How To Market A Brand with A Mobile App

Mobile App as a Brand Marketing Channel: Benefits Apps Provide to Brands - Custom Mobile | Web App Development | Vancouver | Toronto

Gone are the days when advertising was considered the most prominent marketing channel to promote a brand. With rapid transformations in the digital landscape, having a strong mobile presence has become a necessity for businesses to thrive.

Mobile apps have emerged as an effective marketing solution. A mobile app not only helps automate business but also provides better customer service. With apps, brands do not have to struggle to establish themselves- they can foster a deep connection with netizens of all demographics and age groups, promote brand awareness and garner the right market visibility.

Studies show that more than 50% of customers who regularly use a branded app are more likely to buy from the company.

It is relatively easy to target a mass audience base with other marketing channels but targeting each individual based on their unique preferences is the need of the hour, and it has become all the more possible through mobile apps.

A branded app is a powerful approach to facilitate brand promotions in a persuasive way. By using a mobile app as a brand marketing channel, you can reap huge benefits. It keeps users engaged and you can enjoy higher conversion rates.

Why should Brands go online?

Brands Online Sales: Fashion and lifestyle brands facing another crushing 20-30% decline in online sales amid second Covid-19 wave - The Economic Times

According to a report, smartphones account for 70% of the mobile time out of which 90% of smartphone time is spent on applications. Most people today have access to their phones wherever they go, which implies that you can reach your target audience almost anytime, anywhere through a mobile app. This doesn’t necessarily apphttps://appinventiv.com/blog/mobile-app-as-brand-marketing-channel/ly to other marketing channels, some of which are limited by the restricted availability of the devices that they depend on.

Brands have realised the potential of what a mobile application can do and that goes beyond simply selling a product or service. This discovery has opened up new marketing avenues. It provides businesses the opportunity to engage with their audience in new and creative ways and turn them into loyal customers.

Studies show that desktop internet usage is dropping and mobile internet usage is rising significantly. Although mobile websites get more visitors, visitors tend to spend

Mobile app industry is flourishing. It is estimated that by 2021, there will be roughly 7 billion mobile users worldwide. (Source) With the advent of disruptive technologies such as AI, AR VR companies are finding new ways to market their products. Artificial Intelligence allows mobile apps to store user data in order to recognise and preempt their preferences, needs and choices.

Mobile apps are a powerful marketing channel for brands. It helps companies connect with the audience, convey brand messages, keep users engaged and create customer loyalty in a crowded marketplace.

Today brands are using mobile apps to improve offline experiences for their customers and boost sales. According to a recent survey, 75 percent of customers engage more with loyalty programs that provide rewards in a mobile-friendly way.

So, if you are still not going mobile for marketing, it’s time you consider the many benefits a branded app has to offer.

Benefits of Mobile platforms as Marketing tools 

There are a number of ways how mobile apps help businesses. They humanise companies, lead to better interactions between brands and customers, and increase loyalty and sales.

1. Enhancing Brand awareness and visibility

Why Do You Need Product Stickers/Labels for Brand Awareness?

Businesses are often on the lookout for an effective platform through which they can market their brand. Apps enhance brand awareness and visibility and can strategically increase the customer base.

Once an application gets installed on a mobile device, users will come across the brand logo frequently, thereby enhancing visibility and awareness. The more often a user interacts with a brand’s app, the sooner they tend to buy their products and avail their services.

If you want to get users talking about your unique app, you must ensure that your app provides all the features that your target audience is looking for.

The app should be interactive and keep users coming for more. Afterall, it all boils down to effective frequency- the more people are introduced to an app and the more they interact with it, the more chances that they will actually buy.

2. Forming a connection with your Customers 

How to Make a Personal Connection with Customers

Engagement is extremely crucial and a mobile app helps you form a deeper connection with your customers and prospects.

With declining attention spans, it has become significantly important to curate compelling personalised content and keep your users coming back for more.

An effective way to engage your users is to frequently offer them fresh Personalised Content. Users are interested in content that is relatable and piques their interest. In this rapidly changing environment, user preferences keep on changing and to establish yourself in the market you need to keep up with them.

Regardless of the type of application, a brand must invest in personalized in-app content. One way to ensure that happens is to create and study customer personas to better understand what type of content works best for your audience.

Another effective strategy is Push Notifications. Push notifications have the power to capture user attention and make them check out what’s new in your app. They encourage customers to use your app. The key with push notifications is to make them compelling. A push notification must be of some value to the end user no matter if it’s a copy, a promotion or some perk. Don’t overdo the notifications or it may irritate the users.

3. Collecting Data about Customers

See Why Businesses Can't Do Without Customer Data Collection

A good marketing strategy revolves around analysing customer behaviour. If your app solves a pain point for the user, they are likely to share their data with you.

You can use mobile app as a brand marketing channel to monitor users, their personal shopping behaviors, engagement levels, browsing habits, locations, mobile app usage, favorite hours and much more.

This way you can collect valuable user insights, analyse through the data, understand the needs of the customer and improve your product quickly.

You can collect user data in the following ways:

  • Onboarding: You can have a basic questionnaire during registration which includes pertinent information about age, preferences, habits and more.
  • By offering Bonuses:  It is an ideal approach to swap discounts, bonuses or special offers as a reward for completing small questionnaires.
  • In- app Behaviour:  Marketers can always keep track of the marketing process in a closed loop by monitoring and analysing user’s in-app behaviour. For brands it has become relatively easy to collect user data based on purchases and reviews of the product.

This way you can evaluate the data and change your brand development strategy based on user feedback.

The Starbucks mobile app widely uses this opportunity and monitors in-app user behaviour. As of April 2019, Starbucks claims 16.8 million active loyalty program members. It all became possible by analysing user data, looking for new avenues and rolling out strategic data-driven initiatives to target users.

It is essential to have a review/ feedback section. Allow your users to tell you what exactly they want from your app. Iterating and improving the product the way your target audience wants it reaps excellent rewards.

4. Increasing Customer Loyalty

5 Ways to Earn & Build Customer Loyalty | WordStream

Rewarding frequent customers is a great marketing strategy. Getting customer loyalty has become a challenge for a number of brands. A mobile app is the right tool to increase your customer loyalty.

When you reward frequent customers, it encourages them to buy more and they are more likely to share your brand with their fellow friends. This strategy can be easily implemented using push notifications or via in-app messages.  Loyalty rewards help in establishing a strong connection and turns users into loyal customers.

5. Scaling up your target Audience 

6 Effective Ways to Reach Your Target Audience (Updated May 2019) - GRIN - Influencer Marketing Software

The Internet is not just breaking boundaries but making things that were impossible a decade ago happen in real-time. Mobile apps enhance the user base, not just in their country of origin but also across the world.

Through geo-targeted push notifications, localisation and location based brands can send specific messages to their target user audience. Location based call to action via region or location mapping feel more personalised to the user, grow the target audience and can drive more sales.

6. Increasing Sales Ratio 

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Applications enhance customer experience by making the buying process simpler, convenient and intuitive, thereby resulting in the increase in sales ratio.

But an app doesn’t have to necessarily offer purchases to boost sales, it can do so by offering loyalty programs and additional services.

Domino’s faced a serious sales issue back in the mid-2000s. With the wave of digitalisation, Domino’s decided to go mobile. Besides making significant improvements in the quality of their product, Domino’s created a branded mobile app that was extremely responsive and rendered a delightful experience.

It resulted in the app’s contribution to half of the company’s online sales in 2015.

When Domino’s started facing issues with retaining their customers and witnessed a rise in the bounce rate, they came to us. We worked on their UX, refined their UX Strategy and brought a steep rise in their conversion rate by 23% and significantly increased their session time.

7. Social Network Marketing through apps 

Promote App On Social Media With 6 Easy Ways - Netsavvies - Digital Marketing Agency in Ahmedabad

Mobile connectivity has become essentially important and the ability to synchronise it with social networks provides businesses a higher chance to disperse the content and make it go viral. Mobile apps allow users to easily share the brand’s content across all social networks.

For instance, PUMA’s empowering Propah Lady campaign created a ripple effect on the social media and gained a huge amount of followers and brand customers.

Common Mistakes to avoid when making a mobile app for Brands 

The advantages of a mobile app for business are endless. Sure, you can create a unique app and get users to download it but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the user will return to your app.

According to Statista, 25 percent apps downloaded by mobile app users worldwide are only accessed once after download.

So, how do you ensure that users keep coming back to your app for more?

The underlying reason why most users abandon a branded app is either poor UX or it focuses more on novelty value and lacks functionality. So, here are some common mistakes that you should avoid when creating an app and to establish it as an effective brand marketing channel.

