internet of Things is the future, and has facilitated devices such as home appliances, cars and much more to be connected to and exchange data over the Internet. The IoT technology trend enables better security, efficient decision making for businesses as information is collected and analyzed through the internet. It is said to provide predictive maintenance, speed up medical care, improve customer service, and offer various benefits in the coming future.

According to Statista Forecasts, around 50 billion of IoT devices will be in use around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.

6. Edge computing

Top 5 Edge Computing companies you should follow in 2020 | TechGig

One of the least talked about but one of the latest upcoming technologies will take the center stage the day IoT becomes a mainstream technology. While businesses are presently working comfortably in their Cloud setup, things are going to change pretty soon with edge computing.

Edge computing supports computation and data storage together on the collection device, inplace of depending on one major location that can be miles away.

It is a computing element where everything from – information processing, content collection, and delivery etc. are situated close to the source of information. Latency and connectivity challenges, bandwidth restrictions, and higher functionality are some of the benefits that get embedded at the edge of the source.

To be a part of the future technology trends enterprises should start using edge based design patterns in the infrastructure architectures, especially in those that come with notable IoT elements. For achieving this, the starting point can use edge-specific and co-location networking abilities.

Being a prominent part of a new technology, we with our IoT app development company are expected to witness increased attention being paid to edge computing for enabling intelligent networks, in which the connected devices will be performing the necessary analytics right at the location and would use the results for performing the specific actions. It will all happen within a few milliseconds, as compared to a few hundred milliseconds – the time it takes today with cloud computing. The promise that edge computing comes with, makes it an important addition in the top 10 new technology trends.

7. Predictive & personalized medicine

Free Vector | Doctors and personalized prescriptive analytics. big data healthcare, personalized medicine, big data patient care, predictive analytics concept. bright vibrant violet isolated illustration

Innovation is pushing the healthcare sector forward at a growing rate. The potential to get information about an individual’s lifestyle from a smartwatch (like Samsung, Apple Watch, Fitbit, etc.) is giving healthcare professionals the ability to forecast and even treat possible medical issues before a patient even has any symptoms.

When it comes to treating these patients, this technology trend will help doctors prescribe more personalized medicine, often referred to as predictive medicine. The info-driven understanding of how useful some treatments are on people will boost the healthcare market forward in 2021.

With regards to treating the patients, this technology trend will assist doctors in prescribing personalized medication, generally known predictive medicine. The data driven comprehension of how helpful treatments are on individuals will support the medical services market in the coming years.

Reports from Juniper Research reveal that wearables, including health trackers and remote patient monitoring devices, will be the must haves in delivering healthcare with the forecasted annual spend of $20 billion on these devices by 2023.

8. 5G

What is 5G | Everything You Need to Know About 5G | 5G FAQ | Qualcomm

The 2021 technology predictions show that the world in the coming years will be under the spell of fast internet connection and all the various perks that come attached with it.

5g will find its place in the market very soon, bringing with itself benefits such as high internet speed, lower latency, and higher capacities.

The benefits would make it possible for autonomous vehicles and wireless VR to work with minimal technical hesitancies. The benefit of 5G would be two-fold. Not only would it enrich the user experience by offering higher data rates when we talk by VR or AR, but it will also be much safer, which is where the latency point comes in.

But just how fast would 5G be? It is anticipated that when it takes 26 hours for a movie to download in a 3G network, in 5G the time would reduce to 3.6 seconds.

9. Facial recognition

Facial recognition utilized by protestors around the world to identify police | Biometric Update

Your face will become the ideal technology partner by 2020. What started with iPhone X with its face ID will be taken ahead by a number of industries who would now be using your face for a series of different applications.

From the present ability to unlock your phone just by looking at it, the latest technology in facial recognition will allow you to unlock your house and car, which would be connected with the internet. In the future it is said that an individual would be able to withdraw money from the ATM using nothing but your face.

10. Automation

Sales Automation Process – Everything You Need to Know in 2020

Automation has moved ahead from its involvement in the production lines. There are a number of ways automation will create its presence around us by becoming one the most awaited technologies.

From packaging juice boxes to delivering pizza in self-driving vehicles, automation is fast climbing the food chain from doing routine tasks to a lot more complex, decision-making tasks.

Mixed with Robotics, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence, processes across multiple industries like Food and Beverage, Medical, and Customer Service will become further streamlined and automated by the time future hits our doors.

So here were the latest technology trends that will see the mass adoption in the future years. Are you ready for them?

The Three Technology Entrants That Will Additionally Redefine the World in the Upcoming Years

1. Big data

What is big data and why is it important? | by Raghav Sharma | Noteworthy - The Journal Blog

With the ever growing amount of interaction between machines and humans, the devices that we carry with us every waking hour have become a massive repository of data. Data that is waiting to be converted into meaningful information and insight for businesses to use for offering better service.

2. AR/VR

The world of AR/VR and what it holds for us in the future - Blog by Intern

If there is anything that Pokémon Go has taught us it is that users are very open to the idea of losing the sense of their reality for a good time in the virtual world. Taking the cue from the interest that Pokémon Go managed to create, a number of business models have come up in a number of different industries like Healthcare, Retail, and Education etc. focusing on giving the users a chance to introduce fiction in their daily life and find something of value at the back of the whole experience. That’s why AR VR app development company like us help the clients to achieve their technological goals.

3. Chatbots

The Ultimate Guide to Chatbots: What is a Chatbot? Why Are They Important? | RingCentral UK Blog

It has already been established that Chatbots are shaping the business growth story by making business available 24*7. The coming years will find the conversion magnet becoming more personal and intelligent with the power of machine learning and predictive analytics technologies.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Which technology is best in future?

Artificial Intelligence in the best technology for the future. The technology, with its potential to mimic human brain, has offered a myriad of opportunities/functionalities to different business verticals, such as Real Estate, Healthcare, Education, Travel, Finance, and more.

