Category: App Development

Categories
App Development

Life after the release of the mobile application

Life after the release of the mobile application

The release of the mobile application is only the beginning of the journey. It must remain functional. Despite the fact that testers have caught most of the errors in the application, they can and will occur, and this is normal. In addition, user habits and technologies change every year, and a truly promising product must change with them in order to remain relevant and profitable.

If you have collaborated with a studio and developed an application from scratch, then the easiest and most obvious thing to do is sign a technical support contract with this studio.

Previously, live typing support was a clause in the main software development contract. But we isolated this service, raising its value and significance.

The clause in the contract read something like this: “We will do it for N thousand rubles” (with the Fixed Price payment model) or “We give you M hours of our support services” (with the Time & Materials model). The technical support contract says: “For N amount, we guarantee you M hours of our support services.” In other words, this is a booking of a specialist by you. And no one can encroach on a specialist whose time is booked.

Changes can be preventive and qualitative. The former include updating the libraries used, monitoring hosting and servers, and maintaining the overall health of the application. The second includes the introduction of new features, support for new versions of operating systems, optimization of the product interface, taking into account new standards in design and user behavior data, scaling the backend if the number of users has increased dramatically, etc.

For greater transparency in relations with the support team, conclude an SLA, or Service Level Agreement (English “service level agreement”). This is the document which specifies the amount of support (number of hours per month), roles on the project, response time depending on the status of the task (critical, urgent, normal), what will be the result of the response, as well as how the time of the project manager, developer, tester is planned and paid, analyst and designer.

SLA work is the result of negotiations. The manager offers to choose from two conditions: either the client pays money for support under the Time & Materials scheme (and this means that the task can be completed at any time within the paid time), or the work goes according to SLA and the client pays a subscription fee (and this means that the team is booked for a specific number of hours and is always ready to quickly respond to incidents).

Such things cannot be left in the format of an oral agreement.

Mobile App Marketing Fundamentals

When it comes to how to promote a mobile application, two areas of work are most often distinguished: generating a stream of new users and returning current users (as well as those who deleted the application), the so-called “work for retention”.

There are two ways to promote in generating a flow of new users: organic and paid.

Organic promotion requires almost no financial investments. It includes:

  • Email distribution. Suitable for working with the collected target base, which can turn into loyal users of the product;
  • Store search promotion (ASO, or App Store Optimization). Makes it easier for your app to be discovered in the App Store or Google Play. As part of the promotion, you need to correctly formulate the title and subtitle, choose the right keywords, prepare an attractive icon and illustrations;
  • Content. It includes articles, podcasts, videos. Tell your potential audience about your successes and failures and thereby create an image of a product that can be trusted;
  • Transferring traffic from your site or other resources. For example, if you already have a website, then offer to download the application to visitors who have entered it through a mobile device, and place banners advertising the application.

Paid promotion works as an aid to organic.

It includes:

  • Motivated ASO. The application reaches the top points in the issuance of stores due to installations made by users for money or some kind of bonuses;
  • Contextual advertising. With it, potential users see your application when they search for something through the search engines on the phone. It is only important that your application solves the very problems that the user turned to Google or Yandex;

Media advertising.

Takes the form of banners on websites and mobile apps that sell ad space. By clicking on the banner, the user gets to the page of the store with your application;

Targeted advertising in social networks. If you are primarily counting on installations from Russia, then use the MyTarget system to target popular social networks. Reach out to a global audience through Facebook and Instagram ads;

Social media crops.

  • Look for specialized communities with a large number of subscribers on VKontakte and buy advertising posts from them. The method will be cheaper than the previous one, but the effect will be weaker;
  • Affiliates (CPA networks, arbitrage networks). Installs are generated through the work of a webmaster whose task is to buy one install for less than the amount for which he sells her to you. The affiliate network acts here as an intermediary between you and the webmaster.

Metrics and conversion

Analytics helps to set goals, adjust the development strategy, evaluate the success of advertising campaigns and the effectiveness of business processes. In order for your eCommerce application to generate the desired income, you need to analyze the following metrics.

The cost of attracting a new client, or Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Shows the amount you spend on a customer who does not just enter the application, but makes a purchase. It is calculated by dividing the cost of an advertising campaign by the number of buyers attracted during its implementation.