1. The app doesn’t provide any value to the user

The $4 Billion App That Doesn't Value Privacy, Security or Accessibility | Centre for International Governance Innovation

Every app operates on a pain point and it is designed to solve a specific user problem. This holds true for branded apps as well. If your app is a means to place advertisements on your customers’ mobiles, you are doing it wrong.

A branded app should solve user problems in one manner or another. It is only when you create a useful product that provides some value on an ongoing basis, that users will keep coming back to the app. The ideal approach is to know your target audience, study their needs and determine what they expect from your app.

2. The app lacks special offers 

The Best Calendar Apps for Android | Zapier

The idea behind a branded app is to create awareness and enhance customer loyalty. If a branded app doesn’t offer discounts, special offers and other app usage benefits, customers will most likely abandon the application.

3. The app is difficult to use

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The simplest way to identify a good app is how convenient and intuitive it is for the customers. If the app is complicated to use regardless of the functionality it offers, it won’t appeal to a mass audience.

4. The app lacks updates

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It is essential to keep up with the rapid shifts in technology and implement the same into your app. If you change your marketing strategy, website design or provide better branding, you must ensure that you have enough resources to make the same updates on your app.

5. The app doesn’t move beyond the desktop experience 

The 15 Best Mac Apps You Should Download Now: Free and Paid | WIRED

If you consider an app as a smaller version of the website with the same features, you aren’t leveraging the app as a right marketing channel. A branded app is more than a novelty value and must provide important features and information.

6. The app doesn’t provide a personalised touch 

13 more effective alternatives to “just touching base” emails | RingCentral

Today a wide variety of content is available on the Internet and with ever decreasing attention spans, it has become significantly important to provide a personalised touch with your application.

Through a branded app you can target each individual based on their unique preferences and get closer to your customers. By sending personalised push notifications you can retain your users and turn them into loyal customers.

How to establish a Mobile App Marketing Strategy?

Having an app marketing plan is extremely crucial when creating a branded mobile app. So, dig deep and understand what your business needs. There are many types of mobile apps but the crucial factors that come into play when creating a branded app are as follows:

Acquisition: You must ensure that when a user onboards and shares their personal information on your app, they come across a variety of useful mobile features that add some value to their life.

Engagement: Your app should be able to capture user attention, engage customers with the brand and keep them coming for more.

Conversion: Besides engaging customers, your app should focus on driving users to conversion.

Next thing that you need to figure out is the product pricing strategy. Product pricing strategy or mobile app monetization plays an instrumental role in getting your app the initial traction and visibility in the app store. The app pricing model determines the success of your product  in terms of the number of downloads and user retention in the long run. It is essential to take into account the cost and value, run a competitor audit, gauge the estimated demand and analyse the cost of user acquisition before opting for a pricing model.

Considerable App Marketing Strategies That Drive App Downloads

Here’s our Insight on how to choose the right pricing strategy for your mobile app project

Making a branded app is one thing but you also need to understand that the mobile app ecosystem is a challenging environment.

It is a given that regardless of how well crafted your application is, it will not get its spot under the sun until it is marketed right and there is a buzz around it much before it hits the stores and users’ devices.

So, how to promote your brand with mobile apps?

Well, here’s a definitive mobile app promotion guide that will help your market your brand

A Brand Marketing Channel for the world’s largest Furniture retailer IKEA

The IKEA Go To Marketing Strategy: Why It Works & How It's Shifts | WCD

The lack of mobile app as a brand marketing channel is often felt by startups and established enterprises.

For IKEA, we developed an impeccable solution that helps walk-in customers go through the products catalogue. With a simple and comprehensible user interface, the application displays the products straight from the inventory, eliminating the chances of disharmony between the customer demand and the product supply.

Moreover, it offers customers access to product discounts and offers all in one place.

We solved the problem that IKEA was facing, and with our effective solution customers got a catalogue that displayed all the store offers and discounts in one place and retailers got the contact information of hundreds of store customers for sending them marketing collaterals.

Conclusion

A mobile app is considered a brand’s own marketing platform. It establishes a direct marketing channel and allows marketers to reach a wide range of users around the world. If you are still not leveraging mobile apps as your brands marketing channel, you are certainly lagging behind. It is time you explore the new marketing avenues and jump on the wagon.

What Does It Take To Create A Billion-Dollar Application?

App Builder | The Best App Maker for High End Mobile Apps

The world of smartphones is pretty exciting with constant changes in their landscape. With the arrival of a new device every week, the scope of these life-changing devices seems to be never-ending. Along with the evolving changes in smartphones, we’re also bombarded with several applications. Whether you want to book a taxi or purchase a rug, there’s a mobile application available for every purpose.

If you’re a budding entrepreneur with an innovative and developing app idea and are looking to make billions, you’ve surely found a sweet spot. Let’s take a look at the detailed guide to build a billion-dollar application.

How to Build a Billion Dollar App?

1. Building a team and raising funds

Why You Need To Build Your Team Before Raising Money - Brett J. Fox

If you have a revolutionary idea to build next million dollar app that you believe will be loved by millions of people, the first thing you should do is test your great idea for an app by stating it on a paper and getting feedback from the public. Figure out a problem, a solution, and translate it into an application.

Whether you use paper or photoshop, make sure your billion dollar business idea can be easily communicated and explained to others. Once you’ve made a great design, make a prototype out of it. As soon as your app gets into users’ hands, you can start getting feedback.

To start building a team, all you need to do is find people who share the same vision as you and have the required skills to make your dream achievable. Recruitment will be a game-changing task, and you must do everything to get skilled and enjoyable people on board.

Ask your friends, family, and even your enemies to download and use your app – and provide brutally honest feedback. Analyze your targeted audience and brainstorm different routes to reach them and use your application.

2. Capturing the product market

How to Conduct a Market Analysis for Your Business in 4 Steps

As of now, you should have a prototype ready and used by people. If you have a simple business model such as gaming, you may consider releasing the first version of your app startup idea on the app stores. Otherwise, for a complicated model, you need investment for further development.

At this point, the only thing you should care about is achieving a solid product-market fit and making sure people love your app up to an extent where they’re willing to pay for it. Keep developing a reliable user acquisition strategy.

You also need to determine the cost of acquiring a user and how you can make it profitable. The billion dollar app idea that started as a basic model will evolve quickly now, and you need to keep validating it by testing, measuring, and analyzing with users.

Although it may be hard to make an app that people love and pay for, you must keep patience and perseverance. Once you’ve gone through this stage of hardship, the valuation of your app should be on an average near $10 million.

3. Generating revenue streams

Revenue Streams | Business Model Canvas

Now when you’ve achieved product-market fit and have an app ready that users love, your aim should be to keep growing and achieving traction by improving all the aspects of your app and figuring out how to monetize it and generate revenue.

If you have a gaming, eCommerce, or marketplace business model, you’ve already convinced users to pay for your app. All you need to do now is improve the lifetime value of your app by holding and retaining users along with keen increments in your margins.

In addition to providing a satisfying user experience, you also need to work your way to optimize the price points and lower the cost of customer acquisition. Keep adding new features and revenue streams to your app without compromising on usability.

By this time, you should also land your first investor, and finally join the big bulls. This also means you should have at least a million dollars or more in your bank account, depending on your negotiation skills and traction.

4. Scaling like crazy

How one e-commerce giant uses microservices and open source to scale like crazy - TechRepublic

After signing your first investor, you continue gaining great reviews about your app and have a clear process to address user feedback. Your team also continues to grow at an enormous rate, and you may even hit a hundred people or even more.

Moreover, your user base should also be growing steadily and the user-retention strategy should be in place. As you reach this stage, you’ll notice that user acquisition has become predictable and systematic, along with the drowning cost of acquiring new users.

Your company is also becoming increasingly profitable and revenues are growing at an exponential rate. This calls for the need to constantly look for product innovations and introduce more revenue streams in your business.

Talking about the valuation of your app, everything seems to be different and you’ll no longer be treated as a startup. You’re now an established company with a very complex valuation based on your financial performance and uniqueness.

5. The big billions

What Is a Vision Statement and Why Is it Important? | BoardEffect

While you keep making constant progressions in the app and follow the momentum, you also need to have a clearly defined vision for your product with practical and systematic steps to realize it. The core mantra is to keep your users happy and satisfied with your app.

The business model at this point also requires to be tuned constantly, and even small fractional improvements can yield big profits. The valuations will still be complex and you must keep a keen eye on your profits, growth, and products.

How Much Does It Cost To Build An App?

Prior to leaping directly into the cost, first of all else, you need to choose the niche of the application and its features. The prerequisite of the overall population or the demand of the user ought to be profoundly understood, and a thorough thought should be given to respond to various inquiries.

