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How to Launch an App?

Posted on November 30, 2017 by Super Admin Testreveal

Do you feel that every business should have an app? Certainly not necessary. But if you already have an app, do you need to bring it in front of your potential customers? Certainly a YES. With millions of apps launching and competing every day in the market, a good app strategy will help you get to your destination.

Since a good app strategy is a topic that someone can write a book on, we are here to describe some interesting tips and tricks for launching your next app. This blog is drawn from the best practices seen in the development and launch of apps in the real world and gathered from the web.

We will divide the blog into 2 sections for launching of an app:

Tech/Developer Preparations
Marketing Preparations

Let us see them in details:-

Tech/Developer Preparations

A successful strategy of launching your app starts even before you actually launch it. Your developing team should keep in mind the following points just before they submit their app for launch.

a) Controlling Source/Version code:

If you aren’t using the source control of your app, start using it right away. This allows the developers to control and manage any future versions and changes made to the app so you need not build a new app every time your business expands.

b) Using the Latest Technologies:

iOS and Google are busy researching and bringing out new and latest features every another day. Make sure your app is built on the latest features offered by these operating systems to avoid getting outdated.

c) SEO/Link building for Different Users:

Every user has a peculiar preference for searching his app on the app/play store. Make a thorough keyword research and customize your app according to various user requirements. Also, linking the app creates a great user experience.

d) Push Notifications:

Incorporate push notifications for your app. They are one of the most effective and loved tool for your customers. This can prove a good strategy for re-engagement of your audience. But make sure you do not use this plan to annoy ad irritate your user.

Marketing Plan

There are 5 simple steps you need to follow for achieving your marketing target. Before you go through the points, it’s important you study the basics of about marketing techniques.

a) Researching Competitors:

A recent study shows that almost 50,000 apps are launched every month. Before you launch you app, ask yourself, “Are you offering something unique and new to your customers?” Research and document all the things your competitors offer and what makes them stand out to the audience.

b) App Marketing And Discovery Platform:

Platforms like ‘Preapps’ and ‘appnext’ offers sharing of your app ideas and experience to a community of similar interest before your app hits the market. This helps you to make creative and strategic enhancement to your ideas and leverage your network.

c) Optimizing app store listing:

Similar to optimizing your website through SEO/SEM activities, a mobile app also needs optimization on play/app store. There are many tools like Sensor tower and Mobile action that can help you optimize your listing. You can also google other tips for app store listing tips.

d) Setup social platform accounts:

An optimized mobile app is incomplete without its presence on social media. When a user searches for your service, it’s important they recognise your brand and connect with you instantly. Make sure you have an active social presence to connect with your audience in no time.

e) Beta test:

Are you sure your application is free of bugs and serves it purpose? Before you release it to your actual users, release a beta test of the app for a selected group of people so that you know your app behaves the right way it should. Ask them to review your app while using it so that you are able to make any necessary changes and bug fixes.

Conclusion:

The above tips are just a few ways you can make your app stand out of the rest. There are numerous other things you can do, but without these key steps those aren’t fruitful. Since now your strategy is upgraded, you are ready to rock!

Keep in mind that every business is different, each has its own culture, brand and approach. Customize your brand strategy in such a way that your users feel the need to be connected with you whenever they need. Make sure you get back to us.

How to Design an App for the Better User Experience?

Posted on November 29, 2017 by Super Admin Testreveal

As more and more apps are finding their way in app stores, getting your mobile app design loved by users is most crucial. Users want to see brilliant design elements in your app. However, no mobile app design is complete without consideration of best user experience.

While designing mobile app architecture, you are also at times designing the future user experience.

This clearly indicates that an app must deliver user-friendly experience in the first place. Poor user experience means a lot of disappointment and frustration coming your way. Designing an app for better UX is a key to getting competitive, noticed and viable in the crowded app market.

So here are 10 great tips to design an app for delightful user experience:

1. Simplicity and Minimalism

A UX design that offers simplicity and minimal steps for users to fulfil their purpose is an ideal structure of a successful mobile app. Simple content with clear graphic explanation is what users want especially when the app is focused on multiple tasks.

Too much flash and glamour can distract users and send them away. Extra colour and glitters can even discourage app users to take desirable actions. Apart from that, unnecessary images and shine can even affect the speed at which app loads.

Minimal design approach and its simple presentation can keep users’ focus in the right place and lead them to the final action in fewer steps. It also helps your app load faster so that users won’t think of switching to other rival apps.

2. Preferential UX design

Recently, the new trend has picked the nerve of mobile app design. Unlike conventional interface, many apps have designs that are tailored to appear according to users’ personal taste, likes and tendencies. With such extraordinary design shift, the old approach of one-size-fits-all is getting older now.

This kind of intelligent app design may be termed as adaptive UX design or preferential UI. It takes advantage of users’ personal information to deliver customized experience.

This unusual UX design is commonly found in Travel apps or Real Estate search apps. The design of such mobile apps accommodates all the correct information before users even demand. This is possible because of app’s ability to learn users’ preferences and interests based on previous search history and location settings.

3. Silent Magic of White Space

The empty space found between in-app elements of a page layout is ignored and seen as being negative. Many of us like to believe that whit space through the app content is useless and pointless, and that it needs to be eliminated.

This is a serious practical mistake a designer would ever do. On the contrary, white space (infamously known as negative space in the world of mobile app design) helps bring positive results.

We often underestimate the magical power of negative white space. However, you can use negative space to create more interest and draw more attention.

Seemingly considered as a passive element, this white space is actually an active hero that silently enhances the ease of reading, priority of interesting content and betters and visuals of the layout. It even makes it possible to notice the highlights of the content, resulting in the simplicity of viewing.

4. Great Visuals, Better Influence

Human eyes are the first place where images are primarily processed and briefly approved. In fact, we have a common proclivity to choose something that has ample aesthetic value. Mobile apps are one of such things as mobile app designers will highly concede.

Despite being virtual, mobile app design intrigues users as if it is tangible goods. Users download an app because of its usability and design splendour. Text-centric apps are not welcome, but apps with remarkable visual elements are.

Having an appealing mobile app often results into higher user engagement, better influence and pleasant user experience.

5. Keep a Sharp Eye on Market

Before you design or redesign your mobile app, make sure you dedicate an eye to the relevant market. Find out what is brewing in the market and what trends people tend to embrace most. This will set you on the heavy quest for scooping up the hot trends making signatures on the face of mobile app design.

The foremost thing to bear in mind before you think of user experience is the understanding of your own prime audience. The trends you learn from the app market are representative of customer’s behaviour, tastes and preferences.

Develop use cases that help you go still closer to your audience and help you design a user-focused interface for your app. The more interactive the interface is, the better will be the user experience.

6. Minimize the Burden for Users

Any veteran mobile app designer could not deny the importance of having a clean, clutter-free user interface. Every page you design for the mobile app must contain straight-to-the-point content and single call-to-action option. Users believe in limited attention span wanting their options quickly.

While designing an app, the best approach is to get users what they really want with minimal efforts.

This principle is highly appreciated for purpose-oriented apps. For instance, if it is a hair salon appointment app, it should process users’ preferable timings, style preferences and match it with availability of services to suggest the best solution.

In some cases, the app also detects the user’s location through GPS to tell the distance between their home and salon. The whole process should be kept simple and light, with minimum time-consuming content.

7. Effortless Navigation

Navigation holds immense importance especially if the app is aimed for ecommerce, social media or finance industry. Since much of user experience depends on the navigational ease, your app must comfort users while they flow or switch from one page to another.

If you are a Mobile app designer, you must know that users want the navigation to be simple, accessible and self-evident. Ideal navigation system of an app is the one that liberates them from using great efforts to understand it. So make it easy to discover despite the fact that mobile screen offers small screen.

Tab bars designed with suitable names of for each page can be a best solution to effortless navigation. It offers one tab selection to navigate across different pages.

8. Clever Push Notifications

In 21^st century, due to pushy marketers, people tend to avoid countless messages coming from every corner of the consumer market. Mobile users avoid getting distracted by bombardment of push notifications on their digital devices.

Nobody is interested in your other products, discounts or information of your partner companies when all they want is to get straight down to the action.

In most cases, such exasperating push notifications can encourage users to quit your app forever.

So make a practice of sending only selected custom messages to users. Don’t ruin their busy hours by sending irrelevant messages. Instead, send messages of value on a certain intervals that won’t plague them.

Instead of giving them a rush in a short while, try to channel your messages in multiple slots like email, push notifications, in-app messages, etc. This will save both your reputation and brand.

Conclusion

While designing a mobile app, designers must remember the purpose of the app and how users are going to interact with its various elements and features. You can include these tips in your next mobile app design strategy to build a compelling mobile app. You must ensure that your app has the reason for users to use it and requires minimal time and effort to understand it. Whatever you do with your design, make sure your app retains its usability and has potential to deliver intuitive user experience.

How to Increase App User Engagement?

Posted on November 28, 2017 by Super Admin Testreveal

You might consider user acquisition as the most integral part of mobile app success. But, how can your app thrive without users actively engaging with your app? High number of downloads is not a perfect measure of your app being all the rage in the market. User Engagement and retention are key drivers of a successful mobile app.

While app user engagement mainly reflects user interactions with a mobile app, app retention fairly means a number of customers who return to your app after abandonment.

Poor app engagement and user experience can lead to high user abandonment rate. Hence, you must increase engagement and retention to get more loyal users.

Here are the best practices for improving engagement for your app users:

1. User On-boarding Made Fast & Simple

User onboarding experience is perhaps the first conversation you will spark off with your app users. The main purpose of user onboarding is to get users to take a walk into your app and prepare them for more interesting elements within your app.

Don’t:

Make on-boarding experience a tutorial or serious app education
Make it look like an attempt to increase users’ familiarity with the app
Bore users by introducing fancy screen shots of interface and features
Overwhelm users with too many information fields
Prolong their sign up steps

Do’s:

Educate users about main app benefits
Present them the unique value your app brings
Minimize the number of steps for sign up process
Eliminate confusing factors that result in app abandonment
Offer flexible registration options

User on-boarding is all about making the first impression last. Seamless, intuitive on-boarding experience means letting your users settle in your app comfortably. Avoid as many troubles as you can for them especially when they sign up.

Let them learn more about your app features when they actually begin to explore more in detail. This will help reduce abandonment rate.

2. Push Notifications

Push notification is often seen as a fair practice for increasing user retention rate. Statistics confirm that users that choose to receive push notifications tend to engage with 88% higher than those who haven’t.

The concept of sending push notifications to users has evolved a lot. These messages are much more tailored, meaningful and quite customizable, and appear relevant.

Push notifications are crucial in fulfilling several purposes for your app. It acts as a reminder to users that they have downloaded and are using your app, which in turn helps beat the competition through psychological effect.

Push messaging, if done consciously and based on users’ preferences, can capture massive attention of the app audience. Such messages can convince users of reasons to continue to use app that has very specific functions.

This is the idea championed by Single Grain’s Guide to Mobile App Advertising that suggests how push messages can persuade users to run straight to your app for specific actions.

3. Personalization of App Interactions

Mobile personalization has a lot to do with improved user experience and user engagement. Mobile app users seek the kind of experience that incorporates their personal needs, likes and preferences.

This is why mobile app developers are compelled to build apps that use user’s data to display relevant, customized content in the app. Customized content means personalization of app interactions that delivers additional value to app users.

Localytics suggests that push messages that are tailored to user interests have a 54% conversion rate. However, send personalized messages carefully as any irrelevant messages may make users abandon your app.

