Benefits of an Android App for your Business

It is needless to say that a mobile strategy is crucial for all businesses today. with the help of a mobile app, any business can dominate a large segment of a market and also create an entirely new revenue stream. However, it is often difficult to choose a platform to go with while launching your mobile app. Although, it is always best to launch on all possible platforms, sometimes compromises have to be made.

Let's have a look at how an Android App will be beneficial if you choose to go with it for your mobile app.

Benefits of an Android App for your Business

1. Larger Market


Of the major mobile platforms that dominate the market, Android is still the undefeated king. If your app benefits by the numbers, Android apps are the way to go. A majority of the devices make use of the Android operating system all over the world. According to studies, in 2015, over 80% of the devices were running on Android. this clearly puts you to a very big advantage.

2. Android Apps have broader device compatibility


Another reason why Android apps expose you to a larger market is because of the fact that it is easy to make an Android app that is compatible with a variety of its versions. This is difficult to achieve in iOS. So when you hire an Android App Developer, he/she can make sure that your app reaches out to a maximum number of users. The same is often not guaranteed in iOS.

3. Cost effective


Since cost is a really big factor in any business, Android gives you another upper hand here. If you go out and search for them, it is a lot more cheaper to hire dedicated android app developers than their iOS counterparts. This is because since the market share for Android is much larger, there is an abundance of android developers available. Android developers are also said to be a lot more skilled in general due to the ease of the programming languages used.

4. Android Apps are more easily discoverable on Google Play Store


Google Play Store has a more robust search function. This means that whenever a user types something into the search bar, Play Store matches the keywords to all textual data present on an app's page. This way, a user could randomly type a particular function of the app and could find the app on play store. However, the same is not applicable for Apple's App Store. App store only matches the search words with the keywords provided by the developer. Developers may not always be able to anticipate the search query their prospective users may be typing. This could lead to a loss of very significant users. However, the developers of Android Apps do not have to face a similar situation. 

So these were the top 4 benefits of Android Apps for your business. Sure it cannot be argued whether iOS is better than Android or not because, both have their own benefits. This is why a thorough research is always recommended when choosing a single platform for launch. This, however, is only in case you don't have the budget to launch your app on all major platforms.

So no matter if you're running a small business, large business or a simple online business, an Android App can most definitely benefit you. 

How to beat large eCommerce businesses like Amazon: A checklist!

The eCommerce industry is a multi-trillion dollar industry with a plethora of opportunities. As of now, the eCommerce industry is one of the most lucrative ones that is easy to get into. However, this ocean of opportunity is dominated by a few big fish like Amazon, Alibaba, Walmart etc. This makes it a little bit of a bigger challenge for smaller fish to come out on top and get a bit of that opportunities.


However, this doesn't really mean that it is not possible for newly launched stores to acquire large profits in any way. they just need more smarter ways to compete with established businesses like these. Given below is a checklist of five smart ways you can enhance your potential.

1. Content Personalization

Personalization is crucial not just for eCommerce stores but for any kind of business that functions online. Content personalization not only engages users better but also helps business create a more efficient customer journey map that leads to a purchase.


Personalizing content is simply a matter of writing extra lines of codes. You first divide users into various categories based on their history and behaviour and then create a customer journey map. This will look something like this:

Based on this, you can modify the code of your platform display content in a way that engages the website visitors and guides them towards the purchase. Personalization doesn't just stop at the content of the website but also extends to the content of the email newsletters, social media posts etc. With a few extra coding or a custom plugin, all of it can be personalized.

2. Don't Sell through Marketplaces

Conventional methods dictate that you should sell your products through all marketplaces to reach out to a large number of audience. This definitely is true if your sole aim is to make money. However, to increase your brand's awareness, you should stick to selling products only through your site.

Marketplaces work for their own profit and not yours. they definitely expose your products to many but never your website or your brand. If you analzyze the way the product pages of such marketplaces are designed, you'll notice that your website is not as conspicuous as it should be. This way, a lot of prospective audience won't even come to realize your website and will ultimately refer the marketplace to buy your product.

3. Include a Unique Functionality

There is one flaw that large eCommerce businesses can't do with ease and that is implement a new and unique technical functionality on their site. This is because of their large customer base, they will initially have to go through an extensive amount of beta testing, work with the variety of customer feedback to ensure whether the functionality works well etc. However, with small stores, this doesn't pose much of a problem.

Small eCommerce stores can easily create and launch custom functionalities such as AR product view, virtual try on, product customization etc. Such features will ultimately become a unique selling point for businesses to market on. With an efficient strategy of marketing, this feature alone will be able to attract a plethora of customers to your store and establish an impactful presence in the market.

