Author: admin

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]To you, your app isn’t just an app. It’s your idea, your brainchild that will change the game for you, your business and your customers. 

It’s only natural to want to build your app in-house. After all, who’s better acquainted with your business and your industry than your in-house team? You may believe your team will take the most pride and sense of ownership in taking on your project, as they have a vested interest in its success. You may believe that building your app in-house will give you greater oversight and insight into its development. 

These assumptions may not be so accurate. Many reservations you have around your ability to control your project may be immaterial in the context of modern project management. 

When paired with the substantial direct and indirect costs of assembling and managing an internal team, these factors may shift the scales as you weigh the benefits of an in-house team against the benefits of partner app development company in Toronto. 

You don’t know what you don’t know

Bringing your app to life takes a team of specialists who—in an ideal scenario—will work alongside the general practitioners who run your company daily. It can be easy to overestimate the capabilities of your team to extend their talents to adjacent, yet distinctly different areas.

While you may have a talented team of developers at your disposal, they may not be equipped to fully round out your app for maximum usability. Even a team of excellent developers will need the input of privacy, security and accessibility experts. Keep in mind each of these specialties functions differently in different app environments—security protocols for a web-based application have a different structure than a SaaS application, for instance.

Your internal design team may have created stellar branding and collateral, but they aren’t experts in UX and UI. These niche skills are crucial in making your app as smooth and user-friendly as possible, which requires an entire world of skills and best practices like journey mapping, usability testing, beta-testing your app, and more.

Without external input, your app may suffer from an echo chamber effect.

Your in-house team may have a deep understanding of what your app should be, but they may fail to envision everything your app could be. They don’t live each day in the world of app development, and may not anticipate emerging trends that impact the success of your app in the world.

They may not be capable of building your app for the future, instead of just for the now. 

The cost of deepening your bench

Perhaps you’ve considered hiring these experts to round out your internal project team. This approach comes with several logistical challenges that are detrimental to the ROI of your project. 

Obviously, new employees will increase payroll costs in salaries and benefits. Hiring new employees will affect the timeline of your project, because they will need time to onboard with your company and understand what you do, how you do it, and why it’s important.

Then there are the managerial costs of incorporating new talent into your existing protocols and overseeing those new employees and ensuring that they are engaged and using their talents on an on-going basis. 

More importantly, hiring niche specialists full-time may not be practical. 

Your company’s hiring targets are matched with ongoing demand for a skillset that will keep your business running or solve a recurring business need. Projects of this nature tend to be short-term, therefore hiring technicians long-term may be counterintuitive to the broader recruitment strategy.  

For example, imagine you have a plumbing issue at your office. Though you may call upon a plumber on multiple occasions, you won’t need a plumber so frequently that you hire one full time, or even keep a plumber on a retainer. 

That’s because you need a specific set of skills to solve a specific problem within a timely fashion. 

• You’ll look for recommendations for a plumber, and they’ll bring the skills to solve your problem—a wealth of expertise and niche experience in the realm of plumbing. The plumber will diagnose your problem and quote the price of a solution. 
• They’ll complete the work. You’ll pay them for the work. They’ll only charge you for the work they did. Your problem is solved by a trusted professional.

Many companies simply assume it’s better to expand the skillsets in-house, but they can’t say exactly why. If you go this route, make sure you establish a clear understanding of what exactly you stand to gain by hiring full-time employees in-house, rather than working with a vendor partner who specializes in these types of skills.

Development companies, the inside outsiders

With the right app development partner, you’ll get the expertise you need while minimizing the costs of that expertise outside the completion of your app project. 

• You won’t have to train your vendor team. All they need to understand is the scope of your project and its KPIs. 
• You’ll lower the managerial burden of your project. An app development partner can focus totally on your project, unencumbered by the day-to-day operations of your company. 
• You won’t pay for specialists you aren’t using. An app development partner can rotate specialists into your project when needed and rotate them out when they’ve finished.
• You’ll cut costs. A development partner can help determine the most economical approach to building your app.
• You’ll benefit from top-shelf industry knowledge and experience that will expand your ideas about what your app could be. Your partner will help you establish the scope of your project, define your Minimum Viable Product, home in on meaningful KPIs and provide post-launch support.

Your app development partner will know how to leverage the expertise of your internal team, as well. As you know, no one knows your business like your team. A development partner will work to understand your business as thoroughly as possible to produce an outstanding result. 

The last thing you want is a partnership that amounts to mere order-taking. A true partnership is collaborative. It thrives on trust, communication, determination. By the end of the project, you should feel like your vendor is part of your in-house team. 

At TheAppLabb, we help clients bring their ideas into reality. That’s why we’ve been named one of the top developers in Canada for three years in a row. Our goal isn’t just to build and deliver a stellar app, but to accelerate the growth of your business and empower your in-house team. [/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”Full Width Line” line_thickness=”1″ divider_color=”default”][vc_column_text]TheAppLabb is a leader in the strategy, design and development of mobile apps. We work with global brands across a number of industries to create innovative and user centric business solutions and app experiences. Have an idea? Tell us about it.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]Remember the last time someone asked you about your mobile app? What was your first thought? Perhaps you thought about the fact that you hadn’t thought about your app since the last time someone asked you about it. Perhaps you couldn’t even think of which person or department was responsible for the app. Or maybe you thought about how you have been thinking for quite some time that your company really should do something about the app.

