How to Create a Custom Mobile App in 2024

In 2024, the field of mobile app development continues to undergo rapid revolution driven partly by technological revolution and changing user expectations. The surge in smartphone usage coupled with emerging forms of technology like augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technologies continues to offer businesses new ways to engage and connect with their target audiences.

It should be acknowledged that custom mobile apps have emerged as indispensable solutions for businesses seeking to maintain a competitive edge in today’s dynamic marketplace. Unlike off-the-shelf business solutions, custom mobile apps are carefully aligned with the business needs, aligning seamlessly with both short and long-term business goals and enhancing the operational efficiency of the firm. Custom mobile apps not only streamline key business processes, but they offer a unique user experience, helping businesses build meaningful and lasting relationships with their clientele.

1. Understanding the Concept of Mobile App

In the realm of mobile app development, a custom mobile app refers to a software solution specifically designed to meet the needs of a business. Unlike off-the-shelf apps that are designed to meet generic needs, custom mobile apps are designed to address the target audience of a specific business, solve specific business needs, and align seamlessly with a business’s long-term mission or vision. This form of customization for custom mobile apps extends beyond its functionalities, design, user experience, and integration with existing systems,

The need for a custom mobile app solution has become increasingly apparent in today’s competitive marketplace landscape where businesses want to compete for customers, optimize operations, and ultimately differentiate themselves from the competition.

Some of the key benefits of having a custom mobile app solution include:

  • Tailored functionalities

Custom mobile app solutions are built from the ground up to cater to the specific needs and workflows of a business. This means that these apps are equipped with features and functionalities that directly support the company’s objectives. Whether it’s enhancing customer interactions, streamlining internal processes, or facilitating custom processes, custom mobile apps help support the specific needs of a business.

  • Enhanced user experience

Custom mobile apps offer a personalized and intuitive user interface designed to resonate with the target audience. By understanding behavioral patterns, user preferences, and user pain points, businesses can create visually appealing, user-friendly, and highly engaging apps, thus leading to increased user retention and user satisfaction.

  • Integration and scalability

Custom mobile apps can easily be integrated with existing third-party systems, servers, and databases, ensuring consistency in data and operational efficiency. In addition, custom mobile apps are scalable, allowing businesses to evolve and adapt as their needs grow without being constrained by the limitations of pre-packaged solutions.

  • Brand identity and recognition

A custom mobile app serves as a powerful branding tool, reflecting the company’s values, identity, and aesthetics. Consistent branding elements such as colors, logs, and messaging help reinforce the brand identity, helping build brand recognition and brand loyalty among users, and thus fostering a strong brand connection.

  • Competitive advantage

By leveraging a custom mobile app solution, businesses can differentiate themselves in the market. This helps to position themselves as industry leaders with innovative solutions tailored to specific customer needs. This differentiation helps attract new customers, retain the existing ones, and drive business growth, especially in a competitive market.

2. Preparing for development

Before delving into the development of a custom mobile app solution, thorough planning and preparations are necessary. This phase involves several crucial steps that form the foundation for a successful mobile app journey.

Conducting market research

The first step of conducting any market research is identifying your target audience. Understanding the gender, preferences, demographics, and pain points of your target audience is important to designing an app that resonates with your target audience.

Secondly, it’s important to conduct competitor analysis by researching your competitor’s apps to better understand any differentiating features, and market gaps, and identify any areas of differentiation that help position your app strategically in the market.

Thirdly, it’s important to carefully monitor market trends to keep abreast of important technological trends, user expectations, and technological advancements. Monitoring market trends allows for informed decision-making and innovation within the app.

Defining app objectives and goals

Defining your app objectives and goals by clearly articulating the purpose of your app, whether it’s increasing sales, improving customer service, retention, or providing value to new users. Secondly, set goals and key performance indicators that align with your business objectives, retention rates, user engagement, conversion metrics, and revenue generation.

Creating a wireframe or prototype

The first step is to visualize the app layout by developing a wireframe to visualize the app’s user experience, user interface, and overall layout. This particular step helps in conceptualizing the app’s functionality and navigation. The second step of this process is the iterative design process. It’s crucial to engage with stakeholders and designers to create an iterative design that refines the app’s functionality, aesthetics, and usability based on feedback. Finally, define key functional specifications, including data flows, features, interactions, and user journeys.

3. Choosing the Development Approach

Choosing the right development approach is an important decision to make as it shapes the functionality, user experience, and performance of an app. In 2024, businesses have several options to consider each with its strengths and weaknesses.

Evaluation of development approaches:

  • Native apps: Native apps are built specifically for a single platform, such as Android or IOS by using platform-specific programming languages such as Java, CSS, Kotlin, Swift, or Objective-C. These apps offer high performance, faster integration with the device features, and seamless access to the app’s features and functionalities.
  • Hybrid apps: Hybrid apps are designed using web technologies such as HTML, Java, and CSS. After design, they’re wrapped in a native container for deployment across multiple platforms. These apps combine the advantages of native apps like access to platform features with cross-platform development, allowing faster development process and cost-effectiveness.
  • Progressive web apps: Progressive web apps (PWAs) are web-based applications that offer app-like features, including offline access, responsive design, and push notifications. They can be accessed through web browsers and can be installed on a user’s device. These apps offer a seamless experience across various platforms and many devices. 

Selection of Appropriate Development Frameworks

  • Native development: For native app development, frameworks like Flutter (Dart), React Native (JavaScript), and Xamarin (C#) can be used to build cross-platform apps that maintain native performance and user experience.
  • Hybrid development. Frameworks such as Apache Cordova, Iconic, and others provided by renowned platforms such as Flutter and React Native can be used to develop hybrid apps, leveraging cross-platform compatibility and web technologies.
  • Progressive web apps: Frameworks like Angular, Vue.js. or frameworks that support PWA features such as responsive design and service workers for offline functionality can all be deployed to develop progressive web apps.

It’s important to note that the choice of development framework depends on many factors, including cost, project requirements, timelines, target audience, and long-term maintenance considerations.

4. Designing the User Experience and User Interface

In mobile app development, the user experience and user interface play a pivotal role in shaping the app’s success. Designing an engaging and intuitive user experience not only enhances user satisfaction but also contributes to higher user adoption.

Importance of User-centric Design

  • Enhanced user experience: User-centric design focuses on understanding user’s needs, preferences, and behaviors to create experiences that are intuitive, efficient, and enjoyable.
  • Higher user engagement: By prioritizing user feedback and user needs, businesses can build apps that resonate with users, leading to increased user engagement, loyalty, and positive word of mouth.
  • Improved conversion rates: A well-designed user interface can streamline the user’s journey, reduce friction points, and encourage designed actions like making a purchase or signing up, thus resulting in improved business outcomes and conversions.

