Showing posts with label Mobile Applications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mobile Applications. Show all posts

Friday, October 19, 2018

E-COMMERCE SUCCESS

HOW TO DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR ONLINE STORE

The famous psycho-physicist Dr. Howard Moskowitz once said: “There is no perfect Pepsi; just different kinds of perfect Pepsi for different groups of people.” His point is that every visitor that comes to your website is different –– bringing along with them various life experiences and points of view that alter the way your site and products look to them. Therefore, it is crucial to choose those marketing methods that will ‘attract’ your customer. For instance, if you know that your audience is frequent social media users, you need to focus on Social Media Marketing (SMM), such as Facebook:
 

  However, social media is not the only tool. Digital Marketing tools like HootSuite, Sprout Social, Social Oomph, and much more makes very easy to engage the relevant audience for sales. A very famous e-commerce company-Diamond Candles, sold their products in a unique way. These scented soya based candles can give a customer a surprise fancy ring ranging from $100 to $5000 in value. Instead of promoting their product on Social Media, they discussed the brand with every 3rd person and asked their customers to post their picture with a ring. Later on, they used same pictures to re-post on Social Media to engage their customers. CEO of Diamond Candle pretty much believed in “Showing” rather than “Saying” and thought out of the box to make it a huge success with help of social media and word of mouth. Today we will have a look at three ways of how to increase the number of visitors to your online shopping store.

INFLUENCER MARKETING

Influencer marketing is a relatively new concept in the marketing world. With the rise in popularity of social media, brands have realized that they no longer have the ‘one to all’ voice they used to. Billboards, TV commercials and magazine ads may still be used by big brands to increase brand visibility, but these tactics are usually outside the reach (and budgets) of small businesses. Fortunately, social media offers small businesses the opportunity to level the playing field. Instead of broadcasting their message to a large, generic audience – which is likely to cost lots of money and be only moderately effective – they can target a smaller, more relevant audience. One of the most effective ways businesses are doing this is through influencer marketing. This is the process of having celebrities, influential bloggers, or industry experts talk about your brand, mention a product, or share your content. Not only does influencer marketing tend to be less costly than traditional marketing methods, it’s a much better fit (i.e. more effective) in our word-of-mouth culture.  

 

Case Study: Daniel Wellington

According to Econsultancy.com, Daniel Wellington is a watch brand that has chosen to completely bypass traditional marketing to focus on influencers. The brand pays celebrities for the sponsored posts and gifts watches to lesser-known micro-influencers. In exchange, they post photos of themselves wearing the watch, accompanied by a unique money-off code for followers. It’s a simple formula: beautiful images of minimalistic jewellery, which serve to promote a lifestyle as well as a product. There are over 1.5m Instagram posts using the #danielwellington hashtag, with the brand’s main account amassing over 3.5m followers. Considering the brand’s beginnings as a small start-up – it’s an impressive display of the strategy's potential.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

We all know SEO is important, and yet sometimes we let it “happen by accident” instead of giving it the attention it deserves. 95% of web traffic comes from a search engine, and less than 5% of web searchers make it through to the second page of returned search results. It is important to pay attention to the product keywords you should be using. You need to use a tool like the Google Keyword Planner to guide you to the right list of words that are the most relevant to your product. Consistently adding unique and high quality content on a regular basis to your ecommerce site will not only add additional value for users, it will also help with your search engine ranking. Consider using your and add content that's related to the products and services that you sell.  

 

Few important SEO tips for your E-commerce store:

Image search has become a very popular function that internet users are increasingly using to find products online. Therefore, ecommerce websites need to add related keywords into the ALT tags of every image on their website. For optimal effect, make sure that every keyword used for an image is directly relevant and avoid stuffing keywords into the alt tags. A common error made by many ecommerce sites is burying their product pages deep within their link structure. This will not only make it more difficult for users to find products, it will also impact the product pages PageRank score, making those pages less likely to appear high in search. Having product content only a link away from your home page will make them easier for both the search engines as well as your customers. In addition, the way that you structure your online shopping store will impact its visibility. Consider structuring your ecommerce store so that it includes a number of landing pages. These pages can be specific to a brand or product type. Doing this gives you the opportunity to optimize for multiple pages and keyword groups, which will increase your site's visibilty in search (Shopify.com). Do you need SEO assistance for your e-commerce store? Let Blueninja.io help you! The more detailed explanation of how to structure your E-commerce website will be given in our next E-commerce article. Stay tuned!

