Thursday, October 11, 2018

E-Commerce | Digital Malaysia 2018

MALAYSIA AS THE NEXT FRONTIER OF E-COMMERCE BOOM

“The evolvement of e-commerce sector will put Malaysia on track as a leading ASEAN logistics hub which will place it on the global logistics map”, says the Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai. Yes, it is true. However, this is only one out of the hundreds of benefits e-commerce can bring to Malaysia. E-commerce has been recognized as a critical enabler to accelerate the revenue growth for the Malaysian economy, under the Digital Malaysia Initiative. Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation director of e-commerce enablement Wee Huay Neo mentioned internet penetration in Malaysia stands at 67%, while e-commerce contributes 5.8% to the nation’s gross domestic product, just 0.6% below the target set for 2020.  
“Malaysia’s e-commerce market will continue to be highly attractive with plenty of room to grow. The increasing consumer spending, the growing number of internet users and the greater acceptance of mobile e-commerce are the main drives,” she told SunBiz. First of all, let’s explore the Malaysian online shoppers by looking at few interesting e-commerce statistics:
  1. The most popular types of products purchased by Malaysians online are fashion & beauty products, electronics, and sports products.
  2. 80% of shoppers use their smart phones for purchasing online
  3. The main factor Malaysians consider when shopping online is the price
  4. Nowadays, men tend to shop more than women
  5. 59% of Malaysians shop online at least once a month
  6. 95% of Malaysian population are satisfied with online shopping experience

LAZADA | The advice of e-commerce leader in Malaysia

 
  Malaysia is one of the key markets for Southeast Asia’s largest e-commerce website Lazada and the nation has demonstrated the fastest growth within countries that Lazada operates in for the last seven months, posting over 100% jump year-on-year in gross merchandise value, said Lazada Malaysia CEO Hans-Peter Ressel. “In a market like Malaysia, with its high internet and smart phone penetration, these are the right fundamentals and pillars to make it (e-commerce) boom even further. We’re now at a nice environment that’s flourishing. “All the enablers for successful e-commerce operations are in checked for Malaysia. It’s a market where we can roll out new initiatives because it’s a sophisticated market,” Ressel said. It said Lazada’s website received an average of 29 million visitors on a monthly basis while 11 Street received nine million visitors monthly. “These three top e-commerce companies were all founded in South-East Asia. “Although e-commerce websites originating from outside the South-East Asia region such as eBay and Sephora are also accessible to Malaysians, regional or locally based e-commerce sites seemed to be more successful, probably due to their on-the-ground knowledge which gives them a higher advantage,” it said. The main suggestion of Lazada to the e-commerce businesses in Malaysia is winning on mobile devices as people use mCommerce more and more. Why? Let us explain you!  

M-COMMERCE | New Trend

 According to Digital News Asia, South-East Asian online payment gateway provider iPay88 Sdn Bhd said that based on transactions recorded on its platform, it expects mobile-commerce to grow three times faster than the overall e-commerce market in Malaysia. The company claims that about 70% of online transactions in Malaysia take place on its platform. It was also mentioned that the growth of m-commerce is clear, given the percentage of traffic from mobile channels recorded in its system: 27% in 2015; 38.4% in 2016; and 48.6% in 2017. “No doubt, the availability of cheaper smart phones and laptops have made the Internet accessible to a whole new demographic. The advent of tablets and smart watches has also broadened the spectrum of Internet usage.”  
  “Besides the high proliferation of smart phones, new Internet business models such as those from Grab and Uber that leverage on mobile booking and transactions … are also expected to drive m-commerce volumes,” iPay88 representatives state. A survey on mobile online shopping last year ranked Malaysia third in terms of mobile shopping growth rate in Asia, at over 20%, from 25.4% in 2012 to 45.6% in 2014. Many popular international online stores including Amazon, Apple, Walmart and Google Play have recorded an increasing number of consumers purchasing on their mobile.

