Go mobile to reach your customers anytime, anywhere
You need to be where your customers are, and more and more of your customers are using mobile devices. Mobile apps provide the best experience for your customers and prospects to interact with your brand. We’ll work closely with you to create, publish, promote, and maintain engaging mobile apps that meet the needs of both your organization and your customers. Whether you’re looking to publish rich content or develop a mobile commerce platform, we’ll apply our expertise in developing apps for mobile phones and tablets for all platforms.
We are experts in cross-platform technologies like Xamarin and ReactJS – helping keep development time and costs down. And if you need complex integrations – with, for instance, ERP services, authentication services, third party data services and the like, then there can be no better partner than us.
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What Goes into Creating a Successful Mobile App?
If you’re thinking of creating a mobile app for your business, then you’re already ahead of the game. Mobile internet use is on the rise, and users flock to applications in droves as long as they serve a purpose and are functional.
In today’s consumer climate, it has become more important than ever to have an app for your company. Apps give users a dedicated platform to connect with the products and services that they enjoy without having to worry about web browsing.
But, you’re not the only business to realize this. The mobile app market has become fiercely competitive, with hundreds of companies vying to be the top dog in their industry. That’s why it’s important to know what goes into creating a successful mobile app, to give yourself a jump start advantage over the competition.
By entering the app development phase armed with a working knowledge of what exactly makes an app work, you can maximize your downloads and increase your profits immediately upon deployment.
Here are a number of ways in which you can get a leg up on your competitors by developing a smart, focused, and functional application that has a wide appeal for your target audience.
Solve a Specific Problem
Who is this app for? What’s your target audience? And, most importantly, what problem is your app solving for them?
All apps need to solve a problem. Whether it’s for fitness, shopping, or just a game to stave away boredom, you need a purpose. You need a problem to solve.
That problem can be as simple as “how do I pass time while in the waiting room at a doctor’s office?” or it could be something more complex like, “how do I effectively budget my monthly income?”
This problem should directly relate to your audience. You need to pull demographic information first. Identify who they are, what issues they face in their every day lives, and how your app can help them.
You need a clear vision in your mind before the development process even begins. An app without a clear purpose becomes irrelevant. Understand the pain points of your demographic. Identify the barriers that they place around purchase decisions. Then, use those insights to determine the problem that your app is intended to solve.
Have a Clear Focus
Apps that try to do too much end up failing miserably. A successful app does one thing, and it does it exceptionally well. Unnecessary features tend to make the user experience cluttered and frustrating. For example, if you’re a weight loss tracking app, you don’t need games in there. Focus on weight loss tracking, nutrition tips, food diaries, etc. Everything needs to come back to that initial problem that you’re trying to solve. Save your resources and focus them on the task at hand. Doing so helps to solve a specific need and deliver value to your users.
It’s important to always keep that focus in sight. But you also need to focus on your competition. How does your app differ from theirs? How is it superior? If you’re a fitness tracking app, what can you offer that MyFitnessPal can’t? Are you improving upon the concept, or just being a cheap knock-off?
To be successful, your app has to perform differently or better than competing apps. That might mean more features, or just different features. Remember, you can learn as you go and update, but you can’t put out an inferior product at launch. You only have one chance to make a strong first impression, so don’t blow it immediately.
Simplicity
Better doesn’t mean more complicated. Your app needs to improve upon a user’s life, not make it more stressful by delivering a user interface that’s overly complex.
Remember, the purpose of a mobile app is to accomplish a task and declutter processes. That means that everything should be simple and straightforward. Put yourself in the shoes of an average user. You might be an expert in the use of your application, but the average user is not. Everything needs to be easy. The more that can happen with a single click, the better.
Provide your users with a clear path to work their way through your app’s functionality. A convenient and simple user interface that is easy to navigate will keep your audience engaged and lower your bounce rate.
Simplicity goes hand in hand with being user friendly. Ease of navigation and being visually pleasant are also vital to creating a successful app. Ensure that you’re meeting the pain points of your users in a way that is not overly complicated and you will keep them from straying and seeking value from your competitors.
Performance
Your app has to perform. I know this sounds like a fairly obvious point, but the app can’t launch with bugs and problematic issues that cause repeated freezing and crashes. Remember that negative user experiences will be reflected in your reviews on the Google Play store and the Apple App store.
Users will only be so patient with an app. If it can’t deliver on its promise, there is another app out there that will. That is both the blessing and curse of a competitive app market. You can catch users that are fleeing a poorly functioning competitor app, but if you’re not on top of providing excellent performance, then you’re pushing your own users right into the arms of your competitors.
Performance level is dictated by launch times, bugs, crashes, and speed. You want your app to boot up right away, or with very limited load times. Once on the user interface, users should be able to move freely around, navigating with little to no lag time. And, obviously, if you’re app is crashing every few minutes, that’s a huge issue that needs to be addressed.
Release on Android and iOS
Together, the Android and iOS platforms make up 99% of all mobile phone users. That’s more than an overwhelming majority. Android has a larger slice of the user pie, with 87%, but Apple should never be ignored.
Use cross-platform development tools to control the time and cost of development. Working on both at the same time will cut down your overhead costs and allow you to release your app in a more timely fashion.