Useful Tip: If you have known user behaviour, use it to segment your app audience. Divide users into multiple segments and align their preferences with customized user experience. Send each of them relevant messages through different channels of communication like social network, in-app messaging, push notifications and measure its effect.

4. Incentivized User Engagement

Everybody loves rewards and your mobile app users are no exception. Giving users certain incentives to encourage them to use your app can help drive user engagement and retention for your app.

Create special content that users would like to access. Or treat them with reward points, coupons, promotions, freebies or other thinkable gimmicks that will increase their interaction with your app.

Tip: While implementing incentives, try to make it look natural and interesting. In-app s with special discounts work well for some apps while others can opt for usage-based encouragement. Suitability of incentivized engagement ultimately depends on the nature of your app.

5. Speed Up Your App Performance

Now that our world is processing data at fastest speed to save time and efforts, people are growing more demanding than before. E-commerce retailers make the same-day delivery while international travels are booked in a matter of a few seconds.

Why not apps fulfil the same requirement? App users want to experience significant speed as they jump from one page to another or open a feature or app itself. App lovers want their app to run, load and process information in countable seconds. This is only possible if the back-end of the app is working efficiently.

If your app has core features that deliver fast performance, you are most likely to observe more users depending on and interacting with your app.

6. Mistake Correction & Feedback Management

It is quite understandable that your app might not come out perfect in the first shot. There will always be certain a scope for betterment and improvement, which is clear when you receive honest feedback from app users.

It is important to listen to what your customers are saying about all the wrongs with your app. However, most unhappy app users refuse to show their dissatisfaction and leave. Hence, it is important to pro-actively ask them about their experience and anticipate their exact needs.

Tips:

You must learn, adapt and implement. Apple, for instance, is a proactive player known for making innovative products long before consumers voice their needs. You can also solicit feedback from your app users and incorporate their requirements in your next update.
You can integrate SaaS CRM in your customer relation management system to monitor individual customer choices and behavioural pattern. Now that such CRMs are evolved, even SMBs can afford using it.

7. Deep Linking works for app engagement

We already saw how precise, relevant and customized push messages can increase user engagement for any mobile app. Deep linking goes one step ahead and helps strengthen the power of push notifications or SMS.

Deep linking can be effectively implemented with the idea of inviting new users to your app. In mobile app terms, it is a URL for a mobile app that sends users directly to a specific page inside an app when opened for the first time.

Big names like Google and Apple are also the believers of deep linking power and encourage the adaptation of this practice for enhanced user engagement and retention.

The practice enhances user experience, saves time spent on navigation and engages users.

8. Update the Product to Attract and Retain Users

After a certain period of using the same app with old features and content, users tend to get slightly indifferent with your app and want to experience different material. This is why one needs to regularly update their apps and enter new exciting features and contents to keep surprising users.

Even if your app is quite polished, functional and trendier than competitors, you will have to realize the potential of delighting users with more personalized contents. This is also an effective way to capture users’ interest and retain them for longer period.

Take for example how Facebook reads their users’ taste and preferences and continues to introduce fascinating updates to their app to keep users delighted and stuck to their mobile app.

Core benefits of regular app iterations:

Refined user experience and in-app journey
Satisfied and excited customers
Significant improvement in user engagement
Better customer retention
Increase in customer LTV (lifetime value)
Minimal chance of app abandonment

Tip: Make use of app analytics to monitor users’ behaviour so that you can process the statistics to update their experience inside the app with valuable iterations.

Conclusion:

These are just a few of greatly impactful user engagement and retention tactics you can consider for your app to gain loyal, delighted brand app users. However, there is no magic formula for making your app rise in the market. You may try adopting one or two of these methods at times along with the recommended tips to see how it works with your app. It will take some time before you find out which ones have better impact on your business. You can then optimize your strategy accordingly.

How to Promote an App Online?

Posted on November 24, 2017 by Super Admin Testreveal

2017 is finally a mobile year with 4.77 billion users worldwide. In a recent study, 2 out of 5 visitors to your website are mobile users. As a business baron, it is surely a challenge to promote your app to the right audience, at the right place and at the right time. This predicts that you certainly keep in mind your mobile application for 2/5^th of the population that look for the businesses like you.

This blog will take you on a journey which will teach you everything you need to do to promote your app to ensure that you are easily accessible through the app/play stores.

1.App Store Optimization (ASO)

Just as in website optimization and SEO, app store optimization includes activities to optimize you app store listing deciding your apps’ rank on the stores. This is considered as an important aspect of pre-launch strategy. Not following these steps can do no good to your business.

App store optimization includes the following basic tasks:

Understanding your competitors : Research and analyse what your competitors describe their app, what keywords are they using, who are they targeting etc.

Choose the perfect name for your app by researching on relevant keywords

Create a grappling description which will serve as a call to customers

Design a unique and captivating icon following proper guidelines and details

Release a beta-test app to know your customers preference and likes.

2.Promote app on Social Media

Not promoting your app will tend to lose your potential customers. Nobody will visit unless you follow a proper promotional strategy of your business app. Writing engaging reviews and attractive content to draw the attention of user that are looking out for services like yours is more important than any other tasks.

Other ways include creation of campaigns with discounts and cashback making them getting connected with you without a second thought. The whole idea is to get customers know you and build their trust with the valuable content. App developers and marketers can make of social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

3.Reaching out to Publications and Influencers

There are many publications and influencers related to your niche who has a huge fan following. Ask them to publish your blogs and share your ideas through their platform. Make sure you target the right audience that are engaging.

Many influencers ask for monetary needs to share your materials. If you have sufficient budget, it would simply be a clever idea.

4.Local Ads

Connect with your local customers by listing your business on the radio/newspaper channels. This has proven beneficial where your customers will learn a lot more before stepping up on your app.

Run an ad campaign with your local radio station, tv channel. Give away promotions like 10% off on your first order through the radio/newspaper channel.

5.Mailing Lists

Still ranking high, email marketing has a great potential in reaching and converting your audience to buy your services. Follow a few steps to create an email campaign at least once in a month and convince your buyers that you are always set to serve them high.

Tools like mail chimp can help you get started with your first mail campaign and encourage people to visit and signup for your services.

6.Affiliated Marketing

Affiliated marketing has been an age old tradition of promoting your brand and this hold true even today in the online world. It’s a process where a person/medium sells your product and they receive a commission for it.

You can simply sign-up for a marketplace and get your products tracked whenever someone advertises it. If anyone buys your services, they earn a part of your earnings.

7.Reviews and Rating

Allow testimonial to be displayed on your website and market it as much as possible. People tend to believe others who have already used your service and are satisfied with it.

It also allows you to know what your goodwill is among your customer base. Knowing your client is satisfied and is reacting well is all you need for staying motivated.

Conclusion

Each website you browse to know the various ways to market your app will have different ways to explain. It depends on every business vertical and what they are looking for. Following the above steps will certainly help you take the first step into the marketing world. You can also opt for working with an agency that will do these things on your part.

How To Create an App and Make Money

Posted on November 23, 2017 by Super Admin Testreveal

https://www.redbytes.in/contactus/?utm_source=Header&utm_medium=Button&utm_campaign=ContactusRecently, app monetization is the hottest topic in the world of mobile app development. If you are looking to build a mobile app, you would not want to make it just for fun. Of course, you should have a proper app monetization model and thoughtful strategy to increase ROI. There are many app monetization options available in the market. Choosing a few viable monetization plans can increase your chance of making more revenue in the app market.

You may start with a free application that has certain premium features, in-app s and clever advertisements. Free apps are also more preferable than paid ones nowadays. But how exactly would you approach the idea of making money from your mobile apps?

Let’s explore how you can make it happen:

Your main app monetization strategy must include:

Advertising
Subscriptions
In-app s
Freemium plans
Affiliate marketing and referral scheme

App monetization revenue model:

Here is the most viable app monetization revenue model that will help you generate unstoppable income from your mobile app:

1.Advertising

Since almost 70% of app owners use it, Mobile advertising proves to be the most functional and profitable app revenue generation model in 2017. Just display a commercial in your app and start getting paid. There are top 3 methods of in-app advertising as used by developers:

Interstitial ads:

This format contains full screen pop-ups that occur at specific time intervals. Users can close the ad either by selecting the displayed page or by choosing a close button in the top ad corner. Interstitial ads are organic revenue boosters for app developers.

Banners ads:

It appears at the top or bottom of the screen in varied sizes. They are small and do not cover the whole mobile screen, thereby being less intrusive to users’ interaction with the app. App owners can tailor ad banners for specific target demographic of users considering their past behavior. The lower half of the app screen has highest effects on users.

Native ads:

This type of ad can perfectly fit into the original app design and flow, acting as a sponsored material for product promotion. Native ads work like a natural app element, so users do not feel irritated. Eventually, developers get nice revenue stream and engagement through native advertising.

Incentivized ads:

Users usually like reward apps more than apps that just contain ads. These types of ads are driven by tools that make it possible to reward consumers as they complete certain in-app actions or survey steps. This tactic results in better user engagement, customer loyalty and brand image.

According to statistics disclose the Nearby Live on Android, a social network app, makes around$4,000-$5,000 per month using Facebook native ads.

Researchers say that by 2020, mobile apps would generate 188.9 billion U.S. dollars in revenues via app stores and in-app ads.

2.Subscriptions

Subscription is another monetization models for free apps with restricted content and features. After the free trial period, users can pay fixed charges to get full access to all premium app features and contents. The revenue model is commonly found in apps with exclusive news material, special reports, streaming (audio/video) privileges, ebooks, blogs and magazines, etc.

Apple and Google enable subscription transactions. Apple takes 30% of subscription revenue for first year and then 15% for the following years. On the other hand, Google takes 15% of the app revenue each year.

Despite being a little less famous in the app development market, subscriptions are still a vital monetization model for many leading premium-service apps.

New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Spotify are all big names using subscription based revenue stream model, offering various subscription tiers to their users.

3.In-app s

More popular in mobile gaming apps, -in-app s is one of the most successful app monetization models that enable users to sell assorted virtual items. With in-app s, users can win:

Exchangeable game currency
Buy extra bonus points
Access premium content inside the app
Unlock new features or higher game levels.

According to current app market scene, more than 50% of top apps capitalize on in-app s to generate a dependable stream of revenue. This model is found quite successful and is likely to dominate in future, especially for game developers.

The concept of virtual currency as a part of in-app s creates exciting user experience, which is more suitable for gaming apps. The world’s leading Supercell earned $1 million a day from in-app s in their Clash of Clans game. Pokemon Go users spend about $1.5 million on in-app s on daily basis.

4.Freemium Model

According to Gartner Research group, customers are likely to spend 24% more on in-app s than on paid-for apps. This suggests that people will tend to generate transactions within the app and pay for in-app features, once they are confident that the app can bring real value.

This principle is highly applicable for freemium app models. Unlike paid apps, freemium apps can be used with no charge. However, it contains paid or premium features that are in-app s.

Users have a benefit of downloading the free version to assess the worth and value of the app. If they are satisfied, they will commit to pay for its exclusive sister version with high-grade features. Developers see this as the easiest monetization model where apps have both light and full versions.

15% of apps are focused on this popular mobile app revenue strategy.

AppsFlyer states that the average iOS freemium app generates $1.08 per month per user, and the average Android freemium app generates $0.43 per month per user.

Spotify is one great freemium app that allows users to create personalized play-lists on their mobile device with its premium version unlocking more exclusive features for users.

