Custom Mobile App Development: How To Benefit From The Latest Trends

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As a forward-looking business leader, you want to utilize mobile technologies to put your organization in the lead. But where do you begin with all the options currently available — do you pick an off-the-shelf solution or venture forth with custom mobile app development? 

The first option seems cheaper and hassle-free since you can use the product soon after registering your account. But with the latter option, a custom-built app will require a significant commitment from you, which will involve an initial cost outlay and consultation time with a mobile development studio.

Considering the mere accessibility of the first option, it should be the way to go, right? That may be the case if you only have a surface-level view of your organization’s short-term and long-term requirements. 

For example, you may be running a startup with a limited budget, so an affordable off-the-shelf solution suits your needs now. But how robust is this solution when you decide to scale your business or require features that this solution doesn’t offer? Will you jump to another ready-made solution to fill these gaps, or do you opt for a mobile app custom-built to your exact requirements? 

If you end up with several off-the-shelf solutions, you’ll add complexity to your organization’s existing tech infrastructure. Furthermore, your staff will require training to use these additional apps. While this isn’t necessarily bad, it’s seldom possible to train staff when you need them to perform mission-critical tasks required for the smooth functioning of your organization.  

Fortunately, you can do away with these issues by embracing custom mobile app development. Your organization will enjoy several key benefits from the latest trends custom-built apps bring forth, which we’ll discuss below.  

Custom Mobile App Development Solves Problems Exclusive To Your Business

Primarily, you want to approach custom mobile app development to solve problems that exclusively impact your business. Off-the-shelf solutions seldom do this because they attempt to solve issues affecting organizations in general. Since your business is unique, you can’t always rely on tools that all your competitors are using. 

Let’s assume you’re operating a chain of bakeries that use wood-fired ovens. But all your competitors are using either commercial electric or gas-powered ovens. Thus, how you stock your inventory and prepare your baked goods will differ significantly from competing stores and chains. 

The unique methodologies in preparing your goods will inevitably impact your tech infrastructure. You may need to create an inventory management mobile app to keep track of your stock levels based on your dough preparation and baking rates. Since your wood-fired ovens require skilled artisans to operate and bake slower than electric or gas ovens, your custom-built management app will work with this scenario.

If you had to use a similar solution to your competitors, you’d end up over-ordering or under-ordering on the wrong days. And this would impact the efficiency and profitability of your chain of bakeries. 

But why create a custom-built inventory management mobile app when you could go with a desktop or web-based solution? A mobile app is often the better choice since all your employees have mobile devices and will be in different areas of your stores. Your chief baker can check inventory and place orders without leaving the bakery floor, especially if a desktop PC isn’t available here. 

A Custom-Built Mobile App Offers Stellar Data Security

Not a day goes by without a major data security breach making the news. Sadly, the world’s most popular websites and cloud services are usually at the front lines of these data breaches. Whether it’s Alibaba’s leak of 1.1 billion chunks of user information or Microsoft’s Azure cybersecurity breach impacting executive accounts, no mainstream online product is safe from hackers.

But where does that leave mobile apps; are they safer? Yes, mobile apps are often safer if users download them directly from the App Store or Google Play. Both app stores have raised the bar on what they expect from developers regarding app security, user data, and privacy. However, unscrupulous developers and bad actors still manage to publish dubious apps on these stores, which poses a significant security risk to users. 

The good news is that custom mobile app development allows you to lock down your security on all fronts. And enjoy peace of mind due to having a higher level of app security than any off-the-shelf solution can offer your organization. Moreover, you can integrate your custom-built app with a hybrid or private cloud service, giving you considerable control and data protection. 

Take Advantage Of The Latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trends

Trailblazing large language models (LLMs) like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini are integral to the modern AI landscape. There’s a good reason for this since these LLMs radically improve the productivity and efficiency of users and organizations. And like all modern organizations, you want to take advantage of these LLMs if you haven’t done so already. 

All the most popular LLMs offer application programming interfaces (APIs) that integrate with desktop, mobile, and web apps. So, you can easily tap into the power of these LLMs without requiring expensive hardware or knowing the minutest details of how these language models work. All your staff needs to do is learn how to enter prompts that will output the desired results from the LLMs you’ve integrated.

It’s also possible to build custom mobile apps that don’t use prompts but rely on other forms of user interaction, such as voice and context-based inputs. If you embark on custom mobile app development, consult a reputable studio like NS804 to help you plan and implement these inputs to suit your needs along with LLM integration.

Improve Staff Productivity With A Custom-Built Mobile App

Since you’re the leader of your organization, there’s no one better placed to understand your staff. You know how productive they are, their workflows, and what motivates them to perform at their best. You also know who the team players are and who are unengaged. 

Ideally, you want your unengaged staff to step up by emulating the behavior of your best employees. But that largely depends on how well you convey your organization’s culture, expectations, and goals. Leading by example and initiating discussions with staff members who are lagging behind will also help.

Even if you take all these actions, your staff still needs the right tools to produce optimal results. If you’re relying on a mix of disparate apps from different vendors, you’re making things more difficult for your staff. And that’s because they’ll have to contend with differing user interfaces (UIs), workflows, and app usability.  

Worse still, you’ll often encounter one or two apps within your suite of apps that create bottlenecks. These bottlenecks may be due to apps with poor performance, lack of updates, and unsupported features, ultimately making them redundant. Nevertheless, your organization can adopt a better app strategy by creating one or more custom-built apps that address all bottlenecks your organization currently deals with.

Thus, approach custom mobile app development to offer the features and workflows that will help keep all your staff members productive. Moreover, ensure all your custom-built mobile apps are fully compatible and integrate with your existing tech. In time, you can consolidate all the most crucial features into a singular mobile app, reducing complexity and maintenance costs.

Custom Mobile App Development Enhances Business Competitiveness

World-renowned brands like Domino’s Pizza, IKEA, and Nike rely on custom mobile app development. Also, NS804 has delivered custom-built solutions for leading brands like CarLotz, Dominion Energy, and Luck Stone. All these brands understand that custom-built apps offer them an unprecedented amount of control, efficiency, and security.

Another reason custom mobile app development is popular with brands is that it helps them stay competitive. They prefer using bespoke apps that align fully with their needs and goals instead of relying on off-the-shelf solutions that have little to do with their businesses. It’s not that brands will never use the latter, but tailor-made solutions will always play a central role due to their holistic design and implementation. 

But how can a custom-built mobile app give your organization a competitive edge? If your organization is a startup or a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), you’ll have a tool designed specifically for your business processes. That won’t be the case for most of your competitors who opt for off-the-shelf solutions, as these won’t adequately cover all their day-to-day operations.

Increase Customer Engagement And Satisfaction

While custom-built mobile apps usually address internal business needs, you should also consider customer-facing scenarios. Nowadays, most existing and potential customers will seldom visit your website unless you have an e-commerce store or are regularly running special offers. So, you’ll need to consider a more effective avenue to reach and engage customers if your online presence isn’t having an impact.

An effective way to form a more meaningful relationship with your customers is with a custom mobile app. The app must make it easy for customers to learn about your products and services and receive round-the-clock assistance via AI-assisted chatbots. 

To make it easy for them to make purchases, ensure that you integrate the most popular payment gateways into your mobile app. Apple allows third-party payment processors for iOS apps distributed in the European Union (EU) as of March 2024. Android developers enjoy more freedom in this regard, as they can integrate leading platforms like 2checkout, Stripe, and WePay for most territories. 

Your customers will use mobile devices with different aspect ratios and screen sizes, and a growing number will use Android flip phones. Obviously, supporting these various screen configurations complicates matters from a development standpoint. But you want to give all your customers a satisfactory user experience (UX), and that’s only possible by implementing responsive design so that your mobile app adjusts its UI for each target device.

But to substantially increase your customer-facing app’s engagement, consider integrating the most favored social media platforms. Make it child’s play for your customers to share all the coolest products and services you offer across all their favorite social media accounts. Furthermore, this will help build awareness for your brand and its offerings without any marketing cost for your organization.

Connect With The Surrounding World More Effectively

The increased adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) devices offers businesses of all sizes countless opportunities to boost efficiency. IoT devices come in all forms, such as affordable single-board computers (SBCs), industrial sensors, and even security systems. The best part is that you can build an app that can communicate with all these devices and even automate specific tasks.

Now, consider a practical application for your organization’s office management procedures. You want to keep track of staff activities in the office related to their attendance, interactions, and movements. Why you should do this is to ensure that your office facilitates a safe and productive work environment. 

While you can spend weeks or months monitoring the office environment in person, you can gather more meaningful data by installing IoT devices in the right places. These include an automated attendance clock, desk sensors, and room occupancy monitoring devices. Then, your custom-built office management app will draw data from all these devices and provide you with real-time analytics.

With this data-driven approach, you can quickly pinpoint troublespots in your office layout and even identify errant employees. And with all custom mobile app development endeavors, you can add additional features when required. For example, you’ve identified that staff members spend their lunch breaks at the office lounge and avoid the cafeteria. 

You could remodel the cafeteria to make it more appealing. Alternatively, you can install vending machines in the office lounge to dispense drinks and snacks. And make it easy for employees to make purchases by introducing near field communication (NFC) payment via a newly-introduced feature in your office management app.

The Bottom Line

Custom mobile app development is the way forward for all businesses that want to perform at their best, especially when presented with harsh economic conditions. A custom-built app is designed to exclusively serve your organization’s structure, goals, and business processes. It’s never a one-size-fits-all approach like many popular off-the-shelf apps that usually run on a Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription model. Contact NS804 today to learn how we’ll help you build a custom app to help you stay ahead in your industry!

The Most Popular Android App Categories in 2024

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If you are looking to build an app in 2024, you need to look at what the data says about the most popular app categories. There are app categories where the competition is quite fierce but the market size keeps growing. Other categories are relatively small and competition is not too much of a concern. In this article, we highlight the 20 most popular app categories on the Play Store for Android devices.

Gaming

Gaming apps have been the most popular app category over the last decade and there is good reason for it. The most popular gaming apps offer an immersive experience for users which increases screen time and total revenue generated. As processors have become more powerful, games have improved user experiences to mirror what users would experience on dedicated gaming consoles. Better screens, battery sizes, and fast charging capacity have also contributed to phone gaming becoming more ubiquitous.

Mobile phones have long overtaken consoles in terms of revenue generation, mostly because phones are much more accessible than consoles worldwide. Consoles are also not as portable as phones and tablets.

There are numerous categories of games with casinos, puzzles, adventure, and strategy-based games leading the way. Games have built communities through leaderboards, in-game communication, and online events helping popularize games even further.

Ride-Hailing

Ride-hailing apps are still a popular app category on the Play Store in 2024. These apps present several advantages for users including being able to use one of several payment methods. In addition, users appreciate being able to see the exact cost of their rides beforehand, the expected length of their journey, and the location of their driver prior to and upon request.

For businesses, such an app is great for fleet management because it would have a dashboard to view revenue generated, driver statistics, and a lot of other management-related metrics.

Business Apps

This is a broad category encompassing all apps geared to facilitating business-related work. For instance, Skype, Google Meet, and Zoom can be classed as business apps because they are mainly used by teams working remotely. Besides the meeting feature, these apps have inbuilt features such as document sharing, meeting moderation buttons, and even integration with scheduling apps such as Calendly to ease appointment bookings.

Other business apps such as Slack are used for workflow management, especially in team settings. Managers can assign tasks, people can submit their portions of a project, and there can be channels for discussing different matters. Upcoming deadlines are also easier to track with dedicated work management applications.