In Conclusion
To stay competitive in today’s technological world, you need to have a mobile application. By adhering to these five key points, you can ensure that, at the time of launch, your app will be ready to go and make a huge splash in your industry.
Why It’s Beneficial to Build on Android’s Platform
When Android first burst onto the scene in 2007, it had a rocky start. The world was stuck in the throngs of Apple fever, and the iPhone’s popular “there’s an app for that” marketing campaign became a part of modern vernacular. So, of course, some second copycat platform wasn’t going to unseat the mighty iOS.
What a difference 11 years makes.
The entire ballgame changed dramatically when Google got involved. Apple is one of the most respected and trusted companies on the planet, so only a company of equal reputation and resources could ever hope to compete. Google was and is that company.
Google set right to the task of revolutionizing Android’s app development process, and Android’s visibility and popularity exploded, almost overnight.
But what really puts Android over the edge was its open sourced Java friendly app development process. Creating an application on Android is a far more user-friendly experience, with a lot more potential for a return on investment.
What’s more, Android has overtaken Apple in dramatic fashion, with a whopping 87% of all mobile users logged onto the platform.
But maybe you need a little more convincing as to the benefits of creating an app for the Android platform.
Here are six reasons why it’s beneficial the build an application on Android’s platform.
1. Open Sourcing
Open source is a phrase I used above. If it left you scratching at your head, let me explain a bit further.
When I say that Android’s platform is open sourced, I mean that its original source code was made available to the masses and can be redistributed or modified by users. That helps to keep Android on the cutting edge, with various tech experts lending their knowledge and experience for the advancement of the platform.
So, what does this mean for the development of your Android-based application?
You can actually interact with the Android community and contribute to upcoming app development expansions. This comes at no additional cost, and it’s 100% royalty-free.
Wireless operators go absolutely nuts for this. It makes it far easier to develop new and advanced phones for the Android platform. That’s one of the reasons why the majority of modern iOS phone advancements were already created for Android phones several generations ago.
2. Higher ROI
When embarking on any kind of business opportunity, you want to stay heavily focused on your return on investment. That is, you want to make sure that the money you’re getting from this venture is greater than the money you had to put into it.
This is especially important when developing an app. Thankfully, Android apps have a far greater probability of turning a profit over other platforms because of their comparatively low entry barrier.
What I mean is, overhead costs are far lower than iOS, so right away you’re ahead of the game.
For starters, Android’s Software Development Kit (also known as SDK) comes free-of-charge for the entire development community. This leads to a massive reduction in both licensing and development costs.
That means initial investments go toward app development, testing, and the cost of test and deployment hardware.
It’s simple math. Put less money in and make profit faster.
3. Social Integration
It’s far easier to integrate popular social networks into Android applications because of the platform’s association with Google. For starters, Google’s ownership over Android makes it far easier to integrate Gmail into your app, and that is the most popular email platform on the planet.
Android apps often give you the chance to sign in directly with a social media account, whether it be Google, Twitter, Facebook, or more.
4. Ease of Use
Java is used for the scripting of Android applications, which makes development much easier for those with Java knowledge.
It’s common for software developers to start their education in Java, which means that it will be easier for them to adapt to the programming language of Android applications. That means that there is virtually no learning curve and developers can get right to the important task of developing a functional application.
With a working knowledge of Java, developers can transition its code script into a mobile application while implementing development services for Android in the process.
5. Sales Channels
One of the more profitable benefits of an application on the Android platform is sales deployment. While other mobile platforms will force developers to sell exclusively in their online app market, Android apps can be distributed through third party marketplaces, or through your company’s own sales channel.
Your app is yours. You can build it and publish it on your own, so it is also yours to sell as you please. That being said, the Google Play store is a fantastic and high traffic avenue to generate the most bang for your buck.
6. User Interface is Customizable
Android apps are completely customizable, which is good news when you consider that your user interface is one of the most important functions to get right.
Google wants customizable user interfaces for their apps because it will help developers create more apps in a shorter amount of time. This all goes back to the open sourced nature of Android. Developers can harness their creativity, turning their dreams into reality without having to worry about being pigeonholed into a platform specific mold.
Customization does not begin and end with the user interface though. Both multimedia tools and data management can be customized and easily updated throughout the process.
And with Android’s background processes, app integration is a snap.
In Conclusion
Companies that are developing applications for their business and overlooking the power of Android are doing themselves a disservice. The overwhelming majority of mobile users are on this platform, and you’ll wind up saving a bundle throughout the development process.
Many companies like to cast a wide net, developing apps for both Android and iOS platforms. That’s a good thing, because together, the two make up 99% of all mobile users. But if you’re ignoring Android in favor of iOS, you’re severely limiting your earning potential and making the app development process far more difficult than it has to be.
10 Best Practices for Mobile UX Design
Every mobile app or mobile website needs expert mobile user experience design. UX practices need to keep up with changing trends and evolving knowledge in the field.
Cross Platform Mobile Development Tools: Ending the iOS vs. Android Debate
Different cross platform mobile development tools have different specialties: some focus on gaming, some are focused on data security for business purposes, and others specialize in letting you use whatever programming language you like, so you (or your developer team) don’t have to learn new ones. Ultimately, which of these cross platform mobile development tools you choose depends on your needs and goals for your app-based business.