Mistakes to avoid while developing a mobile app

App development has recently undergone a lot of changes, and it still keeps changing. Nowadays, more and more innovations are introduced to the app development – new coding languages, technologies, etc.

Mobile app developers are always looking for some new ways and means to develop outstanding mobile software meeting the needs of the modern society. Everyone is piquing the interest in how to develop an app bringing huge profits.

Of course, there are a lot of tutorials, coverages, how-to guides, books available both in paper and online, but there is still one thing to consider – you can’t achieve success in the field without outlining the main pitfalls to evade while developing a mobile app.

We’ve analyzed a great many of surveys and shoveled up hundreds of book on app development.

And here are four top mistakes you should circumvent when developing a successful mobile app.

Building an app for all screens

A common issue developer run into is deciding which OS to run first – Android or iOS. When considering the platform, take into account your target audience. This should help you make an informed decision.

For statistic data, you can use the following platforms:

• Statista
• Developer Economics
• Stack OverFlow

Launching an app for both platforms at once will double(or triple) your expenses since you should develop two different apps making any alterations to design or/and functionality. Note, developing an app for iOS takes less time than for Android because of a limited number of screens.

And this means, it’s somehow cheaper and allows getting an MVP (minimum viable product) as soon as possible to iTunes and see how the market reacts.

Try developing an app for one platform, then fix the bugs and make some iterations before launching for other platforms.

Did you know that Instagram was firstly built for iOS? After its spectacular success – Instagram has got nearly 30 million of active users, it was launched to Google Play.

Packing too many features

Nearly every beginner developer wants to use all built-in features of a cell phone in one app. Most modern smartphones are loaded with a great variety of features such as camera, accelerometer, pedometer, gyroscope, GPS, and so on.

Using them all in your app won’t add more value to the software. You, as a developer, should outline the main do’s of an app. Pack it with unique features designated to serve the customers well.

You’d better load an MVP with the core features focusing on the immediate needs of your target audience. You can add more useful features later in the future app versions.

Adding new features, later on, look like you’re constantly updating the app and think over the users. Hence, the app will gain more and more popularity.

Complicated UIs

Your MVP should have an extremely easy-to-use and highly intuitive user interface. The UI should be such allowing the user to learn quickly how to use it without reading the user manual.

Note, your average user is not a tech geek. Allow the user to experience the basic features of a cell phone to ease the daily routine. Try to create a well-defined User Interface where each screen, button, and function are well-thought-out.

Of course, if you want to develop an app for a real geek with the elaborate UIs, multi-gestures, and virtual reality features, it’ll be great to include a how-to section in an app.

In a nutshell, make your UI consistent and homogeneous in all your upcoming versions, so that the users won’t have to learn how to navigate the updated app.

Marketing after launching app

It’s vital to start your marketing campaign as soon as possible to achieve first visible results within a short period. Waiting until submitting an app to Google Play or App Store to start a press outreach campaign may throw you a wobbly.

It’s better to start contacting media around a month before a planned launch. Before sending outreach emails, look through the Web to find bloggers, journalists or platforms writing about similar apps.

While writing emails, try to keep them short and precise for the bloggers to grasp the main idea of what you want and what your app is capable of. Try to end your email with a call-to-action:

• Do you want to know more?
• Find it interesting?

Conclusions

Developing an app is the very first (and the most important) step in your app development career. Due to the fact, the app market is really overloaded with mobile software and without a proper marketing strategy, it may be hard to succeed.

Try to avoid the common mistakes while developing an own app and your chances to develop a fruitful app is going up and up.

Are there any mistakes that I didn’t manage to cover? Leave a comment below.

About the author:

Tasha Bronitska

She runs a blog at IDAP Group. Tasha stays tuned for more news regarding app development and other geek stuff. Want to be the first to read her must-use guides and ultimate coverages, follow IDAP on Facebook or Twitter.

Sales play a crucial role in bringing in cash flow into the business. A business cannot sustain its daily operation without it, and without it, a business would eventually fail. One of its most important and initial steps is called “prospecting” – the process of qualifying the leads who has demonstrated the desire to make a purchase decision.

Here is an in-depth definition of ringDNA on what prospecting is, and what it involves:

“The definition of sales prospecting is when inside sales reps make outbound calls or send outbound emails to leads in hopes of creating opportunities for account executives. Prospecting can involve cold-calling as well as reaching out to nurture leads that have gone cold. Many inside sales organizations have achieved successful results by hiring dedicated sales prospectors. Prospectors, also known as sales development reps (SDRs) can help achieve predictable ROI by creating a steady stream of opportunities for account executives. This can be highly effective because it frees account executives from having to prospect for their own leads.  Instead, they can spend their time selling to sales-ready prospects that have been qualified by sales development reps.”

Prospecting is pivotal in closing deals, which is the reason why it must be executed properly and in the right time. According to statistics, the first viable vendor to reach a decision maker has a 74% chance to win the deal if they manage to set the buying vision.

Here are the key takeaways from this infographic by Business Coaches Sydney on what it takes to prospect more effectively:

1. Follow a consistent schedule
2. Focus, focus, and focus
3. Implement different techniques
4. Create prospecting scripts
5. Be a provider of great solutions
6. Practice warm calling
7. Establish yourself as a thought leader
8. Know that prospecting is not selling

Check out their infographic to find out more.