5.Affiliate Marketing and Referral Scheme

You can be a part of affiliate marketing to promote someone’s products and services for split revenue. Money comes from a number of clicks or installs received from pop-ups and banners used to promote their apps.

Amazon store offers tremendous space for affiliate marketing. You can choose any product and advertise it through your apps. You get revenue from qualifying s and clicks on advertisements done by users.

In this model, you can promote other apps or advertise products through pop-ups and banners. Rovio, the leader in mobile gaming, used Google AdMob network to boost their Angry Birds downloads among Android users.

Final words:

Apart from the above illustrated app monetization tools and tactics, there are still more effective ways to monetize your mobile app. However, among all other app revenue models, according to sweet pricing, in-app advertising covers 65% of all major apps in the market. In-app s is also another success bringer. Some developers blend several methods to experience faster, better results. All it takes is careful planning and competitive marketing strategy to reap massive profits and app-engaged customers.

How to Test an App?

Posted on November 22, 2017 by Super Admin Testreveal

Mobile devices look incomplete without mobile apps. If mobile devices account for communication, apps drive engagement.

This is why businesses worldwide develop mobile apps to reach their potential prospects, establish personalized interactions and attain business growth.

And how to make sure your mobile app is perfect and persuasive to customers?

The answer lies in the standards of mobile app development process. A thriving mobile app is the product of flawless app development methods and rigorous testing format.

Through the entire process of mobile app development and testing, consumers are the biggest influencers.

Hence, your app testing must integrate customer’s perspective and business objective. Here is all you need to know about precise app testing process:

Types of Mobile App Testing

To maintain the technical aspects of the app, we recommend these major types of mobile app testing:

Usability testing – Checks the mobile app for its ease of use and overall user experience.
Compatibility testing – Tests the application across various mobiles devices, browsers, OS versions and screen sizes.
Interface testing – Tests the appearance and navigational aspects of the app such as menu options, buttons, tabs, white space, responsiveness, bookmarks, history, settings, etc.
Services testing – Tests available services of the application in online and offline mode.
Performance testing – Tests the performance level of the application (battery usage, file sharing speed, data usage) when switching its network connection from 2G, 3G, 4G to Wi-Fi.
Operational testing – Tests the data backup, loss and recovery options in case of battery problems or app upgrading process.
Installation testing – Checks the installation behaviour of the app by installing and uninstalling it on different devices.
Security Testing – Tests if the application is capable of protecting private information of users or not.

Mobile App Testing Strategy

Mobile application test strategy ensures all the standards of quality and performance are properly maintained. It usually contains:

1) The Device Selection

While choosing the device for testing, the main consideration should be of popularity of the devices. Run your eyes through the market to figure out which devices are widely preferred by users. Clients or app developers are the deciders for this.

Apart from popularity, other factors that drive the device selection could be:

Operating System
Form factors
Screen resolution
Memory capacity
Connectivity

Testing must be handled across all widely used OS versions for different screen size and resolutions of devices in use. Check the functioning and compatibility of apps for various memory and connectivity options for accurate analysis.

2) Emulators

Emulator is a system where the app is passed from one environment to another without making any changes to the original version.

Emulators duplicate the features of the app and give a real system to work on. The use of emulators is conducive to primary stages of app development as they assist with:

Agile testing with great efficiency
Basic app functionality testing
Network bypass,
Creating an artificial live environment
Test scripting languages.

During various phases of mobile app development, three major types of emulators needed for testing are:

Device Emulator
Browser Emulator
Operating systems Emulator

Some of the free open source mobile device emulators are:

Mobile Phone Emulator
iPad Peek
BlueStacks
MobiReady
Screenfly
Responsinator
Jar of Beans

3) Cloud Computing For App Testing:

With cloud computing, application testing gets further easier to manage with infinite combinations of testing scenario. Devices are run on multiple systems or networks enabled by internet to deploy, test and manage applications. In order to run tests, it creates a simulated web based mobile environment for a developer to access on-demand mobile devices.

Benefits:

Automatic Backup and easy recovery and restoration of app data.
Gives the advantage of unlimited storage capacity
Highly synchronized, efficient and pre-configured structures
No need for creating time-eating on-premise test conditions
Quick, location-independent and full access on different devices
Controls project costs and increases ROI
Speedy and quick deployment.
Supports most complicated mobile apps with huge scalability
Quick and easy online solutions for defects found
Can support multiple for running the same script
Reduces TTM (time to market) and accelerates testing pace

Demerits:

Due to third party services, users have limited control and access over various functions for testing
Since the set-up is entirely on internet, unstable network connections compromise testing process and functioning
The entire set-up is on internet, which means security risks and chances of data theft are high

4) Automated and Manual Testing

When it comes to effective regression testing in development phase, automation testing wins over manual one. However, automated testing comes with significant amount of investment.

Choose manual testing if:

The application has new functionality
The application needs not more attempts of testing

Automated testing is preferred when:

There are repeated attempts for regression tests
There are complex scenarios that may consume more time if manually executed

There are two types of automated testing tools:

Object based mobile testing tools (e.g M-eux test, Rapise, Ranorex, ClicAutomate, Batik)
Image based mobile testing tools (e.g Egg Plant, AppVerify, AppLoader, Sikuli, JAutomate)

5) Network Configuration

Network testing for mobile apps validate the application consistency on various popular network connections such as 2G, 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi.

Network connectivity plays a vital role for apps that are hugely dependent on its online status. There are many mobile apps that need proper internet services to ensure healthy functioning.

This requires QA testing experts to test mobile apps for real network environments to measure application’s actual behaviour.

To simulate network environment, many handy tools are available that helps check app’s performance against network speeds, connection failures, bandwidth limitations and other practical scenarios.

Testing process gets more precise with network simulation technique as it determines how the mobile app under the test will perform in real-time network conditions.

6) Mobile App Performance Testing

Mobile application becomes complex software when it gets integrated with a device environment and interacts with its various functionalities. Therefore, it is advisable to test the application for its practical performance when run on the device.

Users store ample amount of data on their devices that have generous storage capacity. This is likely to mean that your mobile application’s performance is subject to the volume of albums, files, messages, images and other content in the app. This is highly important when your app houses user-generated data.

For this reason, the app must be tested for its behaviour and responses in heavy-content scenarios. If the application has a component on its server, the performance must be checked for varying number of users.

7) Mobile App Security Testing

Security of user data is the most crucial part when it comes to building expectations of app usability. Users are so quick to disapprove your application if they encounter security loopholes or vulnerabilities in your app.

Users are possessive about their credentials, so you must remain careful about providing unbreakable security standard for your mobile app.

Some of the checkpoints of mobile app security testing are:

Secure network protocols
SSL data encryption for enhanced security
Storage of payment information inside the app
Number of steps or permission levels for full access
Use of quality and high-security certificates
The process of user authentication and its complexity
Number of permissible login attempts

For your app to meet high security level, it must encrypt intimate credentials of users such as username and passwords. To strengthen the security, mobile app development companies nowadays use several modern authentication methods and testing scenarios where apps are tested on Proxy servers.

Special Test Case Scenarios

Some of the other essential scenarios for which your mobile app should be tested are:

Battery usage: To monitor the battery consumption while app is being run on mobile devices.
Data requirements: To determine the data required for installation and check if the users with a limited data plan can download it.
Response Speed of the application: To checkthe application for the time it takes to respond on different devices against parameters like memory capacity, network types, etc.
Functionality of the application: To ensure application runs healthily and does not collapse in adverse or changing network conditions.

Your Takeaway

It is hard to build a perfect mobile app without fostering the clear idea of precise mobile app testing. The app testing steps discussed above are core essentials of smooth mobile app testing strategy that drives success.

However, there are many other real-time scenarios that come to challenge the developers and testers throughout the various stages of development. Careful selection emulators and physical devices, manual checking and exhaustive app testing strategy create a ground for launching a high-quality app.

How to Build an App?

Posted on November 21, 2017 by Super Admin Testreveal

If you have never attempted for building a mobile app, the idea of building one now may seem a little more challenging. Let’s face it, if you are going to make an app from scratch, you will encounter tons of advices and recommendations. Of course, you can think of hiring an app development company. However, one must realize the purpose of building the app.

Do you want to become an app entrepreneur, or resolve a certain problem? You must have a clear idea in your brain before you venture into the domain of mobile app development. Once you do, you can gather strong insight to make your vision a reality.

To give you a brief sketch, here is the list of steps you need to build a successful mobile app:

1.Put Your Objectives on Paper

Before you start thinking about complex coding and design elements, define what you wish to achieve. The technology part comes much later. First, some of the questions you need answers to are:

What is it that your app would do for you?
What problems is it going to address?
Will users fall for your app design or idea?
How will it add value to the life users?
Have you thought about app marketing?
How a mobile app will drive growth to your business?

These questions are goal finders and will help you come up with a strong strategy to achieve it. A lack of direction and vision means fruitless efforts. So try to define the clear objective of having an app.

To envision the app success, first try to figure out your audience and why they would interact with your business. Whether online or offline, users want to see what benefits they would get from it. If they find none, they will simply abandon your app.

After the audience comes your own business plan. Your future app can touch many areas of your current business like customer retention, ROI, repeated business, brand engagement, productivity, operational cost and brand awareness.

2.Define Your App Functionality & Features

After following the first step, you are sure about what you want to accomplish by making the app. Now its time to consider the internal content of your app. At this stage, you can go on to be creative and define your mobile app’s scope that includes most functionalities and features. Note down all these essentials you need to perfect the solution and achieve desired goals.

You can do as much as you imagine especially when nowadays there are many paid as well as open source plugins shared by online community. Make sure you add features that truly add value to customers.

The mantra is, to first start with all the typical elements followed later by innovative tweaks that can interest and engage the audience gradually.

3.Wireframes and Use cases

Wireframe means a lot in the world of mobile app development as it adds vivid clarity to the app making idea. Wireframe is a stage where foundation of your app is built. With a mature, well-shaped sketch of what your app will look like, Wireframe contains the skeleton of your design and its functional elements. It walks you through your app’s layout and flow.

As you go online, you will discover a reliable amount of wireframing websites that help you bring your idea to life and see the possibility becoming a reality. You are through with the objectives and desired functionalities of your app and have done your market research.

The visual guide of your wireframe helps you:

Measure what all users can achieve
Clarify your app’s future potential
Grasp the thought process involved in use cases
Understand the stages and steps required to complete each task
Optimize the flow and user’s journey to fulfil each goal
Revamp the design layout and find the most functional screen
Eliminate unnecessary flaws and confusing elements
Reduce development hours and even resultant cost

You can prepare the wireframes both online and offline. Offline method involves pen and a paper or ready made templates. Some of the thinkable online options include: Fluid UI, Adobe Suite, Proto, Moqups, Gliffy, Mockflow, JustinMind, Pidoco, Protoshare etc.

For better results, you may try one mock-up for each use case which includes the entire screen flow users take from opening your app to completing a task.

4.Shape the back-end of your app

At this stage, you go a step beyond building a wireframe and truly start developing your app. Using the storyboard of app functioning, you can design back end and examine the functionality.

Create the clear flow of diagrams that contains servers, APIs and database. For this purpose, you can either choose do-it-yourself app builders or go for tools that do it for you. Alternatively, if you are fresh in the business, you can ask reliable back end service providers that offer services of hosting and app data usage.

