5 Mobile Analytics Tips To Drive Your Business

When you set out to build a mobile app, a well-planned strategy and solid development are a must and a neat design is paramount. But analytics is the key to measuring  execution and the value of all hard work you’ve put into building the app. As mobiles continue to penetrate every aspect of our lives, it is but natural that developers and marketers alike are constantly trying to measure user behaviour through app analytics. While the mobile app industry might be young, there are a number of platforms and services vying with each other to provide you with good app data.

Start using Analytics before your application is in the Appstore

There’s no use if you start thinking about analytics after your application has been accepted in the appstore. You can create a more robust, user-friendly version1 if you start analysing data during your application’s alpha and beta phases. You could use Testflight for example.

Users may not use your app the way you do

You’ve meticulously planned your app’s design, functionality and flow, but you still need to be able to think like the user. Get third party opinion by asking unbiased users to use your application. Put websites like Craigslist and heatma.ps which uses heatmaps to enable you to see which part of your application users interact with to good use.

Analyse market data to avoid mistakes of your competitors

While analytics providers may be a bit expensive, it is still worthwhile to see what other apps are doing in the market, their price and functionality. With this information, you can make decisions knowing how consumer preferences and application performances in your category.

Select KPIs that suit your target audience

There are a variety of apps for a variety of things. There are apps for education, testprep, epub, news, messaging, movies and entertainment. Each has a performance indicator of its own. User retention might be important for a particular application while purchase conversion would expectedly, be paramount for an ecommerce application. It is important to know what metric to focus on for your app.

Different providers for different apps

Again, this boils down to knowledge. You need to know which analytics provider caters to which vertical. Localytics and Platyomics are both analytics providers, but one caters to content delivery while the other is for mobile gaming.

As mobile users grow at a rapid pace, mobile analytics too would catch up. Which means you’ve got to keep pace as the scenario keeps changing.

5 Reasons Why You Should Have Gone Mobile By Now

A large number of users in today's world are using mobile apps to get the desired information and meet their daily needs. This has meant that businesses of all hues go mobile to attract customers. No matter what business you are into, having a mobile app helps to strengthen relations with clients and retain them. Having a mobile app for your business makes customers download and purchase your products or hire your services
.

In this article we look at the top 5 reasons why it’s time your business went mobile with a view to boost growth.

Visibility 

Customers these days use smartphones and tablets extensively. This has made businesses to have mobile apps of their own, to gain visibility. A mobile application makes your products & services available to the customers at any time of the hour. It is the most convenient way for mobile users to connect to your business and its offering.

Mobile apps thus enhance the visibility of businesses, help to attract more customers, and improve sales.

A new audience

Many users who are not your customers right now can come to know about your useful and feature-rich app and download them. A mobile application can widen your reach and interest more customers to select your products & services. It greatly helps in creating brand awareness and strengthening your brand among app users to draw new customers.

Marketing  

Mobile applications play an important role in directing your marketing efforts to the right direction. You can keep your customers updated with your latest products, new arrivals, discounts and more right at their fingertips. Push notifications continuously remind your customers of your products and services, encouraging them to buy regularly and even triggering impulse shopping.

Convenience 

Mobile apps offer convenience to customers in buying your products and services. Smartphone's users have access to your app even while on the move, thus making purchases from anywhere and at any time.

You can integrate your mobile app with your company's website to give latest information and updates of your business to customers. This ensures that your customers stay abreast with all your recent business activities.

This is a great way for your clients to stay in touch with your business, get a sense of belonging, put confidence in you, and choose your brand.

Competitive advantage 

In this cut-throat competitive market, businesses are always trying to attract more customers towards their offerings. Many businesses still do not use a mobile application or have not yet started to use it. This is where you can gain a competitive edge, keep your competitors behind, and enhance sales.

Going mobile? Choose Drupal

   
Since it was officially released, Drupal has been one of the most sought after languages for those who wish to build responsive web applications. Now as mobile devices open up new frontiers and step on to 24*7 interactions, it is imperative that Drupal reinvents itself to suit the needs of the changing times.

One of the oft-heard complaints against it is that it is incompatible for the small screen. If we make the small- and touch-screen experience more acceptable, everyone would want the freedom of using Drupal from anywhere-but-a-desk.

Mobile phones are personal devices: There is no other device that provides proximity, privacy and ease-of-use as much as a mobile phone. By restricting or dissuading users from interacting with Drupal on the go, one is limiting their connections to their needs.