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Have you just started your B2B business and wondering how to generate more leads? B2b lead generation can be tricky without a proven track record.

You may have tried some strategies, but the result isn’t what you expected. And all of it is taking too much work and time.

You may also be wondering how some start-ups grow so fast and build their client base in a few months only.

Here I’ll share 15+ tools with you which will help you to find new quality leads to your B2B business, and build up your client base quickly.

Let’s start.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

These days search engines are the map of Internet – especially Google. Search engines have the largest audience to redirect, and you simply can’t ignore them.

If you know how these engines work and how you can get your targeted keywords on top in there, your business will skyrocket like you’ve never thought.

Here’re some tools to help you with SEO.

#1. Google Keyword Planner (free)

All the SEO strategy starts with keywords. In fact, your whole strategy, implementation, and its success are hugely dependent on the keywords you want to rank for. So, finding appropriate keywords for your business is a crucial process.

Google keyword planner gives you keyword ideas, its monthly search volume, difficulty level, and more important things.

#2. Mozbar Extension (freemium)

Another important part of SEO is to study your competition. You need to know your competitor’s strength, so you can do your preparation accordingly and beat them.

Mozbar tool tells you page authority, domain authority, backlinks, and more information while viewing any page or SERP. With premium, you can see keyword difficulty, page optimization and content suggestions, and more metrics.

#3. Yoast (freemium)

When your website is up, and you start publishing content, you need to optimize it for search engines. Yoast is your friend there. It’s a plugin that helps you to make your website search engine optimized.

You get snippet editor, real time page analysis, optimize your page content, image titles, create XML sitemaps, and much more. With premium, you get redirect manager, multiple focus keywords, internal linking, and premium support.

Analyzing Traffic

Have you ever thought of analyzing your website traffic and finding leads from there? Imagine if you can find who is visiting your website, and see the visiting pattern.

By studying your audience behavior, you can optimize your website for the maximum conversion. And if you do some more research, you can find the contact details of your potential client.

This is a great strategy for finding quality leads for your B2B business. Here’re some tools to help:

#4. Google Analytics (freemium)

Google Analytics is a website monitoring and visitors tracking system. It helps you to find how many people are visiting your website, where are they coming from, what device are they using, what visiting pattern are they following, and much more. Google Analytics is so powerful and has a lot of other useful features. However, it has a little learning curve. You’ve to spend some time and learn how it works to get most out of it.

#5. Lead Forensics (free trial)

We build our website, attract our audience, and wait for the potential client to contact us. This approach has a flaw because 98% visitors never make a contact. But it doesn’t mean they don’t need your product.

Lead Forensics insert a small code (similar to Google Analytics) into your pages and tracks visitors. After tracking, it matches that information with their database and gives you the contact information of your lead.

#6. Lead Feeder (free trial)

Lead Feeder is another lead capturing tool working on the same concept – tracking your visitors and giving you the contact information. The good part is that it integrates with your Google Analytics account. The process is simple, and the interface is beautiful.

The advantage of integration with Google Analytics is that you can get leads from the last months which means you set this up and get your results instantly.

Lead Magnet Forms

Once you start getting traffic, you must prepare to get a recurring audience. Every visitor is an opportunity to grow your business and his life as well. People must go away with something valuable from your site. It could be an ebook, case-study, cheat sheet, or something else.

You may have seen big brands giving out valuable things to their visitors for free. It helps to grow the authority, getting recurring visitors, and quality leads from there.

Here’re some tools:

#7. Sumo Plugin (freemium)

Sumo is a suite of free tools that can be used to grow your website traffic and generating leads. It’s easy to setup and has features like Welcome Mat, Scroll box, Smart bar, social share buttons, and more. You can integrate your list with email service provider such MailChimp, Aweber, Active Campaign, and all other big email service providers.

#8. Lead Pages (Premium)

Lead Pages is a landing page creator that has an intuitive, drag-n-drop feature which helps you to generate simple and complex forms in minutes. It has hundreds of templates you can choose from and start instantly. It also supports popup box and integrates with your website and email service provider.

#9. TypeForm (freemium)

Another form generating tool you can use to create multiple types of forms like lead generating forms, survey forms, registration forms, quizzes, and more. The interface is minimal, and its drag-n-drop feature helps to design forms quickly. It provides an embedded code so you can display your forms on your website, social media channels, and other places.

Emailing

Email marketing is an old, yet the best strategy to get new clients and grow your business. A study says that email marketing has 4400% ROI. It means for every $1 you spend, you get $44 in return.

Let’s see some tools to help you in your email game.

#10. MailChimp (freemium)

As your email list grows, it becomes hard to handle it and sending emails turns into a nerve wrecking process. MailChimp is an email marketing automation tool that helps you to organize your email list, sending automated emails, analyzing conversion reports and more.

With a free version, you can have up to 2000 subscribers and send 12,000 emails per month. As you grow, you can upgrade your account.

#11. Hunter (freemium)

What if you’re having trouble to find an email address of someone in the company? Hunter comes there to rescue in that situation. You enter the domain name, and it tells you the company’s email format and available email address on the Internet.

