However, mobile app development companies are also facing the heat of competitive market and in order to make rank higher, they need to adopt long-term plans. In this article, we will talk about some efficient strategies that will help you to float in this rapidly changing world of digital marketing.

Social Media Presence

Today, every small, medium and large enterprise has their own account in several social media sites. If you want to develop your app business, then you should utilize this tool efficiently that can open the door for thousands of potential clients for your business.

In addition, you should know that social media is one of the most powerful mediums through which a business can interact with its potential client conveniently. Thus, never ignore the potential of social networking sites and try to get followed and liked by thousands of people who can be marked as your potential customers. Here are some advantages you can gain if your app development business associates with social networking sites.

• Connect millions of people across the world
• Less expensive marketing strategy
• Efficient way to announce new plans
• Get traced by targeted audience easily

 
Respect Your Loyal Users

Nowadays, almost every app development service provider (no matter how big or small) offers extra benefits to its loyal customers, because their success lies in the constant support of their loyal customers.

The best way to reward your loyal customer is to send some special and unique offers like a gift or an assured discount on every product through a mobile app. This will energize and encourage your customer to build a strong relationship with the company. The bottom line is that you will have to make your customers feel like they are special.

Join the Ad Network

If you find it difficult to promote your company in the vast arena of other app development companies, you can join the networks of affiliated add companies. These companies will work for you and promote your applications through different but efficient mediums.

However, if you want to promote your app through ad networks, then you will have to bear just 1% for click-through process. The click-through process will definitely boost your ratings and will enhance your company’s organic ranking.

Opt out for Organic Marketing

App Store and Google Play work with organic ranking differently and to ensure the optimum exposure to your targeted audience, you will have to understand those differences so that you can sense the improvement conveniently.

You should know that your position in the ranking would be determined by ad-driven links if your app is going with the App Store. However, if it is Google play, then your ranking will depend on a number of users and the ratio of per download. The higher number of download you have counted the higher rank you will avail for your mobile app development company.

Today, numerous app development service providers choose to build their own app empire through which they can present different apps to their existing users through the internet banners, external link suggestions or push notifications within their own apps. By utilizing the process of click-through, one can increase the number of app downloads.

These are some of the easiest and effective marketing strategies, for your app development business. If you have experienced other efficient strategy, please share with us.

DocuSign

DocuSign is a handy application that takes a scanned document that lets you seamlessly apply your signature digitally to receipts, contracts, and other sensitive content from the smartphone. Besides solving any signature issues, it also allows you to easily send your newly signed contracts back to your office. This means you can make it to a sales meeting at the same time as someone on your team ensures the contract is good to go. Thus, you don’t need to squeeze time out of your hectic schedule.

GotoMeeting

Do you often find it hard to make it to meetings on time? It may not more seem a herculean task for a business leader who’s continuously away from the office and on the move if you have GoToMeeting. Thanks to the app for offering an excellent way to resolve such a problem. GotoMeeting app of Citrix is available on both iOS and Android. It lets you call in to your meetings including entire functionality of the desktop version. It can be treated just like a usual phone call, and listen to each person on the line perfectly. Now you can shun keeping colleagues waiting as you hustle back to the meeting room.

Dropbox

When you are a business owner on the run, bridging the gap between mobile and desktop is a real challenge. Among spreadsheets, word documents and images, it’s hard to ensure you can access everything you require while you are on the go. There comes the significance of Dropbox. The platform helps you keep all your content in solitary place. Thus, you will be able to bring up documents, presentations, and other important files even when you are on the run. Available on Android and iOS devices, Dropbox assures that everything required to review for the perfect pitch is all the time available with you.

LinkedIn

For businesses, LinkedIn is an important place on social media, and this is especially true for C-level employees who want to turn out to be thought leaders in their field. The LinkedIn application ensures that you are up to date with the things your colleagues have to say regarding specific topics. It also allows you to share any of your opinion or on-site content that you wish for your peers to see.