Don’t lose the clarity or add confusion in this phase. Create clear diagrams so that everyone working on the project can work in precise directions. In case of technical struggle, your wireframe should reflect the changes.

Here are the good examples of back end services for you: Parse, Kumulos, QuickBlox, Amazon AWS, Appery.io, Kony, Microsoft Azure etc.

5.Test the Wireframe

Before you move on to the next crucial phase of app development, it is time to test the user experience and flow of your app based on its visual representation.

Testing the wireframe will result into understanding of the ease of screen flow, detailed use case analysis and areas where improvement is needed. This exercise will save you frustrating repeated hard work in the future.

Testing Solutions

There are certain online prototyping tools that allow designers to generate highly interactive wireframe. You can even connect the static mock-ups and use cases with its online capabilities to simulate the wireframe for the purpose of testing.

All you have to do is simply put your project in there and create a new prototype and start testing the screens. Some of them are all-in-one tools that also enable you to share it with your colleagues and customers to assess users’ full journey in the app. Some of the useful tools for use case simulation are InVision, Justinmind, Marvel, Photo.io, Sketch etc.

6.Build the app

This step is the most crucial to seeing the well-determined face of your mobile app. At this stage, a lot of things are mulled over before implementing any app development action. One of the points of brainstorming while building the app is whether to choose Native app development or Hybrid apps.

a) Native app development:

Based on a chosen operating system, you build your app from scratch for separate OS. In native app development, it takes heavy coding efforts as one needs to focus on both Apple app store (iOS) and Google Play store (Android) independently.

Despite being gruelling and expensive, native apps will result into robust and reliable performance. The downpoint is, two separate developer teams are employed for both the platforms for separate code bases. For this reason, any custom feature will take a few weeks or months before its deployment.

b) Hybrid apps:

It uses cross platform mobile app framework that allows you to build apps across multiple platforms. The pro is that the same code base is distributed across different OS.

If performance is not a big problem for developers, Hybrid apps offer amazing ease and speed of app development. They work on a single code base that is deployed on both Android and iOS.

Some of the widely preferred framework options for hybrid apps are Xamarin, Phonegap, Ionic, Framework7, Appcelerator Titanium, Onsen UI, Sencha Touch, Kendo UI.

With the help of app builders, the puzzle will make sense as database, server and APIs are synchronized to work together. During the app building process, you may sign up and make an account in Play store or Apple store to launch the app in time.

7.Create User Interface

Creating a finest UI for your app is again one of the most critical stages of app design and development process. Here designers will use their creative knack and imaginative mind to carve the design of interface that can attract millions of users.

Always remember that UI is not just about creating fascinating aesthetics, but it should also reflect how easily app users can navigate. Try to process every feedback you received from testers so that your final interface design reflects them and leaves no scope of disappointment.

Ask your graphic expert to give you high resolution screens with impressive visual appeal from the wireframe you prepared earlier. To reiterate, always prioritize the need of users when working on the look and feel of your app. User feedback are indeed the best resort for building an impeccable UI.

8.Test your app

After your have accomplished developing the mobile app, it is time to test your product. This is to ensure your app is bug-free and delivers intuitive user experience. There are two types of tests: internal and external.

Internal testing has you and the people from your own team pretending you all are users. It helps identify any bugs or UX problems.

In external testing, people who test and try your app are not familiar with your app. This tests help scoop up the kind of bugs and UX flaws that you could not detect through internal testing.

Some eminent app testing tools you may consider are: Katalon, Appium, Ranorex, eggPlant, Calabash, Sauce Labs, Robotium etc.

Live Environment Beta testing

You have already filtered your app through many stages of testing to produce an excellent, fully functional app. Now you need to test it for the live environment.

For Android app, the process is simple unlike iOS where the environment is austerely controlled. For Android, just upload your app apk file on any Android device and start testing it.

For beta testing, iOS urges you to use a special platform called TestFlight. Apple believes in specific discipline and precise directions to use its beta platform. Here you have an opportunity to get reviews about your app from beta testers so that your app will be polished further before going live.

9.Release and Launch

At this point, you can see your app idea transformed into an app reality. Hopefully, your app will solve users’ problem or has features that will attract them. Now the product is ready to venture out in the world. So start distributing.

When it comes to marketing and launching your app, Android and iOS both work differently. It is easy to release the android version to Google Play store and see your app getting downloaded. In Apple store, your app will be reviewed first. Hence, it may take a week or so before it goes live in iOS market.

To make your app visible and searchable in the app store, you will need to optimize the app for respective stores, which is called ASO (app store optimization). Many a time, ASO tricks are enough to get your app to be noticed by users within the store.

However, there are many other ways to promote your app outside the app store such as:

Email Marketing
Content Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Press Releases

Last Word:

Either your hire an app development company or do it all yourself, make sure you have all the knowledge and resources for building a successful mobile app. You must be conversant with what all the efforts that go into creating a functional, aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly app. You will find a wealth of resources and community online to usher you down the path. Hopefully, the steps explained here will ease your concerns and enlighten you.

How To Create a Mobile App Using Xamarin

Posted on July 12, 2017 by Super Admin Testreveal

Xamarin is a mobile app development framework that allows you to create simple form of native apps that can share codes across Android, iOS and Windows.

Xamarin opens possibilities to aim at different mobile platforms by sharing up to 90% of the created codes. It provides a full access to Android and iOS APIs, using the same language and data structures on all platforms.

Platforms Supported

Xamarin mainly offers three main choices:

1) Visual Studio: Helps to develop Android and iOS apps.

2) Xamarin Studio: Xamarin’s own IDE, which provides high quality to accelerate mobile app development processing.

3) Xamarin Studio: Best at developing apps for both Android and iOS. Xamarin’s combination with Xcode does make testing and designing of iOS app development more easier.

Based on C# along with NET Framework, Xamarin makes works easy for developers to create apps for cross platforms. About 90% of the source code can be reused which results in speeding up the development part of the app making process.

There is no need to switch between different development environment as it works on both Visual Studio (for Windows) and Xamarin IDE (for Mac).

To build native apps (Android, iOS, Android) you need:

1) To start working with Android and Windows apps you need a windows computer with Visual Studio and Xamarin installed. And in-case you are working on iOS apps, a Mac with Xamarin and Xcode should be installed.

2) After Setup and installation, verify whether everything is ready for development procedure. Once verifications are completed, you can step on to the next steps:

• Learn basics with Xamarin.Forms

• Start building apps with native UI using Xamarin

3) Set Up a Solution– Steps to create solution with native UI:

• Firstly, you need to create a Blank app solution by using Visual Studio and name the app

• Click OK to create the solution. At this time, different projects are showcased, with access to native designer for the corresponding platform. Platform specific screens can also be implemented in this part.

• Add NuGet and Newtonsoft.Json package to the PCL project. This is used to retrieve information from the data services. This step is repeated several times and then install the Microsoft.Net.Http package.

• Finally, your solution is built for the app and verify that there are no built errors.

4) Write & Share the Data Service Code

For any app development using Xamarin Cross-Platform Development, the code is written on the portable library class(PCL) that can be shared across different platforms in future. PCL are automatically included in packages built by Android, iOS and Windows app projects.

5) Design UI

Next design the user interface, connect it to your shared code and run the final output. At this part you need to set properties like layout, background, text view, text colour, text style etc. Once the properties are fixed, save the file and switch to design view and finally, the UI appears.

In iOS, connect to a Mac on your local network with Xcode and Xamarin installed. After this directly use iOS designer in Visual Studio.

6) Consume the Shared Code: Open the file of the App project in the code editor and replace the generated C# code its contents with the codes.

7) Run the App

• Set it as the start up project in Explorer
• Select an appropriate target/device, then start the application

8) Testing app on Android

Testing Android app using a Visual Studio Android Emulator is an easy technique. Firstly, you have to select the app project, choose a device to emulate and then click to start. The Android emulators are generally slow and should take some time to load. If everything is built properly, your app must run on Android perfectly.

9) Testing app on iOS

Testing on iOS is little difficult when compared with Android devices, because it requires a iOS Mac to provide the emulator. Follow the official instructions given to set up and connect to Visual Studio. Then, select the app project, switch the design plan to iPhone Simulator, choose the version of device used and click Play. Thus, your app test is done.

I guess, now you have a basic understanding about Xamarin Cross-Platform Development. Due to its properties like code sharing, efficiency, use of single technology stacks, native-app like performance, reduced cost and time to launch a product, many entrepreneurs, start-ups mainly the enterprise mobile solutions and Xamarin developers has started to prefer this platform.

Apps built on each platform is unique and Xamarin understands features for each platform. However, business strategies are reusable and this is where Xamarin Cross-Platform Development comes in handy.

How To Create A Chat App Successfully

Posted on June 9, 2017 by Super Admin Testreveal

Messaging or the use of chat apps are surging in popularity these days as people prefer chat-based apps over text messages as it provides real-time interactions and gives them a personal touch experience. Compared to the previous year, the number of persons who use chat apps for messaging has increased by 15.5% when compared to previous year.

How To Create A Chat App

Being a cheaper service when compared with text messaging, most of the chat apps, provide service at very low cost or is completely free to use. 2018 is again considered to be a year of growth, where 1.85 billion people annually might use these kind of apps.

Features of a Chat App:

1) Send messages all over the world

2) Add social networking features

3) Simple and uncluttered

4) Free audio/video calling and messaging services

5) Enable individual as well as groupchats etc.

6) Mostly cloud-based

7) High reliability, scalability

8) Higher load support

9) A faster way of sending messages

10) Support graphical emoticons for enhanced user experience

11) Works in multi-platforms

12) Cost-efficient service

13) Improve security with an end to end encryption

With the explosion of popular, easy-to-use messaging apps like WhatsApp, Line, Telegram, WeChat, Tango, SnapChat, Skype, Google Hangouts, Hike etc., the demand of chat apps is growing day by day. Almost all of these apps provide real-time messaging, free voice and video calls, group chats, end-to-end encryption messaging, unlimited sharing of data and files, contact sharing, and much more either over the mobile data plan or using Wi-Fi.

When it comes to building a chat app, the main advantage for businesses is:

Increased Productivity
Increased visibility
Brand promotions
Quicker marketing facilities

Chat Application Trend that Companies Need to Leverage On:

1. Use of Emojis:

When it comes to building a user-friendly chat app, one of the main factors to include is emojis which lets users express their emotions with just a click. Usage of emojis not only enable overall interaction but even makes the app more attractive and fun to use.

2. Integration of AI:

Now app developers are leveraging on AI to seamlessly connect and integrate with the audience. Deep learning, face recognition, emotional perception etc. are integrated into chat apps to make a better and smarter communication.

3. Multi-platform:

This feature lets you access the same account on any device, thus giving more access to their communication tools.

4. Ephemerality:

Living in the moment or end-to-end encryption is another feature that it taking over in almost all chat apps. The best thing about this feature is that you need not worry about the messages or the media that your sharing because it only exists for a very short time span.

5. Geo-location Integration:

Geo-location provides users the facility to tag the exact location to provide an effective flow of interaction on a real-time basis.

6. Cloud Service Synchronization:

This helps users to monitor, scale, store and update the hosting environment and data.

Overall, a chat app is not only for texting or sharing pictures, but it can be used for all sort of content. To attract users, brands and businesses need to generate new trends and techniques to top the chart.

Each successful chat app needs to have specific salient features, so let’s take a look at the steps to create a chat app successfully with the best functionalities.

The Startup Idea- What Makes your App Idea Special?

