How to Choose a Mobile App Development Company? – A Comprehensive Guide

Mobile App Development Company

Choosing an outsourcing partner for your next mobile app is everything but easy. First, there is endless number of mobile application development companies out there. Try to Google, ‘mobile app development company’ and you’ll understand what I mean here. Apparently, Google is the best place to look for an app development company.

With so many companies showing up in Google search results, it’s easy to get lost. However, don’t lose your hope already. There are some neat tricks and after a little scrutinizing to the parameters, which I am going to present by means of this blog, you’re going to run out of quality mobile app firms to choose from.

Preps

One of the major problems with firms looking to outsource mobile app development is this that they start searching and approaching firms without gaining any intelligence into the market or perfecting their app idea. This anomaly makes them an easy target of fraudulent app developers that disappear somewhere upon the receipt of payment.

Gathering intelligence

You’re not the only firm looking for an app development company. There are many on the same trail. The only difference is this that many of them are not doing this for the first time. With mobile development getting larger every day, every firm wants to make money out of it. No doubt, there are so many companies out there, confusing the hell out of you.

Gathering intelligence

When you approach a company over a cold online search, it expects you would have done some sort of research. When it realizes you did not, they are going to either over-quote you or won’t take you seriously.

I would recommend going through a few YouTube videos and a number of blogs to get a basic understanding of mobile app development before running the hunt.. While the pricing varies greatly from firm to firm and geographies, you should get a fair estimation how many hours it will take to bring the app to the market.

In addition, you can meet some local mobile development companies in your area to gather intelligence.

Shortlisting the firms

As I said, the internet isn’t short of companies that stuff “mobile app development company” in their webpages. However, not every company that stuffs the keyword to manipulate Google search algorithm in its favor develops mobile apps. So are mere vectors to actual companies. Beware! these agents disappear as soon as they get their commission.

Shortlisting the firms

Nevertheless, it’s not hard to tell an agent from an actual development company that specializes in mobile app development.

Tip: Remember, a website shows only the best of a company. If you want to learn the truth, look elsewhere.

When you look for an app development company in Texas, you will encounter three types of websites: development companies in Texas or operating in Texas, a website that lists such companies, for example, Clutch and GoodFirms, and education websites teaching you how to develop an app.

Is outsourcing abroad safe?

While outsourcing development to a firm in the states is a much safer option, a mobile development company easily charges anywhere $100-$150 per hour in the US, which isn’t affordable unless you’re fine spending upwards of $50000 in mobile development alone. On other extreme are mobile developers in Bangladesh and the Philippines that are ready to work for less than $10 per hour. If you are looking for a balance between cost and quality, you can pick East Europe and India.

software Outsourcing

I personally prefer India as developers there are much more fluent in English than developers in Europe. Also, it’s easier to find a development company in India that is ready to work for less than $40/hour.

Check Portfolio then Crosscheck

Most of the development companies demonstrate their portfolio on their websites. If a certain website you shortlisted do not, it’s ok to ask for it. Most websites have a contact us page to contact the administrator.

Once you have hands-on the portfolio, try to contact the companies whose portfolio has been shared with you. It’s easy to find their contact info as long as their websites have a contact us page. Don’t be shocked if you find a few companies that fail to recognize the developers. In the mobile development market, ‘fake till you make it’ is a common mantra.

I’ll suggest you drop such developers already and go with only those developers whose portfolio you could validate. Credible mobile development companies won’t hesitate from sharing the info about the client they worked with unless an NDA is involved.

Raise an inquiry

It’s time to contact the shortlisted development companies. At this stage, you do not have to share any info about your idea or the app. Just let them know that you’re interested to work with them on an app. Most of them, will contact you back within a couple of days to gather ideas and details for the app you are looking to develop.

Commonly, development firms expect the interested parties to share their contact information on their website from the contact us page. A few firms also offer you free estimation or consultation on request.

A word of caution!

Do not share any details of the app or your ingenious app idea unless the development company has signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with you. Once they have signed the document, they are under legal obligation not to disclose any info about the app to anyone. NDA will give you creative and technical freedom to share your thoughts with all the shortlisted companies.

Passing the info is important for development companies to understand the scope of your work and translate into the number of man-hours required and, ultimately, cost.