For interactions called "just-in-time interactions"; user tasks are urgent and immediate. Speed is essential and waiting is not an option. Like the saying, "The best camera is the one you have with you." The same is true for computers. In the coming years people are going to be using Drupal from everywhere, whether we like it or not. Drupal 8 has to embrace this.

Attempting to build a mobile UI from the ground up is a large task with many facets. Design principles can help keep us on track, and give us a wider perspective. With global objectives we always have a good idea what "good" looks like.

Simple

Simplicity is Key to any language and any app that aims to connect with users.

Fast

This is an essential criterion be it a mobile or a desktop app. We need to keep in mind that no one likes to wait.

Consistency

We're designing a whole system of tools and objects. New situations will arrive that we won't expect; we can soften this pain by implementing framework components instead of one-shot solutions.We need to keep in mind that we’re not solving problems for individual pages.

New Toolbar

It’s alright if you can’t show all the menu items at once, what we need is some method of revealing them. What becomes really interesting is the thoughts on what else we could use the rest of the toolbar space for. Contextual actions include filter, add, delete, bulk edit and sort.

Finger Friendly

A thumb is more than a fat cursor. End of story.

Global Search

A global search function allows users who know they want to get there quickly..A nice, friendly, easy to use navigation tree is great but some users want to get around fast. This spotlight style feature is also a great safety net for new users who have lost their way in Drupal.

Swift And Its Impact On The Mobile Industry

           
There’s been a new excitement in the air in iOS developer circles. It is the arrival of Swift that is driving new developers to joy. The onset of Swift has meant that it is finally curtains down for the parent, Objective C. In this article, we look at the motives behind the switch to a new programming language and how it will affect the IT industry as a whole.

For those of you who didn’t know, Objective-C is ridiculously difficult to use. Most beginners who attempted to learn it and even developers familiar with its complexities breathed a huge sigh of relief at the announcement. It is clear that Apple wanted to make iOS accessible to a wider range of developers and it understood that sticking to Objective-C wouldn't work. However, it isn't exactly unfamiliar to existing developers because it uses the same LLVM compiler and runtime which means the code can live side-by-side in the same application. According to Apple, this will "unify the procedural and object-oriented portions of the language."

Apple's free e-book, The Swift Programming Language, offers a guide that goes deeper into the language and acts as a formal reference for any interested developer. Owing to its accessibility and its promise of adopting safe programming patterns and adding modern features to make programming easier, more flexible and fun, businesses looking to develop apps on iOS will soon have a wider pool of iOS and Mac OS X developers to choose from. This will help alleviate the stress of hiring qualified developers in a gradually shrinking talent pool. This increase in talent may also make developers' salaries accelerate at a slower rate.

Additionally, Swift utilizes several time saving features such as displaying outputs in real time and delivering instant feedback on errors. Developers are thus saved from having to create colossal amounts of code before seeing the results. Apple developers can also bid adieu to sifting through code line-by-line to find tiny errors whenever an issue arises. These benefits will result in huge cost reductions for corporations and may sway more of the IT industry's top innovators to developing for Apple.

Although it is too premature to say the effect of these will be seen immediately, the IT industry is certainly abuzz about Swift. It not only begins a new chapter in iOS development, but also makes iOS and Mac OS X development a more viable option in the years to come and its accessibility will most certainly work to Apple's advantage.

9 Facts You Should Know About Mobile Payments

 
Technology is evolving at such a rapid speed that businesses need to keep pace or fall back. Mobile phones have contributed greatly towards enhancing the quality of our lives and mobile payments is an essential part of this. In this article, we look at how exactly they help securing our financial dimension.

1. Mobile payments are more secure

Safety and security are global concerns and mobile payments ensure precisely that. Mobile payments do away with the need of you having to take your wallet wherever you go.

2. They provide flexibility

Carrying cash has become not only an inconvenience but also a danger. Instead users now have the privilege of just tapping your mobile phones to complete transactions.

3. Mobile payments are growing globally

Many parts of the globe have little access to financial services, but 85% of the global population has mobiles. So payments through these phones are definitely on the path towards high growth

4. They help Economies Flourish

From transferring money to pay your utility bills to sending money home, mobile payments make transactions so much more smooth and streamlined. They also help rural economies by making micropayments possible.

5. NFC is the way of the future

A simple and secure technology solution, near field communications (NFC) helps businesses and consumers alike make faster, safer transactions. They’re called contactless payments because all you need to do is keep your NFC enabled phone near a suitable reader to make payments.

6. It’s already built into many phones

Many of the latest smart phones already have built in NFC chips, so adopting this technology is even more hassle-free. Just upgrade your phone or maybe get an NFC sticker for your present phone and you’re ready to make mobile payments.