Asana

Asana is your best bet when it’s all about project management. Available for Android and iOS devices as well as desktop, it helps every person on your team stay productive and organized. The app allows you to assign tasks to anyone in your team through individual email address and includes abilities to create all the projects with subtasks, due dates, and notifications to the emails of respective employees so that everybody is on the same page. This mobile app for business helps b2b market leader stay on top of everything that is going on at the business place while the person is away while letting you know who in your team could have some bandwidth for an upcoming project.

In this blog we are going to take a look at the top shopping sites in India this year and understand how they are magnetizing millions of potential customers all over the world, in spite of the presence of enormous shopping complexes and retail outlets.

10. Infibeam.com

One of the very popular e-commerce site is Infibeam. It managed to be in the 10^th position for revolutionizing online shopping experience. Whether you are looking to purchase exam books, mobiles, laptops, appliances, clothes, watches, cameras, home furniture, foot wear, accessories, etc., Infibeam stocks everything and offers discount that saves money and the smart e-commerce solution makes the buying process hassle-free, user-friendly and safe.

9. Bigbasket.com

Bigbasket.com is another leading site in the list. It is the online grocery store and supermarket that aims to enrich your shopping experience for products that we use day-to-day. One can buy the freshest of consumer items like fruits and vegetables, grocery and staples, dairy products, beverages, branded and imported foods, personal and baby care items, meat and fish at discounted prices. This responsive e-commerce site is easy to operate and mobile version also loads pretty quickly!

8. Healthkart.com

They claim to be India’s first online health shop and serve the needs of health and fitness lovers. The site displays an array of health supplements, body building items, nutrition and supplements, Ayurveda and herbs, beauty care, fitness and personal grooming products for both women and men. Easy payment modes, multiple category and add to cart options make purchasing very swift, safe and secure.

7. Shopclues.com

Featuring next on the list is Shopclues.com. This is one of India’s top online shopping destination which sells numerous products on different categories like electronic gadgets, home and kitchen, clothes, footwear, jewelry, travel and luggage, books, baby care, health and nutrition and many more at wonderful discounts. Customers can click on the product and check in preview before placing the order.

6. Yebhi.com

Another widely known name among the leaders at present is yebhi.com. The look and feel of this shopping portal are enough to grab customers’ attention. The site nestles fresh fashion clothings, designer wears, shoes, accessories, jewelry and very recently it has added mobile phones.

5. Jabong.com

Looking to buy the best in fashion and brands? Jabong.com can meet your needs. Similar to other e-commerce site, this also has customized functionality and secure shopping cart. Being mobile friendly, you can water your shopaholic nature, even when you are travelling or not in front of your desktop.

4. Myntra.com

This Bangalore based fashion site brings in awe-inspiring varieties of the recent fashion and lifestyle items, accessories, for kids, women and men. The fabulous discounts glues massive traffic. The secure payment gateways and cash on delivery option get big thumbs up!

1-2-3. Amazon.in – Snapdeal.com – Flipkart.com

The reason for listing the 3 sites together is that it is not fairly possible to rank them 1^st; 2^nd and 3^rd based on the popularity and sales as they are giving tough competition to each other and the position is constantly fluctuating. Amazon.com is a global leader which made a strong position in the Indian market as well by stocking a great variety of products starting from books, DVDs, apparels, accessories, appliances and more. Snapdeal.com is a Delhi based online site where people love to shop because of the discounts, coupons and gift vouchers. Flipkart.com is another Indian e-commerce website based in Bangalore. Although, it ventured as an e-book store, but slowly added categories like electronics, fashion, mobile and gadgets, accessories, etc. Nevertheless to mention that three of these web stores have finest e-commerce features.

Kudos to the technology and e-commerce development teams that offer bespoke Shopping Cart solutions, allowing companies to advertise, promote and sell products or service all over the globe.

On the other hand, many consumers use mobile phones to gather information on products and services. If a business owner allocates maximum budget for print advertising, then the money may go wasted. The best way to tap potential prospects is to run campaigns through digital platforms. These mediums not only generate fast response, but they also offer economy of scale to business owners.