Features and functionality

Features vs. Benefits: Here's the Difference & Why It Matters

Knowing the cost of development is an ideal opportunity to find what features impact the intricacy of the entire application. Execution of certain features can be a lengthy process, while others are moderately short and simple. Based upon the complexity of solutions, mobile app developers need to utilize third-party API or code from the scratch. Less complex solutions, thus, require standard instruments and connect with native features.

Product design

Product Design | Product Design Service | Spark Innovations

Making a special UI design is a complicated process that produces extra cost to your task. The less expensive variation suggests utilizing OS-provided things and building screens of standard components. The quantity of screen is likewise a deciding variable. Thus, cost strategies and models need to be decided before implementing any decision.

Number of platforms

Have You Done These 5 App Store Optimizations?

It is obvious that you need to make a decision on which platform to begin from. Making a decision for the platform is the most significant and difference making character for creating mobile applications.  These platforms take over various programming languages, have diverse SDKs and use distinctive development tools. Thus, the cost varies differently if one has to develop on iOS or Android.

Backend infrastructure

Premium Vector | Back end development concept.

When it comes to mobile app development, backend is normally an OS that provides developers with APIs to have a data trade between an application and a database. To follow user activity and access the performance of your consumer application, it is outfitted with examination. Depending on the quantity of parameters you will track and how detailed and specific the tracking will be, expenses vary.

App administration

Morpholio's Latest Trace App Update Streamlines Construction Administration Design Changes | ArchDaily

The organization board is unquestionably an extremely helpful tool for dealing with application content, customers, and statistics. There are alternatives to adopt existing admin panel formats for your necessities, yet tracking down a good one is an issue. So it makes sense to create a satisfactory board to meet your business prerequisites.

Location and structure of team

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The location of your application development team is a crucial factor affecting the product’s last cost. The expense of making an application in the US will contrast from the expense of mobile app development services in Europe or other different areas. If you want, you can opt for companies in your area like mobile app development company in USA if you live in the US or any other area where you reside. But you have to be careful while choosing a company or developer to get quality results.

Summing Up 

Today, billions of people across the world are using smartphones and their applications daily. Moreover, in a few years, the figures will simply multiply themselves, and that’s because technology has never been so accessible and powerful before. People are making the most to develop a billion dollar app and get the best idea to satisfy customers.

Impact of Android 11 Features on your Mobile Application

Turning it up to Android 11

Android 10 was a big shift for Google in the Operating System environment. We did not just finally get to work around the long-awaited Dark mode and saw several important changes happening on the app permission front, we also saw the end of an era.

With Android 10, Google brought its tradition to name operating systems behind desserts to a halt.

Android 10 was a testament to the growth and maturity graph that Google has taken. The same principles are being carried over by Android 11 developer preview now. While we are some months away from playing around the final build, the recent developer preview is a sufficient peek into where Google wants to take the operating system.

With every new update, it is not just the Android app developers who get excited. The stakeholders on the other side of the coin – the app owners – also sit on the edge of their seats everytime around the mid of May when a new version is announced at the Google I/O events.

Before we look into the ways Android 11 changes the app domain for the entrepreneurs who own Android apps, let us look into the new android features that have been introduced with the Android 11 highlights.

Android 11 Features Set

1.  Multiple Improvements for Messaging 

How to Combine All of Your Messaging Apps in One Place - Blog - Shift

Going by the Android latest version features, a lot is being done to improve the users’ messaging experience on Android. Here are the upgrades that have been introduced:

  • Chat bubbles – Android 11 chat bubbles hide all the ongoing conversations in little bubbles on the side of the screen. You can move the bubbles around and tap them to reveal the specific conversations.
  • To make the process of getting messages real-time, Android 11 has introduced a dedicated conversation section in the notification shade, offering instant access to all the ongoing conversations you are having.
  • With the Android 11 concept it will now be possible to send images when replying to a message from notifications.

2.  One-Time Permission

Android 11 features we love: One-time permissions | Android Central

If you look back at Android 10, one of the ebay things about it was how app permissions was handled. Android 10 gave the users a lot more control over the apps and what they could access. Android 11 keeps the train rolling.

Now, when the app asks for permission to use intricate features, the users can grant access on a one-time basis. The application will use the permission during the time you use the application. And the moment you quit the app, the permission will be revoked.

3.  Built-in Screen Recorder

How to use Android 11's built-in screen recorder - gHacks Tech News

Since the past few releases, the Android users have been desperately waiting for Google to incorporate a built-in screen recorder.  Although the chances anyone would need it on an everyday basis is very slim but the function is pretty basic, so the wait for it to get integrated was annoying.

Android 11 update will change this. Developer Preview 2 showed a screen recorder which was accompanied by an extremely polished UI and toggle for recording the audio and showing the touches in the recording.

4.  Adaptation on Different Screen Types 

Adaptive vs responsive design: which is better? | Webflow Blog

If there is one space where we can say that true advancements have happened in the Android ecosystem, it is in terms of foldable devices. 2020 is going to witness a lot of new additions in the foldable smartphone market – all running at different screen sizes and resolutions.

The OS 11 has been developed to run on the foldable devices effortlessly. Thus marketing the time to start working on foldable smartphones app development.

5.  Preparations for 5G

R&D projects support 5G network preparations | Daily Sabah

5G started making news by the second half of the last year and what has gone off in 2020, with coronavirus pandemic affecting a number of industries and technologies, the need for 5G adoption has only grown in the world.

To help the smooth processing, Android 11 has added a very important “Dynamic Meterdness API”. One that would allow smartphones to take the complete advantage set that 5G brings.

Once the API detects that you are connected to unlimited 5G, you will be able to access the highest possible graphics and videos quality and other intricacies that come adorned with the 5G technology.

Now that we have looked into the Android new features & API, let us shift the focus on how these additions would bring a change in the functionality of your existing app.

What Would Migrating Apps to Android 11 Mean for Your Android App?

If you look at the Android 11 developer preview documentation, you will find that it is divided into three categories: Behaviour Changes, Privacy Features, and New Features & APIs. Under all the categories, there are pointers which carry an impact on the application’s performance.

While majorly your partnered android app development company will look into those changes, let us look into the things that you should be on top of.

1.  The users can restrict when permission dialog appears

Exploring Android Q: Location Permissions | by Joe Birch | Google Developers Experts | Medium

Android 11 will discourage repeated requests for a single permission. If your users click on ‘Deny’ twice for a specific permission, it would imply ‘Don’t ask Again’. What this translates to is that you will have to clearly convey and convince the reason behind asking for permission in your marketing methods or through your MVP features.

2.   App usage stats will be kept private 

Mobile App Usage Growing as Users Spend 3 Hours Per Day in Apps

For better protecting the users data, Android 11 will store all the users’ app usage statistics in the credential encrypted storage. Thus, neither the app or any system can access the data unless certain coding work is done. Which, in turn, is dependent on two conditions:

  • Users unlock their devices the first time after system startup
  • Users switch to their account on the device.

So, until your developer knows the workaround, you will face issues in viewing the app usage statistics.

3.   Lowered data redundancy 

What is Data Redundancy? | Alooma

In situations that involve media playback or machine learning, the application might want to use the same large dataset on another application. In the earlier versions of Android, your and another app had to download a separate copy of the dataset, each.

To lower the data redundancy on disk and the network, Android 11 allows the large datasets to get cached on devices using shared data blobs.

4.  Greater clarity on app process exit reasons 

When Entry Multiples Don't Matter - Andreessen Horowitz

Android 11 has introduced a new feature under which reports carrying the reasons for recent process terminations will be generated. The app owners will not be able to gather data around crash diagnostics in detail – whether a process has been terminated because of memory issues, ANRs or other reasons. It is one of the main advantage of new features introduced by Android 11.

5.   Expediting incremental APK installation 

How Will Android 11 Impact Mobile Apps | Appinventiv

Installing the large APKs on devices tend to take a long time, even if you made a small change. Seeing how app updates matter, Google has introduced Incremental APK installation in Android 11. It accelerates the process by installing enough of the APK needed to launch the app while streaming the rest of the data in background.

6.  Greater support for neural network applications

Introducing Deep Learning and Neural Networks — Deep Learning for Rookies (1) | by Nahua Kang | Towards Data Science

If your application is based on Machine Learning and Neural Networks, Android 11 will only make it more beneficial. With its new Neural Networks API 1.3, Android is taking efforts to make your Machine Learning apps run smoothly on devices. It is time to bring your AI project management process in line and develop new use cases around the disruptive technology.

7.  An infrastructure to benefit from 5G 

Benefits of 5G network in telecommunications infrastructure management

There are many benefits that 5G brings to mobile apps. With Android 11 now extending full support to the technology, businesses can now benefit from a greater streaming speed, fast file transfer, zero latency – overall, heightened user experience.