Collaboration between Designers and Developers

  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaboration between UI/UX designers and developers is important for ensuring seamless integration of design elements and features.
  • Design System and Style Guide: Establishing a design system and style guide helps maintain consistency in visual aesthetics, UI elements, color schemes, typography, and interaction patterns throughout the app.
  • Iterative Design Process: Adopting an iterative design process allows for refinement, continuous feedback, and seamless testing of design prototypes, thus ensuring alignment with user expectations and project goals.

Implementing Accessibility Features and Mobile Responsiveness

  • Accessibility: Integrating Accessibility features such as alternative text for images, screen readers, keyword navigation, and color contrast options ensures compliance with accessibility standards such as the WCAG.
  • Mobile responsiveness: Designing responsive interfaces and layouts that adapt seamlessly to different screen orientations and screen sizes enhances usability and provides a consistent experience across different platforms.

By emphasizing user-centric design principles, encouraging collaborations among designers and developers, and implementing accessibility features and mobile responsiveness, businesses can create custom mobile apps that not only meet the current market expectations but also stand out in a competitive market landscape.

5. Development Phase

The development phase is the heart of creating a custom mobile app; it’s where the conceptualized design and functionality are transformed into a fully-fledged digital product. This phase involves coding, testing, and iterating to ensure a user-friendly and high-quality app.

Coding the app

  • Translating design into code: Developers translate the functional specifications, UX/UI design and wireframes into code using frameworks and programming languages relevant to the chosen development approach (native, hybrid, or web-based).
  • Backend development: Backend developers work on database integration, server-side logic, APIs, and other backend functionalities required for the data storage, and the app’s functionalities.

Testing each module

  • Bugs and defects: Quality assurance (QA) engineers test all app’s functionalities to identify bugs, errors, and defects, ensuring smooth and error-free functionality.
  • Usability testing: Usability testing involves evaluating navigation flow, user interface, interactions, and overall functionality to identify areas of improvement and optimization.
  • Performance testing: Performance testing assesses the app’s speed, stability, and responsiveness. It also evaluates the app’s performance under various conditions such as different network speeds and different device types to ensure optimal performance for end users.

Iterative development process

  • Feedback collection: This step involves establishing continuous feedback loops from beta testers, stakeholders, and users to gather insights into the app’s performance, identify pain points, and gather feature improvement feedback.
  • Agile methodology: Adopting an agile development approach allows iterative cycles of improvement, testing, and feedback incorporation, allowing for adaptability, flexibility, and responsiveness to changing requirements.
  • Making adjustments: Based on the collected feedback and test results, developers make the necessary adjustments, improvements, and optimizations to improve the app’s usability, functionality, and performance.

The development is characterized by robust collaborations among developers, QA engineers, testers, and designers, ensuring that the app meets its basic functional requirements and user expectations.

6. Integrating Essential Features

Integrating essential features in a custom-built mobile app is crucial for providing a comprehensive solution that meets the users’ needs and aligns with the business objectives. These features not only enhance user engagement but also contribute to the app’s success and overall competitiveness in the market.

Here are essential features to consider:

  • Multi-factor authentication: Also called two-factor authentication, secure user authentication mechanisms require users to log into their primary account and verify their authenticity on a different device. This means a code can be sent to your phone when you’re trying to log in to your computer. This double layer of security ensures user data is protected against unauthorized access.
  • Push notifications: Allowing push notifications allows for real-time communication and real-time notifications, delivering personalized alerts, updates, and promotional messages to enhance re-engagement and user retention.
  • In-app purchases: Integrating in-app purchases such as digital goods, subscription plans, and premium content enhances monetization opportunities and enhances the app’s overall revenue generation capabilities.
  • Location-based services: Using GPS and geo-location features to offer location-based services like directions, maps, and location-aware content tailored to users’ geographic location can enhance user retention and improve adoption rates.
  • Social sharing and integration: Allowing social sharing integration allows users to share content, achievements, updates, and experiences on other social media platforms, increasing user engagement and app visibility.

By integrating these essential features in their apps, businesses can deliver robust, feature-rich, and future-proof custom mobile app solutions that meet user expectations and drive engagement.

7. Deployment and App Store Optimization (ASO)

Once a custom mobile app has been developed, tested, and finalized, the next crucial step is deployment into popular app stores such as Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and other relevant app marketplaces. Additionally, optimizing the app’s visibility, user engagement, and downloads through app store optimization techniques is crucial for the app’s overall success.

App store optimization techniques for app visibility and user engagement include:

  • Keyword optimization: Conduct keyword research and optimize app metadata with relevant phrases and keywords that align with user search queries and app category trends.
  • App icons and screenshots: Design visually appealing icons and high-quality screenshots that showcase the app’s features, functionalities, and capture user attention and encourage downloads.
  • App ratings and reviews: Encourage positive app ratings and app reviews from satisfied users by providing a seamless user experience, addressing user feedback, and incentivizing feedback submission through in-app rewards.
  • App localization: Localize app content, metadata, and meta description to target specific regions, languages, and cultural preferences, thus improving the app’s discoverability and appeal to global audiences.
  • App updates and maintenance: Regularly update the app with new features, conduct bug fixes, performance optimization, and user-requested enhancements to maintain relevance, and user engagement, and improve positive ratings.

By implementing app store optimization techniques for improved visibility and user experience, a business can optimize its custom-built mobile app for success.

NS804 – Powering Your Journey Towards a Custom Mobile App

At the forefront of this transformative journey stands NS804, a leader in custom mobile app solutions. With a proven track record of delivering innovative and highly scalable mobile apps, NS804 empowers businesses of different sizes and industries to harness the full power of mobile app technology. Whether it’s designing cutting-edge user interfaces, integrating new features, or optimizing performance, NS804 combines technical expertise with a client-centric focus to drive app success.

Contact NS804 today for custom mobile app solutions.

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

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 with the intent 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!

6 Reasons To Use Artificial Intelligence In Mobile Apps

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! 

10 Kinds of Mobile Apps with Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that simulates human intelligence in machines to help machines perform certain tasks that require human intelligence, such as learning, decision-making, and problem-solving. In the context of mobile applications, AI is revolutionizing how users interact and adapt to their apps. This is achieved by building apps that can communicate, interact, and engage with the end user, all while responding diligently to user requests and input preferences.

Artificial intelligence in mobile apps captures a wide range of domains, including voice recognition, natural language processing, predictive analytics, computer vision, and machine learning. These technologies enable mobile apps to learn user behavior, interpret complex data, and make decisions.

Importance of Artificial Intelligence in Enhancing Mobile App Experiences

Artificial intelligence has improved the performance of mobile apps, delivering unprecedented levels of convenience, usability, and personalization. Some of the key ways artificial intelligence enhances mobile app experiences include:

Personalization

AI analyzes user behavior, interactions, and preferences to deliver personalized content, services, and recommendations. Whether it’s suggesting workouts, curating menus, or recommending relevant products and services, AI-powered mobile apps adapt to individual user preferences, making the user experience more engaging.