We live in an era of social media. The importance of popular social media site like Facebook is already known to us. Platform like Facebook offers you with viral means for promoting your business effectively. Do not think that usage of digital platforms to promote your business is a costly affair. Nowadays, many consumers use smartphones for making purchase decisions. So, why not you design a mobile app for your business by hiring a mobile app development company and reap the future benefits.

Current Insights about Mobile Usage

• 21% of millenials prefer mobile phones for getting online access
• Mobile phones have surpassed computers in internet usage in January 2014
• Consumers spend 89% of their time on mobile apps for gathering knowledge of products and making purchase
• By 2019, marketers will allocate 72% of their budget towards mobile ad spending

You have seen how mobile apps can promise generous returns in the future. It is a wise idea to deploy a mobile app in place by hiring an app development service. However, in order to promote your app, you need to build robust strategies. Go through the following tips and generate the desired revenue for your business.

Target Custom Ads

When you sell in-app advertising space, you can earn substantial profits by incurring minimal expenses. When you execute the plan in right manner, you will find that you have covered the cost of the app development.

A reputed e-marketing survey company has predicted that $28.72 billion will go towards mobile ad spending this year. Marketers are competing with each other to get their brands exposed through mobile apps. When you launch your app, you can earn more revenue by approaching local businesses and offering them more advertising space at lower rates.

You need to display a logo on your app’s home page or you can add a sponsor’s page, which links to front end sites. When such advertisers provide you with images, conducting the campaigns becomes an easy task. You can attract more advertisers, when you roll out this strategy.

Go for Self Promotion

If you have developed a single app to promote your business, promote the same with your existing customers. In addition, resume social media sharing to spread the word of mouth effectively. When you see that visitors are frequently downloading your app, you can get the guaranteed ROI.

If you have developed multiple applications, then promote them within each other rather than hiring someone else to perform that task. A banner ad developed for a specific app will result in more traffic and you can easily execute and monitor the campaign. You have to link your banner ad to the app store listing, so that users can click for downloading the app.

Go for Automated Ads

You can make money without putting much stress on sales procedure. Mobile ad companies like iAds, Doubleclick and AdMob permit you in integrating automated advertisements into your application. By doing so, you can get a good response, as the integration can boost clickthrough rates. You can easily perform the integration task, without worrying for sales procedures.

These are the above said ways of generating revenue for your business by developing mobile app. If you do not have an app, get it developed now from a reliable app development service.

ADB Idea

From Android Studio, you often need to run some common ADB commands, and this plug-in eases that process. It saves you from the hassle of typing quite a bit on the command line because it knows your app’s package name from the IDE. In addition, you just need to put a few key strokes to clear app data or restart the app, which is again quite handy.

ideaVim

Using ideaVim adds Vim keybindings to the editors of IDEA that makes it easy to edit text virtually anywhere. Along with Android Studio, the plug-in is compatible with PhpStorm, AppCode, RubyMine, IntelliJ IDEA and CLion.

Holo Colors Generator

For Android app development, it is important to have a good layout and design. Using the plug-in Android Holo Colors Generator helps you to customize your apps easily according to what you prefer. By using own colors for the app, the plug-in allows you to create layout components. With this plug-in, you can generate everything that you need with styles and XML drawables that you need for the mobile application design or other Android app project.

Android Drawable Importer

As an Android developer, you already know the importance of importing different drawables to support different screen sizes. This is essential for adapting to all the densities and screen sizes of Android devices. When you install Android Drawable Importer, the job gets easier. You can easily import scaled images into your project in different resolutions.

CodeGlance

This plug-in displays minimap or zoomed out overview. With the help if minimap, it is easier for the Android developers to scroll quickly and get straight into the coding section. This plug-in works both for dark and light themes using personalized colors for highlighting syntax.

Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager

For faster execution of app for the developers who use the Android Emulator, Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager provides good help. The plug-in provides acceleration of hardware on Intel Systems on Android SDK emulators. The plug-in uses Intel VT built on top of VT-X virtualization hardware. Thus, the plug-in runs the applications very fast on the simulated environments of Android. For an Android developer, Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager is very useful as he can the latest Android version very fast on the emulator.