Where do you go from here? Should you throw in the towel and start over? Or is there a way to take your existing app and breathe new life into it to make it a meaningful part of your revenue generation strategy moving forward?

Whether your app’s been out for a while with no recent updates or improvements, has loads of users but is not generating revenue or regular activity, or has been steadily declining in the app store accompanied by more and more poor reviews, ongoing maintenance and incremental improvements are key to seeing improved acquisition and retention numbers, a higher ranking in the app store, and having your app play an important role in generating revenue for your business. 

In this blog, we’ll be talking about the three key results you can influence and improve by investing more time, energy (and dollars) into your mobile app – surpassing your competitors, delighting your customers, and increasing your bottom line.

Why improve your mobile app

There are a lot of reasons you might want to improve your mobile app. 

• You’re not seeing the retention you expected
• You’re getting bad reviews on the app store
• Your competitors are launching exciting new features and your app just can’t keep up

Regardless of how recently you launched your app, or how large its feature set might be, there’s always an opportunity to make things better and delight your users.

The nice thing about digital products is that they aren’t static and can be updated or improved over time. No matter how many features you planned in your initial scope, you (or your users) are going to be asking for more in short order. Deliberately planning maintenance and updates offers you the opportunity to measure, look at KPIs, add new features and technology as it becomes available, and improve functionality based on user feedback – all leading to an impact on the bottom line.

By planning for the future and defining success from the start, you can go beyond paying down technical debt, look at the essentials of app degradation, fix what’s existing, and make enhancements to improve user experience and hit overall business goals.

Improve what you have, or start from scratch?

Sometimes it’s tempting to start from scratch. But don’t let this distract you from the critical work that needs to be done. You’ll need to take a high-level, strategic view of your app and where you want it to go.

There are three main pitfalls you can fall into when considering the different ways to improve your app. 

1. Do nothing. If you take this route, your app will only get worse. Reviews will plummet as the technology degrades. This can also happen by accident when you get stuck in a decision loop of whether to refactor the existing app or rewrite it from scratch.
2. Replace it completely. There are many inherent risks to this, including the large upfront investment, finding the right partner, and building new to wind up with the same outcome. 
3. Incremental enhancements. You can work to make small improvements over time. This is of course a positive for general maintenance, but if you focus on only on-fire features or problems, you’ll miss the opportunity for a strategic investment in your platform as part of a larger plan.

We always advise our clients to take the future into account when they embark on a new app project. But we quite often meet new clients who have an existing app and are struggling to improve it on their own. When this happens, we walk them through the decision-making process of whether to build upon their existing platform or start from scratch. Either way, we rely on the app’s existing success and barriers to success, as well as user reviews and technical advancement, to determine the right path forward. 

Whether you decide to simply improve your app or build a whole new one, you’ll want to aim for these key outcomes to influence your features and improvements.

Catch up to or surpass competitors

Since you and your mobile app development company developed your app, there have likely been considerable improvements in technology. With over 100,000 apps launched in the Google Play Store every month, you can bet competitors are coming out with new, show-stopping features or apps.

Incorporating emerging technologies like virtual or augmented reality can create opportunities to engage with customers in ways you’ve never been able to before. As we’ve seen through the pandemic, it’s also opened up the doors to apps that customers are dying to see, like virtually trying on shoes through their phone.

Instead of going after boundary-pushing technology, sometimes simply being responsive to bad reviews or user feedback is the best way to fend off the competition. Customers are constantly comparing and contrasting services and experiences. That’s where strategic updates come into play.

Update the overall user experience – take all of the data you have available and leverage this to make your app more seamless, intuitive and easy to use. All customers are looking for is the quickest path to information or purchase, so making improvements to remove even one click from their experience can give you the edge over the competition.

Delight your existing customers by evolving your product or service with new features or functionality

Customers’ needs change over time. The most in-demand features you launched your app with are likely no longer enough. 

Incorporating customer feedback will allow you to both improve existing functionality and add desired new functionality to your app. The pandemic has been a great example of this, as some of the most popular features we’ve seen arise this year have to do with order delivery, tracking, and curbside pickup scheduling. Keeping up with customers’ evolving needs – and being the first to respond to them – often means you can outperform competitors and see revenue gains. 

You can also look at targeting underserved customers, and increase your market share in those areas. Improving overall accessibility for customers with disabilities or limitations opens your app up not just to more customers but happier existing customers who will also see the benefit from these changes. 

Increase your bottom line through user retention

Meet customers where they’re at. 73% of customers will abandon a brand after three bad experiences – or less. This means that any small or large improvements to your app’s user experience will help you retain and grow your user base.

Returning customers pay for themselves over and over – in fact it costs 5x more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one. According to a study by Bain & Company, increasing customer retention by only 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.

Spending more time and effort catering to existing customers and app users certainly pays off. But where should you start?

There are a number of areas to look at when making technical improvements, so be sure to consider all of them and how they can potentially impact your business in the short and long term.

 

1. Restructure your existing functionality. This will allow you to make future updates more feasible and frequent based on emerging user needs.
2. Improve your overall rollout speed by paying down some technical debt in your code base.
3. Implement newer versions of third party libraries and lower your overall code complexity. This will set you up for future success when adding new or improved features and functionality.
4. Eliminate bugs or instability in your code that frustrates users and impacts customers loyalty.
5. Improve your code – update to new or modern standards and fix non-functioning or poorly-functioning code.
6. Focus on reducing load times and streamline the path to cart to positively impact overall functionality.
7. Ensure you’ve kept up with new devices and device requirements as technology evolves, such as with increased processing speed or lower latency networks. 