PPC ADVERTISING

More and more people are shopping online, and advertising platforms have taken notice, giving more on-page real estate to retail-related ads. If you’re in the retail industry, chances are you’re already using some form of online advertising to promote your products (link to digital marketing service page), but there is most likely room for improvement. Just as with search or display ads, there are plenty of options when it comes to PPC ecommerce ads. The two most popular (and fastest-growing) platforms you should be using are Google Merchant Center and Amazon Advertising. Google shopping ads are growing. Amazon is another great option if you’re able to host your products there. A recent report from Slice Intelligence found that spending with Amazon accounted for 43% of all US online revenue in 2016, while the company itself accounted for 53% of all online sales growth in the US. Google has even taken notice of Amazon’s success, with the company recently testing running Amazon shopping ads on Google.  


  Besides, it is important to diversify the types of ads you’re using for ecommerce. Both text ads and Product Listing Ads can be useful when it comes to selling products. Text ads allow you to highlight more specific prices and features in your headline and description, while PLAs allow you to compete with the ever-growing online shopping industry. Having both in place will allow you to partake in the best of both worlds.

Conclusion

“The e-commerce industry is a force that no investor can afford to ignore” © Cushla Sherlock, Corporate Communications, Credit-Suisse. One of the most significant trends of the 21st century is characterized with replacement of traditional retailing with online shopping, gaining the central stage. Driving traffic to your ecommerce store helps bring in potential customers to land you that sale. Many spend their time perfecting the appearance of their online store and fail to do what really matters: marketing. If you’re serious about the future and growth of your business it’s essential that you drive traffic to your online store no matter how much work it is. Do you want Blueninja.io help you with the development of a great online shopping store for your business? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing (link to service pages) are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!  

With creativity in heart, with an idea in mind!

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES FOR MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES FOR MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT

Introduction

The role of the mobile applications in the modern world of business cannot be underestimated. According to a survey conducted by dscout in 2016, “smartphone users touch their phones 2,617 times each day, and spend an average of 145 daily minutes on their mobile phones”, as stated by Buildfire. Besides, as mobile marketing continues to dominate the digital marketing practices, many companies are intensively capitalizing on the latest mobile technology in the current decade – mobile apps, to create brand awareness and acquire new customers. Nowadays, thousands of new mobile apps are added to Google Play and App Store, with thousands of downloads by users within seconds. The mobile app development process typically includes idea, strategy, design, development, deployment, and post-launch phases. Today we will have a closer look at the development phase in general, but at the programming languages in particular. Software and mobile app development is a vigorous field where different programming languages and frameworks are introduced and practiced. The programming language chosen by developers can be one of the most important aspects and should also be one of the first steps taken. It is time to select a programming language for your mobile app development process, keeping in mind your business strategy to make either native, hybrid, or cross-platform mobile apps. There are several programming languages to choose from. One of the easiest ways is to select the most popular language. Today we will have a look at Python, Java and C++.  
 