Q. What are future technology trends?

While there are various technologies that exist in the market and will continue to disrupt the market, here are a few that are newly entering the market and are poised to bring transformation:-

  1. 5G technology
  2. Edge Computing
  3. Prescriptive Analysis

Insights on Designing Experiences in Digital Healthcare

UX/UI Case Study: Digital Disruption, Future of Healthcare and Wellness | by Fadhel Adam | Prototypr

With world in your palms, user experience is becoming a necessity in every domain. Everyone is looking for a memorable and seamless experience that is intuitive, intelligent and definitely a solution provider.

This is why today UX is gaining extreme importance and is playing a major role in simplifying the complexities. It is undoubtedly the foundation to success and all the passionate designers have proven this time and again. Many companies, be it product or service oriented are acknowledging the role of designing in the pavement of success like Fintech, Travel & Tourism, E-commerce, Enterprise Applications. But, there are few industries who needs to brace up like Healthcare, Oil & Gas, Insurance etc.

Today, I will share some insights from our experience in Healthcare and also touch upon the world of possibilities waiting to be discovered.

“How awesome it would be to have an intelligent system that calculates patients BMI, pointers of medical history, important notes of patients and then suggests drugs accordingly and doctors could pick up from that.”

Our first step in Healthcare UX

Insights on Designing Experiences in Digital Healthcare

We started in the field with ‘Context media’, a US based client that aimed at designing an interactive tab app that helped patients gain more knowledge about the chronic diseases. Though, it was not a big project but helped us touch the unanswered vacuum of the industry. Soon, we got our milestone project ‘Surgeon logbook’, a project of ‘Narayana Health’. Dr. Varun Shetty approached us to design an extremely simple app that would aid surgeons in maintaining their log book digitally. We spent hours with the doctors understanding their requirement (conscious and subconscious) and them. We were appalled User Experience in Healthcare to discover how healthcare industry was so heavily paper dependent in 21st century! With our mobile first approach and research, we were happy to unearth that the world of surgeon’s was looking forward to an App like this.

3 Years in Healthcare industry and after spending few thousand hours with doctors, nurses, surgeons and patients, we have been entrusted with immense knowledge and thrust to design many more healthcare products. We are on a mission to revamp health care with outstanding UX and ensure that it is way more accessible than shopping.

Let’s see the current scenario of EMR in Healthcare and later I have shared some tips for designing Healthcare products.

EMR – Electronic Medical Records

digital Healthcare

Today Healthcare is not just about cure it is more about prevention. We have power to access the knowledge with just a tap. But, it’s sad to observe that current Electronic medical records (EMR) in market is just another piece of software that can be used by doctors and patients only post formal training.

Seriously? Training for an EMR! We didn’t need any training for Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, did we? It’s not just about providing a technical solution but it is about providing a right solution that is empathetic towards users and intelligent enough to eradicate problems. Major software companies have spent months and years building EMRs, just to realize that hospitals, doctors and patients aren’t using it the way they were supposed to.

This is where User Experience Design and Emotional intelligent designs play a major role; every other day we read of medical errors that leads to loss of life, but with practicing a good UX practice, we can definitely avoid and overcome these errors.

Imagine an EMR with a seamless experience for doctor while he is prescribing drugs. The app that is as simple as an e-commerce checkout page and takes you through easy but essential steps. What if we design an experience where doctors can see side effects of drugs tailored to individual’s medical history before clicking Prescribe button. How awesome it would be to have an intelligent system that calculates patients BMI, pointers of medical history, important notes of patients and then suggests drugs accordingly and doctors could pick up from that.  It’s about time to add a layer of intelligence to the app by creating an algorithm that offers helpful suggestion to users. A great example would be Tapgenes app Designed by us that takes data from embedded health tracker from iOS and suggests how can we better manage health of ours and our loved ones.  This is way too exciting, I would rather stop, else I might end up building one.

 Anyways, here are some tips to ponder on before designing UX for healthcare.

Start with Design Thinking aka Solution Based Thinking Session

Digital Healthcare

This session with the stakeholders is the first and most crucial step. Involve the entire team, right from product owners, dev team and marketing team. Here are some links for a design thinking workshops.

Design Thinking. Thoughts by Tim Brown

What happens with a design thinking approach to healthcare? by Tim Brown

 Keep it device friendly

Insights on Designing Experiences in Digital Healthcare

Desktop version of EMR is history; let’s think of mobile or tabs. In one of our research, we found that doctors were more comfortable using EMR on iPad. IoT can be smartly used to supplement patient treatment through remote monitoring and communication, and to keep track of patients as they move through a healthcare facility or connect your EMR with smart wearables.

Create a UX Process

The UX design process in 6 stages | Inside Design Blog

Every project has its own challenges, be it budget, timelines or development constraints. It is very important to understand them, sit back and draw your process that is adaptive to the project. We followed following steps for one of the healthcare projects:

  • Empathy: Understand users (doctors and Patients) wants and needs.
  • Discover: Research, create user scenarios, interview stakeholders, users and others playing a major role, create personas, competitor analysis.
  • Define: Create user journey, process flows. wireframes, clickable prototypes.
  • Test: Wireframes can be turned into clickable prototype, test it before you fine tune the pixels, heuristic evaluation.
Know your Users and Know them better than them

Why are personas so important in development? | by Mariano Cocirio | UX Collective

A good product is the result of good IA. Card sorting helps you group and organize necessary information by getting users involved. For example:  What information doctor needs before prescribing medicine and in which flow can be easily determined by having an internal discussion and also by involving doctors involved.

Our team at Lollypop loves this activity, as Card sorting is simple, cheap, fast and user-focused. Card sorting also helps in bonding with clients and knowing the users better.

Understand HIPAA Compliance – Health Insurance, portability and Accountability.

HIPAA Compliance: Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act 2021

Make sure you are aware of all the laws before you start designing fancy things. Few healthcare products fall under regulations that can impact the User Experience. Not being aware of these laws could delay the products release and could also lead to other issues. Understand the laws in handling and protecting personal healthcare information. Most of these laws are around who can access what information.

Once your personas are ready, map it to the roles and create user flows. Health insurances and their coverage are different in every country, it’s important to understand insurances role and regulations while building a product. As a designer be responsible and consider privacy of patient’s information.

