Tips to Provide the Best Website Experience, Page 7 of 25

Mobile applications have become increasingly popular as a tool to engage consumers with various companies. Consumers download an average of 8 applications a day, be they gaming, photo editing, news, or social media apps. Companies and individuals that have an idea for a great application and see it through often find themselves building a multi-billion dollar empire!

Do you want to develop your own app? Have a great idea for a gaming app or want to make your own blog more accessible to the public? It's easier than ever before to create and implement an app for the public. There are a few simple steps to follow in order to bring your idea to life!

First, figure out what type of application you want to create. Take a look at the Android, Google, or Apple stores for ideas on different genres to choose from. The most popular choices tend to be games, photo editing, and social media, but you are free to create whatever app you want! Also, look at the audience you creating the app for. Is this app for your business, or is it something that is meant specifically to entertain? Is a little of both?

Second, begin drawing up different designs for how you want your application to look and be used. These can be simple stick figure drawings at first, but it is still wise to have more developed drawings as you go along. If you prefer, hire someone or find a friend who can help you develop clearer drawings to get your idea across. Clear and professional drawings make it easier to get funding or a professional company to develop and publish your application to all of the major stores. The ultimate point here is to flesh out your idea in a visual sense so that you and others have a clear idea of what you want out of your app.

Thirdly (this part is a little more complicated), develop the back end of your app. This part can be done yourself or through a trusted team of people dedicated to helping you with your application. The back end of your app is the part that makes everything function the way it's supposed to; if it is responsive, for example, then when a consumer scrolls down on their smart phone, it will do as expected. If a consumer goes and updates the application, then it should update as anticipated. (This is essentially why I suggest a team of individuals help with this part of the process, as this is fairly complicated for folks who don't know what they are getting into.)

Finally, find a team to help you get your application published and available through mainstream sources such as the Apple App Store or the Android Store. Do some research online to find great companies who will publish your application. Once your application is accessible to the public, you have succeeded in creating an application! Sound fun? Awesome! Now go out there and create!

There is no way to get around it, custom web development is expensive.  However, there are tangible benefits to building a custom app instead of using an off-the-shelf application.

Insight Into Your Business Needs

You know what you want for your business, but how well does that really align with what your business really needs from a technology perspective? It is impossible to be an expert in everything, and knowing the best software tool for your business just might be out of reach. Working with a custom web app developer gives you a partner to help you decide what will work best for your business as well as writing the actual software.

Spend More Time Running Your Business

Designing, building and maintaining a website is a time-consuming process. By outsourcing these tasks to another firm, you can spend more time doing the work that only you can do and leave the website to the people who can handle it best. Look for a development company that provides complete lifecycle support. You don't want to have a firm that will build your app then run away.

Happier Customers Means Better Results

A custom web app allows you to build the site that is exactly what your customers need it to be, rather than an of the shelf solution, which always requires compromises. When your site fits your customers, they are more likely to spend more time on your site, reading and shopping, which in turn means higher profits for you.

Is your business ready to take the plunge into custom web development? Even if you are still unsure, contact us. You might be surprised at just how much you are missing out on.

The agile development process is designed for transparency with a focus on user needs and satisfaction. When it comes to writing meaningful user stories for use in agile development the idea is to maintain transparency and to open useful discussion about user needs and satisfaction. How is that accomplished? Through coherent user stories. Here's how to write them:

Establish the User, the Action and the Goal

Succinct stories are the goal. A story should fit on a post-it or an index card and should be supplemented with discussion. Each story has the user as the main actor. Within the story the user interacts with a product in the hope of achieving a goal.

You should start a user story with a title that explains who the actor is, what action the actor takes and what the actor hopes to achieve.

For example: A user wants to retrieve information from a database using their smartphone.

Tell the Story

In a few short lines tell what occurred when the actor tried to reach their goal. Be certain to detail the criteria using a given, when, then format.

For example: The user has a database app on their Samsung Galaxy s7 Edge. When the user opens the database to retrieve data, they receive an error message.

Share User Stories

Each member of the team might have a slightly different story. For instance, users with IoS operating systems might not have the same experience. Discussing the differences in stories helps the development team arrive at a solution so that at the end of the process every user story has the best ending.

To learn more about telling meaningful user stories within an agile development process, please contact us

When it comes to mobile app development, one important decision you will have to make is whether to make your app paid or free. Both options have their respective advantages and disadvantages, and your decision should be based on a number of factors. Here is some information that will help you decide whether to charge for your app.

Competition

One factor you should consider is the competition that your mobile app will face. Since there are more free apps, your mobile app will encounter more competition if you make it free. If you want your mobile app to be able to thrive in spite of this competition, the mobile app should be unique. A unique mobile app will stand out in a sea of free apps.

You won't have to worry much about competition from the paid mobile apps because most app stores have separate categories for paid and free apps.

Expectations

If your mobile app isn't polished, you may want to make it free for now until you can make improvements. Users tend to have lower expectations when it comes to free mobile apps. Therefore, even if the mobile app isn't perfect, your users won't be disappointed. Of course, if the mobile app is incredibly buggy and unpolished, the fact that it was free won't stop users from uninstalling in.

If you're in the business of making money from apps, you need to follow a sound strategy when it comes to pricing your apps. If you want more information about how you should price your apps, contact us.