Genymotion

To test the Android applications, this plug-in can be real boon. You can also run custom versions and includes varied features required for interacting with the virtual Android environment. It is well equipped with wide range of sensors and developed for execution inside Virtual Box. You may not feel like returning to the default emulator once you use Genymotion because its emulators are very fast. Moreover, you can test all the apps on diverse virtual devices for development. Genymotion is the ultimate plug-in for every Android developer who wants their apps to smoothly run on every compatible device and can easily trouble shoot the device errors.

If you are into mobile application design or development on the Android platform, these plug-in for Android Studio will prove to be highly useful. If you have other plug-ins that you think suitable to be added in the list, do share with us.

How NASA Plans to Fulfill Its Mission?

The main aim of NASA is to improve the efficiency of astronauts, when they are performing vital tasks in space stations. The US space agency is planning to deploy certain apps that will work well with smartwatches. Introducing smartwatch apps for astronauts will help them to perform tasks easily and quickly. For that reason, NASA has launched an app design contest to find the best talent.

Conditions of App Design

• The app should generate suitable feedbacks against each action taken by astronauts
• Suggest ways of improving efficiency during the work
• Should run well on devices like Samsung Gear 2

In order to fulfill the app design goal, NASA will receive $18 billion from the US government. However, for finding the best talent, the department has declared the contest at a popular freelancing platform called www.freelancer.com . The freelancing site has over 16 million registered users and NASA is confident at picking up one or two contestants, who have the capability of accepting the challenge. As users prefer to use apps having user-friendly mobile application design, NASA has suggested that it is looking for an application, which will have superb user interface design and it should run well in devices like Samsung Gear 2.

The CoECI ( Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation), a department of NASA said that they are interested to explore the growing usage of the smartwatch technology and they are looking to deploy the technology for developing a smartwatch application, which will be helpful for astronauts. The CoECI further said that contestants should take up the challenge of designing the general user interface of smartwatch apps that can be easily operated on the International Space Station.

What Contestants are expected to do?

NASA has instructed to the contestants that it wants a detailed report of the mobile application UI design including layout features, interactive features, etc. NASA explained that currently, astronauts are using iPad or laptop for viewing timeline.

The App Should Provide Alerts

While designing the app, a contestant is required to incorporate warning and caution elements in the design. The app should display change in colors, when an astronaut faces problem in space station.

Time of Establishing Communication

The app should have the capability to inform the astronauts about the time when they can communicate with the control room through video or voice. Such alerts should be popped up on the timeline.

NASA has clarified to the participants that it wants information in one place, especially on the smartwatch, which astronauts are supposed to use during the voyage. The main aim of the future app is that by using the same, astronauts should be in a position to offer feedbacks, when they come up with important findings.

In order to provide a clear picture about the current scenario, NASA has shown some low resolution images of displays, which astronauts use currently. It has been found that those displays featured incomprehensible spreadsheet. Therefore, NASA is planning to develop an app that can solve the current issues.

As an app developer, you can reveal your talent by participating in this contest. The app design competition will end on September 9. Best of luck!

As a marketer, you develop an app with proper mobile application UI design that will allow the consumers to satisfy their specific needs fast and comfortably. As the competition is growing, it is required that you should be in a position, where people can find you easily. Therefore, the essence of publicity of your app through TV mediums arises.

Does Selecting TV Mediums for Apps Work?

Yes, here are few examples that will clear your doubts. Hike, a messaging app company in India is into television advertising for over a year now. The financial support partner Kavin Mittal of SoftBank said that by promoting the service through television, Hike added approximately 150000 to 200000 per day.

Consider the case of OLX. The company became popular through its amusing ad campaign known as “sell phone”. According to a report, during March 2014, the company had attained success with billion page views. It was also found that approximately 70% of the views came through mobile medium.

The intensity of competitiveness and aggressiveness among online retail stores have forced companies like Amazon to advertise about its apps through TV mediums.