E-commerce apps

The e-commerce space continues to grow as more shopping happens online rather than in-store. There are multiple reasons why e-commerce makes sense for a lot of brands. First, apps can use personalized user profiles to avail targeted catalogs of products for customers to view. This means what users see on their homepages is what they are most likely to be interested in. In addition, users can add items to a cart and complete their purchase later.

With a smooth checkout process, e-commerce apps improve the likelihood of converting users who download an app into buying customers. Apps also allow stores to run promo campaigns for all or a section of customers depending on intended goals.

Medical Apps

With an increasing demand for wellness-related information, users find it worthy to have applications where they can find factual and up-to-date information. Medical practitioners can build medical apps as part of their business. Some practitioners may even carry out consultations via video (telemedicine). Such apps have other features such as physical appointment scheduling and tracking of personal health information. Other apps can be purely dedicated to information sharing through videos, articles, research papers, and other useful mediums of information sharing.

As time goes on, medical apps will have more utility as people embrace wellness and realize the power of being able to get accurate information in real time.

E-learning Apps

The internet has democratized access to information and people can now learn most skills for free. E-learning apps organize information and package it in a manner that is easy for users to follow and track progress. In 2024, the demand for e-learning apps will continue to grow as more people seek to upskill to progress their careers or to simply explore new hobbies.

According to Statista there, e-learning apps receive over 400 million downloads every year. The industry is now worth more than $200 billion and has grown by over 900% since 2000. The search for learning apps-related keywords has also been rising year-on-year for the last decade. This goes to show that there is indeed a demand for quality learning apps. The most popular learning categories are IT and web development, business and finance, marketing, art and photography, languages, and gaming.

Health and Fitness Apps

Health and fitness apps continue to be a popular app category in 2024. Fitness has become an aspirational thing for a lot of people in this decade. The growth of the fitness-dedicated wearables market is a testament to this growth. Fitness apps provide tools such as workout programs and meal plans for users depending on personal goals.

Apps can either be driven by a celebrity trainer or by the quality of the information being availed to users. Apps can also differentiate themselves through a high-quality UI and integration with other apps to enhance the overall experience for users.

Travel and Navigation Apps

This broad category includes all apps geared towards helping people plan trips better or find interesting outdoor activities to take in a particular area. If an app is targets travellers and adventurers, creators have the arduous task of finding interesting places to review and add to their app. By enabling users to comment and make recommendations, these apps can quickly build user communities.

There are other apps meant solely for information crowd-sourcing. Here, people simply post reviews and recommendations about places to stay, places to eat, and how to move around when visiting a particular city as a visitor.

Social Networking

While it may feel like the biggest social media apps have taken up all available market space, there is still room for new social apps. Their growth is highly dependent on the ability to create new experiences for users. TikTok grew so fast through short videos, prompting all other popular platforms to prioritize short videos over other forms of content being shared there.  Virtual reality could be the next frontier for social networks. Still, there are other important discussions such as content moderation and user privacy that could create room for new social networks to emerge and grow.

Streaming

Livestreaming has become commonplace is a wide range of industries owing to the reduced cost of broadband access all over the world. Brands are taking advantage of being able to interact live with their clients to create value opportunities. Therefore, building a live-streaming app remains a viable opportunity if well executed.

The sports industry has embraced live streaming on official apps as a way to fight illegal streaming while widening access to their content. Gyms have begun live-streaming classes for subscribers who cannot make it physically to the gym. Other gyms have opted for a class-on-demand approach, similar to what content streaming platforms such as Netflix do.

Live stream shopping is a very interesting emerging sector too. Here, brands go live and showcase new products or review existing ones while allowing customers to comment or ask questions. It’s a great way to sell limited-edition merchandise or build excitement about new items.

Finance and Banking

More people are embracing the power of having control over their finances using their phones. Finance and banking apps can be broken down through the various purposes they may be serving. First, budgeting apps help people to have a better view of their spending patterns through expenditure tracking. Through interactive dashboards, such apps help users to set goals such as cutting down spending or saving for a holiday.

Some finance apps are more geared towards helping people invest in regulated financial products. These apps are owned by licensed investment banks or exchanges. The apps place great importance on securing user information, providing a smooth experience, integration with multiple payment methods, and maintaining high

News and Information

The popularity of social media means that a lot of people get information from their phones as opposed to traditional sources. However, social media also presents the challenge of trying to separate what is true and what is misinformation. High-quality news app is a category of applications targeting discerning people who want well-researched information about subjects they care about. These apps therefore serve a dual purpose of cutting out the noise and providing detailed information. In certain cases, these news apps will charge a premium for access.

An example of such an app is Ground New Pros. The app curates news articles, mainly political, and gives a summary in a few sentences while allowing you the option to open the entire story. Interestingly, the app has a feature that indicates whether a new story has a right-leaning, center, or left inclination politically. This helps users know which articles may be there to sway readers.

Food and Cooking

Food and cooking apps serve several purposes. First, there are apps made for users who want to learn to cook at a professional level. Such apps could be categorized as educational too. However, a large number of apps in this category offer cooking tutorials for people who want to explore new recipes for fun. Through AI-powered recommendations, these apps could help users develop a wide and rich palette by combining foods and drinks from different cultures.

Food and cooking apps could also come with auxiliary features such as being able to order ingredients from particular stores that may in fact own or advertise on the app.

Self-care Apps

Self-care apps are increasing in popularity as the world becomes more aware and receptive towards the mental health of people. People are seeking apps that can help them become more mindful and aware of their moods, sleep patterns, and potential anxiety triggers.  Some apps provide guided meditations, daily affirmations, and other helpful resources. In addition, some apps could incorporate the ability to book a consultation session with certified counselors and psychologists. In fact, remote therapy is becoming more popular as people seek to incorporate regular sessions into their routines.

Home automation apps

A lot of automation apps have come up in the past few years to help people exercise more control over their home devices that are part of the Internet of Things. A popular goal among these apps is to help people save energy by providing data-driven suggestions such as when to switch off devices. People can also set up routines on these apps. For instance, you may want all lights to switch off or turn to a dimmer color at a particular time of night.

NS804 App Development

There are indeed multiple categories of apps that an entrepreneur can decide to build in 2024. The average person today has over 20 different apps installed on their mobile device. The app market is worth well over $400 billion and is growing yearly. Artificial intelligence, together with augmented and virtual reality, will spearhead the growth of the market over the next 10 years. To unlock this market, a business needs to build a truly world-class app that has a unique value proposition for the target audience. Picking the right app development partner is an important first step.

At NS804, we help our clients build their apps from end to end. The process involves conducting a thorough analysis to determine the viability of a proposed app project. We help clients put together features to include in an MVP given the resource constraints present in any app-building project. We have a well-skilled team to take on any project and execute it to world-class standards.

For more information about our services, reach out to us through our website today. A member of our team will be in touch for a detailed discussion.

6 Reasons To Use Artificial Intelligence In Mobile Apps

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AI or artificial intelligence in mobile apps has many appreneurs, businesses, and developers asking questions. Many of these questions surround the feasibility and implementation of this trailblazing technology in today’s apps. There are also concerns that artificial intelligence is currently in a hype bubble. 

The good news is that leading large language model (LLM) platforms like Bard, ChatGPT, and Copilot make implementation easy via their well-documented application programming interfaces (APIs). But the bad news is that there’s significant hype driven primarily by AI evangelists and the media. This hype often misleads users, developers, and business leaders into thinking that AI is a silver bullet to their problems.

While there’s little doubt that AI can radically boost efficiency, productivity, and workflows, it won’t necessarily deliver the desired results. You can use ChatGPT to write an elaborate blog post about any topic imaginable, but it won’t always be factually accurate or contain the most up-to-date information. You’ll still need to fact-check all the information in your post, read through it a few times, and make several edits before you have an article that’s worth publishing.

As you can tell, some level of human intervention is still necessary regardless of how well LLMs have advanced. But you should still use artificial intelligence in mobile apps to deliver solutions that will make life easier for your customers, employees, and users. The solutions will automate arduous tasks, minimize business costs, and help users boost their creativity.

Mobile apps that facilitate the right mix of human interactivity and generative AI output will change the game in 2024 and beyond. Here’s why you should use AI in your upcoming app project.

1. Stay Ahead By Implementing Artificial Intelligence In 2024

The media may make you think generative AI is enjoying wide adoption, but this isn’t the case. It’s still an emerging technology that had a breakout year in 2023 but hasn’t quite hit the mainstream yet. Will 2024 be the year that this happens, or will the pundits be proven wrong?

Forrester analysts provide several predictions and arguments in favor of adopting generative AI soon:

  • More than 90% of enterprises plan to implement generative AI for internal uses and customer service. 
  • Almost 50% of enterprises predict that generative AI will help them attain their productivity objectives. 
  • Approximately 60% of employees will undergo prompt training in 2024. 
  • Bring your own AI (BYOAI) will become commonplace in many enterprises in 2024. 
  • AI will heavily impact the human resources (HR) departments by analyzing employee data. 
  • AI bots and tools will continue to enhance developer productivity, but companies should not ignore potential security issues.
  • Data protection and privacy will play a central role in 2024 as authorities push for legislation to deal with the risks associated with AI. 
  • Governance is essential to deal with copyright violations and to ensure a safer and more ethical environment involving generative AI. 

2. Artificial Intelligence In Mobile Apps Facilitates Efficient Content Creation

Businesses, marketers, and influencers must post regularly on social media to build and sustain a reasonably-sized following. Back in the early days of social media — this was easy — due to the minimal availability of feasible mainstream platforms. Just posting on Facebook and Twitter (now X) was enough to gain visibility. 

Nowadays, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have become indispensable for targeting Millennials and Gen Z consumers. So, you must be constantly active on at least five platforms to maximize your reach. But that’s demanding, as you must also post quality content relevant to your audience. Can you do this consistently while running your business or leading a team?

You’ll likely burn out wearing multiple hats during the workday, negatively impacting your health and productivity in the long term. One solution is to hire social media marketing experts to handle all your social channels. They’ll create content, post regularly, and engage with your audience, but all this is costly. Expect to pay between $500 and $5,000 monthly for these services. 

If you’re a small business owner or starting as an influencer or creative, even a $500 monthly fee may cause you to overshoot your budget over a long period. However, generative artificial intelligence in mobile apps can lead to a remarkable content creation and social media posting solution. If you team up with a reputable studio like NS804, you can build a generative AI-powered app custom-built to your needs. 

You may use multiple generative AI platforms to train your models based on your own text, images, and videos. Then, by inputting a sequence of prompts on your custom-built app, you can generate and post on-brand marketing copy, images, and videos across all your social channels with minimal work.

3. Create High-Quality Videos With Generative AI

We’ve already discussed why you should utilize more social media platforms, particularly the newer impactful ones. But you must create distinctive and humorous short-form videos to make it on TikTok and more in-depth and professional-level videos to captivate YouTube fans. For professional results, you must invest in video production equipment and lighting. Then, learn the skills to use these effectively with video editing suites. 

But that’s not enough, as you’ll still need to write a video script, build a set, and hire a cast and a crew. Of course, you can outsource most of this work to a professional video production company. Depending on the quality and length of your videos, you could pay as little as $500 and possibly over $100,000. Some production companies will work with you on yearly contracts and charge between $15,000 and $100,000.