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][divider line_type=”Full Width Line” line_thickness=”1″ divider_color=”default”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]Ongoing improvements to your mobile app experience should always be a priority once it’s launched in market. Ensuring that these maintenance improvements and costs are factored from the outset will make sure you have budgeted for consistent, incremental updates to serve your existing user base. Customers will notice and reward your for ease of use and improved functionality with frequent visits and purchases, and recommendations to friends and family.

But even if you are considering these changes well after your app has launched, you’ll do well to not just fix the on-fire issues, but create an overarching plan to make sure you are making the best possible ongoing investment. 

If you’re not sure what to do next, send us a message and we’ll be happy to help. We can guide you through the right questions to find out whether improving your existing app, or starting fresh, is the best way forward.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]If you and your team are considering your options when it comes to building a mobile app for your business, there are a few recent statistics you might want to consider.

According to a recent article from the team at Statista, there were 3.6 billion smartphone users in 2020, and this number is predicted to reach 4.3 billion by 2023. The team at App Annie recently published a report that indicates consumers now spend 4.2 hours a day on average on their phones, which is up more than 30% compared with two years prior. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][iv_quote text=”Consumers now spend 4.2 hours a day on average on their phones, which is up more than 30% compared with two years prior.” icon=”yes” c_id=”.vc_1622063939640″ quote_css=”font-weight:500;font-size:25px;line-height:30px;”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]But what do these stats mean for your business? Well, at the very least they mean that if you do not currently have a mobile app as part of your strategic business planning, it might be time to start seriously looking at mobile apps, app development companies, and the potential they have to help your business. 

Apps create loyalty with great customer service, they can provide you with valuable insights and data about your customers and business processes, and they might even allow you to unlock new revenue streams to drive your business forward.

Happy customers are loyal customers

While there are a number of potential benefits to building a mobile app, one of the most important is the ability to put your customer front and center and provide them with a deeply personal brand experience.

A recent article from the team at Salesforce outlines some pretty compelling statistics regarding customer expectations:

• 64% of customers expect companies to respond and react to them in real time
• 66% of consumers say they are likely to switch brands if they feel like they are treated like a number rather than an individual

If you think about your own experiences with brands, you are likely to be able to recall two distinct scenarios: one where you had an exceptional experience and one where you had a very negative experience. 

Customer service, whether it is for a direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand or a business-to-business (B2B) brand, has become increasingly important for not only keeping the customers you have happy and engaged, but also for leveraging that brand goodwill to build out your customer base. Happy and engaged customers help you build your brand through word of mouth recommendations to friends, family and colleagues.

But what exactly falls under the umbrella of good customer service? And how can a mobile app help you not only service your customers better, but start to anticipate their needs and proactively solve their problems? This is where the real magic of great customer service happens. 

The power of great customer service and user experience

Great customer service starts by looking and understanding every customer touchpoint and seeking to delight at every interaction. And because apps are built uniquely for both individuals’ personal and professional phones, a mobile app is designed for an inherently personalized experience. It gives you the opportunity to build out a seamless experience that is optimized for both your products or services as well as the way your customers want to experience them.  

In building out these experiences you can look at every touchpoint within the customer journey and anticipate how to make your brand experience exceptional. Generally this includes key features like:

• loyalty program dashboards and points tracking tools
• inventory information between online and in-store so customers can self-serve
• fully transparent tracking from ordering right through to delivery
• customer service chat bots that can cover your most asked questions or customer queries through a fully automated experience 

The last point in particular is useful in ensuring that you are able to provide a customer service experience even outside regular business hours and automatically escalate queries to ensure timely follow up with clients and customers. 

For those companies that generally service a D2C model, apps are the opportunity to provide value-add experiences for your clients, such as real-time customer service tools, live chat and video functions, product information, invoice and order tracking dashboards, and access to mobile-optimized catalogues for clients outside of a desktop experience.  

With the ever-increasing growth of social media, mobile apps also offer integrations with many social media platforms to help you provide an even wider customer service offering.

Human brands beat out competitors

What companies today must do in order to set them apart from competitors in the space is to have a more direct relationship with their customers and clients. How will you make your brand more human overall and create a relationship between you and your customers rather than a transactional one? 

In building a mobile app, you have the opportunity to look at your top-tier customers and design a completely customized and personalized experience that is based on their unique needs, requests and past behaviour. You can then start basing your product or service decisions on data rather than educated guesses. 

Leverage data and customer insights to drive loyalty

This leads us to another huge win in building out a mobile app experience for your users – user data and behaviour information. 

Because mobile apps are inherently built to provide a more personalized experience overall, the outcome of this is a wealth of information regarding individual user behaviours like location, demographic data, or even information on interests beyond your product or service. 

A huge benefit of designing a personalized mobile app experience is the opportunity to now track, measure and learn from the way your customers engage with your mobile app. By leveraging these learnings, you’ll have a better chance to evolve, anticipate, and preemptively solve challenges facing your customers and clients. 

As a way of looking at how these incredible insights can help brands learn more about their customers, let’s take the example of a new checkout experience as part of an ecommerce mobile app. The standard data points you would expect in this process are things like seeing how customers browse for products, add products to cart and eventually (ideally) checkout.  

Because mobile apps are so personal and accessible, an app can glean greater insights, such as the place and time a user is browsing, what products they browsed, what in-app offers they viewed, coupon codes used, and, of course, collect customer feedback to help you solve common complaints or challenges.  

