Customers: The Last Word

 

Customers play a vital role in the rise or fall of a business venture. The customer experience offered by a retail venture is what sets successful businesses apart from the rest. Studies reveal that it costs businesses about 6-7 times more to acquire a new consumer as compared to retaining an existing consumer. Additionally, companies that prioritize consumer experiences reportedly register 60% more in profits. The consumer does get to have the last word! Why do we say so? This is because a company’s 20 percent loyal consumers are responsible for being the contributors to 80% of the company’s revenues.

At the turn of the decade, as the world witnessed the emergence of smartphones and with more than 6 billion units sold today, retail enterprises have the task of retaining their existing consumers while they acquire new ones. The customer loyalty solutions are the result of a highly novel and intelligent marketing strategy adopted by the business enterprises to connect more with their customers.

The Hidden Costs of In-house App Development

Developing a mobile application involves more than just the costs outlined by the technical specifications for a converting a killer idea into a quantifiable reality. There are a whole lot of hidden costs if app development is in-house, further fuelling the long-standing debate between the pros and cons of outsourcing versus in-house. So what does an in-house application development entail?

1. The first stage of incurring additional investments arises in the form of hiring and setting up a team of developers that encompasses the 24/7 remuneration for employees.

2. However, the investments do not end with the hiring of a bunch of developers. In order to build a cohesive and effective team of app developers, designers and project managers, the businesses are required to spend funds in training them as well.

Re-engaging Users: Going Beyond the Initial Installation

The current ecosystem for mobile application downloads, engagement and usage is very much different from what it used be just a year back. With app downloads and installs no longer a metric to determine the success of the app, app makers as well as marketers need to change their strategies of connecting with users. Studies show that almost 80 to 90% of the mobile apps are used just once before being removed from the system. The key to retaining users lays in the effective implementation of user engagement strategies, including the need to re-engage their users.

Re-engagement implies a set of practices or technologies that can identify users who have downloaded an application and presenting them with offers or services prompting them to use the app more often. If the users have stopped using the app after a specific duration of time, these very offers or entitlements or offers act as an incentive to the user to use the app again. For re-engaging the customers with an app, a web development company California can either implement in-app messaging or push notification services.

Changing Paradigms of Mobile UI Design

With every update of the Android and iOS operating systems, multiple changes in terms of app design or development can be observed, especially the design principles. Moreover, the ever-evolving device hardware and product requirements make it only prudent that web along with app designers not only adapt to this change, but implement it as well.

1. Material Design is the newest design language for the Android platform that makes use of layered interfaces, floating action buttons, and interesting animations in response to a user activity. Although, originally launched for the Android platform, Material now extends to other platforms like iOS and Windows as well.
 

2. Motion design has been around for quite some time, but they were primarily a part of advertisements, music videos or movie intros. It is however, now used for refining the user interface as a way of delighting the users for an action they have taken.

5 reasons to move real estate business online

By this time, your business should already have made its virtual way into the digital world of mobile and web apps. However, if you are not there already, it is high time you thought of implementing a mobile-centric business strategy for your real estate services. A mobile or a web application ensures that your business is accessible to the tech-savvy millennial population.

Here are five reasons (statistics) affirming why you should utilize/ incorporate/ implement online real estate software solutions for your business:

1.    The mobile and web usage by millennials for real estate has increased 81% and 30%, over a period of May, 2013 to July 2014, respectively.

2.    Mobile devices accounted for 44% of the searches for one or other form of real estate services.

3.    Of the half of the total millennial population in the U.S. that visited a real estate website in July 2014, thirty-six percent of those were accessed from mobile devices. The numbers indicate that millennials are twice as likely, if not more, to explore information on real estate on mobile devices.

Material Design and its 4 Principles

A new language for interface design termed the “Material Design”, was the outcome of Google’s Project Kennedy and Holo. The main objective of this new design paradigm was to replace esthetically anti-pleasant interfaces of older Android versions with a consistent view across all devices with varying screen sizes. Basically evolving from Holo, the Material Design concept aims to be the one single decree binding all Android app developers as well as designers. Let’s find out the four main elements of Material Design.

1.    Tactile Surface:

The structure of this latest design language for Android development comprises tangible layers or objects in the form of “sheets” of “quantum paper”, also called layers in general. These so-called layers follow the general laws of physics, in essence that they can essentially be thought of as 3-D orientations with x, y, and z-axes. They can be stacked, aligned at varying heights or can connect and stretch, casting shadows that distinguish one from the other with respect to their relative positioning. The shadows enable users to understand their interface in a better way!

2.    Print Design:

It can very well be just another fancy substitute for digital ink! Having established that material design is nothing but “sheets of quantum paper”, so in effect everything placed on these sheets is digital ink. The two aspects of print design – font and typography – are vital elements in defining the structure of content along with the identity of the application.