Negotiate the cost

Once the shortlist is ready, try to negotiate the cost for the number of features available. Most of the development firms are more flexible with pricing if you commit them long term development plan or give a handful of references. You will be negotiating with more than one firm at a time so keep a tab of the price you last negotiated with a firm.

Price Negotiation

You can make the final decision once you have all of their prices. It’s apparent to go with the lowest price but there are more factors to consider. A major one is a features-to-cost ratio—the greater the ratio the better the deal you’re getting.

Remote Team

You will be working with a virtual team sitting somewhere on the globe. Most firms let you interview and select the members of the cloud team. Remember, you’re going to pay them hourly. So this may occur to you: you don’t need the most efficient person who can deliver the maximum in minimum time. A senior developer will help you make most of the hours you’re going to pay for. However, they are costlier.

Remote Team

A balanced team is consists of a couple of senior developers and 5-10 junior developers working under the command of a supervisor. Selecting candidates for your team is a one-time process. Most companies to cut down chaos allot you a single point of contact, mostly a team leader or a project manager, depending upon the size of the project.

In case you find the developers not up for the job, it is better to look elsewhere probably for a higher cost.

Go Agile

This goes without saying but most new companies looking to develop a mobile app rush through their apps development cycle and try to stuff more features that it can take. This rush leads to the development of an app with half-baked features and too high a cost.

The biggest benefit of going agile is that new features are added gradually. So you have more time to test the features of an MVP. In addition, the developer will bill you for only the features he added, which will help you keep costs in check.

Hire TOPS Infosolutions

If you are looking for a mobile app development company that works with a global clientele and has presence in various countries, there is no better app development company but TOPS Infosolutions.

TOPS Infosolutions

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you practice the Agile App Development Process?
Indeed we do. The most significant advantage of going agile is that you can add new features progressively. So, this gives more time to test the features of an MVP. Additionally, we will bill you only for the added features, which will significantly keep the costs in check.

How secure is my app during the development process and post that?
We follow strict ethics when it comes to confidentiality. We encourage our clients to sign a Non-disclosure agreement (NDA) which entitles us to be under legal obligation not to disclose any app-related information to anyone. So, you need not worry about it.

Will You Maintain My App Post-Launch?
We support maintaining your app post-release. Our developers at Tops are available around the clock to offer maintenance assistance.

What will be the cost involved to develop an app?
The cost varies according to the various features and aspects that your application demands. The timeline and workforce allocated also play a significant role in determining the cost. To know exactly how much it would cost for development, drop us your requirement, and our experts will get back within 24 hours with a free quote.

Apple Ditches Home Button and Adds Notch to All New iPhones

new iPhones

After so many leaks, predictions and speculations, Apple has launched the next generation of iPhones. Like the last year’s event, this year too three iPhones were announced at the recently concluded Apple event: iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and, cheaper, iPhone XR. Last year’s iPhone X has received tons of updates. Its successor comes in two sizes: iPhone XS (pronounced “ten S”) and iPhone XS Max.

iPhone XS Max is a larger avatar and features a bigger battery and screen than iPhone XR, which among many upgrades sport the next gen Apple SoC, A12 Bionic. A12 Bionic SoC, in fact, is standard across all the iPhone announced in 2018, including the entry-level iPhone XR.

Apple A12 Bionic

Apple A12 Bionic processor features 6 cores in big.LITTLE configuration wherein 2 high performance cores are up to 15% faster while remaining 4 efficiency cores consume up to 50% less power than A11 Bionic of iPhone X.

Apple A12 Bionic

The current generation of Apple SoC boasts a GPU with four cores and lossless memory compression. The GPU delivers up to 50% performance gain over A11 Bionic in terms of graphics power.

Say ‘Goodbye’ to bezels and ‘Hi’ to notch

Say ‘Goodbye’ to bezels and ‘Hi’ to notch

With iPhone XR, Apple has ditched bezels and embraced ‘notch’ altogether. While last year’s iPhone X did have bezel less and ‘notch’ design, the entry-level iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, had profound bezels and notch absent. Not to mention, those two were the last iPhones to have a home button. Apple has ditched the Home button and Touch ID in favor of Face ID and the TrueDepth camera respectively in all iPhones.