The other benefit of this is that it will ultimately lead to much more effective and efficient marketing programming overall. Teams can now create unique offers that convert by leveraging key customer behaviour and demographic data points provided as part of the mobile app platform. 

Companies are using these valuable insights in a variety of ways:

• to create custom offers for their customers based on past behaviour 
• use purchase and location data to refine their product or service offering by location or demographic data
• develop new products and services based on search data or customer feedback

In the article from Salesforce, they present the data point that 59% of customers now expect companies will soon anticipate their needs and make relevant suggestions before customer contact.  [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][iv_quote text=”59% of customers now expect companies will soon anticipate their needs and make relevant suggestions before customer contact.” icon=”yes” c_id=”.vc_1622064126058″ quote_css=”font-weight:500;font-size:25px;line-height:30px;”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]If we look at a B2B customer model, let’s look at a company that has a delivery network component such as a trucking company. Mobile apps can provide delivery teams with access to valuable information such as delivery windows, customer address info, optimized delivery scheduling tools, and delivery confirmation tools all in the palm of their hands. 

There is also incredibly useful data for the company including delivery route and order concentration to help in optimizing delivery services, staffing and order assignments, delivery vehicle maintenance, and customer delivery notifications sent directly from drivers to assist in order tracking. 

Mobile apps can identify new revenue streams

Perhaps one of the most compelling reasons to consider building a mobile app are the opportunities to unlock additional revenue streams. A recent article looking at revenue coming from mobile apps shows that Android and iOS app revenue reached $111 billion in 2020, which marks a 24 percent increase year over year. For comparison, in 2016 this number was just 43.5 billion in revenue.  [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][iv_quote text=”App revenue reached $111 billion revenue in 2020, which marks a 24 percent increase year over year.” icon=”yes” c_id=”.vc_1622064164844″ quote_css=”font-weight:500;font-size:25px;line-height:30px;”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]The team at Tech Crunch recently published an article showing that consumers spent $50.1 billion worldwide across the App Store and Google Play Store, which is up 23.4% from the first half of 2019. 

No doubt a part of this is due to pandemic spending habits, but looking at the penetration of cell phone use coupled with steady upward growth of spending within apps, it is worth considering how building a mobile app could play an important part of your revenue generation plan moving forward. 

There are a few key reasons why mobile apps are generating this kind of revenue. Mostly they have to do with the fact that apps are optimized for conversion with simplified browsing and checkout paths, or have feature sets that are specifically designed with the user (and end goal) in mind. They can be easier to navigate than a browser-based experience with a large navigation bar and too many options. There is also something to be said for the ease of use and portability of mobile phones in general. 

Due to their portability and overall ease of use, mobile apps capitalize on this by creating personalized and contextual in-app offers for customers. Retailers can now leverage geolocation data to send push notifications for timely offers based on interests or browsing behavior to drive incremental purchases and increase the frequency of purchases. They can also leverage contextual data like location and even weather events to send push notifications to shoppers.

Mobile apps are critical for driving the efficiency of processes, which also adds more to your bottom line in cost savings and error avoidance. Let’s look at the example of a large warehouse or manufacturing plant. Warehouse employees can now use mobile phones or devices to input important information at every step of the process, from raw materials receiving through to delivery of the final product.

Warehouse managers can have complete visibility of the entire process by leveraging in-app barcode scanners which can be scanned as inventory comes in and leaves the warehouse facility. RFID tags can automatically track products when they come in close proximity to a reader built into the app, eliminating the need for employees to manually enter this data, reducing losses due to improper or forgotten scans of materials or orders.  

The Future Is Increasingly Mobile

Including a mobile app as part of your service offering will not be for everyone, but it could be exactly what you need to take your company to the next level. Expanding your business with an app can be an important strategy to consider when you factor in the ability to create completely customized experiences uniquely designed for your customers or your business operations.

Mobile applications create opportunities for you to provide more personal and responsive customer service models. They can also provide you with incredible data and insights about your business and your customers and clients to turn into efficiencies or new product and service offerings.

Mobile apps are also driving efficiencies and creating new revenue streams for customers across all B2B and B2C industries as companies use mobile platforms to drive cost savings and create personalized and contextual offers to drive incremental revenue.

It might be worth starting a conversation with your team or with a mobile app vendor partner to meaningfully look at how creating a mobile app could be an essential part of your business growth and revenue generation strategy moving forward.Feel free to send us a message and we would be happy to discuss whether a mobile app might be just the right strategy for your business.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]The possibilities afforded by technology grow more boundless every day. From automation to augmented reality, it’s easy to let your imagination run so wild about what your app could be that you forget about what it must be. 

Scoping your project means knowing its boundaries—where it begins and ends. 

Of course, your budget, timeline, and access to talent impose limits to the scope of your project. However, you must also possess a deep and intimate understanding of your project and its users to prioritize the components of its development and keep it from drifting.

Start with a 30,000-foot view of your project

Often, the initial questions you should ask yourself are so broad that they can completely escape you. 

• Are you building a completely new experience, or are you deepening an existing experience?
• Who will use your app? How many users do you expect to attract, and is there a threshold of users? 
• Do you intend for your app to serve your region? Your country? The world? 
• When do you plan for your app to launch?
• What is the minimum viable product — the one thing your product must deliver or enable?
• Will your app be built to a specific platform (Android, iOs, web, etc.), or function across platforms?