PYTHON

Python is an object-oriented and high-level programming language with combined dynamic semantics mainly for web and mobile app development. Python is used in a wide variety of application domains as it can easily be connected with C, Objective-C, Java, or FORTRAN. It runs on all major operating systems, like Windows, Linux/Unix, OS/2, Mac, Amiga, etc. It offers dynamic typing and dynamic binding option so it is highly attractive in the field of mobile application development. In comparison to other programming languages, Python is easier to learn, highly readable, and simple to implement as it has a clean syntax which requires less coding. It focuses on the business logic rather than basic facts of the language. Python helps developers in reading and translating code much easier than any others languages and it also reduces the cost of program maintenance and web & app development. With the help of Python, we can create any type of mobile applications, like Calibre, OpenStack, Ubuntu Software Center, World of Tanks, Quora, BitTorrent, Reddit, Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, and others.  
  Mobile application development has become one of the major sectors because of its expanding scope in the world of business. The cross-platform Python framework works for Android, Windows 7, Linux, and Mac. It is a great tool for writing simple scripts and complex multi-threaded mobile applications. The interesting thing about Android having Python in it is the chance to use limitless lines of code already written and available for free. Web and App Developers for iPhone and Android apps use a number of cross-platform app development techniques to provide their customer a great mobile application, according to DZone.

C++

This is the most appropriate programming language when it comes to building mobile applications for Android and Windows- and, mainly for low-level programming, it's still the go-to language on platforms for mobile app developers. Probytes.net states that regarding mobile apps, C++ has been doing unusually well since it helps to develop cross-platform mobile apps easily with its consolidating debugging experience and powerful environment. It can be used to design and build amazing apps for Android, Windows, and iOS. DZone highlights, as a powerful programming language, C++ allows mobile apps to be developed for practically every purpose on every platform that exists. It might not be super chic or trendy, but it dominated the programming world even before the smartphone revolution.  
  You can build native C++ apps for iOS, Android and Windows devices, and share common code in libraries built for iOS, Android, and Windows, by using Visual C++ for cross-platform mobile development. Development using Visual C++ for cross-platform mobile development has several advantages, as stated in Docs. Microsoft.com: Easy installation. The Visual Studio installer acquires and installs the required third-party tools and SDKs you need to build apps or libraries for Android and iOS. Configuration and setup is simple and mostly automatic. A powerful and familiar build environment. Create sharable cross-platform solutions and projects easily with Visual Studio templates. Manage properties for all projects using one common interface. Edit all your code in the Visual Studio editor, and take advantage of the built-in cross-platform IntelliSense for code completion and error highlighting. A unified debugging experience. Use the world-class debugging tools in Visual Studio to watch and step through C++ code on all platforms, including Android devices and emulators, iOS simulators and devices, and Windows or Windows Phone devices and emulators.

JAVA

Java programming language is one of the most preferred languages when it comes to Android app development. An object-oriented programming language developed at Sun Microsystems (now owned by Oracle), Java can be run in two different ways: either in a browser window, or in a virtual machine that can do without a browser. This flexibility tends to mean a lot when it comes to re-using code and updating software. Although Java does not have much to do if you are considering iOS development, it certainly can be on your chosen list when it comes to mobile applications across platforms, i.e. cross-platform apps.  
  The main advantages of Java for mobile app development have been highlighted by GeoViz. Java has a high emphasis on security because both the platform and the programming language were developed from the day one with the matter of security as the priority. The platform allows users to obtain the codes from the Internet and later run them on Java without infecting the host system with any threats, including virus or malwares. In addition, you are not able to write files from the disk drive on Java, making it extremely protected for use in mobile application development. Java can be kept up limited permission thus will not hurt your computer system. Through the different audits carried out by security experts Java has actually been inspected and its security is guaranteed. It make app development simple in that developers can compose the mobile application once in Java platform and run it in any other platform that supports Java. Recently Java is being integrated in almost all operating systems and popular web browser making it offered for use by many computer systems on the planet. It is further being incorporated in consumer electronics, such as mobile phone, TV, Personal digital assistants (PDAs) and set-top boxes. For that reason mobile applications developed in Java can be made use of with various electronic devices. Java is developed to be network centred. The developers developed it in such a way that user can work with resources throughout the different networks. These features make it possible to produce network-based applications using client server architecture from Java.

Conclusion

Would you want Blueninja.io help you with the development of a great mobile application for your business? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, Progressive Web Applications Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with the best mobile application company, Blueninja.io, and be the first who will read our next article!

Friday, September 28, 2018

Is this once again spelling the downfall of another titan?