Cost per install, or Cost Per Install (CPI). Shows the amount you spend to acquire a new app user, whether they make a purchase or not. Calculated by dividing the app’s ad spend by the number of successful installs.

Revenue Per Install (RPI). Shows the amount you receive from one successful application installation. It is calculated by dividing the total revenue for the period of the advertising campaign by the number of installations. If the value turns out to be slightly higher (and even lower) than CPI, this is a serious reason to think about changing your marketing strategy.

Click-To-Install Rate (or simply Install Rate). Shows how link clicks or clicks to your banner ad are converted into actual app installs. Calculated by dividing the number of successful installs by the total number of clicks. Usually the resulting value is multiplied by 100 to see the result as a percentage. Sometimes it is more profitable to pay not for a click, but for a thousand ad impressions. In this case, you need to track Click Through Rate (CTR) – the ratio of the number of clicks to the total number of ad impressions.

The degree of conversion, or Conversion Rate (CR). Shows the percentage of app users who complete a targeted action, including a purchase. From the moment of installation to placing an order, you need to go through a series of steps, or stages of the sales funnel, and at each of them a part of potential buyers is eliminated. Some do not even enter the catalog, others are limited to viewing products, others add something to the cart, but do not complete the purchase process.

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Categories
App Development

What are the rates for development studios in Western Europe

The Tagline agency lists on its website the following average hourly rates for studio IT-specialists:

Developer. 30$/hour;

Designer/illustrator. $25/hour;

Project Manager. $25/hour;

Analyst. 30$/hour;

Tester. 20$₽/hour.

Rates like these will make up your project’s estimate when assessed by the studio. Cheaper in the regions in the capitals – maybe several times more expensive, it depends on the eminence and demand for the studio.

Depending on the goals of the project, work and payment are carried out according to one of two models:

Fixed price.

The model assumes that for the approved budget within the approved timeframe, the studio creates the things specified in the terms of reference. Suitable when the goal is to make the project by a specific date or the project is small and does not require improvements. The negative side is that the performer may neglect the quality of performance in order to meet the deadline and not receive a fine;

Time & Materials.

The model is suitable for large projects or projects whose owner will constantly change tasks in search of the right solution. You pay after the fact for the man-hours that the team spent on solving individual tasks. This path is good when you have a flexible budget and a project with a new business idea worth testing, or when you want to refine an existing one. The downside is only constant communication, but this and plus – you participate in the project, follow its movement and direct it.

Useful tips to choose IT development company:

Perhaps someone in your social circle has already launched a mobile application. Find out about the studio that worked on the product: in what manner its representatives are used to communicating with the client, how deeply they try to understand the goals and objectives, how close the communication of the project manager during development, were there any unpleasant surprises, how much did the mobile application cost.

Even people you don’t know can respond to your request for feedback on working with a particular studio. Choose a random client from the portfolio of the studio you are interested in and write to him or look for reviews on Clutch, in social networks and in general on the Internet.

If you are looking for quality interaction with the artist and the same result, pay attention to the time the studio has been on the market, the size of its staff, geographical location and portfolio. What considerations should be based on:

  • Studios with a small staff are rarely able to produce a high-level result – due to a banal lack of hands;
  • The standard of living in the regions affects the hourly rate of studio employees. The services of professionals from Siberia cost less than the services of professionals from the capital, and they can do their job just as well;
  • A studio operating on the market for two years or more already has both experience and a portfolio;

Portfolio will tell you a lot: what size clients trusted this studio, how well the studio does its job, and most importantly, whether it has previously created a product similar to yours. If yes, then you are lucky, because the studio already understands your problems and the problems of the market, and work on the project will go faster at all stages.

Many studios describe their work experience in a blog on their website or on industry sites like habr.com, cmsmagazine.ru, vc.ru and others. You can find the right studio by googling about your project and mobile app development in general: someone has written an article or a case about it. Through content marketing, studios create an image for themselves in the industry: boldly report on successes and just as boldly on mistakes that, most likely, will not be repeated when working with you.

A good and responsible studio will never evaluate a project based on your story and brief alone. Perhaps she looks at your project through some kind of template or one-time experience of working on similar tasks. But every project is unique.

A sign of a mature and competent studio is a caustic account manager who holds meeting after meeting with you, asking a lot of questions and pulling all the details of the upcoming work out of you. The result of such communication is a phased assessment of the project and a willingness to explain why each stage should take that much time and cost that much money.