Perception about TV Spends

Previously, TV spends were expensive than digital ones. A past report suggested that an app marketer had to spend $0.75 to $1 for acquiring one Android user. Such company also spent around $2 to $2.5 to acquire one iOS user. Now the scenario has changed. Currently, even small app marketing companies are expanding their budget for running TV commercials and they are not just limited to the expenditure of mobile app design.

The number of TV ad campaigns for mobile applications has risen substantially this year. A digital advertising agency based in US has quoted that it has booked approximately 12000 TV advertisements across 11 countries this year, so far. The agency has reported that the booking rate has increased by 10 times, when compared with 2014.

Is TV Advertisement Expensive?

TV advertising is less expensive than what it was few years back. Three factors are associated with this trend. The rising cost of install based advertising and measuring its performance has forced many mobile app marketers to choose other marketing options and they have found that cost of running campaigns through televisions, fits within their budget.

High profile companies like Machine Zone is spending sumptuous amount of money in TV advertising to promote its game called Game of War: Fire Age. This company has also appointed Kate Upton as brand ambassador. This kind of strategy has attracted small-scale app marketers to enter into TV advertising and see whether such strategy works. Lastly, companies, which have superb customer acquisition strategies are opting TV platforms to spread the brand awareness.

Nowadays, the competition among mobile app marketers is rising. Therefore, a platform like TV is required, where the campaigns can draw mass appeal and effectively engage the users.

The Real Picture

A non-responsive website fails to perform its best on mobile devices due to screen compatibility issues. It means a user will not be able to view the website’s attributes properly on a mobile screen, if it is not responsive. Thus, the answer to this problem can be sorted out by deploying responsive web design solutions that offer easy navigation and results in maximum sales conversions.

Some marketers have found that consumers love interactions through which they want to convey their requirements and get those sufficed as soon as possible. This gap can be filled by the deployment of mobile applications that offers seamless completion and fulfillment of set goals.

Here Lies the Debate

One school of thought professed that a marketer should have both responsive website and mobile app. Whereas another sect says that it is wise to have the responsive website first in order to make the consumers aware of the brand an its utility. Then go for developing and deploying mobile apps. The reason is that it becomes an expensive affair to go parallel for developing two platforms.

How to Build an Efficient Mobile First Strategy?

If you are into non-technology business and wish to deliver your offerings through technology driven platform, then it is tough to decide whether you want to go for an app or a website first. Take your time and learn how your target audience behaves.
Think, what are the best possible ways you can reach them? You have to consider regarding how you can simplify their tasks that they perform often. When you have found answers to these issues, you can easily decide the best ways of offering solutions through mobile or web first strategy.

Whether you require both responsive website and mobile application also depends upon the offering you have devised. For example, if you want to educate your customers for using your products, you can develop an app that offers guidelines and such application does not consume any bandwidth to become functional.
You can see that in order to engage your customers through your offerings and to make them loyal to your brand, both platforms are required. The app platform turns into a value added service.

The Best Way of Developing Mobile Applications

You already know that smartphones come in various styles and shapes. Due to varied screen sizes, compatibility issue arises, which can be sorted through responsive web design. However, these phones work by using various operating systems. For that reason, you have to ensure that the app, which you deploy, runs well on these devices.

At the initial stage, you should go for developing responsive site. You need to add certain analytics tools, through which you can know about the devices used by consumers the most. Then you can resume the task of the application development that fits well with the operating system of the device. With proper mobile application UI design, your target audience can suffice its needs happily.

The bottom line is that you require both mobile app and responsive site for building a strong brand value and engage your customers for sufficing their needs.

Opposing the”big bang”approach, i.e. redesigning the website all at once, Growth Driven Design provides an incremental approach where you can bite just as much as you can chew. This approach helps you:

• To improvise your website continuously
• Eliminate the guesswork from the designing process
• Save your as well as your team’s time
• Launch the website in 1/2 the time of a traditional web re-designing process

What you can expect from Growth  Driven Design

• Continuous data driven improvement

Almost four in every ten firms have opted for re-design in the last 1 and ½ year or so, not on the basis of any metrics. So how they figured out that their website is not performing well?