Having a strong app idea can lead you through the process in a well-defined way. As marketer/businessmen, look at all ideas in the app world through the lens of “how this is going to make money.”

When you’re coming up with an idea to build a chat app, you need to ask yourself two basic questions.

“How many levels are you going to have in an app?”
“What’s the design of the app going to be like?”

So, if you want to take in an advice, then, it’s way better to focus on an existing model and make it better with add-on unique features.

As you think about your idea, make sure that it is perfect from the start to end of the development process.

A major feature of innovative products is their combination of three major aspects: human desirability, financial viability, and technical feasibility. It is important to consider all three aspects to develop a fairly detailed concept before spending unnecessary efforts in implementing a solution. Get feedback from others, including potential users, to help refine your idea.

If you are to opt for developing your own chat site, you should consider these things:

1) First, explore your own resources
2) Study your competition
3) Conduct a broad analysis
4) Expand your vision by exploring other industries that are not related to yours
5) Keep an intimate relation with people whom you want to serve
6) Think about the platform where you need your app to work on

Who is your Competition? Does your Idea have a Chance?

Chatting is still the easiest way to send messages. Brands follow audiences, so, it’s not that surprising to see the explosive growth of chat apps in all fields. There are quite few from which most of us choose. Here, is our list of ten of the top chat apps that can be your app competitor.

1) Telegram:

Kicking this list off is Telegram, which is free to use. The only thing you’ll have to do is, install and start using it. Telegram focuses strongly on encryption and security. Users looking for a chat app more focused on delivering secure messages in a speedy manner certainly can go for this app.

2) WeChat:

WeChat is a popular option to consider and there are plenty of reasons to love this app. It supports Android Wear, which can help you send messages from your wrist if you have one of the supported devices. It also has a PC client so that you can message from your laptop or desktop.

3) Whatsapp:

It is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to send messages without having to pay for SMS. It’s available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Symbian.

With free voice and video calls, you can have face-to-face conversations, when voice or text just isn’t enough, by using your phone’s Internet connection. The latest version of the app has introduced an end to end-to-encryption to keep the personal data of the users secure.

4) Facebook Messenger:

This is easily the biggest and most widely used chat app among social media chat apps. You can talk with any of your Facebook friends or set group chats for multiple people.

5) LINE:

LINE is actually one of the biggest chat apps out in store, and it offers group chats, free video calls, free voice calls with your LINE contacts no matter where you are.

6) Hangout:

It is surely one of the most recognizable chat apps, and like a few in the list, it can be used on multiple platforms like tablets, smart phones and the computer.

7) Snapchat:

This isn’t like the traditional chat apps, but it is a chat app nonetheless. Instead of just your typical typed up messages, it lets you take a quick picture with the option of attaching a caption before sending it to your contacts.

8) Hike:

One of the unique features of hike is its offline chat facility for users. The amazing collection of stickers enhances the experience of chatting, by helping to convey real emotions.

Competition is a good thing. Go through the stories behind leading brands. Google wasn’t the first search engine and Facebook wasn’t the first social network. There are too many examples to count on.

The above-listed apps are just a few from lots left. Unless your app can do something exceptional, it will be certainly very difficult to stay in the market.

Documentation of your Idea

“A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is no legal protection for ideas. Protecting the idea is crucial, especially during developmental stages. Although no legal filings can protect your app idea, the documentation can certainly help you.

Experimentation is an ongoing process that involves trying, retrying and continuous refining. Take into account different scenarios as possible and give each, a type of logic. While you begin first, think about your layout and widget choices. Make an idea of which platform you are going to use and how your UI will look on different screen sizes and resolution densities.

Sketched layouts also known as wire frames will help to show where each element will be placed and how important it will be in relation to other objects on the page. In this, you visually conceptualize the features, and approximate the layout and structure of your application.

Choosing your Platforms- iOS/Android/Windows

The popularity of mobile enterprise and consumer-based mobile apps has grown tremendously in the last decade. The app stores are flooded with millions of mobile apps covering myriad of topics and genres. Since Mobile App Development can be a lucrative business, an app developer hoping to develop the next big thing is always on the horizon.

Mobile platforms have sprung up over the years to cater to the increasing demand, but to choose which platform is best for your app is a tough one.

Knowing about the basic functionalities of iOS, Android, Windows doesn’t give you the full picture of the good and bad of each platform. The capabilities of one operating system may not be possible with the other. Know the limitations of each platform and choose.

Here are a few tips to decide which platforms you have to develop your app for.

1. Target Audience for Your App:

One of the biggest determining factors when it comes to selecting mobile platform is your app’s target audience. If your app targets the mass market, make sure that the most popular platforms such as iOS and Android are your priorities.

Android and iOS have the largest user base. Windows take a significantly smaller share of the pie. According to Business Insider, Android has captured almost 80.2% of the users while iOS trails behind at 14.8% of its users.

In the case of mobile revenue, iOS users are comparatively more loyal than Android by creating greater revenue opportunities for developers who wish to work on the iOS platform.

2. Piracy Issues:

Piracy is a prime concern for mobile app developers. Android is reported to have a whopping number of pirated apps in the playstore and can easily be pirated, circulated as apk files and installed on devices without having to root them. But in the case of iOS, be it free or paid, it requires a validation by the Apple App Store before downloading anything.

The open nature of the Google Play Store compared to the iOS App Store has created circuitous routes for downloading more apps without actually having to pay for them. This is a major cause for the concern to developers who aim to monetize their applications.

3. Environment:

iOS:

Developers looking to create apps on iOS have to work with Xcode, which supports C, C++, Objective-C++, Java, Python, Ruby, Rez and Swift source code with a variety of programming models.

The latest version, Xcode 6, includes interesting features like “Playground”, a live debugging tool and an entirely new programming language called as Swift in iPhone App Development. Even though Xcode is sleek and powerful, latency and editing errors in Xcode 6 can create issues for the developers.

Android Apps:

Android developers now have a choice between Eclipse and Android Studio during development:

a) Eclipse

The program components provide the environment for writing, modifying, compiling, debugging and deploying the software. Support system is available for C++, CBOL, Python, Ruby on Rails etc.

The advantage is that a wide range of cohesive tools is available and it runs on a variety of operating systems. But on the downside, it can be extremely slow and resource intensive.

b) Android Studio

Android Studio is now officially called IDE (Integrated Development Environment). One of the newly integrated features in Android Studio is Gradle, which is deeply integrated that users who have not used this feature may find it extremely challenging.

One of the commendable features is its layout designer with a drag-and-drop interface. This enables the creation of visually appealing chat applications.

The main drawback is the complexity, lack of resources and tutorials for beginners. New users may find it challenging to learn the ropes in Android Studio.

Windows Apps

Windows phone users make approximately 3.5% of the worldwide smart phone market share. Comparing with other mobile platforms, Windows is definitely not the top choice for an app developer.

Even though the features of Windows may not be as promising as iOS/Android, Windows App Development does provide some pretty versatile tools. This platform supports a variety of languages such as C# or C++ with XAML, C++ with Direct X and JavaScript with HTML/CSS.

Although the Windows platform may not have as large market share as Android or iOS, many of their development options are expertly designed for everyone from beginners to veteran developers.

Cross Platform Development

One more option to reduce time & cost is to go for the Hybrid Mobile App Development also known as cross-platform development.

Here, one code language runs on multiple platforms and is a cheaper and faster solution. They provide a native look and feel with the help of an HTML UI framework and CSS, JS Technology.

But, as discussed, each tool has its pros and cons, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

How much will it Cost you to Create a Chat Application?

Mobile App development cost estimate not only hinges on development time and hourly rates, but also the price depends on a number of factors that are needed to successfully implement an idea.

Depending on project requirements, the development team can be basic or extended. A basic app team includes a UI/UX designer, project manager, at least two developers and a quality assurance engineer. If the app requires a back end infrastructure to develop, then, an API and a back end developer should also join the team.

The price of building a mobile chat app is made up of various components:

1. UI/UX design- up to 100 hours
2. Development-up to 900 hours, plus 25% of the PM and QA services.

Considering all this, the medium development price would score around $1,000- $15,000 for a an app.
Generally, a professional company takes somewhere around $5,000 to $10,000 to develop a fully functional instant messaging application like WhatsApp and Hike.

Obviously, complexity of a product is the main factor when it comes to app development costs, and out of this, the following three factors affect the final cost:

1. Technical complexity
2. Number of devices and OS
3. Custom designs and animations

1) Technical Complexity

There are several features that can add technical complexity to a project. Some common examples include:

a) Third-party integrations: Some functions in mobile apps require integration with third party libraries, frameworks, and services. Real-time chats can be easily implemented with the help of Layer, Pubnub etc.

b) Backend development: A backend is an operating system with APIs to enable the exchange of data between a mobile application and a database. The back-end implements the application business logic.

c) Admin panel development: This is a very useful tool that makes it easier to operate apps, manage users, content, view stats, and more.

d) In-app s: From virtual goods to additional functionality, there are different forms of in-app s that we can implement.

e) Use of hardware components: Smart phones are packed with different hardware components such as gyroscopes, heart rate sensors, NFC, Bluetooth, GPS, barometers etc. Finding the right one for each device and testing how different components communicate with the software may increase the cost and time.

2) Number of devices and OS

When it comes to an iOS app, it should be compatible with the latest and previous versions of iPhone and support the latest and previous iOS versions (iOS 9 and iOS 8).

This is also applicable to Android OS versions.

3) Custom designs and animations

Custom user interface costs would be higher than the price of building from standard components.
This includes the choosing of custom and standard UI components.

Designing & Developing your Chat App

The dominance of social networking sites has been curbed by the emergence of messaging chat apps. Currently, the demand for live chat apps has increased to such an extent that they are heading towards dethroning the social media sites.

Messaging app is an understatement. Because there are so many features developed in an instant messaging application that has made them deployable for numerous applications.

When you are looking to build a feature-rich and sturdy chat app, you will have to use the appropriate technologies.

Features to be incorporated while creating a Chat App:

Location based information
Group chats becomes mandatory
Auto sync feature
Offline messages
Last Seen for the recent online activity time
Screen Sharing enables users to share their screens with their contacts
Multimedia sharing allows sharing unlimited multimedia data
Voice Calling feature
Social Integrations
Video Calling for real time conversation

The trend of bots has already taken off, where a large number of brands run bots. Bots make customer service interactions easier for customers, and for brands. Apps like WeChat, Kik and even Facebook messenger has started using bots in their chats.

Hiring a Developer to Create Chat App

When you are going to hire a developer, you tend to have so many options- a firm, an individual, a small team, overseas etc. The hardest part in this would be where to start and whom to trust.

Here are few great ways to start your developer search:

Enquire Around:

This can be through co-workers, friends, family or discussion boards, websites, and review sites. Ask for referrals and explain to them what you’re looking for.

Google – Enables search of different firms and their portfolio/service offerings with their contact details.

Freelancing Sites -You can browse in freelancing websites and find job postings that are similar to yours and see what people write as their job request. You can later do research on these forums by going through their profile pages or on their main web pages, and maybe, even follow up with their contact form.

Choosing a Developer:

Individual Developers

Personal and collaborative– If it’s the right one, they may act more like a partner than a hired person

Specific skill sets– Every developer has their own strengths and if you get one that matches exactly what you’re doing, you will get the best results.

Cheaper– This can either be for better or for worse because you’re not paying for project management and overhead.

Firms

Highly deliverable and time-oriented– Firms focus on project plans and time lines. You’ll be reported with updates on project in regular basis telling you where things stand.