To get a complete picture of the prices on the market and the quality of the work of contractors, we advise you to contact several studios. It is better if there are no more than 10 of them, otherwise it will be difficult for you to choose and you will have to spend too much time communicating with studio representatives and comparing their offers. If you decide to tender between several studios, we do not recommend making low price the main criterion for choosing a contractor. Compare participants by portfolio, quality and speed of communication, beauty of design, experience of specialists, completeness and accuracy of commercial offers.

How to work with freelancers

Live Typing has been working with freelancers for almost two years. They help a lot in a situation where there are not enough full-time employees to create an interesting product. For us, freelancers are divided into four types:

  • Specialists who are engaged only in freelancing. The most efficient. In theory, they can devote all their time only to your project;
  • “Half people” who combine freelancing with the main place of work. Work is a priority for them, so they can postpone deadlines and simply disappear. To avoid unpleasant surprises on the project associated with this type of freelancer, you will need the ability to negotiate;
  • Developers who quit their jobs but haven’t found a new one yet. The inconvenience is that they can find it in some moment;
  • Young teams that are just entering the market and experienced companies. The former can work for you with a full complement, the latter can sell the time of their employees.

They value their image, so their responsibility is higher than that of lone freelancers.

The main advantage of freelancers is low cost.

their services. The main disadvantage is the lack of personal interest in your project, which most likely will have a bad effect on both timing and quality.

Our recommendations for working with freelancers will help reduce the risks:

  • Formulate the key search parameters: what programming language the developer should write in, what tasks he will face, how many hours he should work and in what terms;
  • Choose freelancers through proven channels: exchanges Freelancing, My Circle, workspace.ru and fl.ru and via the Telegram channels Web Freelance, PHP – jobs, job search and analytics, Mobile Dev Jobs – jobs and analytics, Apple, iOS Jobs — vacancies, job search and analytics, “AndroidDev : Development. It`s Android time now!”, Design Hunters, “QA – vacancies and analytics of the job market”, “Bitrix work” and “Work in game development”;
  • Pay attention to the experience in commercial development – it should be at least two years;
  • Specify at what time the freelancer is available for communication and whether he is able to devote at least 20 hours a week to your project;
  • Provide yourself with a choice of 2-3 good specialists: if one disappears, you can try to turn to another;
  • Ask a freelancer for an estimate of each task and add 30-50% of the time received to it for safety net;
  • Control its work: arrange daily rallies, learn about the procedure for working on tasks, ask for clarification and updating of this assessment;
  • Let the freelancer feel like a part of the team: introduce him to everyone involved in the project, tell him in detail about the rules, be interested in his views to work situations.

Following these guidelines will help build strong professional relationships.

Categories
App Development

Whom to choose: internal team, development studio or freelancers

The choice of the contractor is influenced by the size of your business, financial capabilities and time.

Freelancers.

These are non-staff workers that you hire for a limited time to work on the entire project or just specific tasks. A freelancer can work with several clients at the same time or combine his main job with freelance work.

Plus:

  • The cost of working with freelancers is the lowest compared to other options. However, it is worth planning some expenses in case the freelancer incorrectly estimated the project or, for example, if you have to urgently look for a replacement for him.

Minuses:

  • Breaking deadlines and stretching tasks is a common situation in working with freelancers. If he is working on several projects, he will primarily solve the tasks of more hot projects. A freelancer can completely stop communicating and disappear. However, a lot depends on how you organize your work with a specialist.
  • Relations with a freelancer are based on mutual trust, but there is always a risk of stumbling upon an unscrupulous contractor. In addition, without testing and code review by professionals, it is not a fact that the project will be implemented without bugs and other specialists will be able to support it if you decide to change the contractor;
  • A freelancer has no interest in working on your project, except for material. But inclusion to the project is important, and the success of the project will depend on which specialists you select and how you build interaction.

Working with freelancers is suitable when the budget is limited and you have a wealth of experience in project management and willingness to spend a lot of time communicating with contractors. The most important thing is to calculate the risks and always have a plan B at hand.

Development studio.

This is a team of professionals with well-established production processes, to which the client entrusts the work on the project. The studio is responsible for the correct assessment of the stages of work on the project, the implementation of these stages, the documentation and the release of a workable application that corresponds to what is written in the documentation. The client is responsible for achieving business goals and the correctness of the chosen monetization model.