When it comes to best website designs, designers often make incorrect hypothesis about how a firm’s target customers will make use of the website.  Growth Driven Design eliminates this guess-working phase, because you are constantly determining, making assumptions, changing and examining how it affects your business.

After the 1^st few weeks of the project, the service page, about us page, case studies, testimonials etc., has to be revisited. You have to re-write, refine, test and improvise one or two of them at a time. Through this methodical approach you can maximize traffic and lead via your website.

• The cost of web design can be segmented into budget-friendly portions

As per the sources, a traditional business website re-design will cost around $15,000 (the price greatly varies depending on the requirement). Cashing the amount all a time is a big blow to the company. On the other hand, a Growth Driven Design will usually cost you approx $2,500 monthly again, the prices may vary).  This is a budget- friendly option. As the fee per month is all-inclusive, it comprises of updates, maintenance, backups, hosting and installing new features eventually.

• Ideal fit for inbound marketing

Compile inbound marketing  and Growth Driven Design together and you will find out a success mantra! This kind of web design  together with inbound marketing implies that you can attract more users or visitors to your website that skillfully converts prospective customers to leads. Your cost per lead will reduce eventually as your website will be more capable of drawing visitors and make them loyal customers.

• Generate business results and sales revenue through your website

The Growth Driven design approach can convert your website form a mere brochure to a powerful tool for selling, because the approach focus on computing metrics that delivers real business results. Google provides additional advantages to those websites where the content is fresh. Therefore, website developers find it easy to upload new contents every month via this approach.

If your firm is planning for a website redesign and budgeting for the same, try exploring the potentials that a Growth Driven Design could offer. This approach is exclusively designed to make your corporate website a real sales tool  that draws visitors and converts them to customers. Hope this blog helps you to decide on what is best for your website.

From the letter written by Microsoft CEO to the employees, it has been revealed that they are focusing on providing best management, productivity and security that business customers look for, offer communication services to the phone buyers and the flagship devices that the Windows fans will love. Whatever the message you draw from this letter, the concluding ideas is – Microsoft is not going to compete with Android and iPhone anymore.

Peeping into the details

With regards to business consumers who value productivity and safety, it somewhere gives a feeling that Microsoft will most likely compete for niche areas of interest concerning users that BlackBerry continues to hold onto, which is not specifically a large marketplace. Die hard fans for Windows phone will certainly adore the concept of latest flagship hardware, regardless of the fact that they simply are not enough to boost Home Windows Telephone in the marketplace percentage. And in the perspective of phone patrons, companies like Micromax and Xiaomi has been complacently ruling that marketplace with their dirt cheap Android phones.

Taking all these into consideration, Microsoft, truly, is not interested to compete with Apple or Android from now onward. As an alternative, it is making an effort so that it can add extra to the Windows ecosystem for mobile users, that will not essentially comprise of phones.

Future of Microsoft’s phone business

Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, explained that he is committed to their first party devices comprising phones. However, they are required to pay more attention to their phone efforts in the near future whilst driving re-invention. They are shifting from a strategy to prosper with a standalone phone business to a strategy by which they can prosper and develop a vibrant Windows ecosystem that comprise of their first party device segment.

In the upcoming days, Microsoft will run a more efficient phone portfolio, with superior products and speed, given the newly developed Windows and Device group by professional developers. The company plans to narrow their focus to 3 customer segments where they can differentiate via the combination of their software and hardware as well as make unique contributions. They aspire to bring better management for their customers and flagship devices that their patrons will love.

After reading this corporate notice, it can be assumed that the company will primarily focus on particular niche markets, like business customers, and will be working with fewer manpower.

In the end, this can be figured out that Microsoft will not develop anything in the phone segment for general users any more. This follows a routine that the last few years have witnessed that Microsoft pro-actively creating apps and services to compete with its rivals. Microsoft has a very small market share in the category of products and has been dominated by Android and iOS for ages.

Nadella also declared a write-down of $7.6 billions, which is essentially altering the value of an asset that has been declared. So, this also means that the acquisition of Nokia was basically not of much use.

So, things didn’t work out for Microsoft quite well, but it gives a more realistic reflection of why and how people do not really prefer Windows Phone.