The Countdown for Android 11 is on. Don’t Get Left Behind. Let us Help You. 

Android 11: You can install Google's new OS on these phones today. Here's how - CNET

The time between a new OS launch and the time when companies start preparing their application for the version is wide. And generally, the companies that end up taking a lot of time to get their app ready for the next update tend to suffer from the consequences of cut-throat competition.

Our Android developers have already started perusing the Android 11 developer preview document and experimenting around it on our test applications. This means, we will be ready to bring your application on Android 11 in time of its launch.

Get in touch with our team of Android experts to get your plans of migrating your app on Android 11 moving and take benefit of the first mover advantage. But before you do, get an estimate of your android app development cost.

The Mantra to Mobile App Development Success

Mobile is now everywhere. In today’s reality, we can hardly imagine spending a day without our mobile left at home, so much that it turned into an addiction for many of us: feeling the „phantom vibration“ in our pocket or being anxious when the phone is not with us are just two of the obvious aspects reflecting our relationship to the mobile. From an object that we often forgot at home barely fifteen years ago, it turned into a pocket computer that has replaced many of the daily life objects (photo and video cameras, music player, recorder, calculator, agenda, and everything that a powerful, internet-enabled computer provides). From the moment it became „smart“ with the first iPhone release in 2007, everything has changed and more and more of our lives and daily actions are going through that object. Smartphones and tablets have completely changed the way we live, buy, research, communicate – mobile has basically put the digital world at our fingertips 24/7, wherever we are, freeing us from the desktop-sitting and immobile position. This has also drastically changed our approach to common tasks: we expect to perform them at our convenience, according to our needs: what Forrester calls „the mobile mind-shift“ : it replaced the computer as the first and main interaction for daily tasks. Such mind-shift forced every business to adapt their offers and service, as mobile becomes the front door of their organization. All this led to the development of „mobile-first“ design website in a first time, but more and more businesses decide to develop their own branded app. The mobile market is an incredible opportunity for businesses to interact with their customers and know them better thanks to the app analytics, provided they handle these analytics correctly. Let’s go over the key factors to consider when developing a successful mobile app, and how to manage your analytics with reporting tools.

APP ANALYTICS: A GOLD MINE

Mobile app analytics are multiple: they can be used for analyzing the app performance on various app stores, but also bring a lot of insights about the way the users are interacting with it.

Thanks to app analytics, you know how many people have downloaded your app, on which app store, and if they found it directly browsing the store or via another website or app as referrer. It gives you already basic information to shape and adapt your mobile strategy over time.

You also find usual marketing analytics you would use for your branded website or blog: – the number of impressions (how many times your app icon appeared in the store)
– how effective are your different in-store marketing campaigns
– how effective your app product page is, comparing the number of people reading it to the number of people downloading it
– the average visit time and screen views per visit, evaluating the average session duration and how many “app screens” a user read on your app.
– the app retention, measuring how many users come back to your app after their first visit.

Just like in Google Analytics, you can also learn about the demographics of your users:
– who they are
– their age
– their gender
– where they live
– which language they speak.

That will help you define more specifically your target audience and adjust your product and content to their interests and needs.

With mobile app analytics, you also learn a lot about the users’ behavior and habits within your application: these are referred to as in-app analytics. They gather data on:
– how often the users are opening your app,
– how long they engage with it
– on which device they are doing so (the type -mobile or tablet-, the manufacturer, the operating system)
– event tracking (which buttons or ads are clicked for instance)

If you decided to have a free version with specific in-app purchases, or premium version, you can also compare how many paying users to how many free users are using it. You can also learn on a user’s journey through your app: do they always go back to the homepage, or follow deep links and exit? In-app and user behavior are essential to analytics to optimize their experience and see what leads to conversions.

Mobile app analytics will tell you a great deal about the application itself and its performance:
– which pages lead to an app crash
– which device is more likely to make it run slow or crash
– the carrier latency
– the app uptime and downtime,
– the number of errors

A Compuware study showed that 79% of users will retry an app once or twice it fails the first time, a figure that drops to 16% if the app fails more than twice. Same study found out that a poor mobile app experience led to 48% of users less likely to use the app and 34% switching to the competitor’s app! All these figures show how important it is to analyze your performance app analytics in order to diagnose potential problems, troubleshoot what needs to be and identify root causes of issues.  This is key to improve the operational aspect of your app, which can frustrate users and drive them away.

Finally, you can look at rating and review analytics. Today, 88% of users look at reviews before engaging with any business – this is why you are app review are critical to the success of your business. Now, we also know that the overwhelming majority of users don’t leave reviews, and those who take the action to do it is usually to report a bad experience. It is thus important that you communicate your users how important it is to leave a feedback and that such feedback is taken into account to improve the app to their expectations.

You can find a great list of various app KPIs to track in order to perform the best analysis and enhance your application performance. Just like for any analytics, equipping yourself with a reliable business intelligence software will greatly help you in the management and data analysis of your metrics.

 

Outsourcing App Development? Here’s how!

 App Development

Maybe you have a great idea for a stand-alone app, or that you’ve decided your existing business could use one. Either way, there’s a big difference between having an idea and seeing it through, especially when it comes to mobile apps.

App development is not a simple process. A successful app must perform a useful function, boast appealing design features, and be easy for users to navigate. Understanding these goals is easy; achieving them is not.

If you don’t have much experience in technical design, it’s often smart to outsource your app development project to a web design firm. While you could hire people on a full-time basis, this poses a significant risk: You can’t be completely certain that your app will excite users. If it fails, you’ll be stuck with a department that’s of little use to you, and will cost significant money.

Better to collaborate with professionals who have a track record of delivering quality products to their clients. However, in order to find the right web design firm for your needs–and to ensure that you meet your goals–it’s important to keep certain, key points in mind.

Prepare Thoroughly

When you’re enthusiastic about a new app idea, it’s easy to forget that not everyone will share your vision exactly how you imagine it. You may have detailed plans for how the finished product will look and what it will do, but if you don’t effectively communicate those details to the people actually involved in creating it, there’s a good chance that you’ll wind up with something that misses the mark.

Before meeting with a web design agency, prepare thoroughly. Determine exactly what your app will offer users. If it resembles other popular apps, elaborate on the similarities and how you plan on differentiating.

When you plan to outsource your app development needs, it’s essential that your goals are made clear to the developers. You should also decide whether or not you want the app to be available on iOS, Android, Windows, etc. early on in the process, so you’re not stuck with a team that can’t accommodate your plans.

With the app market as highly competitive as it  is currently, it is best to have your app function across multiple platforms. Try to source a development team that has expertise across more than just iOS, and have them show you how each platform will perform to meet your goals.

Establish Timelines & Communication Procedures

If you don’t know much about developing an app, you probably don’t know how long the process generally takes. Save yourself any confusion be establishing milestones and timelines with the team you hire for the job.

Agree upon communication procedures. Even though you won’t be actively working on the project, it’s still yours, and you should be kept in the loop. Know when and how you can reach out to the vendor for updates.

Using a collaborative, organization software can come in handy here or virtual communication methods (e.g. Skype). Whatever the method you choose, make sure it’s easy for you to communicate with each team member throughout the process, and be able to keep track of development goals.

Stay Involved

When you outsource your app development work to a web design firm, you’re most likely not going to participate on a day-to-day basis. That said, along with project milestone timelines, you should put in place timelines for reviewing and testing the product at various stages in its development. This is necessary to confirm that certain key features work properly before moving forward to the next stage in the process.

During these review sessions, you should be involved, especially as the developers get closer to finishing the work. Sometimes, a potentially groundbreaking app fails because issues or problems got overlooked due to lax review processes. You want the opportunity to address these types of issues early.

Be Understood

Just as  you may not know a lot about app development, it’s also likely that the team you hire doesn’t know a lot about your business. However, if they’re developing an app related to your brand, it’s important that they have a reasonable familiarity with it.

When considering which design agency to hire, pay attention to how clearly they seem to understand your industry. There are a number of ways to do this: You could seek out development teams that have created similar apps before. You can deliver a thorough presentation explaining the field in as much detail as possible. Or you could simply pay attention to the questions they ask when discussing your project; if they’re truly comfortable with your industry, they’ll often ask the types of questions people in that vertical would ask.

 

Review Previous Work    

When you hire a contractor to paint your house or remodel your kitchen, you look at examples of past work to determine if they’re right for the job. It’s the same with app development.

After you’ve decided upon a list of potential candidates for the project, find out what apps they’ve created in the past and spend some time using them. Ideally, you should find apps that are reasonable similar to the one you’re planning.

Many vendors can tell a good story about their experienced programmers and dedicated approach to customer satisfaction. The ones worth your attention can also supply you with proof that they’ve delivered quality results in the past.