Also, the client is included in the project as its full participant and is responsible for maintaining communication with the studio, providing its employees with access to everything necessary and for promoting the product.

Pros:

  • An experienced studio will most likely have experience with projects similar to yours and will be able to warn you against common mistakes;
  • The studio is responsible for the quality of the project implementation.
  • Code review, testing, management and additional processes organized by the contractor help to make the project of the expected quality within a fixed time frame and budget;
  • The client communicates primarily with the project manager. The manager regularly reports to the client about how the work on the project is going, discusses what difficulties arise and how they can be resolved, whether there are risks of not meeting the deadline and what to do to prevent this.

Minus and plus:

  • The cost of outsourcing company services is higher than that of freelancers, but lower than the maintenance of an in-house team. On the one hand, the client actually pays the contractor extra for eliminating risks, on the other hand, it reduces fixed costs that are inevitable when working with full-time specialists.
  • This is not the most budget option, but it is yours if you want to get a ready-made high-quality project of the required functionality in a limited time frame. Studio will save your time and prevent numerous risks from being realized.

In house team.

This is an internal development team that works on a regular basis in the client’s staff.

Pros:

  • High speed of response;
  • Involvement of specialists;
  • Following the quality standards set by the department;
  • High motivation to complete the project with high quality and on time.

Since you yourself select people, it also depends on you what values ​​\u200b\u200bwill underlie the work of the team.

Minus:

This is the most expensive interaction option. It is necessary to find qualified specialists, to interest

them with your project, provide the team with permanent and long-term employment, look for replacements for those who have decided to quit.

Also, the employer must pay wages with taxes, regardless of downtime in production, vacation pay, as well as renting an office, equipping workplaces, etc.

Creating your own development team is worth it if you have a product that requires constant development and inclusion, and you are sure that you can provide a team with a constant load and know how to manage such a team.

A common practice is to order the first version of the application in the development studio, and if the project is successful, to assemble your own team to support and develop it. In this case, you need to make sure that the project is easily transferable from one developer to another: it has a set of documentation, understandable readable code with comments, and is written using well-known technologies.

How to find a studio contractor

The outcome of the project depends on the right choice of studio. It should be as responsible as choosing an apartment or a car: at best, you will be the happy owner of a practical property,

at worst, you will get a burden and a feeling of regret for many years.

Start with ratings. Studying them will give you an idea of ​​the number of studios, the cost of their services and their position in the industry. It is worth focusing on four ratings:

  • “Tagline”. The most authoritative ranking of mobile app developers on the market. It takes into account the annual revenue of the studio, the number of employees, the quality of the studio’s website and its recognition among colleagues in the shop;
  • Ruward. Aggregator of other ratings. Takes into account the positions of studios in Tagline and a number of secondary ratings.
  • Clutch. Ranking with editorial in the USA. The positions of the studios depend on real reviews and ratings from clients who have already worked with them;
Categories
App Development

How much time and money will it take to create a mobile application

Development time depends on how complex the project is. All projects can be divided into three types:

Simple applications.

 Created for two platforms. They have few screens, data, and actions that users can take. It is planned to create an API, backend and admin panel, the ability to view and send images, login and authorization through popular social networks. Such applications can use ready-made map services and work with GPS. Examples of applications from the Live Typing portfolio: Svezhev, Kaspersky Security Pulse, Ares, iStirka, Dubai Guide, Vogue Collections.

Time to create: 1-3 months. Cost: 20k – 30k $

Applications of medium complexity.

It includes everything listed above. The functionality becomes more complex: it can include chats, payments, etc. The cost here is affected not only by the complexity of the component, but also by their number.

Examples of applications from the Live Typing portfolio: LIMÉ, Yodel, My Doctor, RocketGo.

Time to create: 3-6 months. Cost: 40k – 50k $

Complex applications.

 It includes everything listed above. The functionality becomes more complex: it may include the processing of audio and video files, synchronization in real time, a large amount of custom animations, integration with a large number of third-party services, work with VR/AR platforms, the presence of several types of users. On top of that, there is a large amount of content and screens. Application examples: Sephora, ILE DE BEAUTE, Moviegoal, MyTech.

Time to create: 6 months or more. Cost: from 100k $.

Creating a mobile application takes not only the time of the development team, but also yours. We suggest you think about what suits you better: to devote personal time to the project or find a trusted person on your side and pay him money for control over the project.