#12. MailMentor (free)

The conversion rate of an email is dependent on its subject line and the body. If you’re worried about crafting better emails, use MailMentor as a helping hand. Its algorithm checks your email quality on various parameters and suggests you changes to turn your emails a little better.

Social Networks

Probably the easiest and quickest way of generating leads. Most businesses use social media for branding only, but social networks can be your great weapon for generating leads. Many growth hackers are already using it. Here’re some tools to help:

#13. LinkedIn Pulse (free)

As you know, LinkedIn is a platform for making professional connections. It has a publishing platform called “Pulse” where you can post your content and get recognition in the community. The more quality content you publish, the more eyes you get. It’s a great way of enhancing your credibility and reaching out to hundreds of quality leads at once.

#14. Buffer (freemium)

The most important part of building authority on social networks is consistency. You’ve to provide valuable content to your audience consistently. Only then you may get some recognition and quality leads.

Buffer is a tool that helps you to schedule and automate your social messages publishing on your selected platform. You can connect your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google Plus, and Pinterest account there.

#15. Facebook Ads (Paid)

Some people think that Facebook is just for spreading fake news. Well, it’s much more useful than that. Facebook has billions of users, and if you implement right thing in the right order, you may get dozens of quality leads there. Through Facebook Ads, you can reach to your targeted audience quickly by just spending a few dollars.

Another idea to run a contest on Facebook. If you’re giving a good deal, it may go viral, and you’ll get plenty of sign ups.

#16. Quora (free)

Quora is the most popular Q&A community on earth. It covers a wide range of niches. No matter what industry you belongs to, you’ll find your audience here.

You need to find boards and topics related to your niche and start getting engaged there. Ask questions and answer what others are asking. Soon you’ll be known and taken as an expert, which will help you to get quality leads.

Starting a business and taking it to the heights isn’t easy. It takes a lot of hard work, time, and money. You’ve to keep yourself in the searching and learning mode all the time. I hope this post will help you in the journey. Share your experience in the comment box.

It’s an achievement to Airbnb to acquire Montreal’s Luxury Retreats

Have you ever noticed most of the entrepreneurs and limited partners often ask the same question: what should they do to get the successful exit? The answer is quite simple, it’s optionality.

Is optionality time-consuming?

There will be the complex opportunity of identifying the early-stage tech entrepreneurs, with them we feel confident enough to partner with over the long-run so that both the partnering companies will have the good name and they can expand their business as they desire. The opportunity of selecting the entrepreneurs comes with the challenge of identifying the entrepreneurs with whom we have chemistry, affinity, similar values, and the alignment of interest. Nowadays, there are many emerging entrepreneurs, but the size of each fund and the time commitment will make the companies to partner with a limited number of entrepreneurs and thus there will be a finite number of entrepreneurs per fund. Another complexity is that we need to be selected by the entrepreneur as well.

Not your usual acquisition deal

Usually, the nascent partnership with the founder will happen after the years of efforts in supporting and enhancing the company’s growth and vision. The VC supporting their entrepreneurs in developing the category-leading companies, sound boarding and focus on the three core elements is mandatory they are attracting talent, attracting capital growth, and helping build corporate relationships.

The exit stage is the most challenging one, in which the whole set of dimensions, comes into play. Some believe that exit is not the best term as an entrepreneur should not have to sell his/ her company, but rather you should up the possibility to get acquired or should have the opportunity to IPO to enable their next chapter.

We understand that it will be difficult for the CEO to get into the mindset of early relationship building that may bring new offers. Building towards the optionality is the time-consuming one because it needs the support of the resources and can divert from the daily operations, but the CEO has the option to say no to the unrequested offer that is quite powerful.

Optionality for luxury retreats

The CEO of luxury retreats, Joe Poulin said that they didn’t raise any venture capital in 2010; at that time they have an option of choosing the investors to fund their vision. Now, Airbnb has acquired Luxury Retreats after many successful attempts. Managing partner of iNovia, Chris Arsenault, was an early investor of Luxury Retreats said that their relationship building with Luxury Retreats has resulted in an investment in the first quarter of 2012. With enough capital on hand, Joe started to pull the high-quality board of directors Hugh Crean, Peter Kern, and Bertrand Cesvet. Chris also has the opportunity to join as a member of the board.

The board was in line with the vision that Joe has already set on and he expected the growth challenges ahead.

Planning the timing

Subsequently, the actions were implemented to solidify the team in order to enhance the growth. Over the few years, iNovia actively concentrated on the work. Joe and the board were helping to attract a stellar executive team with the deep sector expertise. It was really difficult, it took few rounds to attract the right team members, but they eventually found there.

Luxury Retreats were requested a number of times over the years to be acquired and this made them think ever better. It forced the management to check their growth path, which the company has followed over the years. And take decisions concern to how it will step into the next level. This resulted in accelerating the Luxury Retreats. The second financing round was led by iNovia in 2015. This time the company invented three of their limited partners into the round to invest in the fund and it resulted in financial closing internally.

During this whole journey, Joe never moved aimlessly from his original vision of developing and owning the most elegant luxury travel experience for all his guests. He has the ability to attract the top talent, develop technology-based experiences, and concierge management. And he has the ability to build the strong strategic relationships that proved very valuable. According to Joe, building the strategic partnerships was the second nature. Earlier, Luxury Retreats has partnered with HomeAway, VRBO, and Airbnb for their reach and distribution.