A good place to start are the case studies listed on a developer’s website or profile. Delve into these to really gauge what they’re capable of, and how their past experience can apply to you.

This is an especially important point to remember if you have very little experience or familiarity with the process of developing an app. In order to confirm that your design team understands your thinking and knows how to execute on a concept, it’s useful to test out other apps they’ve developed. This will give you a better idea of how their products work when they’re actually completed.

Outsourcing app development to a software design firm is frequently a better choice than sourcing in-house. In order to get the best results, you need to take the time to properly vet the developers.

Once you have, you also need to remain involved to some degree. While they’ll handle the details, you’re still the one whose vision fueled the project in the first place. With a collaborative approach, you’ll boost your odds of success.

 

Mobile Apps That Tech Investors Will Fund in 2020

Sensitive Data and Mobile Apps: Practices that Potentially Exploit User Data

Knowing what investors are looking for in mobile apps is a game of utter unsurity.

The investment/funding rounds most often than not come in waves.

2017 was the year of Blockchain. Investors were swooping in to grab a piece of the decentralized pie.

2018 was all about mobile app startup funding of ubernized business models. Businesses like eScooters and P2P travel accommodation booking  came on the forefront during this time.

2019, surprisingly was all about Fintech. Investors from all across the world and different interest groups were funding projects making Fintech sector reach the developing and underdeveloped nations. They also showed a special interest in projects that would combine the domain with disruptive technologies like Blockchain and AI, etc. This, in turn, helped set up the grounds for app investment trends 2020.

At Anteelo, we are known to help our clients get funding on their project idea and finished applications. It’s an event that results from our knowledge of the steps of how to get an investment for an app and knowing what types of apps investors invest in.

We have shared the first part of the knowledge in this article –  steps to raise money for your mobile app startup. In there, we had touched base upon a number of things: How much mobile apps fund do you actually need, the types of investors for mobile app startup, Things investors look for in an app, and how to get investors for your app. In our another article on the ‘Alternate Funding Models’ we have also looked into the different models that businesses can look into if the traditional routes don’t work.

In this article, we will get you acquainted with what mobile apps investors will be looking for in 2020.

*Disclaimer: This article has been the result of our observations. The ultimate probability of businesses getting funding for app startup will depend on what individual investors are looking for and how well businesses are able to promote their value offering.

App Types Investors Will be Focusing on in 2020

A. On-Demand or Educational Cannabis Apps

Uber for Weed Delivery App Development | On-Demand Cannabis Delivery App

Cannabis is getting legalized across the world like wildfire. Entrepreneurs are looking ahead to different tips to make their cannabis business successful. And with this, the inclusion of technology in the sector for making it worldwide. A massive tech driven demand for the industry is coming in from the mobile domain. In fact, the cannabis sector has become a prominent part of the on demand app investment trends 2020.

Businesses, from all across the globe, are finding ways to make cannabis accessible to users from their smartphones, whether it’s through cannabis delivery applications or apps educating people of how and to what extent should they use cannabis.

Zak Garcia, the chief marketing officer at CBD Capital Group says “with hemp-derived CBD products legal in all 50 states, the market is growing at 132%”. According to the Brightfield Group report as well, the total cannabis market is projected to reach $22 billion by 2022.

B. Real Estate Apps Blended with AR/VR or Blockchain

How AR & VR Mobile App Development is Affecting Real Estate in 2021

With the interest rates across the globe being on a historic low, it is very difficult for mobile app investors to not like real estate sector.

Being an industry that affects the majority and is ripe for technological advancements, real estate is poised to get a lot of investor attention in the coming time. The attention defining the real estate app investment trends 2020 will majorly be seen around products that make real estate accessible to the world and bring transparency in the domain.

This in turn, translates into how important it is for entrepreneurs who already have a solution to get in touch with their real estate mobile app development company and get their mobile apps features updated, maybe even get it incorporated with new technologies like Blockchain. In fact, if you do end up taking the decentralization route, you’ll be able to avail the benefits of blockchain app investment trends 2020 as well.

C. Innovative Fintech Solutions Merged with AI 

Which Indian Startups Making The Best Use Of AI In Fintech Solutions?

Louise Samet, Partner at Blossom Capital, Stockholm, Sweden says, “I’m excited about the global opportunity in B2B fintech. For quite a while now, there’s been a lot of focus on consumer fintech products, while there’s still a huge opportunity in B2B payments, banking and insurance. Companies like Pleo and Tink are growing extremely fast and others are following.”

Like Real estate, Fintech is another mobile app market that holds the potential to disrupt the masses. An application that uses a combination of different technologies like Blockchain’s decentralization and Artificial Intelligence with the domain, is poised to be an instant hit with the mobile apps investor in 2020.

The app investment trends 2020 will not just see a greater rise in P2P payment app development but also ones that help millennials more financially sound and secure, such as stock market apps like Robinhood app or AI-powered budgeting app like Cleo.

D. ERP Solutions Backed by Big Data

How beneficial is the integration Of Big Data And ERP For Manufacturing

Investors have a special place for infrastructure solutions that help startups and enterprises grow. An example of this can be seen in Slack, Intercom, or Skype for businesses. This year as well, they will be focusing on products that help businesses deliver better solutions or simply better streamline their processes.

In this vein, we can see investments happening in business automation systems helping brands across industries – Finance, Manufacturing, Healthcare, etc.

Sarah Smith, the Investing Partner at Bain Capital Ventures, says “I believe the way leaders, managers, teams, and all employees interact and work is changing quite rapidly, but it is not yet clear if one super-app will stitch together everything a remote team needs or if we’ll deploy even more apps than before. More importantly, I’m keen to find tools that create the trust, empathy and companionship that inherently comes with in-person interactions which are mostly lost in a fully remote working world.”

E. mHealth Apps Incorporated with Machine Learning or Blockchain 

How mHealth Apps Are Changing the Face of the Healthcare Industry | Socialnomics

The fact that the healthcare domain is still mainly practiced with humans, even after going through the stages of healthcare evolution, being the sole innovation agents, offers a massive opportunity for incorporation of custom healthcare software development driven by technologies. The combination of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Healthcare and Blockchain hold the potential to evolve the entire health and care ecosystem.

The health app investment trends 2020 are bound to see investors inclining towards app solutions that makes healthcare cost efficient and real time accessible to the masses. On this front, they will also be showing interest in insurance applications which would help people in need in real time through the scope of micro lending.

Geographical Markets That Will Statistically Get Investors’ Attention

ESG Investing: Practices, Progress and Challenges

The global mobile app investment landscape will be fundamentally altered by the impact of changing trade regimen and digital disruption. In order to remain competitive in the market, businesses will have to work in close alliance with policy makers to adapt and then respond to the changing economic globalization.

One such shift can be seen in the United Kingdom because of the Brexit. The country is seeing its top position getting challenged by several other countries and projects to Germany.

The app investments trends 2020 can be seen betting on the growth potential of India, with the country’s economy coming on track to overtake China as the most populous country by 2027, according to the United Nations.

Also, Vietnam, which is one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies, is becoming a profitable haven for U.S. multinationals looking to safeguard themselves in the US-China tariff issues.

“There’s huge growth potential in Asia,” says Rich Sega, the global chief investment strategist at asset manager Conning. “The geopolitical stress in Hong Kong has opened up opportunities for other areas in the region for Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore.”

Ultimately, investors will be looking for mobile apps solutions that make technology mainstream, taking it to domains and nations which have been operating sans them. Moreover, they will be expanding their focus from leading nations like Australia and the USA to emerging markets, which show a potential of immense economic growth.

Now that you have got a starting point for 2020, it is time to take the journey and come in the conscious mind of investors looking for investing in an app startup.

Mobile Apps Trends that will Dominate 2018

Mobile App Development Trends To Watch Out in 2018 | Acodez

2017 was a phenomenal year for Mobile Application Development.

The industry saw a new programming language, Kotlin, becoming Google’s Official Language. We saw Apple making partnerships to rule the AI industry. AR/VR strengthened its position in the industry.

Among this all, we saw the application of one of the most disruptive technologies of our time, come into existence –

1. Mobile Payment

10 Best Mobile Payment Solutions For Your eCommerce Business

This year, more users will turn to their mobile phones to make daily payments as people are less likely to carry cash. If you haven’t considered offering mobile payments to your customers, it’d be a good move for 2018 to discuss this with your mobile app development company.

By 2020, the world will see Mobile Payments reaching out to become a $503 Billion industry – amounting to 80% annual growth percent from 2015 to 2020.

While there are already a number of mobile payment applications operating across the globe, the number is only going to increase: especially since the value of Annual Transaction made through mPayment apps is on a high in the US and globally.

Even if the app you are planning is not a Payment App, in itself, incorporating mPayments feature in your mobile app will bring yours in the list of convenient apps.