Technical task

Terms of Reference (TOR) is a document that structures and describes all the information about the project device obtained during the design process: what platform the application will run on, what versions of the operating system it will support, what hardware parts of the device it will work with, integration with which third-party services and systems are expected. Specification can be ordered

in one studio and go to another with confidence that your task will be understood without distortion and an accurate assessment will be given.

Writing a technical task by a studio is a service that is paid separately. You can write it yourself, and the studio will conduct a review and tell you what it lacks to understand the task and implement the project.

Native or cross-platform development: what to choose

Depending on the approach to development, applications are divided into native and cross-platform.

Native

Native applications are created in a specific programming language for a specific platform: Java and Kotlin for Android, Objective-C and Swift for iOS.

Advantages:

  • Instant response to user actions;
  • Direct access to the hardware of the device;
  • User-familiar interface for the platform.

Disadvantage: high cost of development and support due to the involvement of at least one developer

for each platform.

Cross-platform

Cross-platform applications are created immediately for both iOS and Android using web technologies (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) with Cordova, Xamarin, React Native and Flutter tools. In order for the written code to work on mobile devices, it must either be “translated” into a language they understand, or a layer should be made that works on the device and makes requests to the device’s functions understandable to it.

Advantage: low cost of development and support due to the involvement of one web developer.

Disadvantages:

  • The need to refine the interface for each platform according to the guidelines;
  • Difficulties in achieving the correct operation of all the necessary functions;
  • Delay in response to user actions.

Cross-platform development can be a good choice if you are building a simple application, testing hypotheses, have a low budget, or have your own web developer. In other cases, we recommend choosing native development.

Feedback

First, you need to carefully look through reviews that customers leave in the App Store and Google Play. If you won’t respond to users needs and change anything, then the rating of the app will drop: the client will be unsatisfied, the comment is bad, and the impression is ruined.

Secondly, you should think about an alternative channel of communication – that is, the phone or the support button should be in the application itself, preferably in plain sight. If the client has a problem and does not know where to complain, he will write in the reviews for the application.

MVP Strategy

MVP stands for Minimum Valuable Product (Minimum Viable Product). In such an application, functional or visual excesses are unacceptable – everything that is in it is designed to work strictly for the business purpose of the product.

The MVP strategy is appropriate when you need to release the application on time, understand that people will use it, and test all the hypotheses that you formulated during the design phase. This is how you protect yourself from unnecessary spending on a product that turned out to be uninteresting to the audience. And if there is interest, continue to develop the product: add features, draw animations, connect third-party services.

The MVP version of an application for an online store must necessarily consist of a main page, a catalog with search, shopping cart and payment functions. It’s too early to offer multiple payment methods and implement augmented reality – just make sure that the application is used for shopping. Further analysis will show what else your users want.

MAP strategy

MAP (Minimum Awesome Product, or minimal amazing product) is an MVP that, in addition to solving the main problem, captivates the user. The ideologists of this strategy say that over the 12 years of the history of mobile applications, today’s user has already developed expectations from social networking applications, online stores, to call a taxi, etc. It is not enough to simply make a reliable application no worse than competitors, because people want to be surprised, and you want to earn. And if the application gives new experiences, then it will become the best in its niche, push users to leave from competitors and glorify their creators.

Categories
App Development

Stages of mobile application development

Stylization and design concept.

The application should have its own corporate identity based on the color palette, fonts, illustrations and icon. It gives the application a unique mood that affects the user’s attitude towards it and, consequently, your business. The task of the designer is to “dress up” a visually inexpressive prototype in the corporate style.

He will do this in several variations, each of which is called a design concept. You choose the one you like best.

Make the right choice, because this is how your application will look

Development of a mobile application.

Developers get the design layout of the application through the Zeplin platform. This is convenient and has become a widespread practice, so you will probably be offered to create an account in Zeplin and connect to the project.

After the developers study the design, they may see new challenges in the implementation of the application and reevaluate the project. But you were warned about this at the stage of communication with the account. The task of developers is to bring the design to life, that is, to lay out each screen and write code that logically combines them and allows the approved functionality to work. Also, with the help of code, they establish interaction between the visible part of the application (frontend) and its invisible part, where data is stored (backend).

At this stage, you communicate primarily with the project manager. He tells you about how development is progressing, what problems arise, how they are solved and whether you meet the deadlines.