Once asked, these questions seem quite obvious, but if you don’t ask them, you’ll build your app on a shifting foundation. Working with an app development partner can help you weigh these questions against your ideas and objectives to formalize a scope that suits you and takes all factors into account.

Work to understand your users

Though your team is building your app for your company, your app isn’t for you. It’s for your customer. The more you can understand their needs, goals, pain points, and habits around technology, the better you can understand what your app must provide.

It’s easy to assume that your objectives and the objectives of your customers are one and the same—they are not.

Your objective likely takes the form of a “conversion,” that is, a user taking a desired action. 

The user’s objective is quite different. They take that action to achieve a result for themselves. 

You should align your objective with the user’s objective as thoroughly as possible to achieve a delightful, usable end-project. Map out your customer’s journey to their desired outcome, and consider the functionality your project needs to support each step and hand off your customer smoothly from one step to the next.

Here are just a few functionalities your project might need:

• In-app purchasing capability
• Feedback tools like ratings and reviews
• Voice assistance integration
• Geolocation
• Augmented reality
• Chatbots and customer support
• Language support and localization

These are the most visible parts of your app, but some functions work invisibly. Security and accessibility practices are a must for any app to truly deliver a seamless experience and earn the trust and confidence of the user.

Take stock of your resources

Once you understand the boundaries of your project and the technological demands of your users, you can create a roster of specialists you’ll need to fulfill each demand. 

Which roles can you fill with your in-house team members? Do you have the developers, privacy and accessibility experts, UI/UX designers to do the job? 

Of the team members you have, which ones have the bandwidth to facilitate your project by its launch date? What priority will your project take in the context of their existing workload, and how will that affect the project timeline? 

Whatever you lack, you’ll have to hire for. Not only will you have to add someone to payroll, but the time to find a hire and onboard them can significantly impact your project timeline and budget. 

Don’t forget the managerial burden of supporting your team — project managers, scrum masters, stakeholder teams, etc. Managing your project across so many departments and phases poses a titanic challenge.

Working with a mobile app development company can alleviate most of these issues. They’ll have more talent and tools at their disposal than you could likely hire for, and they can rotate specialists in and out as necessary, meaning you won’t pay for talent that isn’t in use.

The right app development partner will become an accessory to your own team, working closely to stay aligned and on track to push the limits of your project. 

Make your goals and budget meaningful

By doing the upfront work to accurately scope your project, you’ll save the cost and delay of adding elements mid-project. Having an accurate roadmap to your project’s completion makes your budget allocations meaningful and credible. 

What we’re talking about here is ROI, but if you think of ROI strictly in terms of revenue, you might not be thinking dynamically enough. 

Here are a few client goals we’ve worked with in the past:

• “My budget is $220,000, and my board expects a 3-1 ROI. Is that possible?”
• “We need to grow our basket size from $5 to $7.50, how can we support this goal?”
• “How do we prepare to launch our app in another country next year?” 
• “After launching our MVP, what upgrades can we implement within the proceeding eight months?” 

Then there are the KPIs that will indicate your project’s progress and success. Again, these should be tied closely to the user’s objectives.

Keep in mind, KPIs in themselves aren’t the only measures of success. They are indicators of success, and they can change over time. The KPIs for your app’s first six months after launch will be different than the KPIs after two years. Once users begin engaging with your app, their feedback may reveal things can change your whole perspective of your app. 

You should do everything you can to conduct analysis and collect feedback to get a true picture of how well your app serves its users beyond the primary metrics. This information informs the next iteration of your project and how to best spend your budget.

Work With Us

Perhaps your in-house resources allow you to take on your app project internally, and maybe you have the support and management team in place to accurately scope your project and deliver it on time. 

You’d still do well to consider partnering with an app development partner. Their deep industry expertise and experience can help you anticipate the latest developments in technology and trends. The right partner will feel like an extension of your own team and help push your app’s true potential.

TheAppLabb is a leader in the strategy, design and development of mobile apps. We work with global brands across a number of industries to create innovative and user centric business solutions and app experiences. Have an idea? Tell us about it.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]There’s a reason why technology companies are trumpeting the arrival of 5G technology: it’s fundamentally different from previous generations like 3G and 4G. 5G will enable creativity and innovation at a scale we’ve never seen before.

For mobile app development companies like ours, it’s a totally new paradigm, and now’s only just the beginning of what we’ll be able to imagine and create. We work with clients across a wide number of industries to create mobile app experiences from self-serve pizza kiosks to complex delivery and warehouse management solutions. Every day we work with our clients to solve unique challenges faced by their customers and clients by creating mobile apps that are intuitive, personalized and create a seamless path to the intended goals all through their mobile devices.

Up until now, we have been largely limited by the available connectivity and the subsequent restraints like lack of service on subways or processing speeds to provide immediate user data.

As 5G rolls out both globally as well as locally in Canada through TELUS’s 5G network, it brings with it the promise of not only huge improvements in connectivity but also in the real-time data processing that comes with this reliable connectivity.

