Tag: Apps

Mobile Web Apps Versus Native Apps – Which Is Better?

Background

Browser based mobile apps versus native apps. It’s a serious debate about as old as three years. And pretty much since the beginning of that debate, there has been a general underlying current among the Internet community that browser based is good and native is bad. But Native is dominating despite the serious disadvantages, and browser based applications need to do a catch up.

Clearly organizations are realizing the growing importance of the mobile Web channel as a way to build brand awareness and customer loyalty, yet many are unaware that there are new, innovative approaches to the native mobile app which leverage the browser and make it considerably easier to engage consumers across the exponential number of mobile devices war.

The NATIVE way.

Mobile applications are nothing new. Hundreds of thousands of productivity, gaming, utility and entertainment apps abound in stores such as Apple’s iTunes or Salesforce.com’s AppExchange, available for free but mostly paying applications, through a variety of models. Apps redefined usability and interaction on mobile phones – especially touchscreen devices, and nowadays, tablets. But the native way comes at a price: serious development costs plus maintenance and distribution costs. Not to speak of the dependence on app stores and the continual install and update cycle. So for commercial mobile apps the disadvantages might be offset by the business model, for informational mobile apps, that come essentially free, the disadvantages are paid cash.

One of the pre-requisites with this native approach is the extensive infrastructure that is required for basic distribution and maintenance updates. And beyond the distribution infrastructure, organizations need to create customized versions of the app for each of the mobile platforms on which it will run (Android, Mac O/S, RIM, Windows Mobile, Symbian etc.), which in turn also requires individual updates for end-users to install and refresh. For commercial apps not a big hurdle to take, for informational apps and for businesses with a limited amount of resources to deploy, not an obvious choice.

Native has its advantages; the apps works off line, particularly interesting for games and native apps can benefit from the proprietary features of the native platform – on the iPhone apps you can benefit from the tilt angle or the motion of device, provided of course your apps need that capability. For media and entertainment, native apps can be an extra revenue stream as the apps can incur a new recurring revenue stream. But for most companies the apps will be given Free so that extra incentive to build native apps will not be available.

The Mobile browser way

The technical and financial barriers to overcome in the native apps approach are for most companies and their marketing staff to high to take. They need to look for an alternative way to enter the mobile web market and the mobile devices market. Small to medium size organizations are still struggling getting a third generation website or Web Presence going, let alone that they could deal now with three to four different content management, distribution and maintenance platforms.

Taking a look from a different angle, we could look at providing the customers with a mobile web experience rather then an apps experience. And that approach is possible through newly developed standards like HTML5 and CSS3, combined with Javascripts that optimize the content of a website for a first class mobile user experience. Applications can be easily replicated via the browser, without the need of a new and different underlying platform. Bottom line, you are leveraging the content of your existing web site to a mobile platform, accessible from any mobile device or tablet and independently from the operating system and mobile browser used on the device or tablet.

The Benefits of Mobile Web Applications

For the mobile apps provider

The most obvious advantages for the apps provider are the ability to leverage it’s existing investment in a web site or a content management system in to the mobile platform. No need to create new content, no new distribution platform, no hardware and software investments, just an optimization of the content for a solid mobile experience. And some content management platforms are providing this now as an add-on to their existing platform for building non-mobile websites.

Other big advantage is that the approach is technology agnostic, and that with a browser based mobile apps you are covering the entire mobile devices and tablet market, independent of manufacturer and underlying operating systems used. IOS covers about 52% of the mobile market, and as such that is an extra-ordinary figure, but it leaves 48% to the others. Building a native apps on Apple so gives you a coverage of 52% of the market, building a browser based mobile apps gives you a 100% coverage and you do not need to worry what percentage of your customers will be covered by creating a native Apple apps.

Third and probably biggest advantage for a small to medium sized business, is the fact that your update and maintenance cost will be shared with the cost of updating and maintaining your main site. So one investment cost for both the main site and the mobile site, one URL or domain, and one cost for updating and maintaining both platforms.

For the users or customers

For users, they don’t have to download an application or any maintenance updates, but instead “call up” a URL via their mobile browser which instantly delivers the most up-to-date application to their device. The URL can then be bookmarked like a local app on their device desktop for repeat use. In cases where users just want a one-off interaction with an app, they receive immediate access without a download, while organizations capitalize on a one-time opportunity to excite their audience.