Development management. The project can be managed according to two methodologies:

“Waterfall”

The project develops linearly: from the approval of technical specifications to design, prototyping and design, then to development, testing and support. Such a methodology does not imply sudden changes – new proposals are made only after the completion of one stage;

“Agile”

The general name for agile project management methodologies, the most common of which is Scrum. The bottom line is that there is a total amount of tasks (backlog), from which the manager and developers form a stage (sprint). The stage lasts one to two weeks: we completed one part of the tasks, summed up the results, scored the next ones, and so on until the tasks are over. The results of one sprint can affect the composition of the tasks of the next sprint, this is the difference from “waterfall” with its strict sequence.

Some studios (including Live Typing) find it convenient to combine waterfall and Scrum. Large stages are performed one after another, but they are estimated in time and are divided into sprints within themselves. At the end of each sprint, you see the result and thus control the process.

Testing. No sprint is complete without testing. Its goal is to fix most of the bugs in the operation of the application.

Performance testing involves several types of testing. They are automated and manual and are used at different stages of the project.

The backend is checked to see if it can withstand a large number of requests at the same time and not break.

The final product must work on different phones, so testing is not possible without a large fleet of mobile devices. Ask the studio how extensive its park is.

The QA engineer responsible for the quality of the product receives the build of the project, runs it through all the necessary tests and prepares a report for the developers, which indicates all the shortcomings. The developers fix them and send the build back to the tester. After that, she comes to you. You are expected to review the build and provide feedback on its performance.

Release.

The finished application must be submitted for moderation to the App Store mobile app stores.

and Google Play. This is the responsibility of the project manager.

Before publishing to the App Store, the project manager must:

1. Create an account in the App Store for the client, if the client does not have one, or offer to publish the application from the account of the developer studio.

2. Prepare marketing materials (icon, screenshots, text, video for app preview).

3. Attach a digital signature certificate to the application assembly.

4. Set up payment for using the application.

5. Submit the build to the App Store.

The first check can take from several hours to a week. Moderators check how unique the application is, whether there is any unused code, whether the purpose and content of the application matches its name and age rating, if the links work, and if there is a privacy policy.

Before publishing to Google Play, the project manager must:

1. Create an account in the Google Play Developer Console for the client, if the client does not have one, or offer to publish from the studio’s account.

2. Issue a Privacy Policy.

3. Prepare marketing materials (icon, screenshots, APK, banner, text, promo video).

4. Attach a digital signature certificate to the application assembly.

5. Set up payment for using the application.

6. Send assembly to Google Play.

It has long been observed that moderation for Google Play takes less time than moderation for the App Store.

The application may be disqualified for adult content, extremist and immoral content, drug advertisements, the ability to mine cryptocurrency and binary options trading, plagiarism, non-compliance with security conditions and annoying ads.

Refusal to publish is not a sentence: after eliminating all the reasons for the refusal, the application will be approved, and it will be possible to download it from the store.

Support and update.

Support is provided under the contract. You pay for a certain number of hours per year and you can count on experts to sort out problems on your project. Also, over time, you will want a new design or new features, or decide to remove some features if they turn out to be outdated or not used. Support tasks include:

  • Library update;
  • Monitoring the performance of hosting and server;
Categories
App Development

What are the stages of working on a mobile application

Mobile app development costs can be roughly divided into five categories:

1. Management (20% of the total time).

2. Design (11%).

3. Development (55%).

4. Testing (11%).

5. Analytics (3%).

The most expensive graphs at the development stage will be:

  • A large amount of data, screens and actions in the application;
  • Backend and API; Administrative panel;
  • Integration of third-party services; Users with different roles;
  • Use of hardware components and integration with third-party devices;
  • AR and facial capture.

The number of supported operating systems also affects the final cost of the product. This is especially true for Android: if you are making an application for the widest possible audience, then they should be pledged to support versions from 4.4 and below – these are still used by residents of Africa and India.

Mobile app marketing is a constant expense. The budget is needed to attract the primary audience, retain regular customers and search for new ones, to create a more attractive image against the backdrop of competitors. It is better to approve the size of the budget for the year ahead.

The same applies to the budget for updating and maintaining your product.

What are the stages of working on a mobile application

First contact with the development studio.