Predictive insights

AI enables apps to anticipate user needs and tailor proactive solutions. By analyzing past behavior and contextual data, AI-powered mobile apps can predict user behavior, automate tasks, suggest next steps, and streamline user experience. All while saving valuable time for other tasks.

Natural language understanding

Natural language processing algorithms enable mobile apps to understand and respond to human language inputs like text inputs, voice commands, and conversational interactions. Virtual assistants like Google Assistant and Siri leverage natural language processing algorithms to understand and respond to human language inputs and commands. This offers an intuitive and natural interaction model.

Enhanced functionality

AI enables mobile apps to perform functions and tasks that were once impractical. From image recognition and real-time translation to augmented reality and sentiment analysis, AI-powered features expand the capabilities of mobile apps, allowing them to address a broader range of user scenarios and needs.

Continuous improvement

Machine learning algorithms allow mobile apps to learn and improve based on user feedback and data insight. By iteratively refining their algorithms and models, AI-powered apps can adapt to changing user preferences, technological advancements, and market trends. By its adaptive model of continuous improvement ensures that the user experience remains valuable and relevant.

1. Personal Assistant Apps

Personal assistant apps have become commonplace on mobile devices, offering users a more convenient way to interact with smartphones, perform certain tasks, or access certain information through voice commands and text inputs. Examples of popular personal assistant apps include Google Assistant by Google, Siri by Apple, and Cortana by Microsoft.

These apps serve as virtual assistants, capable of performing a wide range of tasks, including sending messages, setting reminders, checking the weather, searching the web, and making calls. They utilize AI technologies such as natural language processing, machine learning, and speech recognition to understand voice commands and message inputs.

How AI Powers These Apps to Understand and Respond to User Requests

AI lies at the core of personal assistant apps, allowing them to understand and respond to user requests intelligently.

Here’s how AI powers personal assistant apps:

  • Natural language processing. Personal assistant apps leverage natural language processing to analyze and understand human language inputs, including voice commands and text inputs. These algorithms parse the syntax and semantics of user queries, extracting keywords, phrases, and entities to infer user intent accurately.
  • Machine learning. Personal assistant apps utilize machine learning algorithms to improve their understanding and response over time. By analyzing vast amounts of user data, including past interactions, preferences, and behavior patterns, these apps can learn to recognize speech patterns, understand context, and predict user intent more accurately.
  • Speech recognition. AI-powered speech recognition algorithms allow personal assistant apps to transcribe words accurately into text. These algorithms can recognize and differentiate accents, languages, and dialects, allowing users to communicate with their devices effectively through voice commands.
  • Contextual understanding. AI-powered apps allow devices to interpret user queries within the appropriate context, taking into account factors such as time of the day, location, and user history. This contextual understanding allows the apps to provide more relevant and personalized responses, enhancing the overall user experience.

3. Virtual Health Assistants

AI-powered health apps have emerged as valuable tools for individuals willing to check and monitor their health and wellness. These apps leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide personalized insights, recommendations and support across a wide range of healthcare spectrum. They offer users convenient access to health information, monitoring capabilities, and proactive interventions, empowering them to take control of their well-being.

Features of Virtual Health Assistants

Symptom checker

AI-powered health apps often include symptom checker functionalities, allowing users to input their symptoms and receive potential diagnoses or recommendations. These apps rely on machine learning algorithms fetched from a large medical dataset to analyze symptoms, determine severity, and provide guidance on the next steps, such as seeking medical attention or self-care measures.

Medication reminders

Most AI-powered health apps come with medication reminders to help users adhere to their medication regimen. These apps send reminders based on individual medication schedules, dosage instructions, and refill dates, reducing the risk of missed doses and medication errors.

Fitness tracking

AI-powered health apps often include fitness tracking capabilities, enabling users to monitor their exercise routine, physical fitness, and overall fitness levels. These apps may utilize wearable devices or built-in sensors to track metrics such as calories burnt, heart rate, steps taken, and sleep patterns. AI algorithms analyze this data to provide insight into users’ activity levels, progress toward fitness goals, and recommendations for optimizing their workouts or lifestyle habits.

3. AI-Powered Navigation Apps

Navigation apps have emerged more significantly with the integration of artificial intelligence to provide users with more accurate and efficient route guidance. These apps utilize AI algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data, including real-time conditions, historical traffic patterns, and road closures, and provide users with the fastest and most reliable directions.

AI-powered navigation apps leverage machine learning techniques to continuously learn and adapt to changing traffic conditions, environmental factors, and user preferences. By processing and interpreting this data in real time, these apps can dynamically adjust routes, predict traffic congestion, and offer alternative paths to help users reach their destinations with ease.

Benefits of AI in Improving Navigation Accuracy and Efficiency

Enhanced Accuracy

AI-powered navigation apps utilize advanced algorithms to analyze and interpret complex data, resulting in more accurate and reliable route guidance. By considering factors such as traffic conditions, road infrastructure, and user behavior, these apps can provide precise directions tailored to individual needs and preferences.

Improved Efficiency

By providing real-time traffic updates and optimizing routes, AI-powered navigation apps help users save time and fuel, minimizing vehicle emissions and reducing travel time. Users can avoid unnecessary delays and congestion, resulting in more efficient and environmentally friendly transportation.

Enhanced User Experience

AI-powered navigation apps offer a seamless and intuitive user experience, with features such as interactive maps, voice-guided navigation, and personalized recommendations. These apps make it easy for users to navigate unfamiliar territories, explore points of interest, and plan for multi-stop trips, thus enhancing the overall travel experience.

4. Language Learning Apps

Language learning apps have undergone a massive transformation following the infusion of artificial intelligence, offering learners personalized and adaptive learning experiences tailored to their individual needs and proficiency levels. These apps leverage AI algorithms to track progress, analyze user behavior, track progress, and deliver targeted content that’s designed to optimize learning outcomes.

AI-powered language learning apps use machine learning techniques to adapt to each learner’s learning style, pace, and preferences, offering personalized learning to each student or learner. By analyzing data such as performance metrics, user interactions, and proficiency levels, these apps can dynamically adjust lesson plans, provide customized feedback, and recommend supplementary resources to enhance the learning experience of students.

5. AI-Enhanced Photo Editing Apps

Photo-editing apps have evolved with the integration of artificial intelligence, offering users the ability to edit apps with unprecedented ease and precision. These apps leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning, and AI algorithms to analyze images, identify scenes and objects, and automatically apply enhancement and corrections to achieve professionally-quality results.

AI-enhanced photo editing apps employ a wide range of techniques, including image recognition, semantic segregation, and neural style transfer to streamline and automate the editing process. By analyzing vast amounts of datasets and learning from professional editing techniques, these apps can intelligently enhance photos and provide users with creative tools to express their artistic vision.