2. Blockchain

Blockchain and cryptocurrency may soon underpin cloud storage | Computerworld

9 in 10 government firms are planning to invest in blockchain for financial transaction management, asset management, contract management and regulatory compliance purposes. One-third of banks are expected to adopt commercial blockchain in 2018.

While Bitcoin, an important element of Blockchain has already held its position in the technology world, 2018 will push Blockchain further from digital payment. With the technology getting more and more investments every passing day, industries would now be using it for so many other uses than just Cryptocurrency transactions.

There are already brands that have started offering the technology to serve their smart contracts feature for real estate industry and then there are others that have made Blockchain Mobile Apps to add on security feature in supply chain management system.

3. PWA

What is PWA? Why It is Better than React Native? - AppStudio

PWA is not something that you have to install from the app stores. It comes with a diverse range of innovative features like quick updates, faster navigation, offline working mode, push notifications, and so on.

Factors like reliability, speed, engagement, reachability, and cost effectiveness, among many others, have bringing Progressive Web Apps in line with their Native Apps counterparts. Although Native Apps still had the upper hand in 2017, the changes that are planned for PWAs in 2018, will make more brands adopt it.

4. IoT and Wearable

Epson eyes IoT and wearable devices market

Analysts predict that IoT will grow from $157.05 billion in 2016 to $661.74 billion by 2021 and we’re just at the beginning stages of this growth.

Users’ demand for wearables that go beyond satisfying their medical needs is on a surge. The need of the hour is to add innovation in what one can do at the click of their watch button or by adjusting their glasses. And, this is exactly what they will be getting in 2018.

Every IoT and Wearable related discussion that happens in 2018 will be incomplete without the mention of Smart Homes. The year will see greater adaptation of technologies like Alexa, which help users control their smart home devices like door locks, camera, lighting, entertainment system, and thermostats, etc. The technology, which is already a billion dollar market, will continue to rise with time.

This year, you will be able to connect your life much more with the minimal devices that you work around with, every day.

5. AR/VR

Smart Real Estate Seen a Boon for Home Hunters Amid Uncertainties - INVEST-GATE

The next-generation apps especially the gaming apps are all about AR and VR. The tech experts have predicted to generate revenue of $150 billion by the year 2020.

While the technology was restricted to mostly gaming and retail industry in 2017, 2018 will see its adaptation in a number of otherwise deemed traditional industries as well. Such as – Real Estate, Healthcare, and Education etc. The foundation that AR/VR had set for itself in 2017 will grow its roots to a much deeper level in 2018.

The elements that are making the revenue chart of AR/VR are not just restricted to AR Voice or AR Games and VR Games and VR Theme Parks, the $120 Billion market of AR and $30 Billion market of VR can be divided into a number of other elements, with each of them holding their piece of share in defining the future of AR/VR in the world.

Introducing AR/VR in your mobile app this year will not just solve your app engagement problem but also will help increase your conversion rate, if yours is an eCommerce app.

6. Enterprise Apps

App47: Deploy, Monitor and Secure Enterprise Apps

An Adobe study says that 77% business owners found enterprise apps advantageous and 66% are increasing their investment further. Also, 430 billion enterprise app markets are expected by 2021.

The reasons that enterprise Apps have found a place in this list is because in today’s corporate scenario, the need of fixing a seat for people to sit and work in has become a thing of the past. In the time of virtual employees, companies’ needs to have all their employee working in one place has become negligible.

The scenario in 2017 was that nwere employing the enterprise apps that adhered to the standards set by their industries. But with greater focus on being different from competition, in 2018, companies will be looking for platforms specific to their business, which only have the elements that their team works around.

7. On Demand

The rise of on-demand mobile apps - Fullestop Blogs

In 2017, users spent 98% more on on-demand entertainment apps compared to 2016. It also expands to users wanting other on-demand services such as haircuts, food, laundry, and so on. The number that is only to increase by manifold in 2018.

The average annual spending for different on demand industry services is also going to see a jump this year when compared to what they were in 2017.

The need to be satisfied instantly for every need is what has brought in an increase in the demand for the technology. While, on demand services has already seeped itself into a number of industries, many more brands will see its inception in the coming time – B2B setup will soon start using the on demand economy to verify their new employees’ background information or getting their hand man jobs done. Even the current industries will have to find new innovative needs of on-demand facilities to stay on top of their competition.

8. Instant Apps

Android Instant Apps are now available to all developers - The Verge

Instant apps are very convenient and that works majorly in attracting more users. The need of app installation is eradicated here which eliminates the barrier between apps and web. The easiness that Android Instant Apps will lead to its greater adaptation in 2018.

Instant Apps is that feature of Google Play Store, which allows you to use an app without having to completely download it on your phone. All one needs to do is find them in the Store and then click on ‘Open App’. The apps even allow you to perform a specific activity inside an app that is not installed in your device, with only a click on a URL.

By allowing users to use the apps without putting an effort and losing even an MB of their precious phone storage space, is what has made Instant Apps a hit in the mobile app world. While only introduced to a limited few apps of Play Store, 2018 will see the “Try it Now” option in more number of apps, increasing your chances at brand visibility.

9. mHealth Apps

mHealth Apps for Nurses | Lippincott NursingCenter

With over 100,000 health apps in the market and with a forecast of 1.7 billion downloads of mhealth app on iOS and Android by 2017, there is plenty of room for more apps with better and personalized outcomes.

Gone are those days when the mHealth apps were only related to showing the number of steps a person has taken or to book an appointment with their doctor. This was all a thing of 2017. The mHealth industry has now evolved, entirely.

This year is about Electronic Medical records (EMR) Apps that helps in keeping records of your medical history, handle your medical bills, and keep a check on serious health issues like Asthma, Diabetes, and Cancer on phone.

While, this is for the patients, doctors will also move one step ahead from their usual application related to accepting appointment and viewing patient history, to practicing serious operations using the Virtual Reality based apps.

10. Cross Platform Apps

Cross-Platform Mobile App Development: Ending the iOS vs. Android Debate

Wide user reach, improved marketing, cost-effectiveness, and increased revenue are just some of the factors that have been pushing the app development world towards Cross-Platform Apps.

With the audiences on both Android and iOS rising neck by a neck in 2017, brands will tweak their strategy and get inclined towards creating an app that works on both platforms. There are a number of issues that will be solved by investing in Cross Platforms apps, such as – High costs associated with developing apps individually for Android and iOS, having different-looking products on different platforms, and limited reach amongst others.

Now when we talk about Cross-Platform Apps, there are a number of issues that can come up, with the main ones being bad UI and speed.

To remove the glitches that Cross-Platform Apps come with, React Native App Development is the framework we swear upon.

While there are other frameworks like NativeScript and Xamarin, React Native single-handedly holds the wagon to be the best cross-platform tool the mobile app world has the offer. Here are the issues that React Native solves –

  • The knowledge of JavaScript is enough to develop a whole Cross-Platform App.
  • React Native Apps are fluid and are highly responsive.
  • Relies completely on Native Controls.
  • It allows the developers to reuse their codes.

11. Chatbots and AI

How Chatbots Use Artificial Intelligence to Satisfy Customers Faster & Easier than Ever Before

Users are searching for more effortless interactions with brands and are now expecting channels of communications to be open 24/7. 52% of consumers prefer to interact with businesses via a messaging app rather than over the phone or in person.

While Chatbots will continue to do their function of answering users’ queries as a bot in 2018 as well, but with AI, they will now answer questions that are not even asked yet. Or even better, they will give alternate solutions to the mobile users, removing the chance of knowing who is behind the screen, a bot or a living, breathing human.

Chatbots have already found their place in a number of industries, globally.

Chatbots will take customer service to a whole different level in 2018, by not just being available to them 24*7, but also by solving issues that were kept on hold till a representative was available, in 2017. This combination of AI and Chatbots will also start making its remarkable presence felt in the apps dealing with mental health.

Are you prepared to see your device get cooler, more useful, and thousand times more active this year?

Learn How to Start Working with KAFKA and More

Top 10 Courses to Learn Apache Kafka in 2021 | by javinpaul | Javarevisited | Medium

Kafka is a distributed publish-subscribe messaging system that is designed to be fast, scalable, and durable. It was developed by LinkedIn and open-sourced in the year 2011. It makes an extremely desirable option for data integration with the increasing complexity in real-time data processing challenges. It is a great solution for applications that require large-scale message processing.

Components of Kafka are :

  1. Zookeeper
  2. Kafka Cluster – which contains one or more servers called brokers
  3. Producer – which publishes messages to Kafka
  4. Consumer – which consumes messages from Kafka.