Here are some quick facts from the team at GSMA, a worldwide communications association, on the mobile economy:

• 5G will account for 15% of the global mobile industry by 2025
• 5G will deliver connectivity speeds of approximately 10 gigabits per second (10-times faster than existing wireless technology)
• Present day 4G networks have an average latency of 50 milliseconds – 5G networks will cut the latency to just one millisecond, leading to less network interference and delays – this represents a 50X change in processing speeds
• 4G networks can only support approximately 2,000 connected devices per 0.38 miles, while 5G will support up to 1 million connections in the same area – this represents 500X the number of connections available

*GSMA 2020 Global Report on Mobile Economy

As people incorporate increasingly more devices into their daily lives, 5G connectivity will be a game changer, ensuring that each of those devices is able to fully leverage the immediate benefits

Highest-impact industries

It might be easier to imagine the impact of 5G in our day-to-day lives by looking at some of the core industries that will see the biggest gains in the near future as this technology rolls out globally.

The hybrid workforce – workplaces in a 5G world*

As we look ahead to a post-pandemic work world, 5G has the potential to vastly improve the experience of employees embracing a hybrid work model. It will also take away current pain points around video conferencing and the ability to create immersive presentations for employees working remotely. Video calls, regardless of the location of the user, will become crisp and clear, and pinwheels and loading bars will become a thing of the past. Even those tasks that we currently take for granted, such as file sharing or cloud-based collaboration platforms, will see significant improvements due to the exponentially faster processing abilities 5G will allow.

People with vision or hearing impairments will also benefit from real-time voiced screen readers, automatically generated captions and sound notification capabilities.

All together, 5G has the potential to offer employers and employees an opportunity to create high-functioning teams with a mix of in-office and remote working models, which more teams are looking to retain as we move past the pandemic.  This means that all employees, whether working in the office or remotely, using their desktop or mobile devices, will have access to the seamless functionality that 5G connectivity will allow.

Take, for example, a retailer who is looking to make real-time decisions on store displays or layout decisions at the HQ level. By using platforms enabled by VR and AR and unencumbered by connectivity issues, merchandisers in stores and marketing teams in the office can now test and visualize in-store displays and product placements alongside real-time retail data, creating time saving tools for in-store teams to seamlessly roll out new products or layout changes in brick-and-mortar stores.

Travel, transportation and tourism

The travel and tourism industry could see huge value-add services such as real-time translation services, mapping and wayfinding, with potentially significant safety improvements for tourists travelling abroad. Any apps created for the tourism industry could now benefit from vastly improved processing capabilities and offer global travelers real-time information based on their location, activities and country-specific language needs.

Of course this also means that any services dependent on precise geolocation technology, such as maps and wayfinding apps, will have notable improvements on accuracy and allow for AR visualization like maps overlaid on the physical city infrastructure. This runs much deeper than simply basic directions, as apps of this nature will have the ability to send immediate push notifications to drivers in the direct vicinity potentially impacted by major safety concerns, such as accidents or public safety incidents.

The transportation industry and the penetration of smart cars will benefit immensely from 5G technology. Cars are now being built that can make complex decisions in real-time based on the data they “see.”  This can affect everything from simple lane changes to safety decisions such as route diversions or warnings of changes in speed or accident location data.

The team at Gartner published a report in 2019 which predicts that “in 2023, the automotive industry will become the largest market opportunity for 5G IoT solutions. It will represent 53% of the overall 5G IoT endpoint opportunity in that year.” It also predicts that “5G-connected cars actively connected to a 5G service will grow from 15% in 2020 to 74% in 2023”. This is a massive opportunity presented by a 5G-connected world for those companies building these connected car experiences.

Smart homes, gaming and home entertainment

Vast improvements will also be seen at a personal level as more and more homes become deeply dependent on smart devices. Currently, smart home applications such as security surveillance products are deeply dependent on home broadband links. 5G signal strength will mean that multiple video streams can be uploaded simultaneously and provide homeowners with real-time video and voice information direct to their mobile phones from their security systems without overly burdening their home broadband and impacting other devices connected to the network.

This also means that households who have multiple gaming devices, streaming services, connected televisions, home assistant devices and smart home operating systems like thermostats will see vast improvements in overall quality, speed and real-time data insights for users. All this without being impacted by the number of devices versus available connectivity. A recent article from Intel.co.uk cites the biggest impact of 5G will be the “ability to provide a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) making (sic) it ideal for running smart home products that require constant, reliable connectivity.”

The gaming industry itself will see huge changes as 5G becomes widely available. Gamers are currently desktop-bound due to connectivity issues that severely impact the overall experience of games that rely on streaming, video and multiplayer functionality. This huge change to connectivity will mean gamers will be able to enjoy these state-of-the-art experiences with other players globally, whether they are sitting in their living rooms or riding the subway to work.

A recent article by Mobile Syrup also talks to the way 5G will shift hardware requirements for gaming away from consumers. “Through services like Google Stadia or Microsoft xCloud, Canadians can stream video games over the internet to any supported screen, removing the need to upgrade your PC or console every few years to play the latest games with the highest quality settings.”

This also holds true for any app experiences deeply reliant on streaming services, such as movies or video. Users will now be able to seamlessly experience these apps and platforms without interruption as they move from their homes to public transportation or even traveling globally.

AI, VR, voice recognition, OCR

New and emerging technologies like Augmented Reality (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Object Recognition and Voice Recognition software will see huge improvements overall. We will likely see a much wider adoption across the board with customer-facing businesses looking to create unique experiences for their customers. We are almost certainly going to see a re-emergence of devices such as smart glasses as the barriers of connectivity and real-time data processing are removed.

As an example, think about a trip to a home goods store and how these types of tools can provide real-time decision support for consumers. Folks shopping for home furniture or home decor will have the ability to use devices such as smart glasses to “picture” their living rooms in real-time by adding pieces of furniture and home decor virtually to determine their best fit or personal taste prior to purchase. Paint swatches are now virtually and instantly applied to an entire room in different light scenarios so people can make informed decisions.