Customer Insights | What Malaysians think about e-commerce

The lack of security is perceived as a major stumbling block for doing business online. Electronic cash payment systems are becoming more important than ever to facilitate online transactions and thus replacing traditional payment methods such as checks. The security aspects of e-commerce technology are one of the key concerns for Malaysian online buyers nowadays Every buyer wants to have privacy and security in the transaction. The personal data of the buyer such as name, address, phone number and also the transaction details of the buyer must not be disclosed to third parties.  There is also some activities of sharing the info to the third party which is illegal. Malaysia has implemented personal data act on 2010. The Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) is an act enacted by the Malaysian government to protect individual’s personal data in online commercial transactions. Other important factors taken into account by Malaysians have been presented in the Malaysian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities by Nadiah Binti Tasin:  
  Besides, speaking particularly about M-commerce, another issue is presented with the lack of user experience (UX) for mobile interfaces. M-payment gateways still do not fully provide an interface that can be customized to suit the mobile apps user interface and also user experience.

User Experience (UX) in mCommerce | Useful Tips

The full guide for the development of excellent UX experience can be found in our previous article, UX in Mobile Apps, while here we will provide the summary of those points:
  1. Minimalism
Creating a minimalistic design of mobile app makes the whole experience much easier — just click that button! A minimalist concept is a powerful form of communication, an easily navigable and simple application can be developed using minimalist concept. Users today like more and more simple interface hence shifting to very basic UX and just keeping the necessary elements.
  1. Simplistic Color Scheme
Simplistic color scheme is key to happiness. In the case of mobile application development, a solution. Clean and clear color theme enhances the user experience, but on the contrary, too many colors spoil the game and bring negativity in the overall design. Well, putting a restriction on color pallette does not mean that you design app in monochrome, but the idea is to use necessary colors which could accurately depict your design and create a hierarchy.
  1. Personalization
The personal approach is something that every individual appreciates in offline activities. When using their smart phones, an app user wants to get the same attitude while doing online shopping or reading news. Nowadays, mobile app developers record users’ steps and customize their experience according to the in-app stroll. Consumers don’t have to search for the same information over and over again while receiving individual push notifications.
  1. Better Security
Here we are talking about a really important security factor when it comes to personal data. Such applications as Apple Pay or Dropbox have Touch ID verification. This provides users with a higher level of security for their personal data, also creating a feeling that your company is taking care of them.

Conclusion

We live in a time where half of the population is digital buyers, which is why e-commerce is an important stepping block for the future of existing businesses while opening up market access. Malaysia’s e-commerce market will continue to be highly attractive with plenty of room to grow. The increasing consumer spending, the growing number of internet users and the greater acceptance of mobile e-commerce are the main drivers. 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 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 9, 2018

ANIMATION IN WEB DESIGN

ANIMATIONS ADVANTAGES, DISADVANTAGES & TIPS IN WEB DESIGN

Introduction

In a today’s competitive world, the web design undoubtedly matters, because it can reflect how your brand is doing their business, and ultimately how your clients and potential customers see and feel about you. Making a great impression is crucial, as you can potentially gain and keep a customer for life. If you ask professional website designers to define what can be considered as a good web design, there are high chances that they will all give you a wide variety of different answers. However, the most well-designed things are based on a number of specific web design principles that result in useful, beautiful products that ultimately give consumers a deep level of satisfaction and enjoyment when used. One of those principles that we are going to discuss today is simplicity and the use of animation.  
  Auxesisinfotech explains that, according to web credibility research from Stanford, 75% of people admit judging the credibility of a business based on their web design. So for sure, credibility has a straight relation to how likely people are to make a purchase. That clearly means one is losing his clients if their site has a poor web design. One needs to ensure that his website conveys that they are in a genuine and trustworthy business, which is often decided by the caliber of the web design.

Animation | Do I need to use it?