6. AI-Powered Virtual Shopping Assistants

Virtual shopping assistants leverage AI to provide users with personalized recommendations, guidance, and support, throughout the online shopping experience. These AI-powered assistants analyze user preferences, browsing behavior, and purchase history, mimicking the role of an in-store shop associate in the digital realm.

By using predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms, virtual shopping assistants can understand individual user preferences, identify browsing patterns, and anticipate user needs and preferences. These assistants use this information to recommend products that align with users’ tastes, preferences, and needs, thus enhancing the relevance and effectiveness of product recommendations.

7. AI-Based Financial Management Apps

AI-based financial management apps revolutionize the way people manage their finances by using artificial intelligence to provide personalized budgeting, financing, and savings advice. These apps analyze users’ spending data, income sources, and financial goals to offer tailored advice and recommendations aimed at improving the users’ financial health.

AI-based financial management apps utilize predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms to forecast future cash flows, identify trends in spending behavior, and optimize budget allocations to help users achieve their financial goals. These apps may also provide investment advice based on users’ investment objectives, risk tolerance, and market trends, enabling them to make informed decisions about their finances and investments.

8. AI-Driven Entertainment Apps

Entertainment apps have optimized artificial intelligence to deliver personalized and immersive listening experiences to users. These AI-driven apps leverage sophisticated algorithms to analyze user preferences, and user behavior, enabling them to recommend content, customize experiences, and enhance engagement across various forms of entertainment, including video streaming, music streaming, and gaming.

By harnessing data analytics and machine learning techniques, AI-driven entertainment apps can understand users’ tastes and preferences, enabling them to curate personalized content recommendations, tailor user interfaces, and optimize user experiences. These apps strive to create a more engaging and enjoyable entertainment ecosystem by leveraging AI to anticipate and fulfill entertainment needs and preferences.

9. AI-Powered Security Apps

AI-powered security apps leverage artificial intelligence to help with threat detection and intrusion prevention, safeguarding users’ digital information and sensitive financial information against cyberattacks or unauthorized access. These AI-powered technologies employ advanced algorithms to detect anomalies, analyze patterns, and identify potential security threats, enabling proactive mitigation measures and ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of users’ data.

By using natural language processing, machine learning techniques, and behavioral analysis, AI-powered security apps can identify emerging threats and detect suspicious activities. These apps provide users with comprehensive security solutions that combine malware detection, threat intelligence, encryption control, and encryption, and access control to protect digital assets and identities.

10. AI-Powered Mental Health Apps

Mental health apps leveraging artificial intelligence have emerged as valuable tools for providing emotional support and cognitive therapy to individuals coping with mental health problems. These apps offer a wide range of features and functionalities tailored to individuals suffering from mental health problems, including stress management, mood tracking, cognitive behavioral therapy, and personalized interventions.

By using AI models and algorithms, AI-powered mental health apps can analyze users’ behaviors and emotions, and provide personalized recommendations, coping strategies, and therapeutic interventions tailored to their unique needs. These apps offer a convenient and accessible way for individuals to manage their mental health and track their progress over time.

What’s The Future of AI-Powered Mobile Apps?

Looking ahead, it’s clear that the future of AI-enabled mobile experiences is boundless. As AI technologies continue to evolve and mature, we expect to see even more innovative advancements and innovations in mobile app development. From more sophisticated personalization and predictive capabilities to seamless integration with IoT and augmented reality (AR) experiences. AI-driven mobile apps will continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible, revolutionizing the way we talk, work, communicate, interact, and entertain ourselves on the go.

NS804 – Delivering Superior, AI-Powered Apps

NS804 is a leading provider of custom-built mobile app solutions. NS804 understands the changing landscape of mobile app development and offers superior AI-powered apps designed to suit your business needs. Whether you’re a small start-up or a large organization seeking a robust app with AI capabilities, we have you covered. We offer superior, excellent, and affordable mobile app solutions that are tailored to your individual needs. Our commitment to service excellent and unwavering dedication to customer service ensures that we offer a timeless app that solves real problems.

Contact us today for inquiries and questions about our AI-powered mobile apps.

Strategies for Building a Loyal User Base in Mobile Apps

The statistics on the success of mobile apps reveal just how difficult it is to build a loyal customer base. 25% of people uninstall mobile apps immediately after downloading and using them just once. Over 70% of mobile apps are uninstalled within 90 days. There are numerous reasons why over 99% of all app projects fail. A lack of resources to improve features and fix bugs is a major contributing factor. However, a lack of commitment to excellence in service delivery is perhaps an even more significant reason.

If you are planning to build or have already built a mobile application, you need to figure out how to build a big enough loyal customer base for sustenance. Whether you are depending on ads or subscription revenue, loyalty is crucial for long-term survival. A small improvement in customer retention rate can yield a large multiple increase in revenue.

In this article, we explore ways to build and maintain customer loyalty.

Understanding Your Users

The first step in building customer loyalty has to be understanding your customers.  What this means is that you have up-to-date information on user demographics and how they interact with your app. You must have a way to collect this data on a continuous basis and then find ways to segment your customers to serve them better.

There are multiple ways to gain insights into who your customers are. The first is through the data collected during onboarding. The age, gender, and location of your users is normally useful when attempting to personalize content and offerings for them.

Another way to get insights is through conducting surveys regularly. You can administer these as pop-ups in the user journey. A lot of companies use this method to collect information on the overall experience of users. You could conduct interviews from a sample of your users although this is a more involving and perhaps expensive way to gain information.

However, automated analytics tools are the most powerful source of data when seeking to improve your app. These can reveal the average time users spend on your app, the most visited pages, the page from which people exit, and a lot more. These tools are not too expensive and are easily scalable as your user numbers grow.

 

USE OUR APP COST CALCULATOR TO ESTIMATE THE COST TO BUILD YOUR APP!

 

Engaging Users

While data collection is key in understanding users, your engagement with users is the primary way to build a relationship leading to a longer customer lifetime. A simple personalized email or pop-up wishing them a happy birthday is a small example. However, you can extend this to make customers feel valued and part of your brand journey.

Perhaps you are testing a new feature or version of your app. You could invite a group of users to test it for a few weeks and offer their feedback. Some companies release a limited version of a product and avail them exclusively to a segment of customers on the app. Such campaigns are meant to drive a sense of connection between the brand and its most loyal customers.

Social media is a great way to endear a brand to current and prospective customers. By adopting a likable and relatable online persona, a brand not only remains top-of-mind but it also reveals its values and courses it cares about. Responding to questions and not shying away from criticism requires deliberate efforts in transparency.  Investing in well-trained community managers is perhaps mandatory in today’s world where a wrong statement can bring far-reaching reputational damage.