Closing the big deal

Joe, the CEO, and co-founder of the profitable company has evaluated every acquisition opportunity and the financing offer as if it was the last. He encourages the relationships and he will make sure the competition and deep pocket acquirers should know about Luxury Retreats, its entire performance, and results. He also makes sure the investors and the key industry players should know about the company and he ensures that the key industry players knew about the company and they are inspired by the team’s execution activities and should know that the company had the exit opportunities and also the financial options. All these relationships were developed over long periods of time and basically, they require a working relationship first. This allows both the sides to understand each other better and better and above all, it discovers the strategic value, which you can bring to a potential acquirer. It considers the unique skills to build the feasible options prior to engaging the company into following any of them. Sometimes, the founders may focus on the narrow set of options, but Joe followed them all.

Making hard business decisions

Optionality was one of the Luxury’s biggest strengths and when Airbnb approached Luxury Retreats to investigate how much deeper the initial commercial relationship can extend. Joe’s vision for the Luxury tourism services was very much clear and for sure the Co-founder of Airbnb, Brian would have fallen in love with it. Along with the powerful management team, and the high growth potential of combining both the partnering companies. The coincidence of interests and the key assumptions would have made Airbnb acquire Luxury Retreats.

To get acquired by another company doesn’t mean that you should have to put up for sale, but as a CEO it means that having an opportunity to review and decline the uninvited order. And if the company is in the situation of optionality requires the investment in the correct time and it also requires the proper effort towards building the key relationship along the same way. iNovia is proud to work with the highly promising company, Luxury Retreats.

The acquisition

With the support of the Luxury Retreats acquisition, Airbnb will gain more than 4,000 best properties in the world. It has the unique technology and the knowledge of 260 main employees with the immense luxury travel and concierge expertise, the vision and clear understanding of the executive team will help to grow this segment like none in the industry have done.

Luxury Retreats, the second transaction iNovia has been involved next to Airbnb. It is an added advantage for the Airbnb to have such a substantial footprint in their history. Great ecosystems happen when this kind of healthy and wise transaction happen. And it is time for the Montreal to raise the bar again. This acquisition will be one of the footpaths in the history of both Luxury Retreats and Airbnb. And it will also help the tech community to grow further. And this acquisition may have the multiplier effect on the Montreal tech ecosystem.

Gaining visibility for your app is increasingly more difficult

So you’re ready with a new app. But have you thought about what you will do to make a huge number of people see your app in order to make its launch a success? Your app launch can either be all “fire” or “all smoke, no fire”; depending on the number of people it reaches after the launch.

The unfortunate reality is, most apps don’t ever really take off, and the reason is there’s no one there to drive the app marketing engine.

Think of your app as a car that requires a driver behind the steering wheel. It can only reach a destination when the driver actually knows what they are doing and where they are heading. Launching your app is the same. If you’re not driving that process, or if you don’t know what you’re doing, your chances of making a splash in the competitive app market are slim.

The booming competition on the major app stores is also making it increasingly difficult for app developers to get significant organic views and download numbers. As a result, many are turning to paid user acquisition and ‘app install ads’ as solutions to this problem. There can be different campaign goals but there is one thing that everyone wants: minimal advertising costs.

How to be a smarter app marketer

Most of the app developers choose Facebook as their favourite advertising platform. The huge user base which is over 700 million daily users on mobile, amazing targeting options, and most importantly, the ability to deliver low-cost app installs and engagement, make it an ideal solution for app developers to make their app successful. On Facebook, if right strategies are used for advertising you app, it is possible to get over 100k people to see your new app within a budget of 100$.

But like anything else, there are learning curves if you want to optimise your Facebook app install ad campaigns.

There are several ways to improve your Facebook ads for apps and your ad campaign can either make it or break it for you when it comes to your app success. In this guide, we will look at the case study of a popular app that gained maximum visibility on Facebook, which can be used to learn the ways to get huge number of people see your new app on Facebook in a limited budget.

Let’s look at the success story of an app that made most of their Facebook ad campaign to find out what can be learnt from them to start a successful ad campaign for an app.

Case study: ServisHero

ServisHero is a mobile app that connects people to service providers for cleaning, air conditioner servicing, moving and more. It was launched in June 2015 and the app operated in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. It provides quotations, profiles and reviews so people can hire with confidence.

Their Goal

As a new start-up, the team at ServisHero wanted to learn more about its customer profile and increase conversions on Facebook. It also wanted to increase app installs.

Their Solution

To identify its target audience, ServisHero team used location and interest targeting, showing ads to people within the Klang Valley in Malaysia. With a partner agency, the team tested a variety of core audience sets, such as young parents and people interested in South-east Asian start-ups, for instance, and used Facebook’s audience retargeting and exclusion capabilities. It found that people aged 25–40 engaged with the ads most. However, most of the job requests came from females aged 30–39.

The campaign used ads and an animated video to promote ServisHero’s key services on Facebook. The ad series demonstrated its variety of services with cartoon visuals that positioned the brand as friendly and accessible. The ads also highlighted ServisHero’s mobile app to encourage downloads.

Generating great content for your ad campaign

Their comical 30-second video featured 2 friends in a living room. The clumsy one makes a mess, and the other friend pulls out her phone to call ServisHero. The catchy video, with its upbeat music, demonstrated how easy it is to use the app.