Project management– You’ll have one prime person who can take the lead on everything you want to discuss about the entire project.

Have backup Plans– This means that if something comes up with any of the developers, there is always a backup plan to continue your project.

Testing/QA– This helps to detect bugs and get multiple perspectives on the project.

Whomever you opt for, your primary goal is to generate revenue with your chat app. The developer needs to know exactly how to build in features to make an income out of it.
If you opt for a free app, be sure that the freelancer/the firm is well versed in integrating mobile display ads, in-app s or paid subscription services.

Which are the Best App Development Tools?

Different cross platform tools have different specialities. Each platform is unique and exhibits different features, capabilities and behaviour. Multi-platform apps are truly in-today; so, you will have to find solutions to develop the best cross-formatted apps, without emptying all your resources.

Here is a list of some great tools for Mobile App Development:

1) RhoMobile: It offers an open-source framework based on Ruby. This permits to create native app, spanning over s stunning range of OS’ and smart phones. This includes Android, Windows Mobile, iOS etc. The framework supplied by this tool is in such a way that you only need to code once. This can be used to build apps for most of the major smart phones.

2) PhoneGap: Allows developers to create chat application for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iTouch and iPad devices. It uses standard web development languages such as HTML and JavaScript, and allows the developer to work with device hardware features such as accelerometer, GPS/location, camera, sound etc.

3)MoSync: Yet another SDK tool based on standard web programming. This offers the developer integrated compilers, libraries, run times, device profiles and various other useful tools. MoSync now also includes Eclipse-based IDE for C/C++ programming.

4)WidgetPad: This is a collaborative, open-source environment for development which uses standard web technologies, such as JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3.

It includes source code editing, collaboration, debugging, project management, distribution. Widget Pad, which is now in private beta, can be used to create a chat application for iOS and Android.

5) Sencha: Helps to develop your tools in HTML5 and works across a handful of devices on different platforms and boosts productivity with pre-built components. Once you have developed the HTML5 code, then you can translate it to both android and iOS platforms.

6) Cocos2d: It is primarily used in two-dimensional game development. It allows the developers to use C++, JavaScript, C#, Xcode, Python etc.

7) Corona: This tool comes with the promise that you can start coding your new app in as little as five minutes after the download. The programming language is Lua, which is written in C.

8)Xamarin: Includes app store delivery, performance testing and monitoring, and the ability to do virtual tests on more devices to test whether everything is working properly.

Making use of these tools can make things easier for you to develop a reliable chat app.

How to Monetize your App?

Finally, when you are finished with your app and polished it as a result of beta testing feedback, the next step is to think about business. When you plan your own development, monetization should be one of the key elements of your design.

Five strategies to design the financial aspects are given below:

Pay per Download:

Using pay per download for your app, each user will have to pay as they download and install it on their phone. Payment can be handled by an app store, mobile operator or you can set up a mechanism. Payment is generally handled in one of two ways: operator billing or credit/debit-card payments.

In-app payment:

It’s a way to charge for specific actions or assets within your application. Alternatively, you can offer some basic features of your application for free, but, charge for premium contents like videos, virtual credits, premium information and additional features.

Mobile Advertising:

As it is common on websites, you can think of earning money by displaying advertisements. Many companies offer tools to display mobile ads and it is the easiest way to make money.

Sponsorships:

The user gets your app for free and in return, is prompted to sign-up for a newsletter of your sponsor. The sponsor will pay the developer an amount for each newsletter registration.

Stickers:

Premium sticker packs are a mixture of the app’s own-produced content and content from established producers such as Disney or Sony, and from smaller providers. The rich, graphical nature of stickers can create interesting and engaging content.

Official accounts:

Such accounts allow brands, celebrities and merchants to connect and engage with users. The official account uses familiar features within the app so that they can connect with users as friends and share contents and messages.

Content Merchandising (themes, filters, wallpapers):

There are different content types that can be retailed within a messaging app. Whether this works or not depends on the implementation of the idea. This content extension can also help in core messaging experiences.

Commerce:

With a large number of users and the presence of brands in official accounts it’s likely that mobile commerce will be a direction for ambitious chatting apps to go in. WeChat has already included a scanner used to read QR codes to help users share their accounts and connect with friends. These bar codes help the users to pay for the product from WeChat.

App Publishing

Publishing refers to the process that takes the completed Mobile App development project to the App Store.

The final step in the development of an application is to publish the application. It involves two essential tasks:

Preparing for Publication – ‘Release version’ of the application is created so that it can be deployed to compatible devices.
Distribution – The release version of an application is made available through one or more of various distribution channels.

iOS Devices

In order to distribute applications to all iOS devices, Apple requires apps to be published through the App Store, making it the one-stop shopping location for iOS applications.

With over 500,000 applications in the store, developers of many types of apps capitalize on the massive success of this single point of distribution. The App Store is a main solution, offering app developers both distribution and payment systems.

The process of submitting an application to the App Store involves:

1. Creating an App idea and selecting entitlements
2. Creating Distribution Provisioning Profile.
3. Submitting your application through iTunes Connect.

After you submit an app for publication, it goes through a review process by Apple to ensure that it meets the guidelines for quality and content. If the application fails to meet these guidelines, iOS will reject it and you’ll have to resubmit it.

Android Devices

The simplest way to distribute an Android App is via the Google Play store. It is also the simplest way to reach millions of users.

The starting point is the Google Play Developer Console. It is the dedicated dashboard for developers, which lets you manage your apps in the Play Store.

After you have signed up and paid the registration fee, complete your account details, including Developer Name (the name that is displayed on the Google Play store).

Once this is done, officially, it can take up to 48 hours for your Google Play Developer registration to be fully processed. Confirm the verification mail. After the account has been created, you can publish your apps.

Windows

In order to publish your app in Windows Store you need to create a Windows Store Account. Once you create your account, go to Dashboard using the live ID.

Verify your payment method link. Once you get the message that your account is verified, you are ready to begin submitting your app.

App Store Optimization

ASO is the process of optimizing mobile apps to rank it higher in the search results of an app store. The higher the app rank is, the more will be its visibility to its potential customers. The increased visibility can bring in more traffic to your app page in the app store.

If you’re not using ASO for your app, then you are losing the largest channel available to search your app. With thousands of apps in different app stores, majority of the developers do not utilise the ASO facility to promote their app. So, you can use this as a secret weapon to rank your app in the app store and for its overall success.

Main factors that affect ASO:

Title: The keyword used in the title should be the one with the most search traffic. For best results with ASO, use relevant keywords within your title.
Keywords: To improve your search rankings, you need to use keywords which are relevant and which are most often used by your target audience.
App Description: This one main field has to be filled with your apps data. This includes ‘above the fold’ and ‘below the fold’. Most of the customers only read the ‘above the fold’ which includes 1-2 sentences as description.
Publishers Name: Make sure that the developer’s name has relevant keywords which could help you rank better for people doing generic search.
Total number of Downloads: Your number of downloads are important to ASO
Ratings and Reviews: This is also important and difficult to control. However, there are ways to motivate happy users to rate and review your app.
Follow the Content Policy: You need to determine the proper app content rating and follow the content policy which is laid down for Android, iOS and Windows devices.
Minimize your Code Size: You should aim to minimize the code size by removing any redundant code and thus, eventually reduce the size of your app.
Design an attractive icon: Having a unique and attractive icon can grab customers’ attention. Attractive icons can make the users curious to know about the app.
Include Screen shots and Videos: Including tempting videos and images can give the user a clear idea about your app.
Localize your app listings: To globalize your app, you need to focus on the localization. It is the method of marketing your app to a non-English speaking audience in their native languages.
Update App Regularly: Keep updating your app to ensure that they meet the changing guidelines of different devices. If you fail to keep up with the guidelines, your app can be blocked in the store.

Like SEO, ASO also takes a substantial amount of time before showing results, but, you need to constantly work on it and keep on improving it. Monitor it regularly and be aware of the competitor’s ranking.

Marketing Strategy

Your work doesn’t end with the launch of the app. Rather, the real work just starts. You need to start marketing your app to the maximum possible levels.

If you have a well planned and executed marketing strategy, it can yield immense benefits among the users.
Your main focus has to be the end-users of your app. So, you will have to study their mobile behavior and understand the same, before embarking on a particular marketing strategy.

Some things to be noted to achieve success with your marketing strategy:

1) Study Customer Behavior Patterns:

Focus on your target audience and find ways to engage them. Study them keenly and recognize their unique behaviour patterns where each user is unique in their own ways.

2) Main Objective should be kept in mind:

Your main aim should be to provide maximum benefits to your users through the application. To achieve this, you will have to keep active interaction with the audience, and offer them, irresistible deals and offers .

3) Refine your Marketing Strategy:

This involves the process of planning, including a team to handle various aspects of your app, publicizing and advertising your service, gathering and processing user information and choosing the right mobile platform to market your app.

4) Select the right mobile technology:

SMS is the best method to reach the maximum users, which also adapts to almost all types of mobile phones. This method of communication is the most direct and one which your audience can opt-in to receive as well.

5) Find your niche and be exclusive:

To differentiate your app with others, introduce features that no one else has given. By doing so, you enable your app to live alongside other messaging juggernauts like WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, We Chat, LINE, Hangout etc.

It’s easy to assume that your app can become the next Snapchat or WhatsApp as long as you build a solid product. However, what makes the app successful isn’t the fact that it exists, but. the efficiencies it creates.

6) Digital/Content Marketing:

Best of all, you can start a micro site and start blogging to your audience and promote your app as you would promote any other product. You can use a variety of valuable content in different forms to attract users from search engines and more.

7) Organic Promotion:

To trace your mobile app distribution process, make sure you sign up for a good analytic tool. Let the app review sites as well as authors and pen down your app’s review. This will help in more downloads and popularity for your app. Share your app and the content on various social media platforms. You can also request users to review or rate your mobile app. Mobiles are holding a considerable share of the digital world, but, web still matters and thus, it is strongly recommended that you create a web page for your app.

8) Paid Promotion:

Install a tracking tool to figure out the paid ad source the visitor is coming from. Calculate the total number of downloads needed to be in the top chart list. Once your app has created a buzz, cut short the paid marketing and maintain keyword rankings organically.

By focusing on marketing strategies, you can create chat application that not only makes life better for your users, but also makes a profit for your start up plan.

Post App Launch Services

Considering the kind of competition we have these days, post app launch services are vital for app success.

Customer Support:

Ensure that you provide your users the best customer support or risk losing them. Why? Simply because they have plenty of alternatives available.

Bug Fixing:

No software is ever bug-free. Also, with a number of software updates happening to operating systems, the chances are ever so high for bugs. So, test and fix buggy software within a short period. Otherwise users would leave you indefinitely.

New Features Incorporation:

There are so many new features cropping up every now and then. To stay in the race, you should adapt new features and work on providing fresh features as well.

On the whole, create chat application is an amazing option and is becoming powerful for most brands and consumers. The greatest opportunity of a chat app lies in its ability to promote all areas of the brands strategy into a great user experience. When creativity is blended with traditional business, it makes an app complete.

Experiences suggest that apps which save money or time are most attractive, followed by games and business tools. But, the success of any app cannot be predicted. Success usually comes with a lot of experimentation and perseverance.

Exclusive Bonus: Download PDF

How to Build an App from Scratch [For Mobile App Entrepreneurs]

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Super Admin Testreveal

We thought it would be terminators, or rogue agents (Agent Smith) who would take over the world. But, it’s mobile apps that have taken over the world. What’s more – they are not half as menacing as sci-fi movies made us believe.