Healthcare

The healthcare industry stands to gain advancements with the ability to widely use technology such as AR and VR. Remote communities, currently underserved and severely limited by connectivity, will now see significant improvements across the board. Communities will now be able to leverage recognition technology for not only diagnosis, but also for doctors and surgeons in large city centres to assist remotely in operations using VR and AR software.

A recent HealthTech article cites research by Aliied Market Research that indicates the market for virtual and augmented reality in healthcare is expected to reach $2.4 billion by 2026 and includes use cases that include pain management, memory care and medical training, among other things. The impacts for patients, particularly in smaller or underserved remote communities, is life-changing as a result.

Let’s take, for example, fitness tracking apps and devices such as smart watches or health wearables in general. With 5G connectivity, data collected on these devices or through body sensors will now have the ability to provide usable insights in real-time, such as performance metrics like heart rate, allowing users to adjust accordingly.

This type of real-time feedback will also have a significant impact in the health industry by providing patients with instant notifications around key indicators like blood sugar, changes in breathing or heart rates, or even changes in speech with Voice Recognition software. Currently, patients and their healthcare providers have access to some forms of this data, but generally it is after the fact and can only inform distant or near-future behaviour. In a 5G-connected world, patients can have this data processed in real-time, providing them insights to change behaviour immediately to prevent potentially life-threatening changes to their conditions.

Smart cities

Cities both large and small will also stand to benefit from the significant benefits of a 5G connected environment. Massive efficiencies and improvement decisions will now be based on real-time data collected at key source points. If we take the example of the commuter experience, this has exciting implications. With the geo-location capabilities offered by 5G, cities can now make informed decisions solely based on user and density data. This certainly means greater efficiency (read: cost savings) across the board, but it also means that citizens benefit from a user data-based schedule that adapts as their needs change and evolve.

The team at McKinsey recently published a report that linked smart city technology to huge gains in overall experience for users of public transport. “Using digital signage or mobile apps to deliver real-time information about delays enables riders to adjust their routes on the fly.” The report also speaks to the benefit of “installing IoT sensors on existing physical infrastructure [so they] can help crews fix problems before they turn into breakdowns and delays.”

This also means that cities and communities can prioritize infrastructure improvements such as walkways, bike paths and safety improvements solely based on user-generated data and usage. Municipal services like libraries and community services will now be able to provide world class connectivity to all members of the community regardless of location and can offer virtual experiences for parents, children, students and community members remotely.

Public safety – police, firefighters, EMTs

The implications for community services such as firefighters, policing and even the military are massive. These essential services will now have the ability to use real-time data collection through smart city sensors and user inputs to provide much-needed services more efficiently and safely.

A recent article on CNN.com outlined how Qwake technologies are using augmented reality to outline the environment firefighters are seeing in the dark while they fight fires. The same article also looks at a prototype smart street lights made by the company ShotSpotter that would record everything happening on a street and then automatically notify police of any gunshots, transmit video from the area and even adjust the lighting in the area as police arrive to investigate.

If we think about the implications of disaster- or weather-related emergencies, the response to these emergencies with 5G-enabled technology is more efficient as the first responders are supplied with more detailed information from the scene in real-time. This means they show up with the right resources quickly and save lives in the process. It also means that services such as police and crowd response personnel can access real-time information from crowd-sourced data inputs in the area and centralized information from video in order to make more informed decisions.

Education

5G connectivity will have a huge impact for students from junior kindergarten through to post-secondary education. The biggest impact will be found around equality and access as students, regardless of location or financial status, will now have access to state-of-the-art connectivity and improvements to education resources currently impaired by connectivity issues.

University students from remote communities who may not have the means to attend in-person will now potentially have the ability to access world-class education experiences with immersive learning platforms currently unavailable due to connectivity challenges.

For students who are learning off-campus, this also means that education institutions now have access to immersive learning and educational app experiences free from connectivity barriers. A recent article from Ed Tech magazine indicates that recent research is backing up the effectiveness of teaching that engages students in “collaboration, problem-solving and two-way communication with instructors”. 5G and the ability to offer lightning-fast download and video streaming between teacher and student means that this type of immersive learning will be a reality for thousands of students in the very near future.

Student campus experiences like safety will be positively impacted as campus security will be able to leverage real-time data collection to keep students safe through push notifications on their mobile devices.

Corporate gains

There will be huge impacts for companies both large and small as well. A smart factory, for example, will see significant improvements in the overall cost of doing business as the reliance on multiple sensors within a factory setting is now removed. Currently large warehouses and factory settings are deeply reliant on hundreds of bluetooth sensors that are still restrained by relatively short range.

The team at Supplychaindive.com recently published an article outlining the current limitations of 4G in that it was never designed to “support mass IoT deployment where hundreds or even thousands of devices communicate in a warehouse.” 5G connectivity bypasses the need for sensors and instead provides instant connectivity that enables all steps of the process from order receipt to loading trucks with merchandise, and everything in between.

This means companies will be able to find efficiencies in the process, improve employee productivity and overall experience and potentially find significant cost savings through these real-time data-informed improvements and the use of IoT technology systems.

Businesses like restaurants and retail will now have opportunities to reach customers as they pass storefronts and provide location-based offers and experiences. A restaurant experience in the near future could include a special offer as a passerby gets within one metre of the restaurant, provide menus and daily specials, and also include requests for customer feedback as you exit.