Offering Incentives

Depending on your revenue model, your marketing team should be able to come up with effective offers and deals to reward customers and boost customer retention. A popular way of doing this is through referral codes. See these as a way to have your current customers say good things about your app. Discounts are very effective in nudging customers to sign on to premium tier pricing.

For instance, if you have customers on a freemium tier, you could offer a significant discount to prompt them to become paying subscribers. Another example would be offering a significant discount for a yearly subscription compared to a monthly one. Companies are willing to make such deals to lock in customers for longer. It also improves the cash position of the business.

Your analytics dashboard of choice should help to you track how successful such a campaign was by revealing total conversions and the conversion rate.

Great Customer Service

There really is no substitute for great customer service. You may have built a great application, but customers will expect an equally great level of customer service. There are several layers to this.

First, your customers should have several avenues to reach you. A lot of premium applications have inbuilt chatbots to respond to frequently asked questions, but queries can always be escalated to live agents. Other ways to communicate include phone lines and emails. Politeness and speed of response are perhaps the greatest determinants of service quality.

Knowledge of products or services cannot be overlooked. Customers are filled with confidence in the brand when they realize they are dealing with knowledgeable live agents.

Knowledgeable staff improve first-time fixes where customers are facing problems with a product or service. They also help customers pick the right products or services, which is crucial for satisfaction. For instance, you wouldn’t want a new customer to a lower tier subscription with limited features when they were looking for a more premium experience of your services.

Offer a Great Mobile App Experience

Your app should feel natural and easy to use regardless of what kind of service or product you are selling. Attention spans have shrunk so much today that people do not have time to figure out a complex application.

First, pick the right colors and use them consistently throughout the application. They should capture your brand well. Pick the right font and font sizes.  Your UX design should make it easy to navigate the entire app. From the homepage, users should know where to go next to find what they want. Avoid taking users on a long chain of clicks to find a service.  In 1 or 2 clicks from the home window, a user should find the specific information or product they need.

A lot of applications tend to get their onboarding process wrong. With short attention spans, your app should take advantage of such things as social logins to autofill information users. Having potential customers fill long forms is too tasking for a lot of people today. Collect just the information you need to get them started on the customer journey.

Take Feedback Seriously

Collecting information from surveys, app reviews, and interviews with customers is great, but you need a structured manner to filter it and use it for your product roadmap. First, your product team needs to fix bugs within the shortest time possible. Next, there should be clear priorities on how to develop an app from its current state.

Customers may be expressing their wish to see a certain feature added. The team needs to decide on whether to build the feature based on cost and benefits projections. Sometimes a rebuild of the entire application may be deemed necessary. This may happen because of constant bugs or a need to move to newer technologies to improve speed, security, appearance, or integration with third-party applications.

You must bring along your customers on the journey. Most popular applications make small tweaks that customers barely notice. They release several updates each year which help to maintain familiarity with the customers. It’s a way to fix bugs while implementing customer feedback consistently.

Push Notifications and Social Media Sharing

There are added features that can quickly bump up your customer retention rates. First, push notifications are a great way to keep customers coming back to your app. There is a thin line between using these notifications wisely and intruding too much into users’ lives. However, you can use these notifications to remind users of carts they left pending, new content on your app, or an upcoming sale. If users find these useful, they are unlikely to find your notifications irritating. Remember, they always have the choice to block such notifications.

Allowing users to share content from your app to social media not only gives them a sense of achievement but it also amplifies your brand. Gaming, content streaming, and fitness apps have leveraged social sharing brilliantly.

Customer Education Content on Mobile Apps

Some apps can benefit from creating content to educate customers on how to get the most out of their subscriptions. The need will often come from user feedback expressing dissatisfaction due to complexity. The material you create should have a clear objective. Some apps will have an FAQ section similar to a website. You could also take a tutorial video approach. Short clips, each addressing one question are a great way to resolve customer problems.

A collection of educational material can be structured so that users can take a self-paced education journey. This is common with technical apps such as video editing software.  Creating reference material can also help create a big enough community of users who might be facing similar challenges with the app.

A/B Testing and Data-Driven Decisions

A/B testing is a technique to test out different designs or versions of marketing copy on different segments of your app users. It is a great way to get the most out of your marketing campaigns.

While A/B testing two different versions of the same message, you might realize that different segments of your customers resonate with either version. The differentiating factor might be age, gender, location, or another relevant differentiator. A decision may be made to show each version at scale to the audience with whom it is likely to resonate with. A/B testing helps to ensure that your marketing dollars get a higher ROI.

You can design and implement A/B tests in multiple ways especially when seeking to improve your UX. You get to see how different tweaks affect user session length, engagement with the app content, and even overall retention rate. It reduces the amount of guesswork in your app roadmap implementation.

 

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

 

Cross Promotion

App cross-promotion involves the promotion of an app in another app. This can take the form of ads or organic recommendations via mentions. Cross-promotion works well when there is a clear synergy between products that share the same profile of users. For instance, a company in the tour business targeting international tourists might recommend a specific app for local transportation. A fitness can have in-app promotions of a nutrition-focused app. Having your app get such recommendations can boost your overall brand image and user retention rate.

NS804

There is so much to pay attention to while seeking to improve how well your mobile apps perform and maintain a large enough user base. Having mobile apps that solve user problems in a world-class manner is the first step. However, you need to combine this with great customer service, feedback collection, community building, offers and rewards, user education material, and new features.

You need a good enough product team to help build a roadmap. At NS804, we specialize in building world-class mobile apps for clients in all industries. Our team has tens of years of combined experience in delivering demanding app projects. We would like to build yours next. You can set up a meeting with one of our team members here.

Mobile App Maintenance: The Importance Of Regular App Updates

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. 

 

USE OUR APP COST CALCULATOR TO ESTIMATE THE COST TO BUILD YOUR APP!

 

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. 

 

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

 

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

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.

 

USE OUR APP COST CALCULATOR TO ESTIMATE THE COST TO BUILD YOUR APP!

 

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! 

Overcoming App Store Visibility and Credibility Challenges

In the dynamic world of mobile applications, the challenges associated with app store credibility and visibility are becoming increasingly formidable. As the mobile app marketplace becomes saturated with apps looking for users’ attention, mobile app developers are faced with the challenge of creating apps that stand out from the competition; and are perceived as trustworthy by users.

App Store Visibility Challenges

With millions of apps across various platforms, the sheer volume of countless options can overwhelm users and make it hard for developers to carve out a path for their unique creations. The saturation of apps heightens competition in the marketplace, making it difficult for well-designed apps to gain market visibility.

Another crucial factor affecting app store visibility and credibility is the app store algorithm and rankings. App store algorithms play a pivotal role in determining the visibility of an app. The algorithms may include download numbers, ratings, and user engagement. Understanding these algorithms and finding a way to strategically optimize your app to directly engage with them is a complex undertaking. However, failure to do so can lead to your app becoming invisible and languishing in obscurity.