Follow “Intelligent Devices, Dumb People” Rule

Yes, you read it right. We should not overweigh anyone to go out of their genre and become extremely tech savvy. Keep it simple, doctors are interested in treating patients and definitely not learning your software.

Conclusion

When you understand “What users need and not what they want” you are treading on a right path. We can order pizza, call for a taxi, maintain our finances, plan our holidays with few clicks, because, these products have appreciated the criticality of designing user centric interfaces and investing in UX to make the experience emotional intelligent. Now it’s time for healthcare to pace up and build an amazing product for hospitals and patients.

We will call it a winner when:
  • Patient would be able to maintain their health records and updates as seamlessly as FB posts.
  • Share medical records like sharing pictures in Instagram.
  • Doctors have all the information in few clicks.
  • Doctors can prescribe with easy reminders.
  • Doctors can concentrate on patients and not technology.
  • When doctors and Patients smile together.

Determining the Chatbot Development Cost

14 Best Chatbot Examples 2021: Most Intelligent and Innovative - thecxinsights
The modern-day business world has found a number of uses for chatbots. From increasing the user engagement count to play a major part in the lead conversion process, chatbots have entered the world across industries. The fact that chatbots are equally famous among baby boomers and millennials, increases the user base of the technology to a great extent. Seeing the business benefits and the flourishing market size, there are a number of businesses that are looking forward to launching their chatbots, both for their own app and for others to use. In this article, we will be looking at how much it costs to build a chatbot and everything surrounding the transformative technology. But before we get into cost benefit analysis of chatbot part, let us first look into what the flourishing chatbot market looks like.

Chatbot Market

Chatbot Market Size & Share | Growth Forecast Report 2024

Within the past one decade, chatbots have witnessed an unprecedented demand from a number of industries around the globe, including logistics and on-demand. What was earlier restricted to only eCommerce has now shifted to a number of other domains ever since the advent of mobile apps. All this has been the doing of growing inclusion of growing level AI in customer experience.

By the time we reach 2024, the market size of Chatbots would have increased to $1.34 Billion – a number that is driven by the inception of disruptive technologies like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in the chatbot mechanism.

From the simplistic rules specific chatbots developed to manage uncomplicated queries to cloud-based self-learning bots that are designed to understand the user intent and automatically modify the output, chatbots, no matter how learned or simple are being used extensively in fields like eCommerce, Healthcare, etc. via business data integration.

The fact that chatbots have proved themselves to be this useful in the world, has prepared them to contribute $1250 million by 2025.

Seeing the market share that chatbots hold, one thing is clear – Chatbots are going to be a very prominent part of businesses across industries. And why not, after all, the business benefits that they have to offer are unmatched and unparalleled.

Talking of business benefits of Chatbots, let us look at what they are before we move on to the chatbot development cost.

Business Benefits of Chatbots

It is invalid to ask the question ‘How much does it cost to build a chatbot’ until you are convinced that they are needed.

Besides the obvious benefit of making your business a 24*7 business, Chatbots, no matter how much you pay in the name of chatbot development life cycle, come with a number of advantages that are known to lower the cost of business operation, which tend to unnecessarily tend to close the gap between gain and loss numbers in the balance sheet. All aimed at changing your business growth story.

Here’s what they are:

A report by Juniper Research validates that the cost of building a chatbot is going to be a much smaller amount in front of the costs that chatbots are all set to cut down – $8 Billion on a yearly basis  – by the time we reach 2022.

Let’s see how:-

Lowered operational cost

Five Ways To Reduce Cost Of Goods Sold For Your Retail Business - Biz2Credit

The biggest operational cost in businesses is around the number of incoming calls. By giving the visitors answers to what they are looking for, chatbots are able to save on the cost associated with the increasing call volumes and in fact the whole interaction volume.

In addition to this, when users call businesses after having the preliminary level of interaction with a chatbot, the time of customer care executive that would go behind answering the first level interaction gets lowered to a huge extent.

Cut down labor expense

How to Cut Labor Costs and Keep Your Employees Happy

In a report, McKinsey estimated that around 29% of customer service position in the US can get automated via a properly designed chatbot. The fact that chatbots can interact with multiple people at the same time, hints at a time where the customer engagement industry would be dominated by chatbots.

In addition to this, businesses who have employed chatbot in their customer service program know how chatbot implementation costs much lower than the annual salary of an employee while doing twice their work.

Cost effective 24*7 availability

Why 24/7 self-service availability is vital in the mobile era | ATM Marketplace

Modern-day customers expect businesses to be available 24*7 to answer their queries at all hours. The fact that a number of businesses are still not able to function on a 24*7 mode has not just made them lose on to prospective sales but also has affected customer loyalty to a great extent.

But when you employ a chatbot that has been designed to answer to the customer requirement in the off hours when your customer rep is not available, you make them more receptive towards your business, altering your brand image 180 degrees.

Better resource allocation

Value segmentation leads to better resource allocation | Alexander Group

When the customer representative doesn’t have a list of customers to attend to and knows that even in their absence their customers will be handled with equal attentiveness through a chatbot, they are able to concentrate on devising strategies on keeping the users hooked and finding ways to help chatbot close more leads.

This way, chatbots prevent sales reps from falling into the cycle of mundane work and monotonous job cycle, giving them the opportunity to keep learning.

Greater revenue

Higher Profit Or Greater Revenue? | StartUs Magazine

There are a number of businesses that have been using Chatbots for lead conversion and greater sales. Through chatbots, you can keep alerting your customers of the discount opportunities and increase the engagement and upsell count.

Along with making a business a sales conversion magnet, chatbots help create a strong brand awareness when integrated with social media messenger platforms.

Increased customer engagement

5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Customer Engagement | by Lydia Priyadarshini | PayUmoney | Medium

It’s vital to keep your clients involved with your brand. As indicated by companies, organizations that involve with their customers through social media were able to increase the user spend by 20% to 40%. While social media is doing its work, chatbots can contribute by making customer engagement interactive and easy.