4. Make Something Exclusive

To stand out of the crowd, small stores should try to create something exclusive to sell. Something that connects with users more deeply and is available solely on your store.

For instance, one of the clients at an eCommerce development company: Matrid Technologies, was an online clothing retailer. He collaborated with a Non Profit Organization to help them sell their merchandise through his store. He also promoted his store by stating that all the proceeds from the merchandise of the organization bought exclusively from his store are donated. This helped him create a product that was exclusive to his store. It also resulted in a significant upsurge in traffic and conversions.

A unique method of selling or creating something unique from an existing product is all you need to make something exclusive to your store. With a little work put in, the rewards can be substantial.

5. Go Mobile

Although this is a pretty obvious strategy, there are still a vast number of small stores that ignore this. Mobile phones contribute a significantly large market to eCommerce businesses. This why all major stores have their native mobile apps.

A custom mobile app for your store is a highly beneficial strategy that opens up another medium of sales and another point of marketing. Reaching out to customers through a mobile app becomes a lot easier thereby making it easier for you to promote your products. A mobile app shortens a customer journey from visiting your store to a sale which directly increases your sales. So no matter the reason, always have a mobile strategy for your store. If you don't have the budget for native apps, hire xamarin app developers to launch a cross platform and then later launch native apps when it fits the budget.

Conclusion

In the end, we can say that competing with large and established eCommerce stores won't be as hard as it may seem. Sure going head to head competing with them won't is not possible in early stages. But it isn't necessary as well as you're not aiming to be exactly like them.

So with just a little smart work, no matter how big the other fish are, nothing will be able to stop you from getting a significant chunk of the prize.

How Mobile App Development with Xamarin can be incredibly beneficial for User Acquisition?

Xamarin App Development to Study your Target Audience

Mobile App Development is a process that requires some serious research and investment. It is not a process that can be rushed into if you want your app to succeed. Apart from choosing the right Mobile App Development company, you will also need to decide your niche audience and how to reach them.

This is where Xamarin can come to your rescue. Xamarin is the best framework for cross platform apps. Since Xamarin has the capability of providing you with almost three apps at the cost of one, it can be used to study your niche market incredibly well.  

Given below are the steps you can follow to conduct a comprehensive research of your market with a Xamarin App.

1. Soft Launch a Xamarin App

The first thing to do in this is to launch a Xamarin App to the market trying to cover as many platforms as possible. Since most of the code of Xamarin apps is shared across all platforms, this process wouldn't be too hard on you in terms of investment. You just need to make sure you hire experienced Xamarin developers.

2. Study App Response

After launching your Xamarin app, market your app well in order to achieve the maximum number of downloads. This way you can study the ratings, suggestions and reviews given for your app on app stores and other channels. With the help of this, you will be able to get a rough idea of who your target audience is and what majority of them prefer.

3. Experiment with App Functionalities

Once people start reviewing and rating your app, a lot of them will also provide suggestions for your app. Even if they don't, you can contemplate a lot of functionalities that your audience might prefer. You can also ask for suggestions from experienced companies that provide business intelligence services. Once you add or remove functionalities with the help of your Xamarin Developers, continue analyzing the response of the audience to the changes.

4. Compare and Make a Decision

After spending some time accumulating responses and experimenting with your app, you can now compare various reports regarding your app audience, their responses, the changes they prefer and the ones they don't etc. You can now move on to finalizing the functionalities of your app, the best audience for your app etc. With this, you can also decide on various techniques and strategies to reach out to them before and after your final launch. 

You wouldn't even have to remove your previously launched Xamarin app from the stores. Experienced Android App Developers and iOS App Developers will be able to simply replace those apps in a version upgrade. If it seems well, you could even continue with the Xamarin apps itself without replacing them with native apps. In the end, your app will be able to generate far better returns in a lot less time than it would have if it had been launched without the research.

Top User Experience Enhancing Features of Android Oreo | Mobile App Development

Top 5 features of Android Oreo that will promote Mobile App Development with Better User Experience

When working on a mobile app, the first thing that professional Mobile App Development companies will suggest you is to map out everything you'll be offering in terms of user experience. This is because how your users feel about you is key to your success.

Similarly, in terms of experience, Android Oreo aims to remove the biscuit layer and go straight for the cream. So far, with the new features that have been announced, it seems like Google might just succeed in achieving it. Although it isn't available yet for all android phones, it will be by next year. However, there's no reason why we can't still be incredibly excited about it.