Animation is one of the most impressive and effective tools that you have to use on your website design and development. The thought-out use of animation on your webpage can help you increase your targeted traffic in a way that ordinary text-based content cannot do for you. There are plenty of advantages of including animation in your web design plan. For instance, it keeps your visitors on your website significantly longer, reducing your bounce rate. As a result, it leads to the higher level of interest in your site and encourages relatively higher number of shares and revisits. However, it is crucial to always keep in mind that, even with animation, your website design has to be as simple and clean as possible. Below are the thoughts of famous SEO (search engine optimization) specialist, Neil Patel, on this matter: “One of the biggest problems with websites is that they become outdated quickly. It seems like, as soon as you’re about to finish with one update, it’s time for another. But it doesn’t need to be that way. Busy website designs lose their allure and become dated quickly.” For instance, “while most news sites are cluttered and distracting, the Los Angeles Times leaves its site clean. It draws focus to a small selection of headings and uses white space for the rest:  
    Despite the fact, designing with motion is a great way to draw user’s interest to a particular part of your website, as well as to lead the user’s eye to important areas of a web design, and make a website memorable, it can also cause some drawbacks, that have to be taken into account as well. Avatar New York states that, before you add a set of animations to your website design, there are potential drawbacks to consider, especially if animations are not implemented properly and negatively impact UX.  Getting overloaded with animations clutter the interface, which leads to a worsened user experience and a negative impact on the loading speed of your website. Slow loading is considered as one of the biggest causes of users abandoning websites, and animations can slow speeds down significantly if not executed with attention to the factors, such as quality, scaling, and minimal coding. Besides, un-optimized animations can also result in rendering issues. It is crucial to take into account that users do not want to wait for pages or animations to render, so make sure that rendering and loading take less than two (2) to three (3) seconds. One of the types of animation effects that will make your website design more eye-catchy, without making it too ‘heavy’ is a parallax effect. Parallax scrolling design refers to the use of visual effects combined with 2D scrolling to create the illusion of depth and layers in a user’s experience.  
  IQ Computing states that, there are the following benefits of using parallax scrolling, which are:
  • Stimulate users with different levels of depth and a sense of animation Encourages longer page visit time as user curiosity leads to scrolling through the entire design (including the highlighted call to actions)
  • Emphasizes professionalism and higher level of creativity of your company/organization (this can vary depending on the industry and size of the website involved)
The practical approach of using parallax effect is explained by WPVortex, which specifies that from the customer perspective, one of the best things about parallax web design involves function – it helps users overcome the barriers presented by being a new user, for instance, and consolidates information in a visually pleasing way. When a new visitor enters the website, they need to get a sense of what the site offers but clicking around a dozen different pages cannot be considered a great way to do that. Parallax websites allow designers to set up content so that all of the key information is in one place – on the homepage – and that information has a narrative structure, i.e. one-page websites. The long scrolling format also allows readers to move through it at their own pace. Finally, parallax is relatively popular compared to other animation effects, as it offers extraordinary web marketing appeal, largely through the experience of dynamic motion. Rather than a flat website design, where readers are faced with big blocks of text and static images, parallax sites offer a high level of interactivity that can make it seem as though the user has climbed inside the webpage. As a conclusion, animation does not need to be overwhelming in your website design, as there is a high chance that the user might just ‘get tired’ browsing throughout the website. Customfitonline states that animations need to be used in the following cases:
  • to add visual interest (i.e. web page slides in from the side of the screen),
  • act as a response (i.e. hovering your mouse over an item and something happens),
  • act as a notification (i.e. a bouncing icon might mean attention is required).

Conclusion

The web design is a tool that should be wisely developed and implemented, taking into consideration the characteristics and preferences of your client base. Who are they? What do they like? How can their attention be attracted? Consider your website design as a part of a big mechanism: every detail matters, and if something does not work, the entire business will be affected. Despite of many opinions, it is not compulsory for the web design to be complex. If your graphic designer is capable of implementing amazing 3D graphics and animation on your website, yes, it is good. However, it is not the most important factor. As in any marketing effort, the ability to understand and address the needs and preferences of your customer is what makes your business a market leader! Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Web design and Website Development? 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 (SMM) 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!

Monday, October 8, 2018



Curated highlights captured at Workday Rising 2018. Impactful and thought provoking sessions, discussions and Insights into Enterprise Digital Transformation, Innovation, Culture & workforce development.

> Workday Usage Metrics: Optimizing Workday Through Data-Driven Decisions.
> Build Out Your Ongoing Business-Enablement Practice with Workday.
> Introduction to Audit in Workday.
> Using Advanced Reporting in Workday for Recruiting.
> Forging a New Frontier with AI and Machine Learning.