 

USE OUR APP COST CALCULATOR TO ESTIMATE THE COST TO BUILD YOUR APP!

 

The Significance of Addressing Visibility and Credibility Concerns

The significance of overcoming the challenge of app store visibility and credibility cannot be overstated. The success of an app is intricately tied to its discoverability and the trust it garners from its users.

The first significance of addressing app store visibility is market survival. In a highly saturated market, visibility is almost synonymous with survival, making it important for developers to develop applications that stand the test of time and are easily discoverable by potential audiences.

The second significance is user trust and reliability. Credibility is the bedrock upon which user trust is built. Users are likely to engage with apps that not only meet their needs but which exude reliability and credibility. Addressing credibility issues is paramount in establishing and maintaining trust, encouraging positive reviews, and fostering user loyalty.

Last but not least, addressing visibility and credibility issues will help apps realize their full potential. A well-designed and innovative app deserves the opportunity to reach its full potential. By overcoming visibility and credibility challenges, developers unlock the full potential of their apps, allowing them to reach a broader audience, increase downloads, and ultimately lead to success.

App Store Visibility Challenges

Market Saturation

The proliferation of mobile mobiles, tablets, and computers has led to a corresponding increase in the number of mobile applications, leading to a competitive digital landscape. The interconnectedness of the digital landscape, characterized by the proliferation of mobile phones and the exchange of information, continues to create a competitive landscape for mobile app developers. Developers now face the challenge of creating unique and valuable applications while creating creations that stand out in a sea of alternatives. The growing number of mobile applications makes it harder for a single application to capture the attention of potential users.

Proliferation of Similar Applications

Beyond the sheer quantity of mobile applications, there’s a noticeable trend of similar apps in the market or simply apps that share similar functionalities and service similar purposes. As certain app concepts gain popularity, numerous developers are entering the market with similar sets of devices, creating a crowded market for similar types of applications.

For instance, health apps as well as wearables used to count heart rates and predict blood pressure levels and blood glucose levels. There has been a proliferation of similar e-health applications, posing a challenge for developers trying to differentiate products that capture a distinct market or user base.

App Store Algorithms and Rankings

App store algorithms and ranking highly influence an app’s visibility and credibility. Algorithms are complex and evolving systems that determine the visibility of an app in an app store. The algorithms take into consideration a wide range of factors to determine an app’s quality, relevance, and popularity. Understanding the nuanced intricacies of algorithms is crucial for developers aiming to optimize their apps for maximum visibility.

Factors Affecting an App’s Rankings

  • Downloads and installations. The number of downloads an app accumulates is a crucial factor influencing its ranking in the app store. Higher download numbers signal user interest and untapped opportunities, contributing to an app’s visibility.
  • User engagement. How users interact and engage with mobile applications, including in-app activities, frequency of use, and session duration, directly impacts an app’s rankings. Apps that engage users are highly favored by search algorithms.
  • Ratings and reviews. User reviews and ratings play a pivotal role, influencing both user trust and search algorithms. High ratings and positive reviews not only attract users but also help the app rank favorably in the app store. Positive reviews influence users, creating significant traffic that influences the algorithms to favor a specific app.
  • Retention rates. Apps that retain users over time are significantly favored by algorithms. A high retention rate indicates an app provides ongoing value, leading to better visibility.
  • ASO. The strategic use of keywords in metadata, descriptions, and app titles is critical for aligning with search queries. The app store relies on search queries, making app store optimization a key part of your app’s visibility.

Navigating these challenges requires a multi-faceted approach that combines innovative app design, strategic marketing, and a solid understanding of the factors affecting an app’s visibility.

Strategies for Improving App Store Visibility

App Store Optimization

1. Keyword research and optimization

Keyword research is the bedrock of effective app store optimization. By understanding the words and phrases users use when searching for apps online, developers can strategically incorporate relevant keywords in their app’s metadata – including tags, titles, and descriptions. Optimizing these elements not only enhances an app’s visibility in the app store but ensures it aligns with the needs and preferences of potential users.

2. Compelling app visuals and descriptions

Beyond app store optimization, visuals and descriptions play a pivotal role in the app’s overall appeal and value proposition. A compelling app description must succinctly describe the app’s features, functionalities, benefits, and uniqueness. High-quality visuals, including screenshots and images, provide users with a preview of the app’s interface and overall functionality. Combined, these features create a compelling first impression, encouraging users to explore further and improve the download rates.

Social Media and Online Presence

1. Social media platforms

In the age of digital connectivity, social media platforms play a pivotal role in expanding an app’s reach. Developers must leverage platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok to create a robust online presence. Targeted advertisements, regular updates, and engaging content can drive awareness and direct traffic to the app. Social media also represents a good platform to engage users, collect feedback, and build brand identity.

2. Building an online community

Establishing and fostering an online community of users can foster a sense of belonging among users. Platforms such as dedicated app communities, forums, and well-moderated discord servers provide a space for users to share experiences, seek assistance, and discuss the app further. Engaging with the community not only reinforces user loyalty but also helps generate organic word-of-mouth promotion as satisfied users become advocates of the app.

Influencer Marketing

1. Collaborating with influencers

Influencer marketing is a potent strategy for reaching a wider audience through trusted voices. Identifying influencers whose following aligns with the app’s target audience is crucial. Collaborating with influencers – or individuals with a significant following on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube – can lead to authentic endorsements that resonate with the app’s target audience.

2. Influencer channels

Once influencers are identified and selected, developers can provide them with early access to the app or collaborate on creative promotional campaigns. Showcasing the app through influencer campaigns gives potential users a first impression of the app’s features and benefits. Influencers provide tutorials, reviews, and testimonials, lending credibility to the app and encouraging their followers to download.

It’s important to note that implementing these strategies creatively and holistically contributes to a creative strategy for improving your app’s visibility. Combining the technical aspects of ASO with social media positions an app for greater discoverability in the app store market.

App Store Credibility Challenges

1. Positive and Negative Reviews

User ratings and reviews wield substantial influence over an app’s credibility. Positive reviews act as powerful endorsements, building trust among users and encouraging downloads. On the other hand, negative reviews can cast doubt and deter users from an app’s quality. The cumulative impact of reviews goes beyond influencing individual decisions, algorithms take into account both negative and positive reviews when ranking apps, making reviews a crucial ingredient of an app’s credibility and success.

2. Trustworthiness and Authenticity

The credibility of an app is closely tied to the authenticity of the information it represents. A clear and accurate description of an app’s features, functionality, and benefits can lead to a more enhanced user experience. Exaggerated and misleading claims can potentially erode an app’s trust and lead to disappointment. Developers must prioritize transparency and ensure the information presented aligns with the actual capabilities of an app.