Components :

Kafka Architecture and Its Fundamental Concepts - DataFlair

It saves messages on a disk and allows subscribers to read from it. Communication between producers, Kafka clusters, and consumers takes place with the TCP protocol. All the published messages will be retained for a configurable period of time. Each Kafka broker may contain multiple topics into which producers publish messages. Each topic is broken into one or more ordered partitions. Partitions are replicated across multiple servers for fault tolerance. Each partition has one Leader server and zero or more follower servers depending upon the replication factor of the partition.

When a publisher publishes to a Kafka cluster, it queries which partitions exist for that topic and which brokers are responsible for each partition. Publishers send messages to the broker responsible for that partition (using some hashing algorithm).

Consumers keep track of what they consume (partition id) and store it in Zookeeper. In case of consumer failure, a new process can start from the last saved point. Each consumer in the group gets assigned a set of partitions to consume from.

Producers can attach key with messages, in which all messages with same key goes to same partition. When consuming from a topic, it is possible to configure a consumer group with multiple consumers. Each consumer in a consumer group will read messages from a unique subset of partitions in each topic they subscribe to, so each message is delivered to one consumer in the group, and all messages with the same key arrive at the same consumer.

Role of Zookeeper in –

What Is Apache Kafka? | How Kafka Works | OpenLogic

It provides access to clients in a tree-like structure. It use ZooKeeper for storing configurations and use them across the cluster in a distributed fashion. It maintains information like topics under a broker, offset of consumers.

Steps to get started with (For UNIX):

  1. Download Kafka – wget http://mirror.sdunix.com/apache/kafka/0.8.2.0/kafka_2.10-0.8.2.0.tgz
  2. tar -xzf kafka_2.10-0.8.2.0.tgz
  3. cd kafka_2.10-0.8.2.0/
  4. nside Config folder you will see server, zookeeper config files
  5. Inside bin folder you will see bash files for starting zookeeper, server, producer, consumer
  6. Start zookeeper – bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh config/zookeeper.properties
  7. Start server – bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server.properties
  8. creating topic –bin/kafka-topics.sh –create –zookeeper localhost:2181 –replication-factor <your_replication_factor> –partitions <no._of_partitions> –topic <your_topic_name>
    This will create a topic with specified name and will be replicated in to brokers based on replication factor and topic will be partitioned based on partition number. Replication factor should not be greater than no. of brokers available.
  9. view topic – bin/kafka-topics.sh –list –zookeeper localhost:2181
  10. delete a topic – add this line to server.properties file delete.topic.enable=true
    then fire this command after starting zookeeper
    bin/kafka-topics.sh –zookeeper localhost:2181 –delete –topic <topic_name>
  11. alter a topic – bin/kafka-topics.sh –zookeeper localhost:2181 –alter –topic <topic_name>
  12. Start producer – bin/kafka-console-producer.sh –broker-list localhost:9092 –topic <your_topic_name> and send some messages
  13. Start consumer – bin/kafka-console-consumer.sh –zookeeper localhost:2181 –from-beginning –topic <your_topic_name> and view messages

If you want to have more than one server, say for ex : 4 (it comes with single server), the steps are:

  1. create server config file for each of the servers :
    cp config/server.properties config/server-1.proeprties
    cp config/server.properties config/server-2.properties
    cp config/server.properties config/server-3.properties
  2. Repeat these steps for all property files you have created with different brokerId, port.
    vi server-1.properties and set following properties
    broker.id = 1
     port = 9093
    log.dir = /tmp/kafka-logs-1
  3. Start Servers :
    bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server-1.properties &
    bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server-2.properties &
    bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server-3.properties &

Now we have four servers running (server, server-1,server-2,server-3)

PROGRAMMING

The program in java includes producer class and consumer class.

Producer Class :

Producer class is used to create messages and specify the topic name with an optional partition.

The maven dependency jar to be included is

We need to define properties for a producer to find brokers, serialize messages, and sends them to the partitions it wants.

Once producer sends data, if we pass an extra item (say id) via data :
ex :

before publishing data to brokers, it goes to the partition class which is mentioned in the properties and selects the partition to which data has to be published.

Consumer Class :

Topic Creation :

It is a distributed commit log service that functions much like a publish/subscribe messaging system, but with better throughput, built-in partitioning, replication, and fault tolerance.

Applications:

  1. Stream processing
  2. Messaging
  3. Multiplayer online game
  4. Log aggregation

Business Needs A Mobile Application for Growth: Reasons

5 Best Enterprise Mobile App Development Platforms

In this age of mobility, it is not only difficult but also impossible to live without our smartphones. The reason behind this dependability is the mobile apps that have made human life so simple. These apps are changing the very way we live our everyday lives. And in order to get things done, we need lots of mobile applications. This has resulted in pressuring mobile app development companies to build more useful enterprise mobile applications. According to research conducted by Gartner, it was said that by the end of 2017, the market demand for enterprise application development shall outpace the need for the organizations to develop the apps. Also, the sale of mobile phones is expected to surpass 2.1 billion units in the year 2019. The numbers are huge and will keep getting bigger and bigger. This only shows how beneficial having a mobile app, be it iOS or Android for your business will be in the future. There are numerous advantages of mobile apps for industries, be it small or large.

These app development services are utilized for the promotion of services that an industry provides, therefore, the app must have an innovative approach for targeting potential customers at the earliest. Increased revenue, the growth of industry and brand awareness are some advantages of having a mobile app. All of these added to the other key everyday advantages makes mobile apps not just important for businesses but also makes them a necessary part of the modern day lifestyle.

Industries that Benefited from Mobile Apps

According to research, industries are putting most of their investment in going mobile, the reason is quite obvious. Going for app development services, many industries have seen growth and an increase in profits. Here are some of the industries that used their mobile apps for business and got amazing results:

Healthcare Industry

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The healthcare industry has been using mobile apps for a long time now and the impact of apps on the healthcare industry is huge. Apart from quick checkups and storing patient information in one tap of the screen, there are many other ways apps are benefiting this industry. Virtual assistance of doctors, identifying the disease through images and much more has been made possible because of mobile apps.

Travel Industry

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The travel industry is using apps to get more customers and also using it to provide better services to them. The travel apps are revolutionizing the travel industry by giving special services to customers, allowing apps to check in and check out without ease, getting combined bookings done and much more. All this is changing the face of travelling and apps are becoming the best travel companies for travellers.

Restaurant Industry

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Restaurants are one of the most successful industries of all times and with the help of mobile apps, they have been able to excel at their services. Restaurants need well executed mobile apps to allow customers to reserve seats, place orders, find good places to eat and anything else that enhances user satisfaction. The apps are even used to showcase restaurants based on the review given by previous customers. And the biggest benefit of mobile apps for restaurant industry is that they gathering a massive audience through apps which increases the profits.

Entertainment Industry

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The entertainment industry is no longer limited to a TV screen but has rapidly shifted to mobile phones and tabs. The reason for this rapid shift is an increase in mobile users. Mobile apps let viewers view any type of show, at any time of the day and at any place. From live streaming to news updates, everything is available on apps. They say mobile is the new TV and it has become possible only through apps.

All these examples show the benefits of mobile apps for business. However, these are not the only industries that benefited from their mobile apps. There are others such as social network, e-scooter, etc. that have gone mobile and are seeing an immediate increase in their business revenue. Some restaurant businesses like DoorDash have a business model that’s completely based on mobile apps.

Why Does Your Business Needs a Mobile App?

Ever since mobile apps have become a lifestyle necessity, the apps are constantly improving in ways to provide the most out of them. Every mobile app development company that develops apps for industries is bringing changes that benefit the users as well as the business. However, there are already many advantages of mobile apps for industries:

Audience building

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With the increase in mobile app usage, industries are taking the benefits of mobile app application development to increase their customer base. Interaction with users becomes easier with the help of mobile apps. Audience building is one of the most important benefits of mobile apps for small businesses in the industry. Since they are just starting, gathering customers through a mobile app is a great strategy.

Creates brand awareness

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Mobile apps are a one-stop point for getting all the relevant information related to the brand as well as showcasing the products and the services. Newer products and services are showcased on the apps and promoted via ads. This will increase the sales of the product while keeping the promotion cost lower.

Analytics for business strategies

With the help of mobile apps, businesses can track important analytics such as the number of visitors, users most viewed product, time spent on each section of the app, and a lot more. Analytics are crucial for marketing and advertising as it makes sure that the targeted audience is right.

Competitive advantage to businesses

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There are still many companies within an industry that don’t use their mobile app’s full potential and there are some companies that don’t even have a mobile app yet. This certainly plays the benefit card for businesses that are working hard with their mobile apps for business. Although the competition is still quite low in this area yet it is a big advantage.