The new ‘entry-level’ iPhone: iPhone XR

iPhone XR

iPhone XR, in addition to using the same processor as the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, supports Face ID and has TrueDepth camera. The major difference between ‘XS’ and, cheaper, ‘XR’ is the display technology. The cheaper variant features a LCD display, which Apple calls “Liquid LCD”. iPhone XS and XS Max, on the other hand, have a more vivid “Super Retina” OLED display. Unfortunately, iPhone XR only uses a single rear camera like the iPhone 8. Seems like Apple likes to reserve more premium features like dual-camera system, wireless charging and OLED display for its more premium phone offerings namely, iPhone XS and XS Max.

SmartHDR, Portrait Mode, and OIS

All the three iPhones support Smart HDR, optical image stabilization and portrait mode despite iPhone XR missing a dual-camera system. SmartHDR is courtesy of A12 Bionic and automatically makes improvements to photos using machine learning.

SmartHDR

Apple, expectedly, has insisted on 12MP rear camera setup this year too. XS and XS Max have two of those 12MP cameras in f1.8 and f2.4 setup respectively while XR has only one in f1.8 setup.

Apple has made last year’s TrueDepth camera standard across all its iPhone models. That is, the same 7MP camera is present on all the three announced iPhones.

Conclusion

Although subtle, Apple brings some noteworthy features with the new line of iPhones. All three new models have got rid of the home button to make room for more screen. The bezel-less screen, indeed, looks overwhelming from every angle. Not to mention, Apple has the most sophisticated facial-recognition technology to unlock its device thanks to the industry-best TrueDepth camera, which is now, fortunately, standard across all the 2018 iPhones. I would like give a clear thumbs-up to Apple for that.

Apple iPhones may be getting more expensive every year. But with the amount of additions and efforts it is putting on them, iPhone are still worth every penny and I don’t think that is changing anytime soon.

Can’t wait to get your hands on the new iPhone? We have a good news for you.

iOS App Development with TOPS

There is even a better news if you’re an app developer, publisher, or someone looking to develop an app for the new iPhones. At TOPS, a leading mobile app development company, we have an enormous experience in developing leading edge applications for iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watch. An expert team of iOS developers, persistently works around delivering one quality iOS app after another and they are ready for the new iPhones too.

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Will React Native mark the demise of Native App Development?

React Native Main Image

You can use your existing web development skills and can produce native iOS and Android app using those skills. It’s completely possible to utilize your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills to develop native Android and iOS apps.

I’m not talking about hybrid apps or just an app wrapper around a mobile website but actual native apps–pure, native apps that you design in iOS using Swift or in Android using Java or Kotlin. Thanks to React Native, native apps can now also be developed with common web technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

If you still don’t believe me that these apps can be really be awesome. Take out your phone and have a look at one of these apps: Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Skype, and Airbnb. They are developed in React Native.

Companies using react native

What is React Native?

Facebook was facing a lot of problems about redesigning their apps and everything. The problem was handling many users and rolling out new features. Facebook needed something more robust, fasts that can handle a lot of traffic as well as can be designed really quickly. The brilliant team at Facebook started working on a JavaScript library, which came to known as React.

The best part is React employs faster virtual DOM. Although React is a library, lightweight component can be injected anywhere. You can use react with PHP, MySQL, Firebase, MongoDB or any database system of your choice.

You must be wondering isn’t React for designing web applications? Consider React Native as the successor of ReactJS for mobile app development. All the things that you learned in React like components props, States, Redux, Modal, etc. are part of React Native as well.

The things that you learned in React can be applied in React Native in the same workflow. Components, props and states are all used in react native and thus you got your native application.

The dual advantage of React Native

In React Native unlike native Java and Swift codes, you don’t ever compile your app. You just reload it just like do you a website in a web browser.

Moreover, you don’t have to maintain two separate codebases for your application. For example, let’s say you are a business and I am application development company whom you have outsourced a mobile app project.

Of course, you want an app for both Android and iOS in addition to the web. It requires two teams one for each mobile platform: one team for Android application and one team for iOS application. Those you aren’t aware implementing the same, exact features in iOS and Android app require a lot of communication exchange between those teams: app features, deadline, delivery, client expectation and requirements, etc.

Performance vs. Native Code

React Native apps perform, more or less, like an app written in Native iOS code. A Medium user ran a few tests to compare its performance with the native code and found performance at par with an equivalent app in Swift, sometimes even better. The Medium article measured performance in three areas: CPU, GPU and Memory utilization at the run time.

In CPU usage the performance was similar although maps performed better in Swift.