‘Custom Audiences’ (a Facebook tool for app ads) helped ServisHero reach people who had previously requested its services to encourage them to make another booking. The company also used Lookalike Audiences to find potential customers similar to those who had already shown interest.

“Facebook Ads helped us know our customers better, increase awareness and drive transactions. Collaborating with our social agency, we have improved our business performance while reducing transaction costs. Given our success, we will be allocating a higher proportion of our digital marketing budget to our Facebook campaigns.”- Siddhant Hiremath, Digital Marketing Associate, ServisHero

Products Used

• Video Ads
• Carousel
• Audience Insights
• Conversion Tracking
• Custom Audiences
• Lookalike Audiences
• App Installs Ad

Goals

• Increase views and Raise Brand Awareness
• Drive Online Sales
• Promote Your App

Their Success

Using Facebook to identify its key audience, ServisHero saw a large increase in job requests and app downloads. The campaign, which ran from early February to the end of June 2016, achieved:

• 56% lower cost per job request
• 32X more mobile app installs
• 10% more job requests than from other ad platforms

“Facebook provides effective ways to reach, influence and convert audiences who need the professional services available on ServisHero. Using our prospect-to-conversion marketing recipe, we accelerated business growth, improved return on investment and moved the brand from zero to hero”-Oliver Cheah, Managing Director.

So, now the question that comes to mind is what can be done in order to be as successful as ServisHero with the help of Facebook? Read below to know:

Facebook Ads

Targeting is what makes Facebook Ads so powerful compared to other advertising platforms. Targeting is all about putting your ads in front of the right people.  The right people are the ones who will download, and use your apps.

Facebook offers a huge range of targeting options that was utilised by the ServisHero team. Let’s look at each type of targeting that’s available and what you can do with them.

• Demographics – Target people by location, age, gender, relationship status, the level of education, work, financial income and net worth, generation, whether or not they are parents, political preference, or certain life events.
• Interests – This is where it starts to get really interesting. You can target people based on what they are interested in. This data isn’t just guesswork, Facebook knows because people share this information openly. Use it to your advantage while targeting the audience for your ad campaign.
• Behaviours – In case that’s not enough for you, Facebook also allows you to target audiences based on behaviours. Here are just a few examples of some user behaviour you can target:
• People who often look up for services online
• People who have made a purchase at a high-end luxury store
• or young  parents who live in a household

Yep, all of those are actual targeting options taken straight from Facebook which turns out to be great for app developers and advertisers.

Tips To Help App Developers Improve Facebook App Install Ad Targeting:

• Determine who your perfect user is– Whether it’s through analytics or market research, you need to really get specific about what your most valuable app users look like. That will make targeting much easier and more effective for you. Once you know who the ideal users are, use demographic targeting to find them. Narrow down the demographic targeting as much as you can.
• Be specific with interest targeting- For example, let’s say you have got a running app. You could target people interested in ‘Fitness.’ But health & fitness is a broad topic, right? This means you probably wouldn’t want to show your ads to people who are interested in yoga. The good news is you don’t have to! You can get really granular and target people interested only in running, and that’s exactly what is recommended.
• Target users who are interested in your competitors- Interest targeting also allows you to target people based on products or services that they like. That means that you can often target people based on them being interested in a particular app.

For example, many game app developers used this to target an audience interested in the app ‘Subway Surfers’.  They knew people who liked that game would also enjoy other similar game. And it worked really well for them. With that campaign, they achieved installs from tier 1 countries (The USA, UK, Australia & Canada) for less than $0.40 each.

• Gain Attention with a Stunning Image or Video – Once you’ve got your targeting set up, it’s time to create the app install ad. The image or video that you use is going to be the first thing people see, so you have to make it count.

The role of the image or video is to get the attention of your ideal user and the video made by ServisHome worked for them. By ideal user, we do not just mean anyone. You could use a picture of a pink gorilla dancing in the street that will get the attention of a broad audience, but if 99% of those people aren’t interested in your app, it won’t be effective for your app install ad campaign.

How to create effective image and video ads for Facebook app marketing campaigns

• Observe your competitors to get an idea of what’s working. Leverage the work already done by big marketing departments by studying the images and videos they use for their ad. See what techniques they are using and apply them to your own images or videos.
• Don’t apply the same strategies to all apps. Once you start looking at competitors you will notice that particular techniques work better for particular app categories. Find what works for your category.
• Use something that is bright, eye-catching, and interesting. There is a lot going on in the Facebook feed, so you will have to make something that stands out from the crowd.
• Make it relevant. For example, if your app is a running app, it would be appropriate to show a fit person running than someone sitting on the couch watching TV.
• Don’t use low-quality images or videos. This is going to set the first impression of your app. If you use a blurry, poor quality image or video, people will assume a similarly low level of quality from your app.
• Capture The Click With Great Text

After looking at your app install ad’s image or video, the next thing people do is read the ad title and body text. After the image does its job of capturing attention, it comes up to the text to convince a person to click on the download option.

Writing sales copy for your app ads

You need to communicate the most appealing features of your app in as few words as possible. Here are the tips:

• Think about what features appeal to your audience most and tell them about those features as briefly as possible.
• Always include a call to action. When you create the call to action, use something they enjoy doing instead of just “download now!”