Conclusion

The debate on native apps versus mobile web apps, is not so much one of which is better, but rather one of which fits best the needs of your organization and your customers. Commercial apps are better served through native applications, but for most organizations that view a mobile web presence as an extension of their main web presence, browser based mobile apps is a an alternative that is technically and financially much easier to implement and that will give customers the mobile experience they are looking for, browsing your website.

The Five Best iPhone Apps For Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

There are three things that business owners can use more of – time, money and sanity. If you are a business owner, and an iPhone enthusiast, you may be interested in the following five iPhone apps.

1. Calendar – for your sanity.

This one comes standard with every iPhone. For the busy entrepreneur, with meetings, deadlines, and calls, it is a life saver. Need to remember an appointment? Plug it in to your calendar and set a reminder. I like to set two – one five minutes before, and another that gives me enough time to prepare.

2. Safari “Add to Home Screen” – to save time.

This is not an actual app, but a function within Safari. If you have a website that you frequent, it can be a hassle to open Safari and type its address in the browser address bar – or even to search for the bookmark. Log on to the website and click on the plus sign on the bottom of the screen. Then, select “Add to Home Screen.” Safari will place a shortcut to your website on your phone. Next time you need to pull up the website, simply click on the “app” for it and you’re there.

3. 1Password if you’re a Mac user, RoboForm if you use a PC – another time saver.

1Password and RoboForm are applications that securely save passwords for you. They can also generate strong passwords. Both apps require you to install the program on your mac or PC, and both are well worth it. They keep your information safe, and keep you from spending ten minutes looking for that lost password.

4. CC Terminal – for more money.

Ever thought you landed a new client – only to find him backing out of the deal when you call and ask for payment? Close the deal, take the credit card, and THEN go back to your office. This app takes a little bit of setup, but is WELL worth it.

5. Relax – another one for your sanity.

Sometimes, the best way to get more done is to take five minutes to clear your mind. “Relax” helps you to meditate by giving a nice variety of relaxing scenes, sounds included. My personal favorites are “Breezy Meadow” and “Under the Sea.” Take five minutes – or even just one minute before making an important decision to breathe and relax using this fantastic app.

The lure of the iPhone is the number of apps that are available to it. Often, it’s the simple application that can help you move forward, save time, save your sanity, and make more money.

Business Owner? Know Why You Need Mobile Apps

In today’s tech-savvy era, going mobile is no more a luxury for diverse businesses. Rather, this is one of the necessities, on which every business should give a deep thought.

Nowadays, almost everyone is using a smartphone. Hence, when you decide to make your business go mobile, you can not only reach a wider audience but can make sure to expand your business market as well.

Still not sure whether you want to invest in making a mobile application for your business or not? Read on to know why you should do so.

Audience Building

Irrespective of their geographical location, you can reach your customers at any time through mobile applications. When customers have the app installed on their smartphones, there is no need of remembering the web address! More interestingly, depending on what functionalities the application has, users can use the mobile app without any access to the Internet as well.

Sales Growth

See, increasing the sales figure in the main target of any business. Now, when you opt for a mobile application, other than your website, you can reach your customers directly through the app. You can contact them, send them push notifications on the latest discount offers, promotions, bonus points to motivate your customers.

Other than this, with the help of such apps, customers can easily make online payments, which is more convenient in today’s technologically progressive era. In this way, any business can experience the overall sales growth.

Optimisation of Business Processes

To support a smooth business flow, uninterrupted communication between the employees is crucial. Apart from this, exchanging data and files, managing and monitoring all the processes, aggregating the statistics etc. are important as well. A mobile app dedicated to the business can help to streamline and optimise all these processes. Automation of different business tasks would definitely result in a fruitful outcome.

Valuable Analytics

By analysing the users’ behaviour while using your app, you can understand which of your products are doing most of the businesses. Moreover, you would get to know how much time users are spending on your application. By analysing this, you would find which functionalities are most and least popular and based on these facts, you can set your next business strategy.

Additionally, you would get important data on users’ demographic details, data on their interests, geolocations and other details that will help you to frame your next business strategy.

Apart from all the basic above-mentioned reasons, such mobile apps can help in better marketing along with creating enhanced communication channels with the customers. Additionally, the customer loyalty also increases. This definitely helps diverse businesses to keep the existing customers.

Google Domain Apps – Google Apps Domain For Business

Google Domain Apps: Add more apps to your business.

Google Domain Apps is probably the solution many business people were looking for. If your business has a domain, but you never knew how to organize various other services related to business, Google apps for business is the solution you should resort to.