As you can tell, it’s cost-prohibitive to compete with top trending video content creators and deep-pocketed enterprises. However, things have changed, especially after OpenAI announced Sora — a trailblazing text-to-video tool designed for generating intricate scenes. 

Sora shocked and amazed the entire video production industry and even caught the attention of Tyler Perry. The world-renowned filmmaker decided to stop the expansion of his studio since this would no longer be necessary with generative AI tools like Sora. He reportedly claimed that these tools save costs but will cause many job losses in the film industry.

While this sounds grim, Sora and similar tools will democratize professional video production soon. And this is an excellent reason to use artificial intelligence in mobile apps aimed primarily at video generation. These apps will find traction in most business environments but also with content creators seeking cost-effective solutions that simplify the entire video production process.

4. Generative AI Enhances The Employee Experience

As a business leader, you want your employees to perform at their best, even when facing organizational change or unsatisfactory task distribution. In more extreme cases, you want employees to perform adequately when key staff members aren’t available. So, you’ll need to implement the tools and methodologies to ensure all your employees stay on track under these scenarios.

Implementing communication and project management platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Trello is a first step. But your business is unique, so you still need a custom solution that addresses all its needs and covers the blind spots other platforms miss. That’s why you can’t ignore the power and versatility that generative AI brings forth. 

You can train your generative models on employee data by including their work roles, productivity, and skills. Your AI model will help you look at your employee data holistically and help you pinpoint any potential productivity bottlenecks or staff shortages early on. Be sure to comply with data and privacy legislation in your region when collecting and analyzing employee data. 

Another benefit of analyzing employee data is you’ll detect notable workforce trends that impact your organization. If you employ a large workforce, it’s often difficult to accurately determine employee retention rates and the overall success of your human resources (HR) department. Traditionally, you’d hire expensive consultants to figure this out for you — but now — your generative AI model will deliver detailed reports in record time and at little cost. 

Building a custom internal app allows your employees to collaborate and complete all their tasks, and you can pull all this data in real-time. The app can also let your employees provide feedback that will help you improve work conditions and the overall employee experience.

5. Use Artificial Intelligence In Mobile Apps To Transform Customer Service

It’s no secret that AI chatbots are very effective at offering customer service around the clock. But how well do they resolve customer complaints and deliver satisfactory service to rival a human agent? It ultimately depends on the capabilities of the AI chatbot platform you decide to use. 

You can choose from several notable chatbot platforms available today, like Botpress, Dialogflow, and UChat. Botpress is ideal for creating conversational chatbots for organizations of all sizes. Dialogflow is Google’s feature-rich solution for building versatile and scalable chatbots and voicebots. Then, there’s UChat, aimed at digital marketers and small business owners who want a simple solution that integrates with all their social channels.   

Of course, there are many more AI chatbots in the marketplace. But instead of trying to find a solution that’s a good fit for your organization, you could always build a custom solution that addresses all your needs. Moreover, you can avoid the monthly fees and limitations these chatbot platforms will subsequently impose on your organization. 

More importantly, you have some control over the intelligence of your custom AI chatbot solution. Before the availability of generative AI chatbots, traditional chatbots weren’t particularly smart since they followed set rules. Thus, these could never convince anyone that they were nothing more than customer-facing bots. 

Once the GPT-5 LLM is available, convincing human-like interactions will become the norm. But you can achieve impressive results depending on how well you train your AI chatbot using GPT-4. You’ll need to collect large datasets of human interactions and then prepare these for training by removing unnecessary datasets. After you train your model, evaluate the results before deploying to all your customer-facing channels.

6. Improve Order Fulfillment With AI

While your organization doesn’t have control of the entire supply chain, it can impact the order fulfillment process. And this segment of your business should run like a well-oiled machine that responds to all types of scenarios like delays, stock shortages, and logistics issues. As a first step, you must implement an order management system (OMS) that’s right for your company structure. 

Then, you’ll need to pick an order fulfillment strategy your organization can handle. For example, if you have enough storage space, employees, and skills, you’ll go with an in-house order fulfillment. But if you don’t have these resources, it’s better to outsource fulfillment to a third party. 

Regardless of your strategy, you should become proficient in forecasting and planning every step to avoid wastage and costly interruptions in order fulfillment. However, you can drastically reduce the guesswork by integrating AI into your order fulfillment operations. Of course, it’s best to do this from day one of your operations, but there’s little harm in integrating AI in due course. 

Using artificial intelligence in mobile apps that aid order fulfillment will help your staff quickly ascertain all current and future inventory levels. They can accurately predict when they’ll run low on inventory and when to order from suppliers. Thus, your company won’t have to turn away customers due to unavailable stock. 

AI-powered order fulfillment is essential for large organizations, but small retailers benefit also. For sustainability reasons alone, retailers must reduce inventory waste. A well-trained inventory model will alert them when they’re ordering too much or too little of a specific item. They can further improve the accuracy of this model with sales and store visitor data.

The Bottom Line

The hype surrounding generative AI is astounding, but so is the technology. We expect future iterations of LLMs to improve and impact even more industries. Also, we expect the use cases to grow exponentially as appreneurs, businesses, and users embrace AI in 2024. Contact us today to learn how NS804 can help you build and use artificial intelligence in mobile apps that will drive growth from now on! 

The NS804 Process for Custom App Development

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At NS804, we are fully committed to delivering the highest quality applications possible with every custom app development project we undertake. When clients commission us to build custom mobile applications, we know they expect world-class solutions to the problems they want to solve.

Custom app development projects are quite different from off-the-shelf solutions. First, they provide the chance to capture a brand’s image in the UI/UX of the application. There is also a match between the resources available at hand and the solution to be built. At NS804, we understand the ever-present problem of optimizing resources for utility purposes. Each project is unique because of the industry, problems at hand, client requests, and numerous other variables.

In this article, we discuss our approach to custom mobile application building. Clearly, it is never a one-sided effort. The general framework is meant to foster continuous communication between the team and the client until project delivery.  We can break down the process into six stages, although some activities could feature in more than one stage.

Project Discovery

The project’s first stage begins when a client gets in touch regarding an app idea they have. A series of discussions follow to establish the scope of the problem at hand and whether a singular app can solve all of them. It may require that we conduct interviews with several stakeholders in the client’s business.

The first stage can last weeks and sometimes months to gather sufficient information. There may be a need to conduct fresh market research to understand competitor strengths, market size and gaps, and even the feasibility of a product in a new market. It may be prudent to enlist the services of people with particular domain knowledge when it is not available in-house.

Getting things right in terms of product-market fit is very important. It can save enormous resources that would otherwise be used in rebuilding a  product in cases where market research was not done comprehensively.

Planning and Design

The second step in our process involves starting to bring ideas to life, at least on paper. At this point, the team begins to visualize what the solution might look like. However, we must first determine the project scope. Not everything that was mentioned in the discovery phase can go into the first version of the application. The best projects have a clear primary problem they are solving, which is the focus of the Minimum Viable Product.

Limiting the project scope is important to ensure the project is deliverable within a reasonable time and with the available resources. Such a project is also more manageable because you can establish milestones that add up to the final product.

The scope of the MVP includes the functionalities/deliverables that the product will need to have before the client approves it.

The team draws up wireframes to demonstrate the flow and layout of the application. Once these are approved, the team can build interactive mock-ups that give a realistic feel of the app. Working prototypes are great for collecting feedback from the users you are targeting with the app.

 

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Actual Development

The next step in the process involves building out the application according to the specifications from the planning phase. The front end of the application is the user interface, which is built with HTML, CSS, and Javascript programming languages. The back end or the server side is the logic or functionality of the app. Multiple technologies can be used to build the backend including Python, Java, and JavaScript.

It is during this stage that any integrations with third-party APIs happen to add functionalities such as payment processing, geolocation, social media integration, and so forth.

Our agile methodology of project handling means that the user remains well-briefed throughout the development phase. With every sprint, new features are delivered and any necessary fixes deemed necessary are made. With version control, we can always roll back to a previous version of the app when the need arises.

Testing

Testing is a crucial part of the custom app development process and enough time and resources must be set aside. It can either be done manually or be automated. In manual testing, you’d ideally be clicking throughout the application and noting any bugs found. This process is tedious, expensive in terms of time, and very prone to human error.

Automated testing is the preferred approach today and can happen concurrently with the development process. Engineers can run tests on their code before adding it to the main project.

There are several types of tests that a team runs on their project.

  • Functional tests are to determine whether a feature works as intended. It looks at the output rather than the behind-the-scene working. For instance, a functional test may be done whether a user can successfully query the database for a piece of information.
  • Integration tests look at whether the different modules or microservices that make up your application are working together as planned.
  • Performance testing simulates different conditions to determine the stability of the application. It looks at the speed and responsiveness of the different microservices especially when handling a high number of requests. Performance testing gives assurances that an app is indeed scalable.
  • End-to-end tests mimic a typical user’s behavior to determine whether the entire application runs as intended. It simulates a user’s journey from logging in, resetting passwords, clicking on links within the app and all other functionalities available.

Deployment

The custom mobile application deployment process is just as important as the building process. There are multiple app deployments that exist today and with good reason. First, the team needs to figure out the correct infrastructure to use including the database and networking resources.

A script that automates the release process is preferred to manual deployment to reduce errors. Test scripts are also necessary so that an alarm is raised in case of a fault. A continuous integration/continuous delivery approach to deployment offers important benefits. It means that each update is minimal and is unlikely to impact or jeopardise the entire application in case of a bug. Small and frequent updates are considered more sustainable today.

The team picks and keep an eye on metrics that indicate the app is running correctly.

Maintenance

The final stage of the application development process is always maintenance. The first and most important thing is to identify and fix bugs as quickly as possible. Frequent bugs or delayed fixes can sabotage the success of an otherwise well-built application. At NS804, we advise clients on how best to plan for maintenance, including setting aside a proportion of the initial budget for maintenance.

The second reason for maintenance is to take advantage to optimize performance As pointed out, continuous performance testing may identify bottlenecks which if improved upon can make the user journey much smoother. Small continuous improvements greatly contribute to user satisfaction numbers.

The third reason is to make security improvements. Popular apps are targets of cyber attacks and therefore any security patches to guard against those attacks are critical.

The final reason is to implement the product roadmap which involves adding new features. The MVP is often simple and limited in functionality. Once the app attains a critical mass of users, the business can begin thinking of ways to build more to grow its user base and revenue. Users appreciate when they are part of an application’s evolution. It is possible to develop new features that are in stride with user needs. Through a feedback loop, a business can find out, prioritize, and build features that resonate with its audience.

Advantages of Custom App Development

Custom application development is an involving process that requires utmost cooperation between the client and the development team. The working relationship can go on for years and the initial application can often evolve substantially.

Despite the longer development cycle and substantial initial cash outlay, custom app development offers multiple advantages.

First, the high level of customization means that the app fits the problem it is meant to solve. There are peculiarities in the environment within which a business operates that an off-the-shelf solution may not provide for.  The second advantage is the guarantee of stability even when the business scales. The assurance comes from the simulations carried out at the testing phase. The app promoters already have projections about future user numbers, and this is taken into account when building the app.

Owing your application means you can evolve it as the business grows. You can build new features, improve existing ones, and take in user feedback along the way. A unique feature that your competitors do not have on their apps could be the source of competitive advantage. Custom applications are also an opportunity to grow brand equity through high service quality and interactions with users.

When your business handles sensitive user data, guaranteed app security is paramount. Custom app development provides you with the peace of mind that user information is safe and frequent security updates are happening.