If you’re advertising a multiplayer racing game, think -what your ideal user like doing? It can be racing with their friends. So as a call to action, you can put “Click here to race your friends now!” as that would be much more appealing to your audience than just a boring “Download Now”.

Make Sure Your Non-Keyword ASO Is Amazing

This is something that is often overlooked, but it is crucial for your app success. ASO (App Store Optimization) means managing everything that a person sees on the app store page for your app.

This can include the icon, title, app description, and average rating.

When a user clicks on an App Install ad on Facebook, they are taken to the App Store page for your app. They will then see all of these things before deciding whether or not to take the final step and download it.

It’s great to have an effective Facebook ad, but all the efforts will be in vain if people get to your app store page and don’t download because you haven’t optimised your non-keyword ASO. Don’t let a bad icon or app description ruin an otherwise great ad campaign.

Final recommendations

Another thing here is the importance of your app’s average rating. The average rating is displayed in both the App Store page and Facebook ad.

Having a 4 or 5-star average rating will have a positive effect on your ad campaigns because people love social proof. If someone sees an ad for your app with a 5-star rating shown below, they are much more likely to click.

Spend some time creating different ad combinations and always run at least three per campaign. On top of testing different ads, you should also test different targeting strategies for your Facebook Ad Campaigns. Like the ads themselves, it’s unlikely that you will create the perfect targeting strategy on the first attempt.

Therefore, take the time to tweak and test your targeting based on the data that you get from the reports. The more you can optimise your targeting, the cheaper those installs or engagements will become.

Conclusion

And there you have it. Use these key components of a Facebook Ad campaign for your app to get better results.

There’s a lot to take in and try out, but remember not to get intimidated. You can always start small until you get confident or use an agency to help.

Campaigns can be run for just a few dollars per day, so why not start experimenting.

There are higher chances that with proper planning and effective implementation of Facebook ad strategies, your app will get enough views to be added to the list of most popular apps in the world.

Top 7 Reasons Your Business Needs a Mobile-Friendly Website Right Now

As more and more business enters the market, the need to adapt to the new technologies is increasingly becoming more imperative nowadays. As our society is rapidly becoming purely digital, companies must be quick in using new tools and platforms to protect their position in the market and not be buried by the stiff competition.

In the online age, what are tools that your business is currently using to stand out from the crowd?

One of the musts, in order to rock in the digital plane, is having a website for your business. However, a website that only runs on desktop PCs and laptops won’t be enough to resonate in the online world, but why? Because of mobile devices.

With 80% of internet users owning a smartphone today, there can be no doubt that most of the organic reach today are coming from mobile users. In fact, over a billion people across the globe are using their mobile devices to access the internet nowadays! That’s a huge number that any business can’t afford to ignore, especially that are aiming to further increase their market reach.

Wondering how mobile-friendly website can improve your business? Here are the key takeaways from the infographic from Harris Myers that reveals the top reasons why mobile-friend.

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1. Most Customers Are Now on Mobile

As of 2013, mobile devices have surpassed desktop PCs and laptops in terms of time spent on online shopping. According to comScore, 55% of all time spent with online retail in June 2013 occurred on a mobile device, while 45% occurred on desktops. Specifically, smartphones accounted for 44% of retail internet minutes while tablets accounted for 11%

This trend is rapidly rising. Last year, smartphones now account for 78% of digital media time spent.

That said, most of the companies today are implementing the “mobile-first” approach to website design to ensure that their site works seamlessly on mobile devices, while its appearance and functionality automatically adjust to other platforms that the user may have access with, such as desktop and laptops.

For small and medium-sized businesses, this is approach is more cost-effective than creating a second site that is parallel to your desktop-oriented site. Though it’s more work-intensive to build a mobile-responsive website, its benefits are extremely significant in the long run.

2. It is Good For SEO

Since Google’s algorithm update in April 2015, Responsive Design is now favored in Google’s Rankings over having a separate mobile website, or not having a mobile-friendly website at all. This major update also imposes significant penalties in terms of search results on websites that fail to meet its standards for mobile usability.

Matt Cutts of Google said that using a separate website for mobile and desktop might work just fine, but if not handled properly, “might, in theory, divide the page rank between those two pages”. Having a responsive design, on the other hand, “means that everything is handled in one URL and so the page rank doesn’t get divided”

Search ranking is critical for many businesses nowadays, so if you do not want to lose it to your competition, you better create a mobile-friendly website today.

3. It Provides Better User Experience

Another reason why your business will benefit from having a mobile-friendly website is that it provides your audience with better mobile experience.

Mobile user experience is such a great deal nowadays that in fact, 52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company!

Imagine this: A visitor to your website is very much interested in your product, to the point he already told ten of his friends to check out your website. Now, they used their mobile devices to access your site, but unfortunately, it took thirty seconds to load, and worst, the page content were not displayed properly.

Will they still buy from your website? Most probably not.

A bad user experience can immensely affect the reputation of your brand. If the user has to spend time scrupulously zooming and scrolling around a desktop website on their mobile, they are more likely to leave your site within the first few seconds.

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4. It Enhances Your Social Media Marketing

The rise of mobile devices also has a direct impact on the explosion of social media networks these days. In fact, 91% of mobile internet access is used for social activities.