7. NFC saves time and trouble

Whether you pay for your bus fare or for a movie show, NFC payments make the process so much faster that it’s already a trend that’s catching on everywhere.

8. They are easy to top-up

Whether you are online or at a mall, your mobile wallet can be topped up anywhere. Life’s so much more easier, isn’t it?

9. Mobile wallets make money transfers easier

Mobile wallets also allow you to send funds to your family and friends who may need money fast. In addition everything from electricity bills to parking fees can be paid by you, even if you are far from home.

How Mobile Apps Make Your Work Place Better

   
Mobile apps and smartphones have together brought about a 180 degree shift in the way data is accessed and shared at the workplace. Smartphones are already a part of the list of productivity tools in many businesses. A study by Forrester shows workers gathering about 13 per cent of information from their smartphones. This article looks at the different options mobile apps give you to help your business run better.

• Development options 

The growing demand for apps has given birth to the mobile development boom we are currently witness to. Though there are many options for building than before, the options fall into two distinct categories - off-the-shelf development and custom development.

• Custom-development

 Here, the company pays a development team or hires one in-house to create customized apps for its business. Often the best option for companies that look to build mission-critical native apps, this methodology of development however is expensive. As a result, most businesses, particularly the small ones, don't prefer them.

• Off-the-shelf development

 If you haven’t the budget or resources to build a custom app in-house or with a development team, you could look at purchasing off-the-shelf apps, albeit at a much lower cost. They can be used for email scheduling, data collection, CRM and so on.

Common mobile apps in enterprise workplace 

Here we give you a list of some common mobile apps used at the enterprise workplace.

• E-mail apps

These are among the basic and most commonly used apps in business mobile devices. E-mail apps enable e-mail usage on smartphones and tablets. Apparently 92% of information workers have an e-mail app on their smartphone according to a Forrester survey.

• Schedule planner apps 

These apps have a calendar that records events, reminding users of important discussions, meetings, etc. No less than 80% of information workers have calendar apps.

• Customer relationship management apps 

They manage and share interactions with customers, and increase your sales prospects by integrating sales, customer support and marketing information into a single, centralized database and software system.

• Service and support automation apps 

They enable you to capture using your mobile phone or tablet, real-time service information. They help you transfer it to back-end systems immediately via wireless connectivity. They also allow you to access this data instantly at any point of time.

• Near field communication apps

 Establish radio communication between two smartphones within a certain range.

• Financial apps 

Can access your financial data like payments, expenses, pending bills, customer accounts from your mobile phone. You can also use these to share or record the financial data whenever required.

What You Shouldn't Do When Devoloping A Mobile App

If you had a killer idea and wanted to make it actionable, you would be developing a mobile app to implement it. That’s the easiest way to ensure that you’re idea is visible, taken note of, and most importantly, put to use by millions. What you require is a clear plan, good strategy, proper programming structure and user friendly implementation. But there are pitfalls even for the trained. We look at some of them in this article.

1. Be very clear about your platform

Android, iOS, Windows....reading them back and forth? Well, just look at who you wanna target. If it’s the global market that you’re targeting, Android must be your choice. If you are looking at a US centric market, you could go for iOS. Either way, avoid ambiguity on the platform front. If you intend to launch it on both the platforms, know that your engineering costs will double accordingly.

2. Mobile is NOT web experience downsized

A majority of website owners do not focus on developing a mobile application that is optimized for all mobile platforms. All that they do is rely on responsive website features or consider that mobile app development should be done with just few necessary elements and features of a website.

3. Don’t confuse the Designer for the Developer

Whatever it is that the designer creates, it will have to go through a developer. It is important the design follows the functionality since we often find that apps where design dictates functionality inevitable fail.
For example, if you app has been planned to include a search box, but the designer might envision one with a type-ahead search that generates live results as the user types. This is a nice add-on, but could mean significant undertaking for the developer.

4. Avoid overlooking User experience

Say Apple and ask people what comes to their mind first. The reply would be its elegance/user experience. So, it’s important to know that a mobile user is more demanding and intuitive when it comes to UX. This is borne by the fact that 26% of the are opened only to be never used again and 48% are opened less than 10 times. Make sure you test your app with Craigslist or better find early beta testers.

5. The app won’t sell by itself

When your app goes live, thousands of competitors are going to look at it and use it. If you do not have a well planned strategy to increase visibility, you are only increase the risk of your app disappearing into oblivion.

This means you’ve got to market your app, identify trends and consumer demand with tools such as Xyologic and Google Trends. If you are looking at a wider market, you’ve got to make sure your app has features that the specific market demands.