CPU Usage

To calculate GPU performance, Native vs React Native, the author calculated frames per second (FPS) of the application under GPU load. Surprisingly, although by small margins, React Native outperformed Swift code by more 6.25 frames per second.

GPU Usage

For memory tests, the author concentrated on maps as the memory footprints of other features was negligible to figure out a contrast. Evidently, at the peak performance, React Native used a whopping 61.11 MiB less memory than Swift. While performing the task and recording the measurements, a spike in Memory usage was observed at the exact moment, he pressed the “Maps” tab, which prompted the MapView to find my current location and highlight it with a blue, pulsating dot.

Memory Usage

React Native is the smartest way to develop Mobile Apps

In the React Native, you just have to maintain a single codebase and that code will produce native Android app as well as iOS app. React Native is getting a lot of attention nowadays and people are loving how the things are shaping for React Native and the community is growing. You must be jumping on your couch. Finally, you can use cheaper web developers to design native Android and iOS app. You no more have to hire programmers or train them in Java, Kotlin, or Swift.

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Is this the end of Native App development?

No, there existed always side-by-side technologies. Some businesses prefer React Native while others prefer native codes in Kotlin or Swift. It’s always good to have many mobile technologies around to choose from. Desktop application developers always had a lot of programming languages and technologies to choose from and most of them are still here, going strong.

For example, there are still apps that are being developed in Ruby on Rails, Django, PHP as well as node.js. Technologies evolve as per the demand.

The biggest takeaway of React Native is now there are more options than ever. Developers can go with Android development using Java or maybe Kotlin. Likewise, they can go for iOS development using Swift. With React Native, they have one more option to native development. Not to mention, now everyday web developers can also be part of native app development party.

The Tremendous Growth and the Future

Nevertheless, React Native is growing at a tremendous pace and if the growth sustains, soon, we will find more React Native developers than those into Swift or Kotlin development. This development in mobile ecosystem will mark a huge shift from the traditional form of mobile development. The field will evolve to absorb React Native development or any similar emerging or upcoming technologies into mobile app development.

React Native Trends

Google Trends is a popular tool to understand people’s interest in a search term. When used to forecast people interest in technology or a mobile development technique in this context, it can tell which of them are growing which are plummeting.

React native Google trends

Source: Google Trends

Clearly, while React Native, as I said, has grown exponentially and iOS development has remained static, Android development has a seen a huge plunge. This made me think. Is the growth in React Native at the expense of Android development? It is too early to say but one thing is for sure: iOS development is here to stay while the future of Android because of React Native is in quite a disarray.

Android developers have a consistent complaint. They don’t earn as much as their iOS counterparts and the ROI is hard to come by. And the revenue gap is almost twice in a few demographics.

World wide app store revenue

Source: App Annie

Perhaps, app platforms find React Native as the answers to their Android development vows.

Blurring lines between Android, iOS and Web development

The popularity of React Native and similar JavaScript frameworks are blurring the lines between web and mobile app developers. For the first in the history of mobile development, a developer can say I don’t want to learn Java or Objective C and still can build a mobile app.

For businesses looking to develop mobile apps, React Native brings a sea of opportunities. They can target both mobile platforms at the fraction of the cost. As businesses prefer iOS to Android for the reason I mentioned, React Native will give a new lease of life to Android development.

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Progressive Web Apps – Blurring the Lines between Web and Mobile Apps

Progressive Web Apps

Steve Job jobs kicked off the smartphone revolution when he introduced the iPhone and on the iPhone there was kind of mobile browser but it was a poor experience of going online. A year later Apple kicked off the App Store and you’ve got the native apps and this is a really good way of getting online in interacting with online content and I’m sure you’ve all use that loads of apps over the last 10 years.

Gmail app for sending emails, Twitter for sending tweets, and Snapchat for sending two delightful pictures of yourself. Talking about view time with those apps, I’m sure you would have spent many weeks and months playing Flappy Birds

Since 2008, the mobile web has increased dramatically.I’m sure that many of you are reading this in Chrome.

What is exactly a Progressive Web App (PWA)?

Well, the idea goes back to 2015 in an article written by Alex Russell, who is a Google engineer. In there, he outlined the requirements for PWA, or progressive web applications. Since then, the whole industry has been working towards progressive web apps. So, Google Chrome supports it. Edge will be supporting it in Redstone4. Even Safari is getting a version of it in11.3, later on this year.