If your business is utilizing social media marketing, then probably most of your followings are using their mobile devices to access your website. If you want to maximize your social media marketing efforts, you need to design a website that is responsive and can make your products and services more shareable.

5. It is Cost-Effective

The “mobile-first” approach ensures that the appearance and functionalities of a desktop website, such as comprehensive menu navigation, are rescaled based on the device or equipment being used by the user.

In doing so, you no longer need to create and manage separate websites for mobile devices and desktop PCs, allowing you to save a lot of money on design, development, and maintenance cost!

6. Better Conversions and Sales

On top of all the benefits of having a mobile-friendly website, it will also help you improve your online conversions and sales.

If your target market can access your website conveniently on their mobile devices, then they are more likely to complete contact forms, make purchases, and become a loyal customer of your brand!

7. It Prepares for the Future

As the global commerce and technology continue to intersect and develop, it can be a real challenge for businesses to see what is coming up next.

One of the main benefits to having a mobile-friendly, responsive website is that even for technology platforms that are dynamic – such as wearable devices and smartphones- your website will still run very well and be optimized.  This means that mobile-friendly website will serve your business for years to come.

These are just of the compelling reasons why your business needs a mobile-friendly website today. If you want to survive in the competitive market, you either join the bandwagon and make your online presence much stronger or be left out by your competitors. It’ s your call.

How to retain users with the right onboarding strategy?

It is critical to have a great mobile application with even better onboarding experience. If the user onboarding experience is great, then the churn rates get lowered along with the boost in long-term success factors like user retention and user life-time value. In order to increase retention, your apps must offer consistent and smooth user experience which includes design, customer delight and a great deal of value. This article is going to explore the best ways that will turn the guest users or initial downloads into highly engaged users.

1. Create a path of minimal resistance:

The harder for people to sign up or sign in in the app, the more will be the abandonment rates. The single log-in screen is the best and preferred by the social media and entertainment apps. After all, user onboarding with mobile (or any other) apps is basically about making it easy for the users to log in and to start using the app. Hence, you must choose the path which is least resistant and difficult for people. But this route is not always the right choice made. The utility of the app and the concept of the app; both are the deciding factors for the different method of onboarding.

• Usefulness-oriented:- transmits information about the value of the app.
• Performance -oriented:- demonstrates the vital functions of the app.
• Progressive:- enlightening the customers through ushered instructions.
• Hybrid:- combination of two or all of the abovementioned points.

Apart from the fact that which method of user onboarding is the best, the primary motive is to make it as easy as possible for the users to start using the app.

2. Keep the amount of sign up or log-in fields to a minimum:

We often face trouble while filling long forms on phone or mobile where the screen size is small. So, it is ideal to allow only a single screen log in process like the social media apps do but some apps might require more information than that. Like an app based on service has user base of existing customers. In such circumstances, where you need a lot of information, you might break the one screen rule. Given below is a demonstration of an application of a large home services company, the sign-up process of which is divided into various steps.

In such circumstances, where you need a lot of information, you might break the one screen rule. Given below is a demonstration of an application of a large home services company, the sign-up process of which is divided into various steps.

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3. Stick to ‘one screen’ and ‘one concept’ principle:

People often pay more attention if something is defined into key points rather than beating about the bush. Onboarding screens must collocate information in single screen and should avoid surcharging the user with useless information. This should be followed especially in the usefulness and performance oriented app onboarding where the basic motive is to educate the users about functions and commune values.

4. Give feedback quickly:

Feedback is very important in an app onboarding process as it reflects the faults and successes in a validation process. Feedbacks can also be used through animations which stimulate the interactions positively.

5. Utilization of ushered interactions to achieve development:

There are also some apps which are complex and not easy to understand and use. Such apps provide a tutorial or guide to make the user familiar with the use of the application. Those apps which provide the most successful app user onboarding experience also give provide the excitement and fun of using and learning something new. This method is mostly preferred in video games where the user just play the game for a while to become familiar with the control and tricks of the game.

6. Make a use of animation:

Subtle animation should be used to draw the attention of the user to something which is undiscovered or to indicate progress or development etc. It should only grab the attention of the user but should not irritate him.

7. Keep testing consistently:

The feedback and reviews given by the users will help you in improving your application. Mobile app development service should never stop listening to the views of the users as it will help them in removing friction and making the app more user-friendly. Try new things if you have sufficient data to discern patterns and test to see if the users love the new idea or hate it.

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Not sure how to develop bug free mobile apps?

Stability is always important when it comes to apps, whether it is a web application or a mobile one. It is especially important in the latter case given the number of security issues that arise in mobile apps and the number of initiatives being taken in this regard. Any developer involved in mobile app development is invested in the idea of a bug free mobile app and strives towards making his/her app bug free. However, it isn’t quite as easy as it sounds and being in the industry for some time now, we came up with a few ideas and strategies that can help developers come up with bug free apps.

With a mobile app, user privacy and security are the foremost concerns as apps access contact details and other personal information about the user. In such scenarios, detailed planning is required to ensure security of user information. Here are some of the things that you should consider doing to ensure the same.