 

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Best Practices in Custom App Development

There are basic app development best practices, which if adhered to, massively increase the chances of building a successful app.

First, every project must have a unique value proposition. If there already exists competitor apps in the space, it must be clear what the new app seeks to do better. Where an off-the-shelf solution exists, the level of customization should justify the time, resources, and effort in custom app development.

Another best practice is to have a user-centric approach to development. From the initial research stage, you must take in user feedback throughout the design, building, testing, and deploying of the application. The UI should be easy and intuitive to use. There has to be a methodology for taking in and filtering user feedback even after launch.

In addition, the team has to have clear performance metrics before deploying an app. There must be no compromise on the standards.

Ensuring there is proper document is another important best practice. Having a proper record of all aspects of an app is crucial during development and maintenance of an app. It also enables knowledge transfer should new developers come on board, or the project is transferred to a new team altogether.  Some important information to have include the server environment and the thought process behind it, the database and a model diagram of the database, a record of all troubleshooting done so far, app installation steps, important libraries and dependencies, code update instructions and so much more.

Unfortunately, there are many projects when important information is never recorded or shared with important stakeholders. When a key figure in a team leaves, there is always a danger of the project being impacted too much negatively.

Laslty, testing and optimization are also important practices in NS804’s development process. While an application may do all the primary functions it is meant to, it is equally important that it does so efficiently. The code needs to be tweaked to reduce load times,  use memory efficiently and  to resolve other glitches in the user journey.

Work with Us

If your business intends to build and deploy an application to augment critical functions, we encourage you to work with us. Our team brings a wealth of experience from years of delivering apps in multiple industries. We walk with clients through every stage including determining MVP features to implementing the product roadmap years down the line. The team handles projects with utmost professionalism and in keeping with global standards. We make use of the right technologies to ensure we future-proof your app.

For more information about our services, reach out to us through our website. A member of our team will be in touch with you.

Mobile App Maintenance: The Importance Of Regular App Updates

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Few first-time appreneurs and developers consider mobile app maintenance when laboring away on their debut projects. And that’s reckless, to put it mildly, as app development is a long process that doesn’t end at launch. Users and the app stores expect apps to receive regular updates months or even years after their initial releases. 

But why are app updates such a pertinent issue that appreneurs and developers must never ignore? The primary reason is that no app is perfect on release and will likely never be during its lifetime. There is a certain quality threshold that an app must meet before it offers a satisfactory user experience. Not meeting this threshold will cause users to uninstall the app and leave negative reviews and low ratings, hurting the prospects of the app. 

That’s why the savviest appreneurs and developers have a mobile app maintenance plan from day one. They know that they must set aside resources for the continuous upkeep of their apps. These resources often include the funding, staff, analytics, tooling, and training required for app maintenance. Furthermore, it’s necessary to have dedicated staff or contractors to handle communications, compliance, documentation, user experience (UX) testing, quality assurance (QA) testing, and user feedback. 

Now, that’s a lot to unpack and only drives through the message that app development is a long, costly, and challenging endeavor. But we don’t want to dissuade you from trying your hand at app development, especially if this will be your first attempt. Instead, we encourage you to move forward, partner with an experienced and reputable studio like NS804, and consider the helpful pointers listed below. 

 

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What Does Mobile App Maintenance Entail?

Mobile app maintenance is an ongoing process that involves multiple tasks that result in the continuous improvement of apps. These tasks include gathering user feedback, data, and analytics. These factors will let developers know whether or not their apps meet changing customer expectations. 

If apps don’t meet customer expectations, developers must modify their apps to bring them in line with these expectations. However, this is only possible by rolling out app updates at regular cadences. In the case of app-breaking bugs or security vulnerabilities, developers must release patches timeously. 

And even if an app runs smoothly and reasonably bug-free, it’s still necessary to respond to current market trends. For example, 2023 was a big year for artificial intelligence (AI) that the market couldn’t ignore. Soon after the launch of ChatGPT and other similar services, mobile app developers quickly launched new AI apps or implemented AI features in their existing apps. 

It’s not uncommon for appreneurs and developers to abandon apps if they’re no longer feasible. The app stores are incredibly competitive — if not downright brutal — making it difficult to justify the cost and effort to maintain underperforming apps. 

Yet, this is not the case with custom apps, especially those aimed at internal company tasks and business-to-business (B2B) applications. Mobile app maintenance is crucial for custom business apps, as regular security and feature updates are essential for the smooth functioning of organizations of all sizes.  

Why Do Users Care About Regular App Updates?

Today’s smartphone users are app-wise and can easily discern a good app from a bad one. Moreover, today’s users are part of a mature market gradually reaching its growth limits. We only need to look at the US smartphone market to understand the staggering difference between today and a decade ago. In 2013, there were approximately 173 million smartphone users in the US, but today, it’s edging closer to 315 million.

While we may be reaching the peak of the smartphone era, this doesn’t mean the app market is going away. It only means that there’s an increase in user demands that you must respond to if you’re going to succeed. But how can you succeed in such an overwhelmingly crowded market where users uninstall apps on a whim? The first step is to create an app that addresses a problem that users have and to make it sticky.

Of course, that’s not easy, and few developers get this right on their initial attempt. But let’s assume you are addressing a problem users are experiencing, but they’re still uninstalling your app — what now? 

That’s where your mobile app maintenance plan comes in, as you’ll focus tightly on your app’s performance and user data. Your analytics will let you know if your user journeys and flows are succeeding or failing. You’ll also know if technical issues make your app function inadequately. These are the most common reasons why users drop apps like hot potatoes and why post-launch analytics are so crucial.

Once you know what’s holding your app back, you can address all relevant issues. Then, plan your roadmap to release the necessary fixes and updates. And establish an effective communications pipeline to gather user feedback and inform users of new updates.

Why A Lack Of Updates Will Hurt Your App? 

Even your most diehard users will lose interest in your app if you don’t update it regularly. They will assume that you no longer have the interest or resources to roll out updates and will eventually move on to apps that seem more promising. There’s nothing worse than losing users due to not providing them with the features competitors have provided already. The current state of the app market requires that you respond to user needs rapidly. 

Look at the leading mobile apps in your segment, and you’ll find that all these receive regular updates. Every app update helps to reinvigorate interest, especially with those users who have started to drop off or become bored. But it’s also a great way to draw new users and media attention when app updates include innovative or highly desired features. 

A lack of updates will also hurt your app’s stability and usability, especially when users upgrade their devices. Furthermore, Apple and Google demand that developers update their apps to meet the requirements of their latest operating systems and APIs. Failing to do so will result in the removal of any un-updated apps from the App Store and Google Play. Third-party Android stores also have specific app update policies that you must follow if you publish on these. 

Security concerns around hacking and data breaches have become the norm recently. Since many people use mobile apps for financial transactions, you must ensure that your app never has any security vulnerabilities. Even if you’re developing a mobile game, you must never take security issues lightly since hackers exploit these also to gain access to user credentials. So, always roll out patches and updates as soon as you know of or encounter a new vulnerability.

How App Updates Help Keep Your Tech Stack Current?

You may be proud of your studio for using the latest technology stack to create your apps. But technology moves forward rapidly, especially in the mobile space. What’s trailblazing today can quickly become outdated in a matter of months. Therefore, you never want to stick to the current versions of your integrated development environments (IDEs), APIs, frameworks, game engines, backend technologies, testing, and deployment tools. 

Sure, your programmers may want to use long-term support (LTS) releases for a more stable development environment. But eventually, you’ll need to pull the plug and move on to the latest supported version. Your team may whine about such a decision since they will feel more comfortable with the older tooling. But ultimately, they must use the tooling that increases stability, usability, and quality.

The beauty of mobile development tooling vendors is they have close relationships with the device manufacturers. Thus, they build their tools according to current and future hardware specifications. And that’s fantastic because this means you’ll often gain a free performance boost and increased stability when building your app with the latest tools.

Furthermore, you’ll be future-proofing your app since it will run adequately on devices about to hit the market. So, you’ll have the assurance that your app will run on devices you haven’t tested for yet. But this doesn’t mean that you should ignore testing altogether. Always test on an emulator if you lack access to a specific mobile device. 

As part of your mobile app maintenance processes, ensure that you keep up to date with what your tooling vendors are releasing. Read their blog posts and release notes regularly, and update all your development tools timeously. 

What Are The Different Types Of App Updates? 

There are several kinds of updates you can roll out, but not all will be suitable for your app. We explain which app updates are best suited for which purposes here: 

  • Feature release updates: Your users will provide feedback about features they want, so you should roll out feature release updates with these additional features. If your app proves popular, you may need to implement these kinds of releases several times a year.
  • Functionality updates: You should roll out functionality updates when upgrading an existing function. The frequency of these updates will depend on how often you need to upgrade the functionality of your app.
  • Maintenance updates: If your app suffers from vulnerability issues due to a cybersecurity threat, you must release emergency hotfixes immediately. You may also release a preventative update for potential attacks, an adaptive update to deal with upcoming changes, and a corrective update for patching up quality issues.
  • Monthly updates: All new apps need monthly updates to gain and retain user trust. Also, it’s necessary to release weekly updates if your app suffers from serious usability, stability, and security issues.
  • Updates for watershed events: You can surprise and delight your users by releasing an update to celebrate the first year of its release. The update must include a significant change or improvement to set your app apart from competitors. 

How To Implement Mobile App Maintenance Successfully?

All the stages of the mobile app development process are challenging. But you can make the maintenance process of your app more manageable by following these steps:

  • Document your mobile app maintenance plan: Always keep notes and documents produced by all stakeholders involved in your project. Ensure that all team members can retrieve these documents easily when necessary.
  • Prioritize training: Ensure your team is up to speed with the latest app update procedures and technologies. 
  • Establish effective communications pipelines: You want to keep all stakeholders in the loop at all times. Keep your communications open and secure for all the relevant parties, and keep everyone informed of any crucial events that require their attention.
  • Keep ahead of compliance and policy changes: The app stores constantly alter their guidelines and policies, so you must adhere to these to avoid any nasty surprises. Furthermore, stay current on regulations in the different territories you publish.
  • Regularly test the effectiveness of your app’s UX: Always be mindful of the end-user experience by testing your app’s UX. More often than not, a bad UX is why most users uninstall apps, and it’s fixable with an update. 

 

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Why Do You Need To Partner With A Reputable Studio?

As you can tell, mobile app maintenance requires hard work and sticking to a tried-and-tested plan. If you already have prior experience with the processes mentioned earlier, you know what to expect. Yet, you may still need the assistance of a talented mobile developer to help you deal with all the complexities involved with regular app updates. And if you’re new to all this, partnering with a studio is undoubtedly the right choice. 

A highly acclaimed and reputable studio like NS804 will help you deploy your app updates on time and within budget. We’ll look at your plan, goals, and requirements with an analytical eye and offer solutions that will drive your app down a successful path. 

Furthermore, we’ll help you evaluate methodologies and development technologies that will lead to the best possible upkeep of your app. We’ll also help you implement new features, fix bugs, and optimize your app so you can focus on other aspects of your app development endeavors.

In Conclusion

Mobile app maintenance is a crucial part of the entire app development cycle. Never ignore this part, as your users expect you to deliver updates that will keep them stuck to your app. If you do this right, you’ll extend the potential lifespan of your app, driving additional revenue and business. Contact NS804 to learn how we’ll help you plan, prepare, and deploy app updates like a pro!  