3. Data Privacy and Security

In an era of heightened consciousness about data privacy, users are increasingly cautious about the security of their personally identifying information. App developers must prioritize and communicate robust data privacy and data protection laws and measures. This involves implementing secure access controls, encryption configurations, and secure data storage. Failure to implement the appropriate measures towards data privacy and security will create a credibility issue that will affect an app’s adoption and success.

 

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

 

Strategies for Building App Store Credibility

Providing Excellent Customer Support

  • Responsiveness to user queries. Customer support serves as the cornerstone for building an app’s credibility. Timely and responsive communication with users – whether through email, in-app channels, or social media, demonstrates commitment to user satisfaction.
  • Feedback for continuous improvement. User feedback is a valuable resource for developers seeking to improve their app’s functionality and overall appeal. Feedback helps to obtain valuable feedback that can incorporated to improve the app’s functionality.

Regular Updates and Fix Bugs

  • Importance of staying current with updates. Regular updates are not only essential for introducing new features but also for improving the app’s overall health. Staying updated with new trends is a crucial step for addressing compatibility issues and ensuring your app is compatible with new operating systems, devices, and systems.
  • Addressing user-reported issues promptly. User-reported issues can surface through user reviews, customer support inquiries, or other channels. Promptly addressing these issues or challenges is crucial for mitigating negative feedback and preventing potential users from encountering similar problems. Developers must establish efficient channels for users to report potential problems. Avenues to address user-reported problems will ensure better credibility of apps.

It’s important to note that building app store credibility is an ongoing effort that revolves around user satisfaction and transparent communication. Providing excellent customer support further ensures users feel heard and respected, contributing to a positive perception of the app. Regular updates and bug fixes demonstrate a commitment to the app’s ongoing improvement.

NS804 – Optimizing Your App for Easy Visibility and Credibility

NS804 provides trusted and reliable app development solutions for individuals, businesses, and corporations. NS804 designs both Android and IOS applications and optimizes the apps for easy discoverability and credibility. With years of design and configuration experience under our belt, we can optimize your app for the app store.

We offer app store optimization, ensuring that your app is fully optimized for easy discoverability. We integrate relevant keywords in your meta, titles, and description, ensuring full optimization and easy discoverability. Our services ensure that your app is easily discoverable in the app store. In addition, we work closely with our clients and developers to ensure that the applications we create meet our client’s requirements.

Last but not least, we offer a minimum viable product which is like a prototype of the actual app. The minimum viable product MVP helps clients test the app before committing to full development. The MVP allows clients to see and test the app’s features, functionality, and other capabilities to know how the actual end product will feel and behave. The MVP service provides an end-to-end overview of the end product, enabling clients to make more informed decisions about their app investments.

Contact NS804 today to create applications with higher visibility and credibility.

Data Security in Mobile Apps: Mitigating Fears and Ensuring User Trust

The significance of mobile apps in the highly interconnected digital landscape cannot be ignored. Published statistics show consumers spent 3.8 trillion hours on mobile apps in 2022 alone. Further evidence suggests that mobile phone users spend 88% of their time in mobile apps, reinforcing the significance of mobile apps in our daily lives. Android and IOS are the leading mobile app stores, although other platforms such as Tizen, KaiOS, and Ubuntu Touch are slowly emerging as favorable platforms to launch an app.

It’s important to note that mobile apps are used for a wide range of purposes – online payments, online shopping, information access, weather updates, bookings, and travel. This means that a slight breach of mobile apps will lead to a significant leakage of consumer information, including personally identifying information such as social security numbers, physical addresses, credit card numbers, and mobile phone numbers. This is precisely why data security in mobile apps is a critical component in ensuring user trust.

This article delves deep into data security, exploring data security concerns in mobile apps as well as mitigation measures, and steps to building a secure mobile app:

Understanding Mobile App Data Security

Mobile app data represents a wide range of information users generate and store in their applications. It includes personal names, email addresses, financial information, credit card information, location, social security numbers, phone numbers, login credentials, multimedia files, location data, communication records, physical addresses, and more. The scope of mobile app data security ranges from the moment this data is keyed in your mobile app to the moment it is transmitted or conveyed to other people, including app platforms, social media accounts, and other digital channels. It’s crucial to note that understanding the diversity and sensitivity of this information is crucial in devising effective security measures.

 

USE OUR APP COST CALCULATOR TO ESTIMATE THE COST TO BUILD YOUR APP!

 

 

Common Data Security Threats

Malware

Mobile apps, similar to other technologies, are highly vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. Malware, the shortcut for malicious software, represents a high-ranking cybersecurity threat. Malware attacks are designed (or created) and conveyed to target victims by cybercriminals to either steal personally identifying information or compromise the normal functioning of mobile apps to steal consumer information. Once infiltrated into mobile apps, malware can affect the normal functioning of mobile devices, interfere with app usage, and disorient the normal functioning of the mobile app, rendering the app unusable. Malware often disguises itself as an authentic application, prompting users to download it and unsuspectedly install it on their phones.

Phishing

Phishing attacks are common cybersecurity threats and one of the leading sources of data leakage in mobile apps. Phishing attacks trick users into revealing confidential information – phone numbers, credit card information, and physical addresses – by posing as trustworthy sources. In mobile apps, phishing attacks come hidden as alerts, emails, and updates that appear to originate from the app or otherwise. Unsuspecting users may inadvertently reveal their private information, leading to a possible compromise or sell their information to third-party users.

Unauthorized access

Unauthorized access to mobile app information is a common threat to data leakage and data security. Unauthorized access occurs when unauthorized persons or unauthorized entities have access to your personal information. Unauthorized access can occur when an internet service provider (ISP) or other users access your app information, thus compromising your data security. Usually, unauthorized access occurs when cybercriminals exploit possible vulnerabilities to gain entry into your app. This compromise may involve weak authorization processes, poorly encrypted data, and loopholes in the app’s code. Once inside the app, users can modify, access, or steal user data, causing significant harm and damage to individuals, brands, and businesses.

Real-Life Data Breaches

Facebook – Cambridge Analytica

The last five years have witnessed massive data breaches, affecting individuals, businesses, and brands. In 2018, the Cambridge Analytical scandal shook the foundation of data privacy following massive leakage of users’ data and information. Facebook-owned Cambridge Analytica lost the data of 87 million Facebook users. According to documented reports, the data of 87 million users was harvested without consent to a third-party app, raising eyebrows about the legitimacy of personal data stored on Facebook. This breach highlighted the dangers of lax data access policies, leading to subsequent changes in data protection regulations.

Equifax

In 2017, Equifax, one of the leading credit-reporting companies suffered a massive data onslaught. Cybercriminals exploited Equifax’s website and user accounts, leading to the data loss of 147 million customers, including personally identifying information and social security numbers. The SSNs were particularly affected, underscoring the importance of safe protection safeguards for both apps and websites.