In the first decade after the millennium, websites used to be that ‘in thing’ which every individual or company craved for. Businesses bloomed and everyone seemed to be following the trend to move into tech. Software developers, both individual freelancers and companies seemed to be selling their services like hot cakes. It was ‘the business’ to be in. The turn of the tide came in July 2008, when apple introduced the app store with 500 mobile applications whereby only 25% were free. During that weekend, over 10 million downloads took place and with android coming into the picture, the rest remained as history. Although, websites still remained hugely popular for quite a bit, its popularity progressively decreased over time.

Mobile Applications: Insights of the titan

In general mobile applications are developed in either one of the two methods; native or hybrid. Development of native applications would require a lot more time and skill as compared to the development of hybrid applications as native applications are built on a cross platform focusing on specific languages such as swift or Objective-C on iOS and then, Java or Kotlin on Android. Mobiles running on windows would be developed in C#. Each native application would be developed and designed individually to suit the platform it is created for.  
On the other hand, Hybrid applications are built using web technologies. In simple terms, imagine a website being compressed and converted into an application. The basis of building a hybrid application simply requires JavaScript, CSS and HTML and the bottom line would essentially be that you would be building one application that would work on both platforms. In comparism, native applications would usually require more time to develop as compared to its hybrid counterpart. On the contrary, as native applications are developed individually to the platform’s requirements, it is often less buggy and it is optimized for performance. Hybrid applications are generally much cheaper in cost and would also require less time to develop but the time taking to fix bugs might require more time for hybrid apps as they are built on one platform catering to many platforms (iOS, Android and Windows). In recent times, hybrid applications have become less popular as react native is used to build applications. So what is react native? React native allows an application to be built cross platform through a JavaScript API, exposing the native controls of the mobile device, which the application is running on. Overall, apps developed via react native are native applications, which would only require the software developer to develop it once. Developers using this method should be skilled and well experienced. It will definitely help a software engineer to reduce the development time.

Part 1: Websites vs Mobile Applications- How the titan took its stage

In the current era of the 21st century, majority of the population clearly suffer from ‘nomophobia’. Okay, this might be a bit of an exaggeration but then again have you noticed that the current generation are somehow hooked unto their mobile pretty much 24/7? The point being made here is that the usage of mobile phones has become a necessity in the general life of the average human being out there.  
  Since you already can see that mobile phones play a huge part in the lives of most people, you should be able to see why mobile applications are hugely popular. Websites in general are 1.5x slower than mobile applications. Secondly, mobile applications are accessible offline where as websites cannot be. Imagine this, you are in the aeroplane or if you do not have access to data, you would not be able to surf the net. However, you would still be able to carry out with whatever application you are browsing since most applications have offline features (unless they are live games). To add more misery to the website cause, websites are not able to give push notifications unlike mobile applications. Push notifications would allow users to get updates on the things they want and hence, proving to be much more personalized.  
  However, websites do bring opportunities that mobile applications do not. With the app store being flooded by millions of applications today, getting to the main page will require an enormous amount of luck. The chances of you appearing on the first page of the app store is literally 0.001%. It’s like purchasing a lottery ticket and hoping that it will hit. With websites, you can create content, and with the content created, you can climb up the Google search rankings. This is known as SEO. Another downside of mobile applications is that once you have created a mobile application, you will have to upload it to the app store where by you will be regulated and it may become a bit sticky in certain situations. Similarly, as a user downloading the app, you will rather not download so many applications since mobile applications in general do take up a lot of space. …how nice would it be to have something right in between a website and a mobile application. Literally the best of both worlds… Guess what? Yes! There is such a thing. Progressive Web Application is the new upcoming prince, whereby it brings the best of both worlds to the table.

Part 2: The arrival of the prince, HRH Progressive Web Application. But will PWA become king?

 A term coined by Alex Russell, Progressive Web Applications are web applications built using modern web technologies but feels like a native application. To put it in my own words, progressive web applications would be the revival of websites whereby it carries all the ‘awesomest’ functionalities of websites and native applications, combining the best of both worlds.