Mobile App Development Mistakes: Impact Of Choosing The Wrong Developer

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One of the costliest and most disastrous mobile app development mistakes you could make is to hire the wrong developer. Unfortunately, it’s an easy trap to fall into, given the plethora of app studios and freelancers vying for your projects. These entities will try to convince you they can complete your projects quickly and cost-effectively. 

In some cases, this is true, yet it’s the more established and experienced developers who make good on these promises. You can check if they’re up to the task if they have a comprehensive portfolio of completed projects, positive customer feedback, and even acquired awards for their work. Established mobile app developers like NS804 tick all these boxes, as we’ve built a reputation for creating phenomenal apps for our clients and have the acclaim to prove it. 

However, many developers are not in our position and are willing to oversell to secure client work. While we can all understand why they do this — it’s not in your best interests to work with them — and here’s why. 

With freelance developers, many are in the process of learning fundamental skills and building up their portfolios. It’s common for newcomers to follow several Udemy app development courses and then set up an account on Fiverr to sell their services to unsuspecting clients. These individuals are neither professionals nor comprehend software development best practices.

Then, many overseas and fly-by-night studios offer competitive rates but have poor code quality and less-than-stellar support. The potential cost savings, if any, will lead to a frustrating and stressful app development experience. As a busy appreneur or business leader — you don’t want this — so avoid the following mobile app development mistakes listed below.

 

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Misunderstanding The App Industry Leads To Costly Mobile App Development Mistakes

About a decade ago, anyone with rudimentary coding skills could release a fun and quirky application in the app stores. The barrier of entry was so low that bedroom coders and startups released tons of apps at negligible cost. Of course, the quality of these apps was often questionable, but these early efforts helped developers earn money and stardom. 

Most app users during that era were willing to put up with subpar apps since smartphones felt novel. Thus, they would download and try out the latest apps regularly, which created a near-endless demand for new apps. But the allure would fade since too many cruddy apps started ruining the user experience. 

Eventually, users became picky about what apps to install and soon lost interest in low-quality or uninspired efforts. Smartphones and tablets also became more standardized, leading to a homogenized look, feel, and feature set among brands. While consumers never truly lost interest in smartphones and apps, they did lose some excitement. But this is not necessarily bad, as it signals a maturing market. 

Sadly, many who wish to enter the app industry today haven’t fathomed these changes. They assume that the barrier of entry is still low and that a simple app developed in a few days or weeks could lead to vast fortunes. 

They haven’t considered the increased demand for quality from users and the app stores. App development today requires testing, a better user experience (UX), and a greater focus on marketing. Then, there’s the high cost and effort associated with user acquisition (UA), which is unavoidable in today’s super competitive app marketplaces. Therefore, it’s better to partner with a reputable studio to help you navigate the app industry as it is today. 

The App Stores Have Raised The Bar To Deter The Wrong Developers

Apple and Google don’t mess about when it comes to increasing trust with users. Both tech giants have taken bold and long-needed steps to diminish the number of low-quality apps from reaching the App Store and Google Play. They’ve long been aware of the glut of buggy, poorly developed, and opportunistic cash grabs filling their app stores.

Besides, many apps from unscrupulous developers also pose significant security risks, which have no place in app marketplaces. There’s always been a troubling amount of apps with malware and trojans available that unsuspecting users download onto their devices. Considering that many users do banking on their smartphones, these infected apps threaten their financial security and privacy. 

One of the most detrimental mobile app development mistakes you could make is to hire such a developer on a lark. The damage to your reputation and business would be monumental, not to mention the legal action against you from users. The developer you hire may not even be malicious but overlooks potential security vulnerabilities that could lead to a similar outcome.

Due to these issues, Apple and Google have constantly improved security measures in their respective app stores, operating systems, and software development kits (SDKs). But they’ve also raised the bar on what they expect from developers with tighter regulations. 

A good example is Google Play’s recent requirements for new Android app developers and those with personal accounts. These developers must have 20 or more people test their apps for at least two weeks before release. Understandably, many developers are venting their frustrations on Reddit and attempting to build test groups on Discord. But studios that have set up effective mobile app testing pipelines won’t face any issues with compliance.

Mobile App Development Mistakes Due To Unsuitable Tooling

You may work with a developer who uses no-code tools to build your app. The developer may insist on using such tools due to the increased speed they offer or because they lack programming experience. Either way, this isn’t necessarily a good idea, as no-code platforms often introduce performance bottlenecks.

While newer no-code app builders offer performance improvements, they still don’t produce apps that hold up to native-developed apps. And if your brand’s reputation hangs on the quality of your app, you shouldn’t cut corners. Work with a studio like NS804, renowned for building apps using native languages like Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android. 

The snappy performance, consistency, and native user interface (UI) make the additional cost and effort to produce native apps worthwhile. It’s also much easier to debug, test, and scale native-built apps than those made with no-code solutions. 

One of the drawbacks of no-code solutions is that they’re rather esoteric and often made by smaller niche tool developers. Thus, documentation, code examples, and support are not on the same level as that provided by Apple and Google. It’s also harder to find tutorials and other training materials from third parties and online teaching platforms. 

Should you want to update or scale your app at a later stage and be unable to work with the same developer, you’ll be out of luck. You will need to rewrite your app entirely from scratch, preferably in a native programming language, to avoid this same issue in the future. You can diminish the potential for mobile app development mistakes by ensuring the developer you hire uses the tooling, programming languages, and best practices recommended by Apple and Google.

The Wrong Developer Relies Heavily On ChatGPT

You’ve probably heard of ChatGPT and the impact of the artificial intelligence (AI) platform on programming and other disciplines. As a tool to help developers write boilerplate code and conjure up solutions, it’s a fantastic time saver. But as some kind of silver bullet for developing complex, robust, and mission-critical apps, the answer is not so straightforward.

While ChatGPT can make all types of apps, even complex ones, it won’t necessarily deliver the best and most solid apps. That partly depends on how well the developer understands ChatGPT’s large language model (LLM) and what prompts to enter. Then, the developer’s comprehension of the code that ChatGPT generates also comes into play. 

If the developer can understand, tweak, and implement the code to fit the app project, the results will impress while cutting costs. But if the developer hasn’t taken the time to learn the nuances of ChatGPT, it will have the opposite effect. It’s also crucial that the developer has a good comprehension of the programming languages used in development, especially after the introduction of new updates and standards. 

Nevertheless, the developer should have the skills to complete apps without ChatGPT or any other AI platform. An overreliance on these platforms isn’t ideal, as the developer must know and trust the codebase. As impressive as these AI platforms have become, they don’t always generate the right solutions.

So, never trust a developer who relies exclusively on these AI platforms to make your app. Or a developer who gives a single glance over the AI-generated code before inserting it into your app during production. And you certainly don’t want your banking or internal business app to have code that hasn’t been thoroughly inspected and tested.

Partnering With A Developer With Little Mobile App Development Experience

It’s not uncommon for developers to jump across industries for various reasons. For example, web developers often become disenchanted with building websites and decide to try their hand at mobile app development. They may assume this route will be more fun or earn them more money. 

While web developers possess several skills used in mobile app development, it’s not always a smooth transition. App development is often more challenging than web development due to the differing hardware considerations and increasing requirements imposed by the app stores. The Android platform alone requires that developers test on a wide variety of devices, while web developers only need to test their websites on several browsers. 

Web developers use languages like JavaScript, PHP, HTML, and CSS to build websites. While it’s possible to develop mobile apps with JavaScript, it’s not a first-class citizen and will seldom deliver the performance of native languages. Another shocker for web developers is the higher costs and more involved procedures associated with app development. 

If you’re considering hiring a web developer who has recently transitioned to mobile app development, think twice before proceeding. You don’t want to work with someone likely to make common mobile app development mistakes. It’s also unlikely that this developer has enough expertise or understands the nuances between Android and iOS.

Instead, opt for an established app development studio that has dedicated Android and iOS developers on the team. You’ll have the peace of mind that your app builds will be equally good on both platforms. And when you need to roll out updates and patches, you have a team on hand to do the heavy lifting.

 

SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION WITH AN APP DEVELOPMENT EXPERT TO GET A CUSTOMIZED QUOTE!

 

Working With A Developer Lacking The Necessary Resources

Mobile app development is not cheap, so every competent developer must have the necessary resources to complete their projects. These resources include the funds, staff, office space, hardware, and development tools available to the developer. If the developer lacks these, they won’t be a good candidate for your next project.

But how can you tell if the developer has the necessary resources to tackle your project? It’s not possible to know every aspect of the developer’s business, but there are a few tell-tale signs you should look out for. 

Check if the developer operates from an office that you can visit if you’re nearby. If you can stop by the developer’s premises to meet the team and discuss your project, that’s a positive sign. And if the team lead gives you a tour of the office and a rundown of the development process, that’s extra reassuring. A well-run and properly equipped development studio means you’re dealing with a credible developer. 

But be sure to ask the developer what contingency plans they have in place should they fall behind schedule. Consider all scenarios that may cause delays, including outages, app store policy changes, API updates, staff turnover, testing issues, etc. Mobile app development mistakes often happen when teams haven’t prepared for unforeseen events or allocated the relevant resources to deal with these issues.

In Conclusion

Mobile app development mistakes often happen when dealing with inexperienced or incompetent developers. But you can avoid regretful outcomes by working with an experienced and established studio that has built a reputation for delivering high-quality apps. Contact NS804 today to learn why we’re one of the best app developers in Richmond, Charlotte, Denver, and beyond! 

8 Ways The Right Mobile App Can Boost Lead Generation

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Every organization needs to boost lead generation to remain profitable in the long run. If you’re finding that your business has trouble attracting prospects, you’re likely seeking solutions right now. While there’s no silver bullet for this problem, effective solutions do actually exist. 

Regardless of the nature and size of your organization and industry, you can increase lead generation with the right mobile app. Your sales team requires tools to make them effective at finding new leads and gradually driving them down the sales funnel. While there’s no shortage of turnkey solutions that do this, your business can benefit by building a custom mobile app solution. 

A custom mobile app will free your sales staff from their desks and allow them to operate without feeling confined by the workflows imposed by the big-name lead generation apps. Here are eight ways that the right mobile app can change the game. 

 

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1. Build A Lead Management App For Your Sales Reps

If you have sales reps operating out in the field, it can become prohibitively expensive for them to chase after unqualified leads. Instead, you want them to be closing deals quickly and cost-effectively. But this is only possible if your sales reps can effectively qualify, segment, and nurture leads. Moreover, you want them to score and track every stage of the lead generation process. 

A great solution is to build a lead management app to empower your sales staff. But what does such an app entail, and how will it boost lead generation? One of its most powerful features is its ability to tap into your existing customer database. Mainly because your database already contains a plethora of customer data that reveals who your cold, warm, and hot leads are.

The lead management app will let sales staff filter the most qualified leads. Now, staff won’t have to take any wild guesses on which leads to focus on. By removing the guesswork, your staff will inevitably save time while decreasing travel costs. Furthermore, the lead management app will contain the contact details of prospects who have expressed interest in your brand, products, and services. 

Sales staff may further drill down on this data based on customer demographics, geographic locations, and purchasing habits. Also, they can use the lead management app to close, track, and cancel appointments. You can also view this data in real-time and access detailed reports to help you best allocate performance bonuses and pinpoint sales strategies to improve.

2. Boost Lead Generation With An AI-Powered App

Your business may already use customer relationship management (CRM) tools. You could even be using one of the popular cloud-based solutions like Oracle NetSuite CRM, Salesforce, and Zoho CRM. And while these turnkey solutions are great, your staff may experience workflow issues.    