Looking at the success stories of apps such as Prisma, Snapchat, etc.. it might be enticing to jump into the app development playground. But there is a horde of questions to be answered before you even touch the drawing board.

You would want to know

Answers to a few questions you have in your mind regarding the business viability and implementation of your app.
Whether you should choose between iOS/Android as the platform of your choice or go for both
If you should choose a mobile app development company or a freelancer
How you can find the best app development company or the best freelancer
You might even want to know the basics of app development.

Also Read:

Tips to Hire the Best Mobile App Development Company

As you read on, you would be able to know about all these. Also, if there are more aspects you would like to know about, you can let us know in the comment section.

6 Questions to Ask Yourself before Getting into Mobile App Development

1. Is there a market for your app?

Is there really a demand for the kind of app you want to develop? If you have an idea for a possibly ground-breaking iPhone app then a quick search through tools like Apptrace or Appstatistics will tell you if there are any established competitors in the market. If you do not find any noteworthy competitors then you are probably in murky waters as far as your target market is concerned.

2. What is the launch plan for your app?

App development is only half the job and is the easiest part of your goal. Today, to establish your iPhone app in the market you need a concrete social media marketing strategy. Locating possible users and reaching out to them is a sure-shot way of getting the first few 100 downloads from the App Store. If you plan to market through Facebook or other online mediums you need to know the user persona, which brings us to our next question.

3. What is your app’s target user profile?

A user profile is a detailed analysis of the behaviour patterns, gender and preferences and it dictates how users will behave inside your app. Your iPhone app development strategy should reflect this profile so that the outcome is a product that is desired by your chosen demographic subset.

4. Monetization strategy for the app?

Less than one percent of all developed iPhone apps are profitable. Even if your app is available for free you should have a strategy to monetize it by other means in the long term. Including add-on features or “unlockables” are some ways of doing this. Advertising is the most commonly used technique for earning revenue from the App Store.

5. Are you familiar with App Store’s guidelines?

Apple’s App Store is extremely popular and has very strict guidelines when it comes to bugs, privacy or plagiarism. 24% of new submissions are rejected from the iPhone App Store because the apps ask for sensitive user data but do not include a privacy policy. When your app is submitted for review it is judged based on content, design, code and thoroughly analysed for crashes or bugs. Head over to the Apple Review Guidelines page to learn more.

6. Why do you want an app?

This is probably the most important question of all and should be visited regularly. A great idea and good programming skills are not strong reasons to build an app. Without a marketing strategy and a target market analysis you don’t have enough resources to justify developing an app. Sure, an app will build your brand’s recognition and customer engagement and might even generate additional sales but all that will happen only after an app is developed for the right purpose keeping the correct goals in mind.

There might be one more question – a business defining one at that

Should I Choose iOS Or Android App Development?

There comes a time in every app entrepreneur’s life when a choice has to be made between developing on one platform or another. Like anything in life, Android and iPhone development have their pros and cons and at times the decision to choose between them can be so difficult that the real loser would be the app entrepreneur.

A common point of debate is that Android is highly accessible and developing an Android app offers good market penetration. iPhone apps, on the other hand have been around for much longer than Android and Apple has used data collected over more than a decade to define industry-changing guidelines regarding user experience.

So the obvious question is: why not develop on both platforms? For starters, it isn’t as simple as copy-pasting code from Android to iPhone or vice versa. There are several design guidelines and coding principles which inhibit the easy development of cross-platform apps.

Here is a comparison between Android and iPhone app development for those of you who are trying to decide which platform to use for your app. We have developed a comparison based on commonly debated points when developing any mobile app whether Android or iPhone. This list should help you decide which of the two platforms would be more suitable for your mobile app.

Development Platforms

To begin Android or iPhone app development you need the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for both platforms – Xcode for iPhone and Android Studio for Android. Xcode has dependencies on some other programs such as Cocoa Touch, which assists in building UI elements.

Differences in development time and cost

One factor which differentiates Android and iPhone apps is the development time. A study done by Infinum on six of their own cross-platform apps shows that development time for Android apps is, on average, 30 percent longer than iPhone apps. This is partly due to the fact that Android apps require more code because they use Java and also because Android emulators are slower than iOS simulators. As a direct consequence of higher development times, development costs for Android apps are also higher – almost 40 percent higher than iPhone apps.

Image courtesy: Infinum

Disparities Arising from a Fragmented User Base

Android’s large market share has a drawback: its users are spread over several countries and each demographic has its own income levels, technology restrictions and language barriers. This translates into limited availability of high-end smart phones in second and third world countries. If you develop an Android app then you have to cater to varying hardware and software, screen resolutions, aspect ratios, graphics processors and a host of other factors. Adding to the problem is the fact that more than 70 percent of Android users don’t have the latest version of the operating system.

Taking care to ensure compatibility across multiple devices is an entire project in itself and this is a major reason for the higher development time and cost of Android apps. Future support and updates are also equally affected by fragmentation.

Image courtesy: Gizmodo

Apple products on the other hand are largely immune to this problem. Only 3 types of Apple devices exist – Mac, iPhone and iPad. iOS users are also quick to upgrade to the latest version. More than 80 percent of iOS devices run the latest operating system.

Publishing and Restrictions – The Guidelines Can be a Game Changer

Apple has strict guidelines when it comes to what an app can and cannot do. iOS and Android provide similar levels of flexibility with firmware components but Apple is much more stringent while checking apps submitted to the App Store. Android offers access to a lot of internal workings which allows the creation of popular utility and customization apps.

When it comes to publishing, Apple’s App Store is tricky to deal with. First of all, an annual fee of $99 is incurred so that your apps can be tested before they are published. Apple thoroughly checks the app for originality, content and design and conducts tests for bugs and crashes over a period of seven days. Even after this there is a good chance that your app may be rejected.

Image courtesy: MacStories

Google’s Play Store is very straight forward – it requires a one-time payment of $25 and your app can be live within a few hours of submission. App Store’s guidelines help to ensure uniformity and good quality but we feel that Play Store’s flexible guidelines promote more creativity.

Understand the Profit Potential

Undoubtedly, there are many more smartphones running Android than iOS but the following report from App Annie shows that iPhone apps bring in almost 75 percent more revenue than Android apps.

Image courtesy: App Annie

This can be attributed to the fact that iPhone users are generally situated in developed countries andare highly educated and have higher incomes than Android users. The average iPhone user makes $85,000 per year whereas the average Android user makes $61,000 per year. This does not mean that Android users are poor, it only implies that iPhone users are more willing to spend money on apps than Android users.

Narrow Down Your Target Demographic

Before you develop an Android or iPhone app, ask yourself: is your app going to be popular among people in developed nations or will it appeal to countries in, for example, South-East Asia. The prevalence of Android in second and third world countries means that apps targeted towards Android users are sure to be successful. This does not mean that iPhone apps will not work; rather they will not be as popular as the Android version of your app simply because not many people use iPhones in these countries.

Image courtesy: Mixpanel

Assess Your Intended User Experience Regardless of functionality or complexity or even usability, an app that offers good user experience has much higher chances of being a success than an app that is well coded and well designed but offers poor user experience. Apple has more than a decade of experience in UX design – the iTunes library has been operational since 2000 and ever since it was opened, customers have used it to buy music. The data and statistics from the iTunes Library were carried over to the App Store in 2008 and resulted in an online marketplace which was easy to navigate and apps which offered consistent user experience. Apple was also ahead of its time in coding complex algorithms for ranking apps – they were ranked based on total downloads, recent download volumes, and possibly active users among many other factors.

You May Also Like:

Can a Mobile App Development Company in India Produce Quality Apps?

Play Store’s user experience has been catching up steadily but is nowhere near as good as Apple’s. The availability of multiple stores like Google Play, Amazon App Store and other independent stores has caused an inconsistency in rankings, reviews and even app designs – this has affected the user experience of Android apps on the whole. We recommend that UX design should be near the top of your list of priorities when developing a new app.

Image courtesy: Crew

No matter which platform you decide to use for your app, keep in mind that developing an Android or iPhone app is more than just writing code – it involves designing, coding the UI, user experience design, and documentation. All of these have to be linked and well coordinated to achieve a good mobile app.

If you have clear cut answers to all the 7 questions, the next step is to find a developer. Instead of learning how to code, you might want to find the right developer. You can either choose a freelance developer or an app development company

Reasons to Choose a Mobile App Development Company Rather Than A Freelance Developer

As every coin has its two sides. Hiring a freelancer over an App Development company may result in a decrease in costs but may certainly increase in risks. A freelancer can clearly not meet all the needs nor can fill in all the roles.

Here are some advantages of hiring a Mobile App Development company rather than a Freelance Developer:

1) Expertise under one roof: An app development company will have a workforce with various talents than a freelancer who cannot possibly be good in all fields. A company will have the experience and expertise working with a multitude of clients. They can also offer everything that requires a top-level mobile app right from the concept to market launch.

2) Design and Development: Giving out the perfect design with the right functions is undoubtedly the hardest challenge in any app project. Designers and developers work together to deliver the best-in-class results in the quickest time within a company than a freelancer. But even if you somehow manage to find a freelancer, and fail to find the equivalent level of expertise on the design side, your project may not yield a viable end product.

3) Client support: A company would have a dedicated network of customer support staff which can help you in all queries. They would also provide various post launch services to its clients. However, a freelancer may not be able to provide any such services as they are operating alone.

4) Communication matters: With different professionals handling different departments, a firm has a better organizational structure. They can provide you with real-time updates and timely solutions to all your problems. This helps you to collaborate on your project easily.

5) Project Estimate: Another factor to consider is that a firm may be more willing to enter into a fixed-price contract compared to a freelancer. Agencies’ collective experience makes them better at accurately estimating the costs of all stages of your project from the beginning. As they may cost more, there should be less chance of cost overruns in the project.

The above features will definitely help you in knowing and understanding why to hire app development companies over freelancers. It has become extremely challenging to build a mobile app and announcing it as a success in this competitive market. Hence, it’s recommended to keep your end-users in mind before choosing a company or a freelancer to start your app creation journey!

Tips To Find The Right Mobile App Development Company

The mobile era is upon us. According to Gartner Inc., the market demand for mobile app development services will grow at least five times faster by the end of 2017. Following this trend, mobile app development companies in India have seen booming business in the last five years.

If you have an idea for a mobile app then now is the time to unleash it and increase the reach of your brand. If your budget permits, you should hire a mobile app development company to create your dream app. A specialised workforce, detailed documentation,and dedicated post-launch support are just some of the benefits of working with a professional organisation.

However, selecting the correct organisation is critical to the success of your mobile app and given the market saturation of mobile app development companies in India; this is a painstaking choice to make. We understand this and have compiled a list of pointers to help you select the correct company for developing your app.

Know The Features Of Your App

In order to enlist a mobile app development company in India, you first need to know what your customers would want from the app. Some preliminary questions to ask yourself:

What do you want to accomplish by developing the app?
What features will your app provide to customers?
How will the app relate to your brand or business?
How will you monetize the app?

Establish A Budget

Adding tons of features to your app is one thing, but having the budget to develop those features is a completely different matter. There are no definitive rules for deriving the “cost per feature” so the best way to determine your budget is to talk with an expert.

Small mobile app development companies in India will work with lower budgets but the chances poor quality or missed deadlines will be high. Larger companies will be able to offer more consistent quality, but at higher prices.