Helping small businesses in the industry

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Mobile apps for small businesses can be a godsend keeping in mind the fact that using apps as a tool for growth is extremely cheap. Most businesses are skeptical because they don’t know how much does it cost to make an app and eventually assume it costs a lot. However, that’s not the case. Once it is developed, a mobile app for business is the best tool for growth.

Ease of payment

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Industries like eCommerce, travel, etc. often require online payment for their products and services. Secure payments are one of the reasons why your business needs a mobile app. Apps can be developed with secure payment options gaining the trust of customers who find it hard to trust websites for making payment. Secure payment option is the most profitable benefits of mobile apps for small businesses.

Sales and Business Growth

The industries are usually focused on exploration of newer avenues in the marketplace for the implementation of mobile application development strategies for their campaigns. With the increasing number of mobile users, there must be an increase in sales while satisfying the user requirements. The mobile apps are very effective in ensuring progress levels within a short span of time.

Retaining Loyal Customers

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Another useful advantage of mobile apps for business is that it offers a hassle-free experience on the customer support request. Businesses can retain their customers with the help of attractive offers such as discount coupons, vouchers, etc. Uber’s business model allows it to offer discounts to mobile app users and so far has been proved to be the best strategy.

Deliverance of Powerful Messages

Powerful messages are delivered to the customers at the best possible rate so that the business organization saves money. These messages are effectively delivered for the conversion of the visitors into potential customers. An irresistible offer, when notified with the push notifications message of the mobile app, is an effective way for business promotion.

Mobile apps are supremely beneficial in fulfilling user expectations. Customers are usually happy when they discover an app that is easy to connect and offers customers the necessary tools for an easy use of the apps.

How to Get Started with Getting Your Mobile App Developed?

The desire to get a mobile app developed becomes easier if employing an app designing company. The mobile app development companies will first and foremost try to evaluate the business requirements of the clients while working closely with them. This is done to understand what the client is looking for in the app, in the best way possible.

Apart from proper functioning, the mobile apps that are developed must also have an attractive look. Multiple programs can be integrated easily with the affordable rates offered by the app-developed services. Before developing an app, one must be absolutely clear on the purpose that it has to serve.

However, most of the time the cost of the app becomes an issue. Majority of small businesses are unable to find how much does it cost to make an app and that prevents them from getting mobile apps for small business.

It is a common practice to find an app development company near to the location of the business to have a proper meeting. Other avenues to find and hire the best app developers are through the internet, meeting their essential needs, for striking a perfect match for their business.

If you are willing to get a mobile app developed for your business then contact us at Anteelo. We have an exceptional team of mobile app developers that build apps for clients to increase their revenue as well as business reach.

Mobile Application Testing- A Step by Step Guide

Tutorial 2: Introduction to Mobile Application Testing

As mobile applications are emerging as the biggest trend in the market today, it is carrying with it plenty of opportunities for everyone- may it be the developers, the app owners or the users. Mobile apps have created a stir in the market, and therefore, the competition in its market is cutthroat. Therefore, just building a functional and aesthetically pleasing app in no longer enough.  Developers must ensure that their app is free from any sort of errors, bugs or glitches which might hinder the UX and avert customers from using it. That’s when TESTING comes into the scene.

Quality Assurance is an indispensable piece of the mobile app development lifespan. Unfortunately, many disregard the basic step of this progression. To guarantee the fruitful development of any application, QA must be engaged with all phases of development, from the ideation stage to breaking down prerequisites, drafting test particulars and deploying the completed item. QA is even the way to post-development audits.

Be that as it may, it can regularly be overwhelming to realise where to begin while making your testing procedure. Mainly follow the below-given steps for a consistent methodology of mobile application testing:

1. Strategizing and Preparation

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This is the first and foremost step after you are done with your development process. This phase requires you to set up a strategy and draft a work plan to define what success means for your app and what constraints it might face. This is a crucial phase as it sets the trajectory for the rest of the steps. The activities that are carried out in this stage are as follows:

  • Affinity for different systems
  • Check and rundown the necessities:
  • Check Frequency of data-usage
  • Check Frequency of space-usage
  • Dissect practical prerequisites
  • Does the application interface with different applications?
  • Identify the targeted devices
  • Is the application testing constrained to front-end? Does it incorporate back-end testing also?
  • Load Handling
  • The utility of each feature
  • Will the app be Native, PWA, or Hybrid?

2. Categorise the type of testing required

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It is a compulsory necessity that the application needs to work in all iOS and Android gadgets as the end-users can have a variety of gadgets. To guarantee that the application works in every one of the gadgets, we chose a mix of manual testing, automated testing and testing in cloud simulator. This comprises of practical, ease of use, similarity, execution, or security testing on the objective gadgets. Likewise, figure out what sort of practical prerequisites ought to be tried.

3. Test Case and Script Design

Test Script Template - With Example - QA world

The test case is a succession of steps that assist us in executing a specific test on the application. The test script, too, is something very similar. The only difference between these two is that the term test case is used during manual testing, whereas the term test script is used during automated testing. It is very crucial to draft a test case for each and every feature and functionality that you have provided in your mobile application. In addition to that, some extra test cases must also be included.

4. Setup Appropriate Environment for Testing

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A testing environment refers to an arrangement of code as well as devices for the testers or automated scripts to perform test cases. In short, it assists in testing with hardware, software, and system designed. Testbed or test environment is arranged according to the need of the App-Under-Test. On a couple of events, testbed could be the mix of the test environment and the test information it works on. Setting up the correct test environment guarantees successful mobile app testing. Any imperfections in this process can lead to additional expense and time of the customer.

5. Manual and Automated Testing

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This progression includes executing manual test cases and mechanised test contents on different gadgets, emulators or test systems. Presently these manual test cases and computerised test contents are run on the key functionalities of the application to guarantee that there are no glitches. Record the flaws recognised in the error management system and follow the work plan as devised in the first step.

6. Beta Testing

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Beta testing is a significant piece of the application dispatch process. After engineers test their application (that is a thorough testing process called alpha testing), they push it forward to genuine clients to test it. Now, they have the chance to get large blemishes settled before making the application accessible for the more extensive audience. What will the beta testers do? They reliably utilize the application over a particular timeframe. They report back any bugs or issues, and they give their reviews about the application. This aides application distributors to choose whether or not their application is prepared for their target users. On the off chance that it’s not, they’ll have the opportunity to continue improving before it hits the application stores.

7. Performance Testing

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Performance testing is the act of assessing how a framework acts as far as responsiveness and soundness under a specific task are concerned. Performance tests are ordinarily executed to analyse speed, power, unwavering quality, and application size. Performance testing assembles each one of the tests that check an application’s speed, strength, unwavering quality, and right estimating. It looks at a few pointers, for example, a program, page and system reaction times, server inquiry handling time, number of acceptable concurrent clients architected, CPU memory utilization, and number/kind of mistakes which might be experienced when utilizing an application.

8. Security Testing

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Make sure that the application is secure by approving SQL injection, information dumps, session seizing, bundle sniffing, SSL, and gate crashers. Typically, mobile apps have generally less gadget memory and power so it is fundamental that applications must deal with it appropriately. Along these lines, the application performance can be tried by modifying the system from 2G, 3G, 4G to broadband and WIFI. Therefore, the responsiveness, adaptability, and strength are tried in performance testing of an application.

9. Device Testing

Mobile Application Testing Service and Tools Company

Device testing includes a lot of exercises from analysing and rectifying errors, content and administrations on genuine handsets. Testing incorporates confirmation and approval of equipment gadgets and programming applications. During this step, the mobile application is tested on various operating systems as well as a variety of devices so as to ensure that the apps work well when it is launched in the market among the end-users identified with the cloud. The primary motive of this phase is to attain decent test coverage relating to various devices, operating systems or versions of OS.

10. Reporting

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At last, the QA administrator produces the test synopsis report. This is an administration report which gives subtleties of any significant data revealed by the tests led, incorporates evaluations of the nature of the testing exertion, the nature of the product framework under test and measurements got from occurrence reports. The report additionally records various kinds of testing performed and the completion of the testing. This assists in improving any future test arranging. This final report shows whether the product framework under test is fit for use and has met acceptance criteria characterized by venture partners.

In a mobile app development venture, mistakes can show up in any of the phases of the development cycle, some of them even stay hidden. Mobile application Testing empowers undertakings to assemble applications that are adaptable and accessible over various stages. It’s a procedure to fabricate a mobile application by testing it for its usefulness, ease of use, and consistency. This is possible via both automation as well as manual testing. Mobile applications are getting more and more complicated with time and there is a requirement for a start-to-end testing. Right from whether the app is downloadable easily, works smoothly, and gives the same kind of experience across various devices. Therefore, we hope that this article has given you enough insights into the mobile application testing process and may come handy when you need it.

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