No matter how good off-the-shelf solutions have become, they seldom fit every organization perfectly. That’s because some solutions suit mid-sized and larger enterprises since these have more rigid structures. If you have a smaller sales team or have specific needs and workflows, it’s wise to go with a custom solution. And even if you’re using an off-the-shelf CRM, you can integrate it with your custom lead generation app. 

But how can you improve workflows on top of what popular solutions offer? Start by surveying your sales staff to determine what pain points they currently experience. To make this process easier, work with an experienced studio like NS804. We’ll draw up wireframes to map out the entire user experience (UX) so that your team will have a point of reference. 

But don’t stop there since we can radically improve your new lead generation app with artificial intelligence (AI). While AI is big news lately due to the popularization of tools like ChatGPT, AI is hardly novel. In the mobile space, AI-powered apps have enjoyed popularity for almost a decade. Yet, only recently are companies embracing AI for their mission-critical apps and software infrastructure. 

Your sales staff can boost lead generation by running powerful sales campaigns created almost entirely by AI. AI can help staff build marketing funnels, assist with neglected or cold leads, and accurately segment your target customers. And since your AI-powered app will save staff so much time, they can focus on prospecting leads and closing deals.

3. Power Up Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Even if your sales staff regularly conduct face-to-face meetings with customers, they probably use email for their marketing campaigns. After all, email remains a powerful channel for connecting with customers, even with the wide use of social media nowadays. The primary reason is that users retain their email addresses for long durations. 

Also, it’s common for users to quit social media due to physical or mental health issues. Some users neglect their accounts, reduce engagement, or flock to the latest trending social media platform. While your sales staff should never ignore social media, they can’t ignore email since it’s a more sustainable and direct channel. The best part is that email can radically boost lead generation if combined with a custom app.

This app will assist your sales staff to automate, personalize, and schedule all email campaigns. Then, you can seamlessly integrate your custom app with your favorite email clients and marketing platforms. Sales staff can effortlessly run campaigns from their smartphones while in any location or time zone. They can also collaborate with your office-bound and remote teams and share progress reports of all campaigns. 

But this is only basic functionality that’s enough to help your team get started. You can add additional features later to make your app an all-encompassing solution for your email campaigns. 

For example, you can add templates that allow sales staff to create impactful landing pages without the assistance of a designer. An additional A/B testing component will let your team fine-tune their split testing efforts. And with a live chat implementation, your team can communicate directly with leads to drive them down the sales funnel.

4. Enhance Sales Proposal And Contract Agreement Procedures 

Your top sales representative probably dislikes writing sales proposals and contracts. But you can reduce the paperwork and drudgery with the right mobile app. Nowadays, there’s little need for your sales reps to spend considerable time writing sales proposals and traveling across the country to have contracts signed. 

Instead, they can use templates that contain the company letterhead for proposals and contract agreements. Better yet, these documents can accept electronic signatures, meaning that clients can sign these directly on their mobile devices or PCs. This paperless approach is more environmentally sustainable and makes it easy to keep track of all documentation. 

Another benefit of this approach is that documents get to customers fast. This is crucial because leads often go cold if they wait too long for a proposal or contract. If your sales staff doesn’t get this documentation through quickly, customers may have second thoughts about doing business with you. Worse still, a rival may approach them during that time and offer a better deal. 

Your custom app can keep track of all outgoing and incoming documentation and issue alerts when customers view or sign these. The app must also have an auto-reminder feature to nudge customers to take action if they haven’t looked at or signed the documentation.

5. Use Mobile Surveys To Boost Lead Generation

Whether you’re targeting regular consumers or business-to-business (B2B) clients, you should survey them regularly. Not only will you gain plenty of valuable customer data, but surveys offer an opportunity to engage leads and drive them towards your brand.

Of course, not everyone enjoys completing surveys, so you’ll need to get creative. Ideally, create a fun and engaging app that your target audience will find appealing. 

If you’re targeting a younger audience, add quizzes and gamification features that remind them of their favorite video games. But if you’re targeting business professionals, ensure that your surveys offer fascinating tidbits and practical advice about the industry once they complete specific milestones.

You may also include polls to identify what interests your target audience the most. Furthermore, keep track of all these polls for longer-than-usual durations to determine changing trends. The more interactive your mobile surveys, the easier it becomes to boost lead generation due to greater user engagement and exposure to your brand via your mobile app.

6. Centralize All Contact Details

Keeping all the contact details of leads and customers in one place is challenging. The reason is that most organizations record customer contact details using several platforms like CRMs, databases, and email clients. Sales staff may note down contact details on Post-it notes or their smartphones. Under such circumstances, it’s easy to lose contact details and have duplicate entries. 

Therefore, it’s essential to have a central hub to keep an updated record of all contact details. A good solution is to build a mobile app that pulls all contact details across all communication channels within your organization. Sales staff should be able to review and update contact details directly on their mobile devices. They should also segment, filter, and list the customers and leads more likely to make a purchase. 

The app should also alert sales staff about customers or leads they haven’t contacted in a long time. Once a sales representative contacts a lead, the app must alert the other sales staff members so they don’t inundate and annoy the same lead with phone calls or emails. The primary goal of your app is to centralize and streamline contact management.

7. Add A Scanning Capability In Your App

Conferences and trade shows are often the best places to meet B2B leads. Visitors at these events usually carry business cards, conference badges, or other identifiers. If you regularly visit these events, you’ve probably become accustomed to collecting and giving away business cards. 

But you can simplify the process by scanning another visitor’s card. Your lead generation app will retain a copy of the scan and extract the text and contact details to store in your address book or contact management app. The scanning capability will prove a time saver if you usually collect business cards en masse. 

However, the app’s most powerful feature is its ability to disseminate these new contact details among your sales staff. Then, they can follow up with warm and hot leads within minutes if necessary. Or if you’ve placed specific instructions, sales staff will email prospects later about the products, services, or topics you’ve already discussed with them at the event.

The ability for your sales staff to create personalized emails based on your face-to-face interactions with prospects will help boost lead generation. Moreover, there’s a higher likelihood to win them over and drive them down the sales funnel rapidly.

 

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8. Track Cross-Channel Behavior 

Your customers and leads engage with your business both offline and online. They also interact with your business on multiple channels like email, social media, and company websites. But are you keeping track of all these engagements? Why you want to do this is to identify the channels that have the most traction and affect your bottom line. 

Perhaps your sales staff spends too much time on email marketing and lead magnets when most of your target audience is on social media. If you’ve identified this issue early on, your sales team can prioritize your social channels quickly. But if you’re unaware of this, your sales staff will miss out on lead-generation opportunities crucial to the profitability of your business.

Your lead generation app should have the capability to track cross-channel behavior. Understanding how leads behave across all channels allows your staff to fine-tune their marketing efforts, target qualified leads, and focus on prospects likely to spend more. But your app should also contain analytics that measure the effectiveness of your sales team’s actions.

The Bottom Line

Lead generation is somewhat of an art form necessary for the long-term survival of just about any business. And nowadays, there’s no shortage of solutions that facilitate lead generation. You can combine off-the-shelf solutions with a custom mobile app or go completely custom if that best suits your business. Contact NS804 today to learn how we’ll help you build an app to boost lead generation and take your business to new heights!

There’s an App for That: 8 Innovative Apps to Inspire Building Yours

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There are millions of apps listed on both the Apple Store and Google Play. Chances are that if you come up with an idea for an app, it already exists in some form. Interestingly though, less than 1% of all apps created end up achieving their intended success levels in terms of downloads, user retention, and monetization. It is therefore safe to assume that ideation is not a problem for most applications. However, there are other underlying issues, which if well addressed could significantly improve the chances of success for a new mobile application.

Researching the Competition

If businesses are offering an app similar to what you are building, take time to understand their model. What core problem are they solving and what features have they built for that? Read reviews and where possible, collect data from users to find out if the competitors do well and where they miss the mark. Your app should be geared towards delivering a better experience for users. The competitors’ scorecard is likely to include pillars such as security, speed and reliability, and UI and UX.

A Marketing Strategy

Building a great product is one part of the equation, getting people’s attention is a different ball game altogether. It is important to put together a comprehensive strategy to funnel people so they can download your app. This might include organizing or participating in physical and virtual events where you meet potential customers and present the app to them. It is important to have a website or a landing page from where you redirect traffic to your app’s listing on official app stores. Using reviewers, influencers, and news publications will also amplify the buzz around your app.   

 

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Leveraging social media and Content Marketing

Creating quality content consistently is never easy and may require you to invest in a team to help you leverage that as part of your growth strategy. Search engine snippets, blogs, and video content can elevate your brand’s position but it doesn’t come cheap. Fortunately, such content is timeless and can be repurposed across multiple platforms. It will keep funneling people to your app.

Your team must understand how to best interact with users and potential new users on social media. Find out which type of posts will maximize your reach, engagement, and conversion. In most cases, it will be a combination of different types of posts.

In case you decide to run paid ads for your app, you will need to invest in getting the best copy, graphics, and video to maximize your ROI. Use A/B testing tools to see how different options perform. Have a sizeable enough budget to ensure the ads run long enough to achieve tangible and sustainable results.

Innovative Ideas to Inspire Your App in 2023

Now that you understand that novel ideas are not the only thing that matters when estimating the chances of an app’s success, we can agree that you can draw inspiration from already existing apps. Here is a list of applications in different industries that could help inspire your next app idea.

TrueBill

TrueBill is a subscription-tracking application in the personal finance management space. The app has both free and premium tiers. The app allows users to set preferred cancellation dates for services such as Netflix and Spotify. The app partners with thousands of banking institutions to make this possible and even has the option to provide a user’s monthly credit report. However, users will need to grant TrueBill various permissions for the soft credit check. The company offers additional services such as bill negotiation on behalf of users.

Headspace

Headspace is a mindfulness and meditation app that has received very good reviews from people in the online wellness community. The app provides tools such as guided meditation, dance tutorials, and focus exercises. The app offers a 7–14-day trial where users can test out all premium features. They do offer discounted prices for students and for family subscriptions.

Creating an app that can compete with Headspace is an enormous task requiring a deep dive to gather resources, market the app, and offer a UI better than what the Headspace team offers.

HiveBrite

HiveBrite is a SaaS application geared towards helping founders of social impact communities manage their workflow. Community founders can easily create landing pages, have a managed news feed, and create guided paths to help onboard new members and stimulate participation by existing members. The platform allows for branding customization through fonts, color palettes, and typography all within the platform and without any coding being needed. HiveBrite also allows founders to manage subscriptions through safe payment handling.

But perhaps the biggest advantage it offers is discoverability for organizations. Volunteers constantly seek to join communities and causes that resonate with their values. Through HiveBrite, founders can make their organizations easier to find.

Focus Booster

With the amount of distractions people have to deal with today, it is not a surprise that there are so many productivity apps in the market. However, you may want to narrow down on creating an app that helps people concentrate on single tasks much better. Focus Booster is one such app that allows users to block out short bursts of time for work and frequent breaks throughout the day. So for instance, a user may schedule 10 half-hour tasks with 5-minute breaks between each. Focus Booster also gives insights into how users have utilized their days (goal tracking).

You could create a similar app with a better implementation of the UI, analytics, as well as additional features such as reminders for scheduled tasks.

LifeAt Communities

This is an app in the online self-study space. It provides a platform where people can join communities to power through tasks such as coursework or projects together. With different study rooms, people get to choose one that suits them. They can block out time for studying, have the camera on or off, attend and even create their events, and much more.