What makes progressive web apps unique are its abilities. For the first time, web applications can work offline and in the background,and that’s done through a thing called service workers.

Think of service workers as little web components that work in the background. They pull in notifications. They cache app data. That’s how they work offline. When you launch a progressive web app, it doesn’t look like you’re in the browser. It looks like an application.

instagram-native-and-pwas

For instance, Instagram has a PWA. If you go to Instagram on your Android phone, assuming it’s a modern one, and you log in, you’ll be asked if you want to pin this to your start screen or your application screen and would you like to receive notifications. Once you do that and then you open that app, it looks just like the regular Instagram application. In fact, the scrolling is better than a native app of Android, which tells you a lot.

Progressive Web Apps vs Native Apps

PWA Features comparison with Native apps

Native apps have a huge benefit in loads of areas: they are fast and quick to respond. You’ve got a really nice icon that you can click on. As soon as you click on that, you get really nice ‘scaffolded’ app screen that comes up. Let’s say you go onto Facebook. It’s kind of a nice blue look and you have a Facebook icon.

Benefits of Native Apps

When I get my Twitter wrap up,I’ve got a load of tweets there. From Twitter app, I can see those straightaway there’s no going into Chrome and trying to find a URL and load up a page.

Apps also have a smooth consistent, self-contained UI that looks really good on your smartphone. The best part is this that native apps works consistently well offline.

PWA vs. Native Apps

If you are checking your emails in no dead zones, that’s not a matter. You can check your emails in basements, tube stations, and other no coverage areas the app seized during the day. You can even reply to those emails. When you come in coverage area, it goes and all works well.

App Development can be Painful

Native app development can be painful. There are different languages between Android and iOS. You got Java. Perhaps, your funk-in-hipster uses Kotlin. Otherwise, you’re using Swift. You can use React Native and still have to change the way you develop a whole load of things.

In React Native, you have to do different stuff depending on the platform you’re on and even then you can have to develop differently for the web. You’re already developing for three different platforms. It’s expensive to develop.

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If you want to release apps on the web, it goes to your customer straightaway whereas a native app you have to go through app stores’ certification. There are separate app stores for Android and iOS.

Progressive Web Apps to the Rescue…

One of the best things about progressive web apps is it used web standard technology. It uses JavaScript. It uses JSON.

It got most of the benefits of native apps, including performance and UI tweaks.

Write once work everywhere. You just build it once and hopefully it should work everywhere. You have one team. Maybe you need a few tweaks depending on the target platform.

What does Progressive Mean?

In the old days, we just have static HTML pages and then JavaScript came around and we wanted to enhance our pages. JavaScript can make the app faster and feel better but if you didn’t run JavaScript, it would still work. It’s a kind of the same thing. Progressive enhancement is a whole bunch of features that you can add to your app. There’s a level that Google lists and each of these should improve the experience for the customer. If their platform doesn’t have one of those features, it shouldn’t break your app.

Progressive web app is a case of extra technologies. They can add to the performance of your app. With more of the features, the benefits across desktop and web kind of always keep comparing against native apps but a lot of these performances are also on the website.

If you have a website you don’t really care so much about your mobile customers, a lot of these technologies can really improve the performance of your websites.

Discoverability and Future of App Stores

Since progressive web apps are websites at the end of the day, app stores don’t need permission from their publishers to publish on their platform. All they’re doing is putting websites in the store. They will act much like websites directories. App stores will have to look at PWA sites that are live right now and if they meet certain standards, they’re going to be putting these in the store automatically. So, we can expect probably a couple hundred maybe even a thousand of these things to all of a sudden show up in the store.

Now since no money is being transpired here, the app store is not making money on ads through these things. It’s all just pulling in a website from a company. There’s no reason there that a company needs its permission. Twitter is Twitter. If Twitter wanted to deny a PWA on Windows10, they would be effectively saying, you can’t go to twitter.com on your web browser, which would be insane.

By putting progressive web apps right in the store and it’s going to be therefor users but without the discoverability problem of having to go to the website,log in and then pin it to your start screen. It’s a unique thing and it should be happening a lot more in coming times.

What is the State of Progressive Web Apps Right Now?

Many progressive web apps are already out there, including Google Maps. You can pin it to your start screen and have a PWA of Google Maps that uses your location and works just like the app itself.