Monitoring consumer data & gaining insights

Social Media Analytics: the Complete Guide | Socialbakers

As you already know that chatbots are great devices and tools to chat with customers. With the input they gather through basic inquiries, you can make improvements on your administrations/products and even upgrade your website by adjusting low converting pages. For instance, if your landing page creates a decent measure of organic traffic but doesn’t convert well, your chatbot can contact customers visiting the page with a study to gather more data on why they are leaving the page without buying or making action and so forth.

The chatbot benefits are equal among all the different types of bots. No matter what type your chatbot gets categorized the benefits mentioned above will hold true for them all.

Speaking of types, let us look at the different Chatbot types that are most commonly employed by businesses across the world.

Type of chatbots

When we look into the types of chatbots, we have to look at both – the Superset and the Subset wise demarcation of Chatbot development type, having elements that goes into interactive chatbot development.

The supersets

There are two categories of chatbots that you can invest in.

  1. Bots Implemented in Own App – These chatbots work inside a mobile app which performs a specific function for the sake of automating the interaction happening between the app and the user.
  2. Bots which Function Within Messenger – These chatbots stay in messengers which support bot interaction. These work best for businesses that do not have a standalone app or wish to keep social media at the center of the business model.

The Subsets

Within the prime categories of the chatbot mentioned above, there are a number of chatbot types that you can get made –

  1. FAQ chatbot – A basic QnA or FAQ Bot provides its users with automated responses to frequently asked questions in a natural, intuitive question-and-answer conversational style.
  2. Conversational chatbot – The chatbot type uses language understanding services to have easy flowing conversations with the end users. They are usually made to A. collect the basic information about the users and B. keep them engaged till a human customer care executive is online.
  3. Transactional chatbot – These are the chatbots that help the app users to inquire into and buy something off the app without ever talking to a human customer care representative.
  4. Predictive Chatbot – These chatbots are the most advanced ones in the market at this time. They are developed and designed on a case by case scenario. By incorporating heavy machine learning in them, businesses use predictive chatbots to analyze how users might react next.

Irrespective of what type your chatbot belongs to, the elements that go into it are all the same. Something we will be attending to, next.

MVP Chatbot Features

Conversation

The Conversation chatbot launches in Facebook Messenger

Conversation, one of the primary needs and features of chatbot should be based on a fundamental principle. In the basic principle, the request for messages ought to be logical and comprehensive for each customer. For example, when a customer asks about the contact number of your organization, the chatbot should tell the user just a number. If it informs about the address, it implies that the entire rationale is broken.

What’s more is that, ensure that your chatbot doesn’t commit grammatical errors and follows the overall pace of the discussion. Keep an official discussion tone in case you’re focusing on business people. If the task is somewhat hard for you, it’s smarter to hire a freelancer to produce content for the messages.

Payment system

Payment Processing With Your Chatbot - discover.bot

This feature suits e-commerce chatbots. If your bot’s main goal is to boost sales and create new distribution channels, you should take care of at least one payment method. This is the point for you to choose between the third-party system or a custom payment solution.

A well-designed payment system eases the flow of the payment security and allows to analyze the payment and customer behavior. What’s more is that you don’t need to stress over expenses that are generally charged by third-party systems. Regardless of advantages, the expense of a custom payment framework is excessively high. That is the reason why most of the small organizations execute services such as PayPal, Braintree, Stripe, and others.

Geolocation

Facebook Messenger Chatbot how do I collect the users geo location that they send? - Stack Overflow

Online mapping is another helpful feature for a chatbot to attract new customers by pinpointing the area of your business on the map. For instance, users can request the bot to help them navigate to the restaurant or street they’ve never been to. Google Maps Platform permits you to make this feature with zero effort. All things considered, it draws customers to visit your place.

If we take an example of food delivery, then this feature is the best. All that your users need to do is to place an order using the chatbot, make payment through an integrated payment gateway, share the location with the delivery personnel, and enjoy the food after arrival.

Personal touch

Bringing back the personal touch in a digital age with conversational AI

The personal touch is more about the personality and character than the technologies. Mentioning users by their name rather than pronouns, elevates their feelings and emotions. The personal mentality to every customer ensures increased brand loyalty and positive input about your chatbot.

To make a remarkable and unique chatbot, you can utilize the knowledge of a brand expert. In case you’re on a tight budget, you can always bring into play your imagination and creativity.

Account synchronization

Perspectives Chatbots in banking industry in 2018 (Finance & payments)

The first use case of account synchronization that rings a bell is redeeming rewards. If there is a promo system, then the users have some awards or bonuses from the past purchases, which users can spend during further purchase. Nonetheless, if the chatbot isn’t synchronized with the website, it doesn’t display the rewards. Thus, you need to ensure that your platforms have a typical database that continually shares data with one another.

A synchronized record permits you to carry out efficient marketing campaigns. Whenever there’s a discount or sale on a product from the customer’s wish list, the chatbot sends a warning about it. This methodology is more successful than promotional e-mails and messages.

The Composition Required to Build a Chatbot

There are a number of components and chatbot design strategies that come together to develop a chatbot that goes on to revolutionize the customer experience that a business offers, all coming as an addition in the breakdown of chatbot pricing models.

Before acquiring the knowledge of building a chatbot, let’s have a look at the image that describes the working of it.

As a business who is looking to partner with an agency that excels in chatbot development services, you should look at their approach in the context of all these components before making any decision.

Backend

Backend Design/Architecture Practices for Chatbots | by Mustafa Turan | Chatbots Magazine

Chatbots need a backend to manage messages coming in from different channels and to process them with NLP offerings like Api.ai, LUIS, or Wit.ai. The backend also holds business logic and integration within the current systems and is used to develop conversational intelligence on the basis of which conversation happens with the end users.

Channels

After your backend is set up, you will have to create the endpoints for the integration with every specific channel. While every single channel integration is different, they mostly follow the same method of endpoint set up in the backend for the purpose of sending and getting messages which rely on the access token authorization. Also, you will have to implement the channel-specific user interface in places like quick reply, visual cards which guide users during a conversation.