Another popular app in the same space is called Gather. It allows people to create avatars, design virtual working spaces with aesthetics they like, and even share personal wins with people in the community. The app also has a room for online games such as Tetris, just to keep people within the app during study breaks.

Developing an app in this space would require a lot of research to add features that significantly improve the experience for users beyond what is currently available. Integration with document editing solutions, storage, and meeting rooms are just examples of what could be possible. Study resources for students could be included as part of the subscription package being offered to them.

Strava

Strava is one of the best-built apps in the fitness space. It is geared towards helping people find communities and outdoor fitness challenges around them. Based on location, Strava users can find new running or hiking trails and challenges around them. People can share their achievements both on the platform and externally. They can also take part in group activities. Strava uses GPS data to ensure the accuracy of the data or results from a user’s activity.

To build a successful app in the fitness space, you would need to invest heavily in the product features as well as in marketing to ensure you reach a critical mass in audience numbers. Social apps need to be people-driven. Once enough people join, the numbers can quickly snowball to tens of millions of users thus unlocking profitability.

Fitbob

There are numerous ways that you can integrate artificial intelligence into the fitness market today. Fitbod is an application that provides customized workouts based on personal goals, available equipment, past workout history, and muscle recovery data. Over time, the app increases the difficulty level of the challenges to help users elevate their fitness levels. For a trainer, the app is useful in helping design workouts for clients who have different equipment at their disposal.

Other apps combine fitness goals with nutrition guidance. They provide custom recipes based on what ingredients a user has available. Apps in this space need to have a simple UI so that users do not feel too overwhelmed especially when inputting data. An extensive food database is necessary to accommodate a wide enough audience of users. Additional resources such as information on nutritional deficiencies of ingredients and possible alternatives would add to the utility of a fitness and nutritional app guide.

 

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Viator

Viator is a travel app that acts as a booking guide for people going to new places. The app has curated over 300,000 experiences across the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia. This means that users can get suggestions of things to do depending on their budget and time in their itinerary. The app allows users to book activities within the app. The app has robust customer-support systems, which have built user confidence over time.

When building such an app, you need resources to curate enough activities for people. You could invite service providers to make a listing on your platform. However, checks are necessary to ensure customer expectations are met after making an online booking.

Actualizing Your Idea

As we have seen, there are multiple opportunities across different industries where you can build a mobile app today. However, actualizing your idea will take loads of work. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

Research- You must study the market to identify a gap. Do not attempt to do too many things in one app. Surveys, interviews, and other forms of data-gathering techniques are useful in narrowing down to a particular problem that your app seeks to address.

MVP- Once you have a problem to solve, it is then important to list down the features to be included in the app. You need to build a minimum viable product first, with only the core features first. Test it in the market and continually iterate, adding new features while improving the primary ones.

UI and UX- Customers want an easy experience when using your app. Dedicate enough resources in developing a user interface that is empathetic to your user’s needs. Make the customer journey as easy as possible else the app will have a low user retention rate.

The Right Tech Stack- With the help of your development team, decide on whether to go with a cross-platform application or a native app for iOS and one for Android.

Marketing- Creating a buzz around your market will take up a significant amount of resources. Have enough set aside to run a marketing campaign before, during, and after the launch of your app.

Continuous Development- Your team should take into account that the app should keep evolving in response to customer feedback and changing needs. Innovation will improve revenue generation for your app too.

Mobile Application Development Services at NS804

Our team at NS804 has the right mix of tech skills and experience to bring your next mobile application idea to life. We have built tens of mobile apps for businesses across multiple industries. No matter what stage your idea is currently at, our team will work with you to deliver it to completion. You are welcome to book a call with a member of our team through our website. 

6 Internal Company Solutions A Mobile App Can Provide

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Internal company solutions often include communication, team collaboration, and project management tools. In most cases, these will be desktop or web-based applications and paper-oriented in more extreme cases. But, increasingly, more companies are shifting to mobile apps due to their versatility and widespread use of mobile devices. Below, we’ll look at what company solutions mobile apps facilitate in greater detail.

Bring Your Line-Of-Business (LOB) Apps To Mobile

Regardless of your organization structure, you likely use a suite of desktop LOB apps for most internal tasks. Also, you’re probably heavily invested in the Windows ecosystem due to its business-centric approach. And while many company solutions may run on Windows, this is not always the case. 

 

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It’s not uncommon for businesses to use macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, FreeBSD, or some other esoteric operating system (OS). There are cases when companies inevitably cling to legacy operating systems such as Windows 95 or DOS since these will only run on their older equipment and computer systems.

But what does this all mean for you, and how can your business benefit by porting your existing LOB apps to mobile? While desktops are great and allow for high productivity, they’re not the only feasible solution for your business. After all, most, if not all, your employees carry smartphones on them during the workday and after hours. And given the considerable computing power of most current smartphones, they’re also excellent productivity devices. 

So, it’s a wasted opportunity not to port several mission-critical apps to mobile, as this will allow employees to complete essential tasks when out of the office or late in the evening when necessary. Furthermore, most employees don’t like using a PC after hours, especially after staring at a computer screen all day at the office. 

But they’ll feel more comfortable with a smartphone or tablet, as these devices feel more personal and intuitive for use inside or outside the office. Thus, your employees won’t mind catching up on work at home or on the go, provided your mobile LOB apps have an intuitive and snappy user interface (UI).

How To Bring Your Internal Company Solutions To Mobile

Unless you have an internal development team, you should partner with a reputable mobile studio, such as NS804, to port your existing LOB apps. Founded in 2012, we have worked on over 100 mobile apps for Android and iOS and received acclaim for our hard work and commitment to excellence. We work with organizations of different sizes and industries, such as CarLotz, Dominion Energy, and Wells Fargo Advisors, to name a few.

But even if you don’t have any desktop or web-based LOB apps but need us to create mobile-first or mobile-only company solutions, we’re happy to assist. We have developed several notable business and productivity apps that you might have used or heard about, like the following:

  • Béné
  • CFO Sidekick
  • EntreConnect
  • Paxis Pro
  • Referral Buddy
  • Substation App
  • Text Surge
  • Transsporter
  • True Home Review
  • Yards4Yeardley

As a native mobile app developer, we use the best-in-class programming languages, tooling, and methodologies for Android and iOS. Ultimately, this guarantees we create apps that offer optimal performance, look, and feel on both mobile platforms. 

But what if you only need to release on one platform due to budget constraints? Which platform should you choose and why? Preferably, opt for the platform that enjoys the most use in your organization. For example, if most of your employees use iPhones, go with iOS. However, if there isn’t a dominant platform, Android is preferable due to its more open nature and ability to sideload apps easily. Android smartphones and tablets are also cheaper to acquire if you plan to equip all your employees with a device.

1. Automating Employee Onboarding And Training

As your business grows, you have little choice but to hire additional staff. But you’ll need to offer a comprehensive onboarding and training program. The only problem with this is that it can become an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. 

That’s because you’ll need training staff to teach newcomers the skills and methods to function effectively in your organization. And every time you hire someone new, you’ll need to repeat this process, which will inevitably increase your costs. It makes little sense to keep training staff around if you only require their services occasionally and at irregular intervals.

One solution is to outsource to a third-party training provider. But that’s not always a good idea, as their pricing may be higher than expected, or you may not want to share methodologies that reveal trade secrets. Instead, you should build a custom training platform that automates these processes continuously.

You’ll only need to hire training staff once to write documentation, film videos, and record audio training courses. Once you’ve assembled all this training media, it’s time to put it to work for you within the framework of a training app. The app will commence with the onboarding process consisting of a welcome video, your company’s mission statement, achievements, goals, and what you expect from new hires. 

Once they complete onboarding, the app will launch a training module specific to each new staff member’s position in the company. They will gain access only to the documentation and media suitable for their roles, then tested via questionnaires and multiple-choice questions (MCQs). The app will also send you progress reports and test results for each candidate so that you can better assess their suitability for their assigned roles.

2. Improve Staff Efficiency With A Team Collaboration Mobile App 

Internal company solutions often revolve around powerful collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Trello. And while all these are great, you may want a more custom solution geared toward the workflows and methodologies of your company.

Furthermore, you may want that extra peace of mind of having complete control of the privacy and security of your collaboration app instead of relying on a third party. After all, it’s not uncommon for popular apps to suffer security breaches and for hackers to steal user credentials.

A side benefit of having your own team collaboration app is that you’re not subject to the end-user license agreement (EULA) set by a third-party software vendor. And that’s because you may not like some terms within the EULA, or updated terms and conditions may pose potential legal risks to your business. It’s also common for vendors to introduce app updates that disrupt staff workflow and business operations. 

With your custom team collaboration platform, you’ll have a level of control to keep undesirable elements blocked off. But you’ll also have complete control over how, when, and where staff may use your app.

Perhaps, you want staff to communicate via text to save on data costs, or you want them to use the app during office hours only. Ideally, you’ll want to make use of what the best team collaboration apps bring to the table, such as video conferencing and the ability to share all types of files. 

3. Accelerate Digitization In Your Organization

Whether you create a communication, project management, or team collaboration app, these will boost digitization within your organization. These apps require you to convert all your physical-based data and media into digital form. All paper documents within your file cabinets are ripe for digitization, and there are many tangible benefits in taking this path. 

Having documents in a digital format will make it easier to archive, share, and update your organization’s files. And you can follow through with other media, such as 3D models, draft plans, illustrations, photos, videos, and audio recordings.

It’s also more cost-effective to store all these on your servers or the cloud instead of allocating significant office space for this purpose. You can also easily backup digital files within and outside the physical confines of your organization, ensuring you never lose this valuable data due to a fire or any other mishap.  

However, one of the reasons why you want to implement digitization for company solutions is to give your business a competitive edge. And that’s only possible if your staff has access to the correct information all the time. You want staff to access the information they need rapidly. Moreover, you want this data to be accurate and up-to-date. 

4. Enhance Supply Management With A Mobile Solution

Even if you already have supply management software for your business, do you have a mobile version? This is a crucial question because a mobile app can radically improve all supply management tasks.

If you’re relying exclusively on a desktop app, your staff is probably wasting valuable time moving back and forth between the office and the storeroom. They’re probably back checking on the inventory in stock and what appears on the computer screen or print out. 

Also, there’s no guarantee that they processed inventory information correctly the first time, as they probably ticked off or filled out a paper document before entering this information into the computer. That’s an additional step that wastes time and increases the probability of error.

With a mobile app, an employee can log all incoming inventory directly on the storeroom floor without needing to be near a desktop. The app will store all recent entries on the mobile app’s backend, and your desktop supply management app can query this data in real-time if necessary.

You probably want internal company solutions to handle your distribution and logistics pipelines. The mobile app can play a vital role here, as you can connect and monitor your drivers and third-party freight carriers and shipping companies to successfully fulfill all delivery obligations. You’ll also reduce the duration of delivery trips, paperwork, and the probability of items going missing in transit.

 

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5. Engage Employees With Social And Gamification Features

The last thing you want is for your employees to lose interest in their work and your company’s goals. Ideally, you want to keep them engaged and excited about coming to work so that they perform at their best. While you can offer them incentives like bonuses and paid company trips, you can achieve much more with the right type of company solutions.    

One good solution is to build a dedicated employee engagement app that functions similarly to a social media platform. It can act as a central hub where staff can gather, complete their profiles, connect with others, hold discussions, make announcements, read company news, and receive acclaim for meeting milestones. 