Starbucks has a preview version. If you go to app.starbucks.com on your phone,you can see it there, log in, and pin that to your start screen and that is a PWA, as well. You also have Twitter, you have Instagram,you have Tinder, you have Uber, and you have Lyft. Even Pinterest has a PWA. All the major companies are embracing this, because again, companies hate paying developers. They would rather just have a web developer, make a PWA website, and call it a day.

What does the Future Hold?

I also expect a lot of banks to jump into this because maintaining a banking app is super expensive. There’s a lot of security involved. There are many laws, in effect,that they need to be compliant with. That’s one reason why Windows 10 always had an issue with banking apps. They’re very expensive to maintain.

But, what is always maintained? A banking website. In fact, that is updated even before any iOS and Android apps. So, if a bank can maintain a PWA website, well that’s a win-win for everybody, including them and their consumers.

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How to Determine the Target Audience of Your Mobile App

Target Audience of Your Mobile App

One of the biggest mistakes made in app development world is putting the technical details first and neglecting the target customer base. Coming up with a unique idea is just not enough to climb the ladder of success; you will have to create an app that delivers value for the target group of people. It is crucial to define target market so that you can know whether they will use the app and can even identify if there’s a demand for the type of mobile app developing.

By figuring out the target audience for your app, you can:-

  • Develop features as the per user preferences
  • Plan strategies for the marketing campaign
  • Use the best monetization techniques

But, how would you identify the right target audience for your mobile app? Let’s dive-in deep to know more…

General Understanding

Knowing target audience is the first step of mobile app development process. For instance, if you are planning to develop a food delivery mobile app in New York, one can assume that your target audience will be the one who is living in New York. In –case, if you are unable to decide on who is your end-customer, you need to work on your app concept to come up with the refined target audience.

Secondary Research

Secondary research includes in-depth analysis of the industry, competitors and actual customers.  For instance, food delivery app, it would be boon for the people who are busy working late-nights or get back home late. You can even focus on how often people order from your app, what are the common items they generally buy, which factor is driving them to buy – new products, discounts, reviews etc. and you must keep an eye intact on competitor’s audience.

Understand buyer’s demography, behavior and lifestyle

You need to know the nitty-gritty of your ideal customers! The more granular you can get with the information, the better you can know the buyer’s persona. Look at the traits such as:

  • Demographics: This information can include gender, age, location and culture. This becomes very important if you are looking to develop food app, travel app, restaurant app or lifestyle app. The demographic information will help in determining the specific group of audience who will be interested in using your mobile app
  • Psychographics: This information goes beyond demographics and identifies more about customer’s psychology, interests, values, attitudes, behaviors and much more. The psychographic information will help you to know the reason for using your mobile app
  • Technographic Segmentation: This information is related to the devices! The number of customers engaging with your product via mobile device, type of device – smart-phone, feature phone, tablet, brand, version, model and other technical attributes. The technographic information will help you to learn where to reach your different audience and on what device.

The above-mentioned information is essential in basic profiling of your customer…

Conduct surveys

You can conduct surveys by directly interacting with the target audience and asking about their preferences. However, there are different ways of conducting the survey.

  • Combining survey and interactive prototype where an interactive prototype is created to draw traffic to your app and survey is done to know the likes and dislikes of the customers
  • Combining mobile MVP with the actual feedback; Opt for this, if you have gathered information about your target audience. You can develop an app with sufficient features and gather feedback from various groups and communities.

Use marketing strategies

  • Focus on the groups to know what users look for
  • Take up social media platforms to promote your app idea just to know what audience think about your product

By using effective marketing strategies, you can gather deep insights about your app’s target audience.

Research competitor’s app

Apart from figuring out the behavior of the customer, closely monitoring competitor’s app will help you to know what they are doing right and their weaknesses. Check out features and designs that are missing in your app and peep through the review to know what people are saying. Make a note of positive and negative reviews; check out what users say about the app speed and performance. With all this insights, you can develop an app which is more in line with the preferences of your target audience.

Wrapping it up…

Now, you may have clear idea for whom you’re developing your app for, what are the opportunities and how your app can fill the gap and gain popularity on app stores. Doing thorough research and developing effective strategies can help to know your potential customers and can aid in getting ahead of the competition.