Here are 5 New features of Android Oreo to be excited about:

1. Notification Badges

Notifications badges are badges that appear over an app's icon indicating the number of unread notifications. In Android Oreo, users will be able to turn these notification badges on or off according to their convenience. Long pressing these app icons will display the notification as a small interactive push notification pop up. Users can take relevant action on this small pop up itself. 

2. Notification Priorities

Badges are not the only exciting functionalities in terms of app notifications. Android Oreo also lets users manage the notifications from different apps in a little more detail. Users can mark their preferences of how they want their notifications to be shown for a particular app. For instance, you can set to receive only silent alerts for certain group chats of a messaging app while the others notify you by a sound and lighting up your screen. However, this depends on whether your app supports this functionality or not. So make sure to include this option before you hire Android App Developers to execute your project. 

3. Picture in Picture Feature

In simple words, this feature will allow you to continue viewing a video while you access other apps. The video player will just be scaled down allowing you to have access to all the other things on your phone. For instance, you're in a video call with someone and wish to take down some notes of what they're saying. The video will simply scale down while you open up your notepad and type everything you need. Again this feature too will have to be enabled by your Android App Developers for your app.

4. Better Auto-fill Data Sync

Android Oreo can proudly boast its capability to save all your login, payment, app data etc. with your permission. This data will then be stored between devices and across apps for you to easily use. Plus, Google claims that the feature is much faster this time so the most relevant auto-fill data will be detected way earlier than it does now.

5. Exciting New Emojis

Taking things to a lighter side, Android Oreo will also introduce a whole list of new and exciting emojis. Some of these include a wizard, dinosaur, fairy and an exploding head you can use when you hear something mind-blowing. Google has made sure to add more face emojis to help users express themselves a lot better in chats.

Android Oreo seems like an incredibly promising upgrade, like always, and has definitely gotten users and android app developers excited. How do you feel?

Trends that will change the Landscape of Mobile Apps

The mobile app market is not the same as it was before. With the insatiable demand and rise in competition, mobile app development companies are constantly introducing new changes and strategies in order to help businesses keep up with the competition.

Given below are 5 Mobile App trends that will change the mobile app market in the near future.

1. Interactive Push notifications

Push notifications became a crucial feature in 2017 for browsers. Although introduced a little earlier, it was only in the late 2016 that they caught a lot of heat. With them came along Interactive push notifications for mobile. In simple words, these notifications allow you to take an action or respond to the notification to without exiting your current application.

Interactive push notifications got a lot of positive feedback as it took the customer first approach by not forcing a notification on them but rather giving them a better option while their busy. In coming years, you will definitely see a lot of these popping up on your screens.

2. Wearable Apps

Wearable Apps introduced a new app ecosystem. Although these too have been around for quite some time, it is only now that the industry is seeing an exponential boom. With the rise in the functionalities they can provide and their reduced costs, wearable devices have become widely popular all around the world. And along with them, the wearable apps that power these devices too.

The functionalities of wearable devices are increasing and with them the functionalities of their related apps. However, along with these, other apps too will be compelled to make wearable device versions of themselves as wearable devices increase their reach. Major apps like Uber or Google Search already do.

3. Augmented Reality Apps

With the introduction of Pokemon Go, augmented reality was brought into a new light. New possibilities of AR opened up and AR App Developers became high valued resources. And now, AR apps are being introduced in the mobile apps of almost every industry there is. Real estate, eCommerce, Gaming, Automobile, Furniture etc. 

It wouldn't be very long before almost every industry would have a mobile app that implements the Augmented Reality Technology in one way or the other. Audi has already built complete showrooms around this technology awing customers worldwide. Mobile apps won't be very far.

4. Enterprise Apps

With the growth in the trend of Bring Your Own Device to Work, enterprise apps are destined to have a very large growth rate ahead. Since majority of businesses today rely on some sort of collaboration and office management software, there seems to be no other cost effective solution other than enterprise apps.

Enterprise apps are an extremely safe bet for businesses. they save up on device costs, device maintenance costs and since most of them will be developed as hybrid apps to cover the varied range of devices, they would also save a lot on development costs.

5. No More Hamburger Menus

There was a time when hamburger menus were an easy way out for mobile apps from a relatively huge and complex menu. However, 2017 might just mark its end. with the ever increasing demand of having more option in visible sights, app owners have no other choice rather than to use other alternatives for their menu.

Hamburger menus sure made the job easy, but that is not something mobile apps should aim for. Mobile apps should aim to deliver a better user experience to their customers in every possible way. And that's not always easy. Popular trends that might take over the hamburgers include in-line scrolling navigation, side scrolling navigation (something which is very popular with apps), bottom navigation and tabs.