Watch Video in Youtube Click Here

Tags : #Workday #workdayrising #workdayevents  #workdayanalytics #workdayrecruiting #workdaysAI #Pixentia #workdayreporting

Visit Us @ www.pixentia.com | www.chasma.io | Contact Us @ +1 903-306-2430

Friday, October 5, 2018

Measuring the Immeasurable in People Analytics

Measuring_the_Immeasurable_in_People_Analytics.jpg
Most of the barriers to adoption of people analytics have been overcome. Modern technology platforms provide robust analytics. An entire industry has sprung up, with helpful tools to cleanse, prepare, and manage data. HR leaders understand that they need not be data scientists—they only need the expertise on the team, and it doesn’t have to be full-time help.
One barrier that remains is what Douglas W. Hubbard calls the illusion of intangibles.[1]  When we talk with people about measuring what is important to the business, they voice confusion in what to measure and how to measure it. Our answer is that we should measure what is relevant to the business. However, that doesn’t move the conversation forward until we agree on what measurement means.

What is Measurement?

What do you think of when we ask what measurement is? If you are like most people we talk to, you think of exact numbers: using a tape measure, computing values, or collecting scores. If that were all there is to measurement, we wouldn’t be able to measure much of anything in business.
Think about these examples:
  • Scientists can conclude with high certainty that a planet or moon exists by changes in the orbits of nearby objects. Not only that, they can deduce its size, mass, and orbit.
  • Your CFO makes or recommends investment decisions based on the probability of a favorable rate of return.
  • Your Marketing Department predicts the behavior of customers by surveying a tiny sample of buyers.
Business leaders are mostly risk-averse. If you can reduce the uncertainty that a business initiative will fail, you are providing a valuable service. Likewise, if you can show them that by spending $40,000 on a talent management initiative that has a 95% certainty of improving business results by $2,000,000 over five years, you are likely to get approval. You don’t need analytics to give you absolute measurements to make decisions. You only need to reduce the risk.
Measurement. A quantitatively expressed reduction of uncertainty based on one or more observations.
-     Douglas W. Hubbard, How to Measure Anything
We express the certainty of future events as a probability. Statistics can tell us what happened, how, where, when, and why. Probability says with a degree of certainty what will happen.

Defining What to Measure

One failure in people analytics is the billions of dollars spent trying to measure and improve employee engagement. There have been successes, and correlation analysis show us that companies with high engagement also have high profitability. However, in the aggregate, most of the investment has been wasted.
If you are asking in a survey how people feel about the workplace, are you getting actionable information? Do good feelings cause better performance?
If you ask instead what people and their managers do, you get useful information. Gallup reported in 2015 that managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. We can show that specific behaviors affect employee productivity and retention.
So, it might be better to measure employee development. No, you say. It’s too “fuzzy.”
Stop and think what activities and behaviors make up employee development. We can track coaching sessions, feedback, learning opportunities, and participation in learning. We can use these measures to understand the probability that improving managers’ ability to coach and develop their employees will have an impact on retaining productive people.

How to Measure

The perception of difficulty in measurement can create significant barriers to action. We can overcome them by taking a systematic approach to a decision. Hubbard recommends asking these questions:
  • What is the decision the measurement will support?
  • What is being measured and how does it matter to the decision?
  • How much do you know about it now?
  • How does uncertainty about the variable create risk for the decision?
  • What is the value of additional information?
At that point, the decision comes down to whether the value exceeds the cost, but there are many ways to control costs.
  • A small sample can tell us a lot about a large population. A valid sample of 370 will give you 95% confidence of an attribute of a population of 10,000 with a 5% confidence margin.
  • We can use inference to estimate characteristics of an unseen population. For decades, customer service centers have been using small samples of observations to improve the skills and behaviors of their representatives.
  • People often give up when measurement involves unknown or uncontrolled variables. Using statistical techniques, your data scientist can determine that a coaching program caused an increase in revenue per employee and not the economy or pricing.
  • You can measure seemingly intangible preferences by how much time, money, or other things people would give up. For example, you can gauge how much employees value a shared-cost benefits program by how much a random sample of employees stands ready to contribute.

Conclusion

The purpose of analytics is to reduce uncertainty in business decisions. Benchmarking, “best practices,” and gut instinct informed by experience can lead you to a decision. When you are embarking on important initiatives that affect your entire organization, it pays to understand the risks and to reduce them as much as possible.
Let’s form your team and get started.
References:
1. Hubbard, Douglas W. How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of “INTANGIBLES” in Business. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2014.
2.  Hubbard.
Pixentia is a full-service technology company dedicated to helping clients solve business problems, improve the capability of their people, and achieve better results.

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