Would you like to know more about how to define the right target audience for your app to open up countless opportunities? Connect with our experts to know how TOPS Infosolutions can help to get you an edge over your competitors.

Mobile App Deep Linking: How it Works and The Benefits it Offers

Mobile App Deep Linking

Mobile App Deep Linking is a uniform resource identifier (URI) that links to the specific page or the locations within a mobile application.  The purpose of the deep linking is to provide relevant information to the user and that can be done via E-mail, social media, push notification, SMS etc. It largely drives user engagement and improves user retention ratio.

Without deep links, URL’s can only direct users to the home screen but can’t direct to a particular content.  However, Deep linking has changed the way apps interacts with each other and seamlessly bridges the gap between websites and apps.

Deep links takes user to the app content from:

  • Website to App
  • App to App
  • Social Media to App
  • Search Result to App
  • Mobile Phone Search to App
  • Ad to App
  • E-mail to App
  • SMS to App

Various Types of Mobile App Deep Linking:

  • Traditional deep linking: Using your app’s URL, it directs users to a specific screen of your mobile app. But, it works only if the users have installed your app otherwise it will show the user an error page.
  • Deferred deep linking: This type of link doesn’t require the app to be downloaded on user’s phone. When the user taps the link, it will direct them to the app store or play store for downloading the app. On downloading the app, the user will be able to view the content.
  • Contextual deep linking: This type of link take user directly to the specific location or content; it also stores contextual information like who shared the link, the source from where it is shared, where the users want to go etc. This data helps in providing a personalized experience to the users with the appropriate content based on their preferences.

Benefits of Mobile App Deep Linking:

  • Drives Re-engagement

It may happen that, your users have installed the app but haven’t used it/ inactive for months. Here, push notifications can be used for promoting a special deal or relevant content in the app to bring back customers. Directing these users to the specific content they are looking for will improve the chance of becoming more active user. Including the deep link in your message encourage user to update the app or download a new feature or improve the chances of becoming an active user. Some of the past research states that, apps that have deep links, are likely to be visited a number of times compared to which have not.

  • Improves App Discoverability and Increases App Downloads

Let’s say, you have a website that drives a good number of visitors per day through but you are unable to drive visitors on your app although you’re putting all your efforts. If this is the scenario, you can get a mobile app deep linking installed for searches, your app will be displayed on the Google search result page. As Google indexes the mobile app deep links, the content appears in the search result similar to website. On clicking that link, users will be directed to install your app. This process can ultimately drive more number of installs to your mobile app, becomes easy for the new users to find the app and can engage users on the current platform.

  • Connect Two Apps

With deep linking, it is easy to establish a connection between two apps. Let’s say, if you have developed two e-commerce apps, one app deals with grocery products and other app is a lifestyle app that includes garments, accessories, décor items and much more. Once the user has completed buying grocery products, you can easily create a deep link and direct users to your other lifestyle app or vice-versa. Linking apps with each other can help you with increased customer-base, high revenue generation as well as cross-selling of products.

  • Provides Convenience in Content Promotion

A deep link enables to create link on the website, e-mails, social-media that directs to certain content in the app. It serves as a promotional tool which links back to your deal or newly launched product that you want to show-case to your customers. Rather than asking users to open up your app, when promoting app content, you can link them directly to the content you are promoting.

Brands Harnessing The Power Of Deep Linking

  • Zomato – When you search for any restaurant in Google, Zomato reviews are generally on the top results. When you click on that, it will ask you to download Zomato app (if not done) and then redirects you to restaurant page, which provides you with all the information that you are looking for. Moreover, when you click on the restaurant address, it will directly take you to the Google Map to show you direction; making the entire process of searching restaurant hassle-free.
  • Google Maps & Uber/Ola – When you search for the direction in the Google Maps, app provides the option of ‘finding ride service’. On taping that, app will ask you the option to opt for Uber/Ola and will tell you the estimated time to wait as well as the cost of reaching the destination. On tapping that, it connects you to Uber/Ola app and automatically inputs your destination information.

Wrapping it Up

Mobile app deep linking has certainly proved to be an important element in revenue generation and enhanced user experience. As competition is high in the mobile app ecosystem, it’s high time to get started with mobile app deep linking today. If done in a right way, it surely increases the profitability of the mobile app.

Haven’t stared App deep linking yet? It’s high time you get started now. Talk to our experts to get started on upgrading your mobile app.

 

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