NLP

The moment you receive messages from a specific channel, you are going to use NLP services like Luis, Api.ai, and Wit.ai for extracting the entities and intents out of the user message. While the set up of NLP service and processing of messages with the help of SDK is pretty direct, training the NLP entities and entities which might be present in an external system is not an easy task. You will have to understand the entities which map to specific objects which exist in systems like Contacts, Products, or Employees. You will also have to implement business logic validation on the extracted data which can range from simple validation to custom.

Conversational intelligence

Conversational AI For Enterprise | Enterprise system, Enterprise, Customer engagement

This is the most complicated component of the whole chatbot development process. You will have to design intelligent conversations on the basis of NLP entities and intents – something that is not easy. To achieve a stage where you build an intelligent chatbot, you will have to create an algorithm for every single conversation and navigation so that users can start from scratch. You will have to make use of decision trees, slot based algos, state workflows, or other deep learning methodologies for controlling the conversation.

Integration

Because of prime purpose of your chatbot is the execution of processes like booking appointments, buying products, ordering items, etc. you will have to integrate the chatbot in an existing mobile application. Integration here will involve factors like business logic rules and validations, the persistence of data which would be required as a part of the business process.

Now that we have looked at the different components that come together to make a chatbot, it is time to attend to the things that matter to you on a more intricate level – the time it would take to develop a chatbot and the cost of chatbot development, in accordance with the different metrics that chatbots are evaluated on.

The time it takes to develop a Chatbot from scratch

A very important part of the whole chatbot app development process for businesses and an answer to the cost of chatbot development is knowing how much time it is going to take for chatbot app development company to develop them so that they get a rough idea of when to start witnessing unprecedented customer satisfaction graphs.

Well, here’s an answer to the hours it would take to develop a bot, something that will have a direct impact on your chatbot cost –

Integration with an app – the duration of it depends on the chatbot complexity, but usually it takes up 40-56 hours. Development of communication interface

  • Command language user interpreter takes up somewhere around 40-56 hours.
  • Natural language user interface takes somewhere around 120-160 hours.

Business logic

  • Adaptation of an existing business logic, takes up 120-160 hours, depending on the amount of logic.
  • Development of business logic from scratch takes around 160-192 hours.

Since you now know the approximate hours it would take to attend to different parts of chatbot development, it is time to translate those hours into the cost of chatbot development.

Decreasing the Chatbot development Cost

There are a number of aspects that increase the price of chatbot development. But there are also the option to stabilize the financial impact like the chatbot development tools that save time for developers and decrease the eventual final cost.

Third-party platforms

Developing a chatbot from the scratch without any preparation is quite expensive. Thus, to solve this people generally use third party platforms. With the assistance of these popular platforms, you can make a chatbot with less efforts and time.

Despite the fact that these platforms guarantee rapid development, they also provide flexibility and adaptability which lets the developer use them often.

Some of the common and popular chatbot platforms are:

Chatfuel — amoCRMBotsify Review - No Code Chatbot For Customer Support and MarketingA brief introduction to Chatbots with Dialogflow - Margo

Botpress Installation Tutorial | The Quickest Way for Beginners to Get Up and Running Using Your Own Hardware - Cyklon Storefront

Chatfuel

Botsify

Dialogflow

BotPress

Mobile Monkey

How Much Does It Cost To Develop a Chatbot? – The Exact Chatbot Development Cost

Now that we have seen all – The market of chatbots, benefits that they have to offer, types of chatbots that are presently ruling the world, and the components that come together to develop them along with the time it takes to develop chatbots, it is now time to look at how much it is going to cost you.

Seeing the work that goes into developing a chatbot, the approximate chatbot cost that comes for development of your bot is in the range of $25,000 to $30,000.The cost range includes the design, development, and integration part of the whole chatbot development framework.

With this, we have now seen all – the benefits of chatbots, features and components that helps to devise a well-structured chatbot, the market size, the type and the cost you will have to pay to get your chatbot developed, the only thing left for you to do here is to get in touch with our chatbot developers and avail the best chatbot app development company in USA.

Know which Platform is Better for Mobile Startups-Android vs iOS

Android vs ios

Starting a mobile app centered business is tough. There are so many questions and doubts that you, in your role as an entrepreneur, have to answer and find answers to. Although things do get a lot easier once you get the support of a partner-like sound mobile app development company, there are a number of factors that you still have to get a grasp on your end for android vs iOS.

While we have curated a mobile app development for startups guide to help you get started with the complete A to Z process of getting your idea on mobile, in this article, we will help you get an answer to the question that worries every entrepreneur who is new to the app industry – android vs iOS for startups.

But before we get on to that, let us give you some ideas and tips on mobile platforms that startups should choose in 2021

Let’s begin with why one should opt for mobile by joining either Android development or iOS development.

Let’s start looking at the smartphone (iPhone or Android) and app market scenario by first looking into the basics of each – number of users, downloads, revenue, and user retention scenario.

Graphs indicating each of the pointers will help give a clear idea of how both the app stores are performing on an individual level – something which will help businesses take a sound decision.

iPhone or Android? Smartphone Users Graph

Android vs iOS Market Share 2020: Stats and Facts | MobileApps.com

These numbers are a clear indication of how big the smartphone industry has been and how it is only going to grow both android and iOS in demand and acquisition number in the coming time. With the number of projected mobile users about to reach 5.7 Billion in a matter of two years, it is beyond time for startups to make a decision related to iOS versus Android and a presence on mobile and reach these billions and then some more users.

Android vs iOS: Market Share

Android v iOS market share 2019

The android and iOS market share division factor when making a choice of iOS vs Android for startup is calculated in terms of total number of users on both platforms. While the graph above shows the obvious – Android development has a greater market share than iOS development, let us still throw some light on it. With the number of Android devices being 10X more than Apple flagship devices, the number of users are by default inclined towards Android as compared to iOS app development.