#1: Have a detailed and thorough plan to ensure security

Having a plan in place before working on your mobile app development and looking out for possible issues and breaches is a very good way to approach handling security in your app. Also, keeping abreast of all the latest threats and vulnerabilities in apps and how developers around the work are handling them is recommended. There are security guidelines too that are coming up and sticking to the highest benchmarks would help ensure that there is no privacy or security violation.

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#2: Test in cycles and iterations to get the best results

A clear cut testing plan is essential if you seek to combat bugs and having multiple rounds of testing at various stages of development is essential. With our experience in Android application development, we also recommend that you take up beta testing. This is perhaps one of the most used testing norms whereby user inputs are taken into account and used to improve the app’s functionality and user experience. We vouch by it and recommend that you give it a try to ensure that your app is bug free!

#3: Revise your code multiple times

Code checks and revisions should be built into the development process and with many iterations, it becomes possible to identify defects early on and improve performance, etc. Get others on your team to review your code and keep doing this multiple times to ensure a bug free app.

#4: Use the debugging tool well

Debuggers are extremely useful and will help you improve the quality of your app. Debuggers needn’t necessarily be a pain; they can be used to improve your app quality and help you fix bugs in a jiffy. Invest in a good debugger and reap rich rewards!

#5: Use automated tools for testing

Automated test scripts help you identify a lot of errors and also save you much time. Agreed that you would have to work on writing the automated test scripts but it is effort well invested. Rather than relying on your team or users to identify issues, your test scripts will help you rule out a lot of nasty bugs and we recommend that you employ them in your mobile app development.

Achieving a state wherein there are no bugs at all is virtually impossible and a lot of the maintenance work that goes into apps is all about fixing some glitches and releasing updates. However, putting in your best effort during Android application development can help you rule out a lot of potentially problematic bugs and the more you focus on this, the higher likelihood there is of avoiding a lot many errors.

Since there are thousands of apps available in the app stores, it becomes quite difficult to establish a unique place in the web market. No matter how interactive and user-friendly your mobile app is, if you haven’t prepared a robust pre as well as post marketing strategy, you won’t generate desired results.

Being an app marketer, make sure you understand the fluctuating needs of the customer’s behavior as well as marketing trends before getting into any promotional activity. After accessing your business needs, specific niche and marketing trends, you can create a robust marketing strategy for both the pre-launch and post-launch of your app.

Here in this blog post, we will go through the pre and post app marketing strategies that are effective and result-oriented.

Let’s get started!

Pre App marketing Strategy 

1. Set your app marketing goals carefully

While promoting a mobile app may be a new task for you, setting up goals is one of the most common and vital steps in all marketing campaigns. Before the launch of your application, make sure you set determined goals for your product.

Be realistic, specific and clear while planning your app marketing goals. Take the feedbacks from your targeted app users or audiences, and understand what they expect from you – this will help you create quality content for your marketing strategy.

2. Create stimulating demo videos

Once setting up your marketing goals, it’s the right time to craft simple yet appealing demo videos to showcase the glimpse of your mobile app. This creates an excitement among the people to use that particular app.

For professional looking demo videos and teasers, use the creative and inviting content. Stimulate people to see your video at least for once. You can even promote these types of stuff on social networking sites as well. There you will get more exposure and you could also generate better results.

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3. Get ready with your content

Marketing an app via unique and quality content is one of the best ways to get people’s attention. Since people search for fresh and informative content, you can prepare all the content such as blog posts, articles, forums, press releases, and newsletters related to your mobile app to encourage more mobile users towards your brand.

You can also hire a professional content writer or a blogger who can help you create high-quality content for your mobile app marketing. This can create awareness about your app among targeted mobile users, which is good for your brand as well.

4. Publicize the launch date and time of your app

Make an official announcement about the launching date of your mobile app. You can do this two or three days before the launch of your app. You can give detailed information about your app to let reporters write news about it with ease.

You can also share logos, screenshots, and demo videos to the specific web audience to make a grand launch of your mobile app.

5. Promote app reviews across web channels

After the launch of your app, make sure you get reviews by sending the app the specific industry experts, bloggers and media personals, big review websites and other popular sites.

Also, post a short description related to the app launch on all social networking sites to get more online visibility.

Post-Launch App Marketing Strategies

Don’t stop the marketing campaigns after the launch of your mobile app. Keep creating fresh and quality blog posts, articles regarding the new features of your app. Below are some other strategies that you should keep in mind:

1. App Store Optimization (ASO)

ASO is the SEO of the App marketing world. This means you will need to optimize your App Store listing page to get better ranking in the App Stores. This makes it easy for potential visitors to discover your app. So, optimize the app store title. Create a title that can represent your brand within a glimpse.

Since the limit of App Icon Name is restricted to 12 characters, make sure you optimize it according to the specific requirement. Also, create ASO friendly description for your app and choose the right category in the app store to save your mobile user’s precious time.

2. Send emails and newsletters

Expand your email list by creating and sending professional looking emails to your potential mobile users. Convey your messages related to the new updates of your app to your subscribers creating beautiful and customized newsletters.

3. Social Media Marketing

Promote your app on different social media platforms such as Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, etc to grow your customer base. You can use videos, images relevant to your app on these platforms to grab the attention of more and more people.

Conclusion

These are the pre- and post app marketing strategies that will boost your marketing reach and also enhance your brand awareness across the web.