Google Apps is a service by Google. It allows you to manage various customized services on your domain. This service comes for free but the best of the business prefer to subscribe to its premium versions.

What Does Google Domain Apps Offer?

Well, Google apps for business is a business solution package most suited to the small businesses who cannot afford resources to have their own server sharing. The various services it offers are:

• Google Start Page: It is your customizable start page that coagulates features like calendar, feeds or even gadgets.

• Google Page Creator: It is a free online tool that makes it easy for anyone, even without technical knowledge, to create and publish web pages in short time.

• Google Calendar: It is a time, work and appointments management application from Google’s stable. It takes care of organizing needs of small businesses.

• Google Docs & Spreadsheets: These are web based word processor and data management applications. It allows interactive real time creation and editing of documents without each user having to make his separate copy.

• Gmail & Google Talk: These are email and chat services. In fact, to utilize above mentioned Google Apps for business, creation of Gmail account is a must. Instant chat and its embodiment in email service make communication real fast.

All these Google Apps solutions for business can be integrated into existing business domain with customized company logo.

Many other domain apps services are provided by other competitors as well, but the speed and the utility that Google offers is unmatched. Moreover, one single user identity allows you to avail all the services.

How to do Google Domain Apps set up?

If you already host your website, then changing over to Google Apps hosting will need a transition. This transition may hamper your online services to the clients. It needs a meticulous planning and transition strategy. There are various expert services that create Google Apps Deployment plan to provide you hosted email and collaboration solution that your users can start utilizing right away. They also provide complete data migration and transition services.

It is always advisable to seek an expert’s services as loss of services or data can mean a lot to a small business. These features are especially useful for the start-up with limited resources and technical know how.

To start with, contact Google Domain Apps hosting provider and further process is easy enough. Once you register your domain name, most of the Google services are activated by default.

Services Offered by Net Development Services and Mobile Apps Development Companies

In the vast sector of information technology there are many services offered by net development and mobile apps development companies. Many companies offer a wide range of services like end-to-end development solutions, Web development, Client – Server application, Custom application development, and Desktop application development, Platform OS Migration or Enterprise Mobility Solutions

Complete and integrated process covering development, testing, debugging, and promotion of all applications on different mobiles like iPhone, Blackberry, Android are undertaken by these service providers which makes it easy consumers. With the mobile app developers’ programming skills, businesses can launch mobile solutions and web interfaces optimized for mobile viewing. Making web application accessible on different mobile platforms and through different technologies makes it more user-friendly and this can mean better profits, loyal and happy customers. Mobile application development services include business software and solutions Productivity apps, utilities and solutions, Mobile client software, Games and multimedia apps, Internet apps, Porting web applications to mobile platform other iPhone, Android, iPad, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile solutions. Financial, money management, payment transferring applications, Advertising like corporate, promotional and coupon apps News apps, Medical and fitness applications are all part of mobile apps development.

Net development applications and custom software development services include everything from a simple content web site application to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic business applications, and social network services, including website design and development, software consulting, application integration, and application maintenance services are all undertaken to make it a one-point stop for all technological needs of a customer.

The reason why companies go to net development services companies is because they help save employee time and effort while companies save money by incorporating easy-to-use and convenient applications to manage company documentation, processes, and workflows. They also help create ecommerce sites that enable companies or even individuals make money on the Internet through an auction web application, custom online store application, or huge ecommerce portal. With their innovative ideas people can convert business idea into an elegant custom web application using the combination of technical expertise and business domain knowledge.

These days, finding the mobile apps development companies is not difficult. The only difficult thing is to get the best company that will suit all your needs. Before you hire any company; make sure you have all the knowledge about what exactly you want to get developed, as well as who can be your potential vendor, so that you do not have to regret later. Thus, whom ever you chose, just pick the correct one!

Top Cloud Apps That Really Make a Difference in Your Small Business

Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud storage and sharing system. It can be used as the center of cloud-based office work. Users can work on their own documents, spreadsheets and presentations, as well as work collaboratively with others. Users need a recent version of the Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari Web browsers in order to use Drive. It has a web-based app and a downloaded version. Once installed, uploading and downloading files is insanely fast. Additional office and creative programs are already available specifically for use with Google Drive such as LucidChart, a diagramming program; WeVideo, a video-editing program; Docusign, an e-signature program; and HelloFax, to send Google Drive files as faxes and receive faxes as Google Drive documents.