Furthermore, the app can facilitate your company’s emergency preparedness and response plans by providing staff with all relevant emergency numbers and a floor plan showing fire escapes inside company premises. You can further boost app engagement by including gamification features that reward staff with points and unique icons or emojis once they complete specific tasks within the app, such as completing their entire profile. 

And if you decide not to build such an app, you can still implement social and gamification features in your training, communications, and team collaboration apps. You may also share company news via your other apps and urgent announcements via push notifications. 

6. Take Charge With A Project Management Mobile App

Your organization needs a good project management app to plan and monitor projects from A to Z. If you already have one, that’s great, but you can achieve more with a mobile app. And that’s because you want staff to collaborate in real-time regardless if they’re in the office or out in the field.

You may also integrate with your existing team collaboration and communication tools to facilitate team project management. And depending on how you plan and execute your projects, you can optimize the app for Agile or Waterfall methodologies. You can take things further by including a Kanban board that allows you to schedule projects visually, making it easier for staff to follow all steps of the process.

The Bottom Line

Businesses are increasingly using mobile apps to fulfill many crucial internal roles. These often work in tandem with existing desktop or web-based company solutions or replacing them entirely. If you’re currently sitting on the fence, there’s never been a better time to enhance or augment your internal company solutions with a mobile app. Contact https://www.ns804.com/ today to learn how we’ll help you develop a custom app to boost your business!

Android Mobile App Development Questions, Answered

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Android app development is the process of developing applications designed to run exclusively on Android devices – smartphones, tablets, laptops, computers, and smart TVs. Android operating system, developed by Google in 2008, is the most widely used OS globally, making it crucial for developers, tech enthusiasts, and business owners. Since its release in 2008, the Android operating system has received worldwide acclaim powering millions of devices across the world.

Android mobile app development involves writing code from scratch using reputable programming languages such as Kotlin and Java, designing attractive interfaces, managing data handling and retrieval, integrating various applications and APIs, and ensuring overall app performance and efficiency. The success of Android applications can be attributed to factors such as the availability of many devices at various price points and an open-source nature that encourages innovation.

This article explores some questions on Android mobile app development and their answers. In this post, we will look at various aspects of Android mobile app development, including architectural patterns, choice of programming language, testing, network, design considerations, and data management.

 

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By examining these concepts, readers will obtain valuable insights, empowering them to build robust, efficient, and feature-rich Android applications.

1. What’s the most frequently used programming language for Android applications?

The answer is Java. However, Kotlin has gained popularity and is now the most preferred language over Java. Developers prefer Kotlin to Java for a wide range of reasons: Kotlin is intuitive to use, easy to learn, and Kotlin code is considered safer and more concise than Java.

2. Do I need to learn Java to develop Android applications?

While Java used to be the primary programming language for Android applications, it is no longer an option. Kotlin is more modern, concise, and accurate, and is preferred for modern projects. However, understanding Java can still be beneficial, especially when you encounter legacy codes or libraries written by Java.

3. What’s the advantage of Kotlin over Java?

Understanding the nuance discrepancies between Java and Kotlin is crucial to making an informed decision about your programming language.

Here are the key advantages of Kotlin:

  • Concise syntax. Kotlin’s expressive syntax allows developers to write more concise code, reducing the chances of introducing errors.
  • Null safety. Kotlin type system introduces null safety, reducing the possibility of null pointer exceptions, a common source of bugs.
  • Interoperability. Kotlin can integrate or interoperate with Java, allowing developers to leverage Java-based libraries and legacy codes.
  • Readability. Kotlin’s type inference and expressive nature make the code maintainable and readable.

4. What is Android Studio, and do I need it in Android app development?

Android Studio is the official integrated development environment (IDE). By integrated development environment, it provides the tools, resources, and machinery required to simplify your code. The Android Studio has diverse programming languages, APIs, and other tools needed for beginners to excel.

5. What’s Google Android SDK?

A Google Android SDK is a toolset for developers to write codes in Android-enabled devices. The SDK contains a graphical interface that acts as an Android-driven handheld environment, allowing developers to test and debug their codes.

6. What are the main components of the Android architecture?

The main components of the Android architecture include:

  • Android applications
  • Android framework
  • Libraries
  • Linux Kernel

7. What are the minimum system requirements for Android app development?

To run Android Studio and design Android apps, you need a powerful computer with 8GB RAM, a recent operating system (Windows, Linux, MacOS), a quad-core CPU, and the relevant tools and technologies.

8. What is the Android API level, and why is it important to consider?

The Android API level refers to the version of the Android operating system that your app targets or supports. When developing an app, you will need to narrow down on special versions of Android available out there. We should consider the Android API level because different versions have different capabilities and features. Selecting the right API level ensures your device operates on as many Android devices as possible while taking advantage of new app features.

9. What’s the difference between fragments and activities?

Activities are represented as a single screen with a user interface. Fragments, on the other hand, are modular components within an activity that can be reused or combined in different activities and are especially useful for multi-pane and adaptable layouts.

10. How can I test my app on multiple devices?

The Android Studio provides tools, including an emulator, for simulating various Android devices. In addition, you can use normal Android devices by setting ‘developer mode’ and USB debugging them. You can connect the Android devices on your computer, and test or debug your app.

11. How can I publish my app in the Google Play store?

To publish your app in Google Play, you will first need to set up a development account. Then you will check your app’s store listings and graphics, set up your distribution options, and show compliance with Google Play Store’s policies. Once your app is ready, you can submit it to the Google Console and upload it for review.

12. Can you develop Android applications on platforms other than Windows, Linux, and MacOS?

Yes, you can use cloud-based environments and virtual machines to develop Android-based applications on environments not supported by Android Studio. However, the app’s experience and performance may vary. That’s why it’s advisable to create applications with supported operating systems.

13. How do you select the appropriate architecture pattern in Android app development?

Selecting an appropriate architecture pattern is crucial for maintaining a well-structured codebase. The common types of architectural patterns include:

  • Model-View-Controller (MVC). The model-view presenter is the oldest and most straightforward. It structures data into three main components: view (user interface), model (business and data logic), and controller, which mediates between the model and the view.
  • Model-View-Presenter (MVP). The model view presenter amplifies the performance of the model-view-controller by adding a component known as a ‘presenter’ that acts as an intermediary between the model and the view. The presenter handles user input and updates the view on a need-to-need basis.
  • Model-View-View-Model (MVVM). The model-view-view-model (MVVM) further simplifies the separation of concerns, introducing a view model that holds the application state and business logic, thus separating it from the view.

The choice of architectural pattern depends on the project’s complexity, the team’s expertise, and the app’s long-term maintainability.

14. How do I ensure my app handles multiple screen sizes and resolutions?

In the diverse Android ecosystem, supporting multiple resolutions and screen sizes is important in ensuring a consistent user experience across different devices. To ensure apps handle multiple screen sizes and resolutions, developers can implement the following strategies:

  • Responsive layouts. Use modern layouts (GridLayout, LinearLayout, Relative Layout) to ensure that screen sizes adjust to screens of various sizes and resolutions.
  • Density Independent Pixels (dp). Use density pixels as a unit for defining dimensions instead of pixels. Selecting dp ensures that elements scale appropriately across different screen densities.
  • Resource directories. Ensure you provide alternative resources like layouts and images in separate folders for different screen size densities and resolutions.
  • Vector graphics. Use scalable vector graphics (SVG) for images and icons as they can scale without losing quality.

15. How do I ensure that my app supports older versions?

Supporting older versions is crucial to ensure that you reach a broader audience.

Here’s how you can ensure that your newly developed Android app works even in older versions of the Android operating system.

  • Set the minimum SDK version. You should specify the minimum SDK version your app supports in the AndroidManifest.XML file.
  • Compatibility libraries. Use AndroidX libraries that offer backward compatibility in case of newer features.
  • Feature detection. Use the Build.VERSION.SDK_INT constant to detect a device’s API levels and apply the appropriate code paths.
  • Test. Test on various devices with varying Android versions to identify and fix compatibility issues.

It’s crucial to ensure that your app can access a broader audience by extending support for older versions of the Android operating system.

 

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16. What are the basic components of an Android app?

Android apps are built with basic components such as activities, content providers, services, and broadcast receivers. Activities represent the user interface. Services represent background tasks. broadcast receivers respond to system-wide announcements and content providers manage data-sharing between the app and different endpoint devices – smartphones, tablets, laptops, and smart TVs.

17. What’s an Android Emulator?

Android emulator is a tool by Android Studio simulating Android devices. Through this simulation, it allows the developer to test an app with different configurations and Android versions.

18. How can I optimize my app for better performance?

Performance optimization is crucial for a good user experience. Some tips include: minimizing network requests, efficient data structures, optimizing images, and using background threads for heavy, time-consuming tasks. Most importantly, it’s advisable to properly manage memory to prevent memory leaks.

19. How can I make my app more compatible with other devices?

Use the latest SDK version and select the minimum API target level. Test your app on different virtual devices with varying hardware specifications and different screen sizes.

20. Can you develop IOS apps using Kotlin or Android Studio?

No, Android Studio is exclusively designed for Android mobile applications. If you want to develop IOS mobile apps, you will need Apple’s development tools like Objective-C and XCode.

21. What are some popular libraries and frameworks in Android App Development?

Some popular libraries for Android app development include OkHttp for networking, Hilt for dependency injection, Room for database management, and Gson for parsing. However, it’s important to remember Android app development is an evolving frontier, therefore, it’s advisable to remain updated with the latest trends and technologies.

22. How do you select the best Android app developer?

Selecting the best Android developer depends on several factors such as cost, expertise, and reputation. Most developers offer a defined budget for mobile app development but this cost may differ depending on the diversity of features, operating environments (Android or IOS), and the complexity of the project.

Here’s how you select the best Android developer:

  • Define project requirements. Define the scope of your project, highlighting app features, app capabilities, operating requirements, and security considerations.
  •  Check experience and portfolio. Look for developers with a proven track record of developing superior mobile applications. Review their portfolio to see the quality and range of their work.
  • Technical expertise. Ensure that your expert or developer has sufficient technical expertise in areas like Java, and Kotlin, and understands Android SDK and other development toolkits and libraries.
  • Reviews and references. Request reviews from previous clients and check their portfolios for any reference materials. Online ratings and reviews on platforms such as LinkedIn or Upwork can provide valuable insight into the developer’s expertise.

Finding the right developer depends on project requirements and overall expectations as a client.

23. How do I know if I am ready for an Android app?

Whether running a small business or managing a large corporation, having an Android app is the best way to simplify those monotonous, mundane tasks such as invoicing, communicating, marketing, branding, and personnel management. An Android app streamlines tasks, enhancing the efficiency, scalability, and productivity of operations.

So, if you’re struggling with managing employees, managing your brand, or growing your revenue streams, it’s high time to consider an Android mobile app. An Android mobile app can provide valuable insights needed to reinforce your decision-making in areas like sales, marketing, advertising, and outreach. And if you’re experiencing HR planning and management issues, an HR app can do the job.

Turbocharge Your Digital Presence with Android App Development

NS804 empowers individuals and enterprises to do more with the power of a mobile app. With a robust, efficient, and feature-rich application, you can reach more customers, communicate with a broader audience, and build lasting brand partnerships and customer relationships.

Most importantly, we allow NS804 customers to experience our MVP product, allowing them to know what solutions they are getting by investing in our digital solutions.

Contact NS804 for superior Android app development solutions.