This will have a significant impact for restaurants looking to cash in on the tourism industry as people explore new places with the benefit of crowd-sourced review apps that present information based on location.

Geo-location services for business will also see a significant improvement as 5G technology rolls out.  Let’s consider apps created that help banking customers plan to achieve financial goals as part of their day-to-day spending. With the accuracy of location now considerably improved by 5G, a financial services customer who set a goal of reducing spending on eating out could now set up notifications that would remind them of these goals as they walked directly in front of their favourite coffee shop.

This also has exciting considerations for retailers looking to entice customers across their physical store lease lines. Retailers could now leverage opted-in app location data to send personalized offers based on shopping behaviour and proximity to the retail location.

In total, users will see much deeper personalization across a number of mobile app experiences, allowing them to cut through the clutter and receive notifications and feedback that is specifically based on their needs and habits.

Accessibility

There is also a significant impact on overall accessibility for customers who are currently limited by existing software and their dependence on the availability of connectivity. Consider the experience of a shopper with vision or hearing impairments. With emerging technology such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Voice Recognition software, 5G has the ability to completely transform day-to-day functions from point-of-sale payment and “reading” labels on store shelves to voice-prompted wayfinding leveraging smart city or even in-store sensors.

A recent article in Engadget outlines how OEM’s are now building devices that use AI to auto-generate subtitles for any audio playing, implement braille keyboards on their devices, and listen for specific noises to alert deaf or hard of hearing users to important situations. This is great news for app developers who can now build their experiences with these device capabilities in mind with the confidence that the speed of connectivity will allow these functions in real-time.

Big data – the 5G implications of data collection and privacy

Perhaps one of the most wide-reaching changes we’ll see will be around data – data collection, data processing in real-time and the ability to provide users with immediate insights that are currently limited by connectivity quality and network penetration. While this has and will continue to be a sensitive topic, 5G has the ability to alleviate some of the concerns around privacy of data collection as it will fundamentally change the way devices are collecting and processing data.

With more powerful and reliable connections, data that was once reliant on the cloud for collection and processing will now largely be done on the device itself. App users will be able to get the benefits and value from the data collected without sacrificing personal privacy.

A change in the way companies and government agencies look at and treat data will need deeper consideration as we move forward in a 5G-connected world.  Although we will see the ability for users to more closely monitor and control their data at a device level, consumer industries will need to closely balance the ability to provide users with immediate behavior or location-based information with the appetite to receive this level of specific information.

Those currently in the data security, blockchain, cloud computing and data privacy industries are going to see a large uptick as companies, app developers and government agencies look to form partnerships with these companies as part of this rollout. Anyone leveraging the wide sweeping benefits that 5G will offer will also need to invest in infrastructure that protects user data and ensures privacy and security at every level. They will need to ensure that they are building in processes to scrub the data of identifying characteristics while still maintaining data integrity to fuel the deeply personalized experiences themselves.

Consumer trust will be essential in harnessing and rolling out app experiences that rely on data collection as part of their core offering. For instance, permission pass and opt-in experiences will need to be implicitly clear on what is being collected, how it will be used and how it will be anonymized and protected as part of the experience, so that consumers can make informed decisions about how they are using the products and services.

Companies or government agencies utilizing 5G technology such as facial recognition in public spaces will need to ensure there is complete transparency in notifying users of these spaces that the technology is being used and for what purpose.

What does this mean for the app industry?

The app industry itself and those involved in building app experiences for their clients will see massive changes prompted by the removal of connectivity and data processing barriers. We are going to see truly incredible new apps that reach towards the bleeding edge of video, streaming, AR/VR and geo-location based capabilities.  We will see the ability to build life-changing experiences across core industries such as healthcare, education and accessibility services, which will have a significant impact on user experience regardless of location or socio-economic indicators.

For these companies, we will also likely see a change in the team makeup and skills repository needed to make these experiences happen. App development companies will look to add or deepen their skill sets in the areas of AR/VR, big data and data privacy, OCR and voice-enabled services.

App companies will also need to forge new or deepen existing partnerships with data security and data privacy firms to ensure that there is a balance between capabilities, consumer trust and data protection, and ensure that they can build best-in-class experiences with safety and privacy at the core.

Looking ahead to a 5G-powered future

The rollout of 5G technology will likely be one of the most significant changes to our current way of life that we have seen in the technology age.

With these changes comes the awesome responsibility of managing and protecting consumer privacy and balancing capabilities with the incredible experiences likely to come as a result of this incredible technological revolution.  The biggest winner in all of this is the average person, with significant impacts on the core tenets of our communities like accessibility, education and healthcare.

Smart cities, smart campuses and real-time data-empowered emergency and infrastructure services means vast improvements to safety and city planning based on citizen-generated data and video inputs.

Removing barriers to connectivity means that those who are building apps and technology-based experiences are limited only by their imagination and a desire to create exceptional, personalized experiences from the moment you get in your smart car to drive to work to a video call with family members across the globe.

Those companies investing now in building out these experiences with this emerging technology in mind will be first to market, and those that make smart, strategic investments in data privacy, balanced with delightful and seamless functionality, will surge ahead of their competitors.

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TheAppLabb is a leader in the strategy, design and development of mobile apps.  We work with global brands across a number of industries to create innovative and user centric business solutions and app experiences.  Have an idea? Tell us about it.

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