QuickBase

QuickBase is a larger, more secure alternative to Google Docs. It helps collect, manage and share data. Quickbase can be customized for a specific business. It has a lot of pre-existing applications and also has a store of customer created applications. It has an easy to understand application builder. Users have to buy a month subscription and a 30 day free trial is available.

Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft Office 365 is designed for cloud-based storage and sharing. A subscription allows users to download Office 2013 (or Office 2011 for Mac) on up to 5 devices. An annual subscription costs $100. Microsoft also offers an $80 subscription to students for all four years. If you don’t want to install the full Office, you can run Office On Demand. Office On Demand temporarily installs a full copy of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, or Publisher on any Windows 7 or 8 machine. It lets you open or create documents and then deletes the app from the system after you close. Improvements have been made to the commenting capabilities in Word as well as to Word in general to make it much cleaner.

Handility

A powerful, yet easy to use cloud based phone system and access to local and global numbers.

The system allows you to free yourself from the limitations of traditional telephony and become seamless and globally connected.

There is no equipment to purchase, maintain or upgrade, and our unlimited inbound and outbound calling plans eliminate long distance charges and billing from third party phone companies.

You can chose to maintain a pay-as-you-go plan at incredible low rates, starting from 3 cents per minute.

Adobe Connect

Adobe Connect is a comprehensive web conferencing cloud application. It costs $55/a month (or $45/month if sign up for a year) and becomes available to 100 users. Adobe Connect allows users to video conference, share and annotate files, videos, and one another’s desktops, and rearrange the look and feel of the space to suit user’s needs. It accommodates all browsers and internet connections. Meeting Rooms can be cumbersome to set up, but once set up are always available.

Expensify

Expensify is a web-based application that helps users track and categorize expenses. It has a mobile application that can be used to take note of expenses. Pictures can be taken of receipts for upload, and users can forward email receipts to the Expensify account. Best, it’s free.

FormMobi

FormMobi is a web based application that helps simplify the process of creating forms. Users create an account on FormMobi and begin building forms. They can then be accessed by the field team if they have the Android or iOS device. Once the form is saved on the device once it can be accessed without a data connection, and finished forms can be synced with FormMobi. It costs $10 for a single user and up to $100 a month for ten users.

How Mobile Apps Can Help Online Businesses?

Do you think you are reaching out to your target customers in the most comprehensive manner? Have you ever realized why your competitors are taking away with the major share of the revenues?

Simply developing a business enterprise is not enough in the tough competitive market today. If you want to be successful, you have to adapt to the modern business scenarios, penetrating and attracting your audience in the most effective manner. With the World Wide Web is making its impact strongly in the mobile phone market, businesses simply cannot do without targeting millions of potential consumers over the mobile internet.

According to a recent research, more than 250 millions Smartphones are used across the world, with billions of people browsing the internet over tablets and smart phones to learn what, where, and how to buy. Latest technology advancements in smart phone devices have altered the way people gather information and communicate with the world. In a situation where even computers are fading away in significance to access internet, smart phones allow people to connect to the world even when they are watching their favourite television program.

With a huge chunk of the target audience being engaged on smart mobile devices to gather information, communicate, and buy, many business enterprises have joined the challenge of developing their own mobile apps.

Why it is Important to Develop Mobile App to Boost Online Business?

  • Connecting to the target audience via mobile app is fast; faster than mobile or computer web browsing
  • It is the simplest and easiest way to connect and reach out to the customers
  • It is, often, an effective and most affordable way of online advertising
  • It makes it exceptionally easy to store important data offline
  • Being innovative in nature, it is a good way to outperform the competitors with something new and interesting

How can Mobile Apps Help Online Business

Regardless of your business niche, developing a smart mobile app is a great way to reach out to a larger target audience and create the impact of your business.

  • Mobile apps creates quick touch bases with the audience with SMS messages and push notifications who are always connected on the go
  • It helps in generating revenues in the way of highlighting latest products, loyalty discounts, service coupons, or sending out promotional messages
  • With an open portal for existing and potential customers, businesses can make their products and services easily accessible
  • Sends reminder notifications to customers periodically and ensures that the messages are seen
  • Builds and promotes strong customer relationships
  • Mobile app helps in establishing a powerful brand identity. Once the customers have downloaded the app on their smart phones, you are literally in their palms, reminding of your business over and over again
  • Keeps the brand and business image updated and fresh with latest technologies

Creating a relevant and interesting mobile app can help. It is all about customizing it to suit specific requirements of your business and present it in the most appealing manner to the audience.

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