This difference in market share makes Android a preferable choice for Startups that are keeping visibility above any other business-y factor.

iOS vs Android App Revenue

Android VS iOS: Which Platform To Build Your Mobile App On First · Swag Soft

One of the biggest deciding factors when it comes to Android vs iOS for businesses is the revenue that each of the avenues is able to generate for the startup. As a startup that is about to make an entry in the mobile domain for the first time, it is almost a necessity to base the platform choice on the basis of the potential of revenue they would be able to generate.

While iOS has over time positioned itself as the platform that businesses head to generate revenue, Android developers are soon catching up with their monetized app. But overall, Play Store will still take up more time to come up to App Store level.

Android vs iOS: User Retention

Android vs. iPhone Users: The Difference Between Behavior

For an entrepreneur struggling to find the answer to which one is correct in iOS vs Android for startup, it is very important to maintain a good user retention number; as it will be the only sign to judge whether or not your app is performing good and is liked by users across the world.

There are a number of factors which contribute to soaring app uninstall rate. Reasons which mostly revolve around the kind of experience you are able to offer through your mobile app.

But in spite of what reasons there are behind growing app uninstall rates  in the industry, the fact that users behave differently between one platform to another remains. While Android users are more loyal, Apple users are less forgiving and tend to leave app very soon after a bad experience – something startups need to plan in their incredible & result-driven mobile app design and development in much detail.

Now that we have looked into the market scenario of both the platforms, it is time to attend to the question that every startup willing to make a presence on mobile is seeking answer to – Android vs iOS development for startups.

Android vs iOS: Which Platform Should Startups Go with as Their First App Choice?

The answer to which platform should startups choose out of Android and iOS development is in no way a Yes or No type (and yet, the wrong answer can turn out to be one of the most deadly mobile app development mistakes). There are a number of factors that startups will have to consider when making the choice.

Let us see what those factors are which help decide the platform startups should go with for their first mobile app launch – iPhone or Android.

Where is your audience

Even though 80% of the world’s mobile app market is dominated by Android, some of the most presumed revenue generating nations like the USA or Australia come under Apple’s dominance.  So if your audience belongs to the western nations, take help from iPhone app developers but if the world is your audience, go with Android developers.

Who is your user

The choice of app platform goes beyond geographical borders. There are a number of traits that separates iOS vs Android demographics.

iOS users usually have a lot higher income, come with greater education levels, are more engaged with the app, and lastly are willing to spend a lot more on the app.

Android users on the other hand, come with their own share of characteristic traits. They usually belong to the 25 to 45 age range, are more spending conscious, tend to be late technology adopters, and in general are more impatient as compared to Apple users (something that has changed in the recent time).

In-app purchases

If your app’s business model has in-app purchase at the center, it would be preferable to go with App Store instead of Android Play Store. While the average per user in-app purchase per app in the case of Apple is $1.08, in case of the same number gets reduced to $0.43.

Talking of in-app purchases, the difference can be seen on a geographical level as well.

On a global level per user app spending is $0.50, in Asia the number is $0.70 and in North America, Europe, and Latin America, the numbers are $0.61, $0.26, and $0.16 respectively.

Fragmentation

Talking of fragmentation in terms of the variety of devices your app would be able to reach, the one platform that emerges as an unprecedented winner is Android. Because Google has partnered with a number of device manufacturers, there are now thousands of devices under Android umbrella as opposed to Apple.

If you are looking for a platform that would help your startup become a household name by taking it to the masses minus any specific demographic challenge, Android app development will be your answer. But if making a presence among an elite concentrated group of users is what you are aiming for, go with your team of iOS developers.

Ease of design & development

The question on which is the most preferred choice for startups – Android vs iOS, has a solution that is different on both Android and iOS development front.

While in terms of designing, Google Material Design has a greater impact on user experience, mobile app developers feel that when it comes to coding mobile apps, Swift is a much easier language to get started with as compared to Java.

However, design and development is one factor that depends less on the platform and more on the skill of your partnered mobile android app development company. When you associate with a brand that specializes in the development of both Apple and Android apps, it doesn’t matter which platform requires less developmental efforts as both are done within equal efforts.

Release cycles

Talking of Android release cycle vs iOS Release cycle, the updation of apps in case of Android is generally restricted with the partnered OEM devices and the OS versions that they support- an issue that Apple and its concentrated list of iPhones and iPads never have to face.

What this means is that while with iOS you can focus on giving the support of new OS version in your present app with much ease, the level of fragmentation that Android comes with makes releasing new OS versions very difficult.

Now that we have seen the factors that would help decide which platform to go with for your first mobile app, the sad truth remains – There is no yes or no answer to which platform should startups go with between Android and iOS.

But while it will be difficult for us to get you an answer to ‘Android vs iOS: Which platform should Startups Choose’ let us get you the answer to the Why and When.

Difference Between iOS and Android Development

There is obviously a comparison between iOS and Android app development that is generally seen by developers during the process toward creating mobile applications. Let’s have a look at these differences

Programming language

The 7 Most In-Demand Programming Languages of 2019 - Coding Dojo Blog

The Android and iOS development operating systems are each customized in various programming languages. This is actually the greatest difference where iOS applications run on Objective-C/Swift, while Android applications run on Java.

The programming in iOS and android platforms utilize different technology stacks. The former vigorously depends on Java or Kotlin as an alternative, while the latter one has an exclusive language intended for application advancement – Swift.

Now you must be thinking which stack is quick and easy to dominate? Most of the app developers discover that an iOS application is simpler to make than the Android one. As the Swift coding involves less time than getting around Java since this language has high clarity and readability.

As Kotlin grows further, in future it is considered to be a prospective Java replacement due to its natural, current, and easy to read features.

Thus, programming languages utilized for iOS have a shorter learning curve than those for Android and are, hence, simple to dominate.

Testing

Why Automated Testing | Advantages of Automated Testing

Every application’s QA testing phase is important for the mobile application development process. The same applies to games and different sorts of software. One should make sure that the application he is creating works perfectly. The iOS simulator and the Android emulator are examples that are frequently used to test this.