How does it work?

Using a supported web browsers such as chrome, progressive web applications are accessible to anyone on the web. Just imagine yourself scrolling through a website and then you realize that you like it. You decide that you would want to receive updates and you feel that you would probably want to check it out pretty often. Using the URL of that particular web application, you will now be able to download it via the web browser and the application would run just like a native application. How cool is that?

How Progressive Web Application carries itself against its counterpart, the native application…

In terms of responsiveness, the user interface has to fit into the form factor of the device, be it in a desktop, tablet or mobile view. Clearly getting inspiration from Bruce Lee, this is literally the form that progressive web applications take.  
  “You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” Users should not be able to differentiate the difference between a progressive web application and a native application while using it. The app like feel has to be paramount. With the availability of service workers, a progressive web application has to be able to work offline just like most native applications. The availability of this offline feature was what was lacking in websites. Just like a native application, progressive web applications are able to provide the push notification service whereby, users are now able to constantly get updates on the topics that are of interest to them. Besides that, a progressive web application is also secure from content tampering as it is served via HTTPS which is clearly, very relaible. The progressive web application is called progressive for a reason. Regardless of the browser choice, it should work for every user. Currently, all browsers but ‘safari’ are able to support the usage of progressive web applications. However, there is a silver lining to this, as Apple has recently announced that they are working on the safari browser to support the progressive web applications cause. This would basically define most of the similarities between a progressive web application and a native application. So what are the differences? Discoverability wise, for a native application, the chances of it being spotted on the app store is literally 0.001% as mentioned above since it is mostly based on luck even if you do everything right. However, with progressive web applications, you are now able to carry out the content creation to help with SEO. This would simply mean, just like a website, progressive web applications are able to be discovered as long as you provide the right content in order for Google to ‘like’ you.  
  Secondly, downloading a progressive web application is easier as you do not need to use any sort of application store to carry out the task. Updating the application would also be simpler as it auto updates by itself rather than you, having to go to the application store to update the application, which does get annoying at times since in most cases, native applications do not work very well if it is not updated. However, if you need an application that requires the tablet’s hardware features such as the Bluetooth, NFC or a device’s sensor package like fingerprint sensors, a progressive web application is currently not able to support that. Hence, if you are planning to build a wearable tech application or in some instances, a proper full scale fitness application, a native application might be more ideal for you.

Impact of Progressive Web Application

Ever since Google launched progressive web applications, they have carried out various tests with several conglomerates such as The Guardian, Washington Post, Alibaba, Channel, Flipkart and many more. The majority of the companies saw an increase in active sessions per user, a rise in engagement and reengagement, as well as conversion rates that increased up to 10 folds on average.  
  Let’s take Alibaba for instance. Alibaba implemented AliExpress as part of their trial for the progressive web application and saw that the conversion rates for new users increased by a whopping 104%. Eventhough the progressive web application is not supported by Safari, AliExpress saw a 82% increment in conversion via the mobile web browser in Safari. Imagine what would happen when Safari begins supporting PWA! Overall the new strategy proved to deliver a much better experience whereby, users now show to visit twice as many pages per session and time spent per session increased by 74% on average, across all browsers. So Progressive Web Application or Native Application? With the benefits that progressive web applications bring, it could be said that that it would certainly be a no brainer for any company to choose this path. With the usage of progressive web applications, people would be able to improvise and grow progressively with the technology. The rate of inactivity would also go down, since it is easily accessible and with the push notifications and offline availability, it just makes it more sensible especially when Search Engine Optimization works perfectly on this platform. However, native applications would still be needed if companies run businesses, which require hardware features or the device’s package sensors.  
  Overall, it can be concluded that in the long run, as progressive web applications continue to improvise, I would not at all, be surprised if progressive web apps support the usage of all hardware features and sensors as early as the end or this year or early 2019. All in all, progressive web application would certainly gain more market share and could potentially freeze out the usage of native applications one day. …Maybe we should all pave way for the future. The future for progressive web applications is now! For more services please click this link https://blueninja.io