Uber

In 2016, one of the leading cab-hailing companies, Uber, suffered a serious data loss of 57 million users, including drivers and passengers. Cybercriminals targeted the Uber app, leading to the loss of information from drivers and passengers. This onslaught highlighted the importance of safe control safeguards and highlighting the sophistication and scope of cyber-attacks. In response, Uber not only paid the attackers a lump sum to conceal the attack but failed to inform its users about this serious data violation.

PayPal

Just recently, the PayPal information of 36,000 users was affected, leading to account compromise. For two days, hackers had unlimited access to linked debit and credit card numbers, transaction histories, postal addresses, full names, date of birth, and individual tax identification numbers. This incident happened in October 2022 as part of a credential-stuffing attack. In credential stuffing, malicious software makes a combination of credentials often run into protected systems trying to gain unauthorized access to users’ information, accounts, and data.

Building a Secure Mobile App

Individuals and businesses must understand the significance of protecting their apps against unauthorized access. First and foremost, users and businesses must address encryption to protect users’ information in transit and at rest. Encryption conceals data using numerical forms or other algorithms, making it impossible for hackers to read and understand context information even if they gain unauthorized access to your systems, including mobile apps.

Another protection is secure authentication. Most often, users do not consider the possibility of a multi-layered security approach whereby there is more than one form of authentication to gain access to a protected system. For instance, 2-factor authentication or multi-factor authentication represents one of the leading forms of security. The two-factor authentication can protect your mobile apps from foreseen and unforeseen circumstances, preventing a possible breach that could expose users’ data.

Another step to building a secure mobile is ensuring regular software updates. Software updates provide you with the opportunity to access the latest version of the software, sometimes saving you money and time in accessing the latest product or service. Keeping your apps and operating systems up-to-date also extends the opportunity to access the latest patching, thus protecting your apps and operating systems.

Another step to protecting yourself is using secure coding practices. Developers must use secure coding practices to create apps that are secure and inaccessible to unauthorized third parties. Secure coding practices provide a safe encryption standard, protecting your apps and operating systems against attacks.

Regulatory Compliance

The General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) provide a benchmark for safe and secure computing practices. The GDPR believes it’s the responsibility of businesses and organizations to protect consumer data against potential leakage. The GDPR provides strict guidelines for protecting personally identifying information and securing your app against unauthorized access and third parties.

Part of protecting your app against potential attacks is following and strictly adhering to compliance requirements. The first policy you need for regulatory compliance is a data protection policy. Data protection policy runs across organizations, providing employees, customers, and other stakeholders with a requirement to safeguard personal data. The second compliance step is the data retention policy, which is one of the 25 principles outlined in the Data Protection Act. The retention policy limits how data is created, stored, and distributed, thus safeguarding consumer information and data.

Privacy policies and notices are crucial benchmarks in regulatory compliance, especially in protecting data against potential violations. Privacy policies and notices inform people about the necessary safeguards for data, including steps, approaches, and strategies to protecting data. It also contains the repercussions of poor data handling and storage. Information security policies represent another set of laws to protect mobile apps and other technologies against potential data violations.

Information security policies define how information will be handled, from the moment it is created to the moment it is used and stored. Finally, an incident response plan is a crucial component of compliance. Organizations and businesses with an incident response plan can maneuver better in case of attacks, and some end up protecting their consumer data and brand in the process. An incident response plan must contain the steps, processes, and measures that will be taken in case of an attack, including isolating the entire organization’s computing infrastructure to another whole new network in case the existing one is compromised.

Building User Trust

Mobile apps provide a huge advantage to users, including the possibility of making online payments and securing flights and trains online. However, user trust continues to be a top-ranking priority for most mobile app developers and businesses. In creating your app, remember that user trust matters as it determines the adoption and the retention of your users. To ensure user trust in your app, here are a few steps you can take.

  • Transparent privacy policies. Organizations must have clear and precise privacy policies that are easy to read and understand. Employees depend on easily understandable and accessible information, making transparency a key factor in designing your privacy policies.
  • User education. Research shows that most cyberattacks can be prevented only if people are educated and trained enough. For most organizations, cybersecurity training is gradually becoming a must-have, especially for organizations dealing with highly sensitive consumer information – education, healthcare, finance, defense, and manufacturing.
  • Secure communication. All communication must be secured both in transit and at rest. Secure communication prevents information leakage, preventing unauthorized access and ensuring user safety. Transparent communication about security measures can reassure users, providing them with an opportunity to protect their data against unauthorized access.
  • Responsive customer support. Did you know responsive customer support is crucial in protecting your apps? Well, when users find genuine concerns, they’re likely to contact you if your app is useful. However, this doesn’t always happen because apps lack a dedicated customer support team and rely on AI bots as response machines. Responsive customer support will give you an added advantage, especially in dealing with new and reported attacks.

These practices secure your app, providing you with maximum security and protection of your users’ data.

 

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

 

Challenges and Future Trends

Cybersecurity is a changing frontier due to the growing scope and sophistication of attacks. Cybercriminals are becoming clever every single day and more experienced with every single successful attack. One of the glaring challenges to mobile app data security is AI-driven attacks. While AI has provided immense opportunities and unlocked many doors of productivity and performance, there remains a lot to be desired in terms of data privacy. AI-driven attacks, unlike contemporary attacks that are orchestrated by humans, are more efficient, faster, and more dangerous. In addition, AI-driven attacks have serious implications for mobile app security because they expose consumer data, compromise the normal functioning of apps, and affect the overall productivity of their target victims.

It’s important to acknowledge that although emerging technologies continue to pose a significant threat to data security, there are still some new technologies that stand to protect individuals and businesses against threats. For instance, blockchain technology has huge potential in combating cybercrime and mobile app privacy violations.

Blockchain technology ensures transparency in transactions, secures transactions and informs everyone in the chain about a transaction. This way, it builds consensus on who and who has not conducted any transaction, thus protecting your information and sensitive data like transaction history. Blockchain technology represents a potent solution in mobile apps, especially in protecting your information against unauthorized access and leakage.

NS804 – Building Secure Apps, Ensuring User Trust

At NS804, we believe that everything starts with security, from the mobile apps we build to the technologies we launch and install. NS804 provides custom mobile app solutions, safeguarding users against potential threats and data leakage. We use the latest technologies and secure coding languages to create apps that are hard to crack. Our app development methodology follows standard practices, ensuring we comply with data protection laws and regulations.

Contact NS804 today for secure mobile app solutions, Android and iOS alike.

8 Ways The Right Mobile App Can Boost Lead Generation

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. 

 

USE OUR APP COST CALCULATOR TO ESTIMATE THE COST TO BUILD YOUR APP!

 

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.

 

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

 

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!