A definite difference is that the iOS simulator is a lot quicker than Android. In any case, the Android emulator has the near benefit of being a powerful virtual machine including CPU, which makes it more practical than its iOS equivalent. The iOS simulator often neglects to deliver precise and realistic portrayals of Apple devices.

Therefore, it is important to complete several tests on real smart devices to see the application’s interaction flow and detect potential bugs.

Interface

What is User Interface Design (UI) and why is it important?

This is where we come over the visual contrasts when we develop an application for an Android or iOS user. At the technical level, the app developer will assemble XML documents onto Android interfaces. These are basically the same as iOS’ XIB documents.

The nature of iOS animations is superior to the one from Android. Google has attempted to fix this through the preview of Android L and by building up an application design pattern known as Material Design. Meanwhile, Apple has consistently been focusing on delicate, complex, and amazing animations by taking care of its user experience cautiously. Google, on the other hand, chose to fcus on the hardware rather than these perspectives.

Design

Importance of App Design for Mobile Developers and Design Trends | by Burcu Kirik Kutluay | NYC Design | Medium

For Apple, the content of the application has importance over design. Therefore, clearness and the wide utilization of white space is advisable. The most widely recognized tools utilized by UI designers are shadows and gradients. All things considered, the application’s design ought to convey a feeling of depth and multi-layers.

Android designs come from real inspiration and motivation. Thus, colors and motion are two characterizing factors. Android designers work with a more extensive scope of tools such as light, motions, shading, color, etc.

When Should Startups Choose iOS?

Apple is starting a war over privacy with iOS 14 – publishers are naive if they think it will back down

You should place your startup’s first mobile app on iOS by investing in a sound reputed iOS app development company if you wish to come in the sight of the app store’s target demographics. Also, if you are not convinced of an app’s ability to be liked and moved to the home screen, the less fragmented world of Apple might come in handy as you won’t have to invest time in preparing your app for multiple devices.

The benefit of concentration and high revenue-generating capability together makes iPhone app development advantageous for businesses.

When And Why Startups Choose Android App Development?

Android's superiority and best practices to build Android apps | GoodWorkLabs: Big Data | AI | Outsourced Product Development Company

You should go with Android first if your audience is not concentrated on any one specific location. Also, if there are a good number of customization elements in your mobile app, go with Android. The benefit of reach and customization that the platform offers, makes it almost necessary for Businesses to have an Android app.

When And Why Startups Choose IOS App Development?

Using Native iOS App Development to Outsmart Competitors | by Thinkwik | Medium

You have to remember that in the debate between Android vs iPhone: Which Platform should Startups choose for First Mobile App have a third option as well, one which ends the confusion between iPhone or Android – Launch app on both Android and iOS.

While the option should be chosen as a solution by companies who have enough monetary and time resources, you should invest in mobile app development companies that specialize in Cross Platform app development to grab the opportunity to enjoy the best of all.

Now that we have seen it all – The factors that affect the Android vs iPhone choice for startups and the situations when one is deemed preferable than the other – it is now time to answer a very futuristic, logical question – When should a Business Move from one Platform to Another.

When Should Your Startup Extend from One Platform to Another?

Most of the Android and Windows Phones are in the low-end

The answer to this lies in – When your app has taken all the advantage of the current platform it is on. If your app has reached a position where it is now getting constant revenue from the App Store, expand it to the Play Store to get greater reach.

If your Android App has gained enough followers on the Play Store, increase the scope of monetization by taking it to the App Store.

Hopefully, our little pocket guide was able to help you get an answer to which platform your early-stage startup should choose. If we have left a scope of confusion, reach out to our team of mobile app strategist and our iOS and android app development company in USA to get the answer.

Impact of 5G Networks on Mobile Apps- Read

Pin on technology

We are just 2 months away from entering the age of next technological revolution – the onset of a wireless network which will help combine data computation with million of devices in a matter of a few seconds. Imagine it like this – Till the time you blink your eye, millions of data would have transmitted from your system to millions and millions of connected devices in the world. The facility that will make it possible – after being talked about and dissected at great length – is finally here. The powerful technology that is on the brink of altering mobility that we are going to talk about in much detail in this piece is 5G Wireless Networks.

Seeing the potentialities that 5G technology comes powered with, it will be naive to call it just a network. 5G will be the underlying fabric for a complete ecosystem that is made of completely connected devices and is capable of overhauling business and economic policies 180 degrees – The reason why 5G has found its place in the list of Top 10 tech trends that will go mainstream in the near future.

The transformative technology has seen interest coming in from not just businesses but also in the charts estimating a number of subscriptions. The paradigm shift that 5G technology is poised to bring is going to having a lasting effect across a number of industries in ways that are going to open doors of innovation and transformation to an extent that things that were always assumed to be too far fetched or ones belonging to a Steven Spielberg sci-fi movie. A shift that will be faster than the time you take to get 5G technology explained.

We are going to look at the impact of 5G on a number of different industries in this article. But since the most direct impact of a high internet connectivity can be seen in a mobile app economy (and because mobile app development economy is our expertise) we will be majorly focusing our attention on the 5G impact on Mobile Apps.

But before we move on to the 5G impacts on Mobile Apps, it is imperative to get you acquainted with the power of 5G – something that you will only be able to understand when you know how different 5G is from 4G or through a comparison between 5G vs. LTE vs. 4G

How is 5G technology Better Than 4G?

5G vs. 4G: What's the Difference? | Synopsys

  • A lot faster fiber comparable sped minus wires
  • Lower latency – meaning lesser delay and interference
  • Greater wireless power to allow more devices to connect on an IoT network
  • A uniform experience with a greater variety of coverage option and condition
  • Greater opportunity for wireless connectivity

But what do these benefits mean for mobile apps?

Let’s Find Out.

What Does 5G Networks Means for Mobile Apps?

1. Greater Speed

Flash Running Fast, HD Superheroes, 4k Wallpapers, Images, Backgrounds, Photos and Pictures

The high download speed that will now be tagged with 5G technology will not just make it easier for the users to download apps in a few second irrespective of what the MB size your app is of.