Perhaps the first and most obvious reason that Agile methodology is seen as the winner in the Waterfall Vs. Agile debate by its proponents is that Agile's origins stem from the shortcomings of the former. Rather than using a more traditional sequential design process, Agile breaks things down into incremental modules and allows for testing and collaborative brainstorming as each individual module is developed, rather than one big team effort at the end of the development cycle.

This process encourages team unity and allows for customer feedback throughout the process. In itself this can be viewed as quite an advantage because solutions can be made to design flaws and customer complaints before the product is deemed final. This can result in significant cost savings because there is much less of a need to backtrack or the worst case scenario, which is to start all over.

Agile also allows for updates and features to be added to stay current with emerging industry trends. Sometimes with the Waterfall approach, before a product is actually released to the target audience it is outdated and a catastrophic fail because it doesn't allow for updates during design. Because product evolution is built into the Agile environment, vital changes can be made on the fly, implemented appropriately, tested, and successfully added to the final product before its release.

Another advantage lies in the fact that defects can be discovered early on and solutions can be implemented during the development process, making for far less disappointing surprises at the end stage of a product developed with the Waterfall methodology.

Detractors of Agile complain that the focus of it is on principles rather than relying on a high quality process. In the end, it really becomes a choice of collaboration versus an undying belief that your process is better than everyone else's. Only you can decide which is right for your organization.

"Contensive" is an information technology company that specializes in developing easy solutions to complex problems. Please contact us today for more information on any of our services including web development, mobile applications, online integration, and responsive design.

Developing a SaaS application involves hundreds of hours of coding to get it functioning just right. But you could be neglecting some important areas that might make a bigger difference than just the quality of your code. From marketing to customer onboarding, here are a few tips on how to make sure your software as a service development ultimately reaches and satisfies its target customers.

Your Code Doesn't Need to be Perfect

Try to get the product out the door even if it still has warts. Software almost always ends up taking longer than what you had planned. The minimum viable product methodology emphasizes getting your SaaS offering in front of potential customers even if it's not 100% polished. A popular mantra for SaaS startups is "if you're not ashamed of it, then you're launching too late".

Get Customers for Your SaaS

• Try to get some press for your startup right off the bat. It can help to craft a one-page summary of each of your key features for emphasis either in your press releases or through your social media posts.
• Split test your sign-up form and optimize for conversions. You will want to test different colors, layouts, button text as well as the length of the page.
• Offer a free trial or some other low cost method for users to get familiar with your product before committing to the full subscription price.

Reduce Churn Among Your Subscribers

Customer churn, when subscribers of your SaaS drop out before the rebill, is the bane of SaaS developers. A higher than expected churn rate can impact your profit as well as also pointing to some possible problems with your SaaS offering. Focusing on improving customer service (including onboarding new customers onto your app) can help plug that leak. You may also want to remove the customer's ability to self-serve cancel their account. By making them contact customer support to cancel their account, you'll also have a chance to give them an exit interview on what went wrong and hopefully gain a few tips to improve your app.

Get in touch with us today if you'd like help developing your SaaS or need a technical consultation about your software development needs.

Much ado has been made about the importance of having a responsive website design, but few people really know why it's important to have a responsive website design for your business. With this in mind, then, we've come up with a list of some of the many benefits of responsive website design:

• Responsive website design saves you time and money. As professionals move away from desktop and laptop computers -- and more towards mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets -- the need for a website that "responds," or can be searchable and clickable regardless of the platform, increases. This means that customers can view your site, and purchase from your site, no matter what they're looking for and no matter what the context.
• Responsive website design improves the user experience. Further along the lines of the website looking good no matter what platform it's viewed on, when a user (that is, a potential customer) sees a nice website on a smartphone or on a laptop, they're more inclined to visit the website again...as well as purchase from the website as well.
• Finally, but certainly no less importantly, responsive website design improves your Google rankings. While no one factor is the sole contributor to Google rankings -- higher rankings come as a result of a combination of digital marketing techniques -- a recent article released by Google suggests that part of the new Google algorithm takes website responsiveness into account when devising the rankings. And, the more responsive the website is, the higher the ranking.

For more information about us and our services, contact us today to see what we can do for you.

So you have got a great idea for an application?

Before you go head first into writing code, take a moment to decide what platform is best for you to develop your app.

• Web Applications

Web applications are cost-effective, accessible and compatible, making them perfect for prototyping your application. Most of these advantages stem from the nature of the web itself.

Web apps are easy to update because they don’t require manual updates through a store like the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. This allows updates to be automatically and forcefully pushed to all your users.

Your users can use your app cross-platform on any device and with any browser. When you develop for mobile you are limiting your audience to a specific platform.

Web applications are easy to share. Getting the word out about your application is crucial in the early stages and sharing through social media is a great way to attract new users. Web applications are primed for sharing by URL and support integration with sharing plugins and tools.

Porting to a mobile application is always an option down the road. Often, the best platform to launch a new app is through the web.

• Mobile Applications

Mobile applications do have their place, however. 

Need location data, sensors, or camera access? Again, this is where mobile shines through. Although, browsers are getting better at using mobile features like click to call and SMS.

Is it critically important that your app is accessible as fast as possible? A mobile app means that your application is just one tap away from using.

Generally, a mobile website should be your first step into the mobile market. A mobile app should come once the value of your service has been proven and you are ready to take advantage of its strengths. Ready to get started? Contact us.