As a general rule, app quality is proportional to your budget, however the quality difference between a $100,000 and a $200,000 company is less than the difference between a $10,000 and a $50,000 company.

Send RFPs To Multiple Vendors

RFP is a Request For Proposal which is sent to mobile app development companies. It outlines the requirements of your app and all the features it would need. A company will typically analyze your RFP and come up with a brief document describing how they would tackle the project and approximate costs of various modules.

RFP will also help you with short listing companies as well as getting a different perspective on t the features in your app.

Client Portfolio

After receiving costing quotes from different vendors you should have a good idea about which ones you can work with. To further narrow down the list, you should request a client portfolio from each company. Many companies display a list of their most recent or most notable clients on their website.

Contact the clients to learn about the quality of work, communication and adherence to deadlines.

While this is a good way to gain a deeper understanding of the company, keep in mind that companies will not share information about clients who had bad experiences with them.

Where Is The Operations/Development Team Located?

If you are constrained by a small budget then you may have to opt for smaller mobile app development companies but, one thing to keep in mind is the location of the organisation’s operations /development team.

Some companies are not very transparent and outsource your app’s development work to freelancer. If this happens then the standard of work will be inconsistent and unreliable since the company has no control over their resources.

Tip: Look for a company that has its own resources for coding, UI, UX, quality, and testing.

Development Workflow And Documentation

Documentation is one of the most under-rated and overlooked modules while developing a mobile app in India.

A well documented project has better chances of being rolled out on time because all the requirements are clear from the start. Post-launch support is also simplified because all the required information is in one place.

If the shortlisted companies don’t give emphasis to proper documentation procedures then you can safely rule them out of the picture.

Looks For a Lasting Relationship

Post-launch support is very important to the success of an app. Many apps fail after being launched because customer feedback could not be used to modify existing features or add new ones.

Hire a mobile app development company which has experience in your line of business and is ready to sign a long-term contract. a strong and long relationship with an organisation will pay off in the long run.

Tip: Unlike freelancers, mobile app development companies can take the leading role in shaping your app. The abundance of specialised employees means that good advice is always available.

With the pointers we have listed, you should be able to find a mobile app development company in India suited to your business.

Why Choose A Freelance Developer Over A

Mobile App Development Company

There are several advantages of distributing your work but the task of choosing between a development company and a freelance developer is cumbersome and requires careful analysis. Budding entrepreneurs and inexperienced companies have a short period of time to establish their name in the market and the results of a poorly chosen developer can be potentially catastrophic.

If you are cash strapped then a freelance developer or a group of freelancers might be your best bet. However, a small budget isn’t the only advantage when it comes to freelance developers. Here are some more reasons to choose a freelance developer over a mobile app development company in India.

Freelancers have experience from multiple industries. Good freelance developers look for work which adds value to their portfolio and in order to do this, they find work from multiple industries. When you hire a freelance developer you get the advantage of expert opinion gathered from many sources over several years of freelancing.

Freelancers reduce the cost of your project. It goes without saying that you do not need to pay for a freelance developer’s Provident Fund or medical insurance. The employees of a development company, on the other hand, require these benefits. Minor costs like these increase the overheads which you will incur when hiring a mobile development company in India. Another factor which reduces cost is that there is no notice period or transition period when terminating a contract with a freelance developer.

Freelancers don’t organize endless meetings. a freelance developer can avoid the hassle of setting up meetings and juggling schedules of the employees in a development company. With freelance developers, you can assign a quantum of work and check on progress occasionally as opposed to weekly meetings with development companies. The time saved in this way can be invested in other app related activities such as marketing and branding.

Freelancers don’t have rigid corporate rules to adhere to. Freelance developers come with the added flexibility of not being restricted by a brand manual or a set of corporate ethics. They are not confined to any regulations except their own and this is more often than not to your advantage. Many freelance developers will put in a few hours of work on weekends as well – something almost unheard of in the corporate world.

Freelancers don’t engage in office politics. If you work in a small-scale mobile app development company then this may not seem like a very important point but if you are an executive in a corporate company, you have probably experienced how office politics can delay projects and be detrimental to productivity. A freelance developer, no matter how senior or experienced, is not directly involved with the employees of your company and is not limited by personal agendas that employees of your organization may have.

Freelancers like direct forms of communication. A mobile development company in India or anywhere in the world has a well defined hierarchy of individuals and communication will always flow to and fro along that hierarchy. Admittedly, this has its advantage in filtering information passed on to third parties but it also increases the time it takes for a point to be put across. Freelance developers can communicate directly and no time is lost in relaying information to and from both parties.

Given the large number of freelance developers out there, many points have to be considered before you hire the right person for the job. If you are new to the freelance outsourcing world then the road will be rough but eventually you will find that working with freelance developers can be very cost effective and time saving while ensuring good quality.

Tips To Find The Right Freelance Developer

For Your App Venture

A lot can happen between the planning and execution of your mobile app idea but the one thing that can make or break your app venture is choosing the right developer.

Hiring a mobile app development company in India is not always feasible for new entrepreneurs

A more lucrative option is to choose a freelance developer but here’s the flip side – an incorrect choice can turn out to be very expensive in the long run.

Choosing the correct freelance developer for your app venture involves more than just finding good skills and low prices. A lot of factors go into deciding who to hire so we have put together a list of things you should consider before getting started.

Filter Spam Applicants

Compounding the problem of choosing the right developer is the fact that a lot of the applicants are likely to be inexperienced, inefficient, or both. Many new comers bulk apply for jobs without bothering to read the requirements of different projects.

There is a very clever way of filtering spammers: include a small paragraph at the end or in the middle of your listing and write something like, “If you have read all of the requirements then send me a message that begins with the words mobile app development in India” or something on these lines.

If an applicant fails to follow simple directions and doesn’t pay attention to detail, you can safely filter them out.

Communication and Portfolio

Nothing can harm your mobile app venture more than poor communication with your developer. If you can’t communicate ideas clearly then a lot of time will be spent in rework which will eventually drive up the cost of your mobile app venture.

To get over this problem, establish a means of communication with your candidates – Skype, email or phone call – and interview them while requesting them to share their portfolios.

Ideally, you should look for a developer who has created apps similar to what you have in mind although this is not a hard and fast rule. Game developers can also create applications.

Search In Colleges

One of the best places to look for freelance developers is a college. This may sound counter-intuitive because educational institutions can hardly offer experienced candidates but chances are that you will find standout developers in the multitude of students.

Good colleges are hotspots for mobile app development companies in India because of the fresh talent they offer. Colleges teach students to think creatively so even if you don’t end up with a developer, you will get several valuable insights into your own app from a lot of different perspectives.

Find A Developer Interested In The Business

The success of an app can often come down to the developer’s interest in the business or idea you are projecting.

Mobile app development companies in India have employees with specialisations in different fields so finding the right person for the job is not difficult. But if you are hiring a freelance developer for your app venture then you need to go the extra mile to ensure the correct fit between your business and the developer’s profile.

An interested developer is likely to give creative inputs and insights from experience with similar apps. A free-thinking developer is much more valuable than a skilled coder.

Tip: a lot of apps need support even after being launched so it is a good idea to hire someone who is ready for a long term contract rather than just the development of your app.

Review their Code Samples

Many freelancers have been known to copy-paste stock code obtained from public websites like Android or iPhone forums.

In order to catch this, you need to ask your candidates for sample codes and get them reviewed by your contacts or at an online portal. While this doesn’t guarantee that a good app will be developed, it does guarantee originality and imagination.

Download Apps That Candidates Have Worked On

By now your list should be quite short and choosing your developer won’t be very difficult. This final test should help you select the final few who are fit for the job.

Just like the websites of mobile app development companies in India, freelance developers should give you a brief introduction to apps that they have worked on. A credible freelance developer should readily give you information about their previous work, including the contact details of their clients.

Ask for the names of apps that your candidates have worked on, download them and judge the apps based on the following criteria:

Average rating of the app.
Reviews of the app – also check negative reviews.
Is the app quick to load?
How smooth are page interactions?
Check the resolution and aspect ratio on different devices.
How pleased are you with the UI/UX?

By the time you are done with this list we hope that you have narrowed your search down to a few candidates. From there on it should only be a matter of negotiating prices and signing contracts. Play your cards right and you will bag a good developer at a good price.

Online Resources For Beginners To Do

Mobile App Development

Instead of hiring a freelancer or a mobile app development company, you might want to build an app on your own. Or, at least to know the intricate nature of app development just for the sake of better management. In that case, there are numerous online resources available for you.

Mobile app development is based on the principles of traditional programming languages like C and Java so people who have prior programming knowledge find that app development is easy to understand. On the contrary, new tools like Apple’s Swift programming language are gaining popularity rapidly because of their gradual learning curve and ease of use.

Non-technical folks have no reason to lose heart because the popularity of mobile app development means that there is no shortage of paid as well as free courses which impart knowledge about basic programming as well as advanced concepts. If you’re hoping to add value to a mobile app development company in India, you’re just a few clicks away from in-demand skills.

To help you get started with mobile app development in India, we have compiled a list of online resources which will aid beginners on their way to becoming mobile app programming gurus. The nature of mobile app development is such that basics can be mastered very quickly and once you are comfortable with developing apps like flashlights and small games, bigger goals can be achieved steadily.

Here is a collection of online resources, both paid and free, to help get you started on the road to mobile app development:

Developer.android.com. Android is among the top two most popular mobile app programming platforms so the first place you should check is Android’s own website. It is one of the best resources out there when it comes to the how-to of Android development. The employees at Google have ensured that there is a lot of material for beginners to learn everything from setting up development environments to cloud-based services.

Codecademy. Codecademy is one of the older, more established websites that is directed towards teaching novices how to code. It has many hands-on tutorials for languages like HTML, JavaScript and Python although it doesn’t directly teach you mobile app development. Its resources will come in handy if you have no experience at all when it comes to coding and you can use other resources to gradually pick up knowledge about mobile app programming.

Alison. Alison is another great website which offers tutorials and certified diploma courses in a vast variety of domains from business skills to programming languages. The app development tutorials have good and consistent ratings and courses for both Android and iOS are available. For example, in order to explain iOS app development, the website first teaches Objective C and then explains how it is used to develop iOS apps. Advanced material includes learning to use multi-touch functionalities as well as the accelerometer.

Learning Tree. Learning tree is an extensive website and it offers courses in a range of subjects from web development and mobile app development to advanced programming techniques. Android as well as iOS development techniques are covered and an introduction to Swift programming language is also available. Swift is largely becoming a popular choice among iOS app developers so we highly recommend learning it from this website.

Vogella. Vogella provides a wide variety of free Android tutorials for coders of all skill levels. The tutorials are detailed and arranged in a tree format so that individual topics can be found under their corresponding headings. Each tutorial is indexed so it becomes easy for you to navigate directly to your choice of topic. The website also gives links to external resources wherever needed.

Coursera. Coursera offers tried and tested tutorials for both Android as well iOS app development. It covers topics like user-facing applications, middleware and cloud-based services. The courses are paid as well as free depending on their complexity and duration. The only drawback is that you do not get a certificate for completing the course unlike some other websites.

Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow is an open, free, and language-independent question and answer website for programmers. It features several forums where topics about beginner to expert level programming are discussed. Although it does not offer tutorials, its wide selection of extensively discussed topics ensure that any and all questions you may have are answered.

We hope this list helps you find the resources you are looking for to build your own app or to get started with mobile app development. It is an exciting and competitive field so be sure to give it your best shot.