Apart from taking benefits in terms of high app download speed, the speed factor seen in mobile apps with 5G will also come in handy for mobile app marketers who are relying on in-app download based monetization plans as one of the ways they can earn from mobile apps.

While this is about the perks that mobile app market will enjoy because of high download speed, there is another category of speed that affects mobile app retention to a huge extent. In fact, in the world of entertainment apps, it is one of the main reasons behind users abandonment after first app visit – App Streaming Speed.

5G mobile apps will remove the mere concept of streaming lags.

2. Faster File Transfer

High Speed File Transfer | Thru, Inc.

With great speed comes faster transfer of files, money or simply anything transferable. The power of 490 MBPS browsing speed and 100 MBPS download speed ripples down to speedier file transfer.

The revolution that 5G mobile app is going to bring in the file transfer feature is going to advance a number of mobile app categories that have based their business model around transfer of data or money from one account to another.

3. Low to Zero Latency

Zero Latency Boosts Player Count | RePlay Magazine

There is nothing more annoying for a mobile app user than an app that takes ages to respond to their one action.

Latency is something that the mobile app development economy is not a stranger to and a victim of. But with 5G mobile apps, the time it takes to react to the users’ prompt becomes even more faster than real-time. An event which comes in very handy in AR/VR based mobile apps.

4. Greater User Experience

10 Examples of Good User Experience (UX) | Trone Brand Energy

While the three factors mentioned above are sufficient in themselves to improve the user experience to a huge extent, one of the biggest perk of high 5G internet speed is clarity.

You must have noticed the difference between watching a video or hearing music on 2G network over streaming the same over an LTE Network. It is only going to advance now. The effect of app UI gets elevated to a very huge extent when used or streamed on a 5G network.

Now that we have given you a sneak into the myriad of benefits that your mobile app is just a few months away from availing, it is now time to look into the industries that are most likely to be touched from this revolution called 5G.

Industries That Are Going to Witness the Maximum Benefit from the Onset of 5G

5G wireless networks will be unleashing a massive amount of revenue opportunity – approximately $12.3 Trillion globally – across a wide spectrum of industries, according to IHS Economics. An amount that is equal to consumer spending of all of the USA in 2016.

5G is expected to create millions of jobs universally, with the mobile app developers being identified as the core career groupings who stand to benefit, in addition to the content and infrastructure providers.

While there is not even a single industry that is going to go untouched by the advantages that the higher than ever seen before internet speed is going to bring, there are some industries that will show the first sign of adoption and innovation. Industries that will in many ways become the torchbearer of 5G Power adoption in the mobile domain.

Let us look at some of those industries that are going to be the fastest recipients of the 5G benefits in the mobile domain.

Internet of Things (IoT)

How 5G is becoming an Important Technology Ingredient for IoT

The faster than real-time communication speed and long battery life – the two benefits of 5G wireless networks are perfect condition for Internet of Things growth

According to a recent survey by Gartner held between several representatives of different economic sectors, it was found that over 57% respondents considered IoT the most promising 5G mobile apps niche.

5G will allow the mobile app developers to work in those IoT areas which makes it crucial to keep a difference between 4 milliseconds and 40 milliseconds.

Smart Cities

Smart Cities Council | In Hungary, 5G-equipped cities are vital to making the country smarter

With 5G finally here, creation of smart homes and heck, Smart Cities a reality now. A reality that is equipped with millions of sensors working in real time.

Smart Cities are undoubtedly a unique platform for businesses as they will now be able to connect multiple devices with a single mobile app.

The perks will most be enjoyed by someone who own multiple businesses as Smart City will help them offer every single sphere of their service offerings to the user of tens of connected devices in one stroke.

Even if you keep the profit and business side away, imagine what 5G powered Smart Cities would do to city’s safety quotient.

AR/VR

How 5G and edge computing can enhance virtual reality - Ericsson

The time when AR/VR used to be an upcoming trend will now finally stop. Now, users will see the advent of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in almost all phases of life around them.

From attending a live event in LA while being at home in Canada to seeing the history of every room and turn of the monument, AR/VR will now finally go mainstream with 5G.

While the examples that we gave above are more inclined towards entertainment, there are a number of other industries – Healthcare, Education, Army, etc that will witness the benefit that the platform where Reality and Virtual surrounding is same.

Logistics and Production

5G and Its Effect on Logistics - ProTrans

Use of 5G mobile apps will help in improving remote control of the machine in complex industries. Stability of the automation system will grow and alongside an enhancement of the product quality.

Three-dimensional printing along with 5G and robotics even allows designing of smart plants. Remote controlled machines significantly reduce risk factors for people who are working at difficult production facility.

Healthcare

5 Ways 5G will Transform Healthcare | AT&T Business

All the various healthcare obstacles will cease to exist once 5G comes into the picture. Challenges like remote patient monitoring and doctors not being able to attend to patients on time are ones that would not exist once 5G meets healthcare applications.

Along with this, wearable devices connected with medical apps will be able to keep better details of the patient’s records and then give reports in real-time as well.

So here were the industries that are going to get affected with 5G onset. But, is the soon to be true future really that perfect?

Well, no.

Like at the beginning of every technology, implementation of 5G also comes with its share of challenges. Let us look at what they are –

Challenges Associated with Implementation of 5G in Mobile Apps

1. Security Issues

Four most hard to solve IIoT security issues

With greater speed will come a greater increase in the number of connected devices and networks – something that will create loopholes in terms of security.

2. Establishment of 5G Based Business Model

5G enabling a new data-driven business model – Telecoms.com

The network speed which 5G is anticipated to be launched with, will demand business models that make the most of its potential, something that the mobile app strategists will have to give a lot of thought to. It is not just the strategists but also the OS ecosystems like Android 11 which are looking to help businesses adapt the 5G technology.

3. Multiple App Versions

With 5G coming into practice, the app audience will be get divided to poles apart. There’ll be those who have devices fit for 5G and then those who are still working on 2G or LTE version devices.

Want to find solution to these challenges? We have them. Get in touch with our team of Mobile App Strategists to know how to prepare your app to be a part of the 5G race even before it’s here.

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