To develop a mobile application, business most often uses the services of mobile development studios. To make the studio take you seriously right away, work above the application. Send it from the corporate mailbox, remembering to fill in the “Subject” field. Tell us about the goals of the application, audience, plans for marketing and development. Attach to the letter everything that you already have and can help the team in evaluating the project: an outline of the terms of reference, corporate identity, prototype, design. Name the amount you are willing to spend on the project.

With an application like “I want an app like Uber. What is the price?” no one will work.

This information will go to the manager of the development studio. You will have a telephone conversation with him, during which you will be asked clarifying questions, the answers to which will complement the application.

The application is sent to the account manager, with whom you dive deeper into the project.

After a series of meetings, the account manager gives the approximate timeline and budget, and also warns that after the prototyping stage, developers can discover previously unobvious difficulties, and the timing will change. If you are interested in cooperation, a preliminary technical task and estimate will be prepared for you, included in the commercial offer and sent to you.

Development will begin when the parties exchange signed agreements.

Design.

Designers, business analysts and system analysts are involved in the work. Their task is to find out why the product is needed, who needs it, how users will work with it and solve problems. and how it will bring you money. A portrait of the target audience will help answer these questions, which can be compiled through surveys, research and interviews with potential users and you. Once you have a user profile, you will begin to hypothesize about how they will work with the application and achieve their goals.

At this stage, you should find out if the problem your application is designed to solve is real, and if there will be it has users. Get ready to invest a lot of personal time and effort now, so as not to throw millions of rubles into the air later.

Prototyping.

A prototype is a sketch of a product that gives an idea of ​​its appearance, work logic and main functionality.

Work on it begins with a rough layout of the application screens, which can be drawn on paper or on a computer. Then the layout acquires specifics: interface elements fall into place on the screens, and this already resembles something. Further, the screens are connected by conditional lines and turn into a User Flow, or a map of screens. With it, it will become clear how the user will navigate through the application, which steps in this movement are superfluous, which functions are not needed, and which ones are missing.

If you wish, the designers can create a clickable version of the prototype. It will be possible to open it on the phone, click on some of the buttons and reach the goals of the application by evaluating the User Flow.

Business analytics. An important role at the stages of design and prototyping is played by a business analyst (aka product analyst). His main task is to understand how the process of work on the project proceeds and convey its meaning to the client and the team: what will the result of work at the business level be, why will it give it, and what product hypotheses support it.

Business analytics is done either on very large projects or in start-ups that, based on analytics, can change business goals or change entirely.

The pool of work of a business analyst can be very extensive:

  • Analysis of the target audience, identification and description of target segments;
  • Formation of product hypotheses and business hypotheses;
  • Formation of the product model (Minimum Valuable Product, Minimum Awesome Product, full-fledged product), product core, main and secondary functionality;
  • Conducting a business review: the result of the work is checked to see if it corresponds to the previously set business purposes;
  • Specification and description of the requirements for the implementation of the product and individual features;
  • Processing requirements, turning them into terms of reference (TOR);
  • Formation of growth hypotheses for the product;
  • Retrieving metrics and setting up analytics;
  • Analysis and statistics, formation of needs for changes in the product.

All items, depending on the needs of the project, are potential documents. Since the requirements for the product may change on the project, during the development process, the business analyst is with the team

and update the documentation.

System analytics.

The system analyst gathers business process requirements. His tasks:

  • Understand and clearly articulate what the actual result the client needs: a mobile application for one or two platforms, an administrative panel, a server part (or a backend), sections with certain capabilities, etc. The result of this formulation will be a functional task (FZ). If it does not exist, then the development process starts to hurt: then there will be Wishlist, which do not fit with the agreements, then the developers will no longer understand what needs to be done;
  • Design a common system architecture: what services will be, what they will be responsible for, whether there are integrations with other systems and how they interact with each other with friend. This work is embodied in diagrams, texts, documentation for the API (Application Programming Interface, or application programming interface – a description of the ways in which one program can interact on the other), documents that describe data flows from system to system or user actions. Business processes and technical scenarios are brought into one-to-one correspondence with each other.

The system analyst is the focal point of all knowledge about the project, he can talk about any aspect of the system and stays on the project until it is completed.

It is possible that the analyst has made understandable documents and is no longer involved in the project, because it is proceeding in accordance with the documents.

Categories
App Development

Mobile development process applications for eCommerce

A mobile app for business starts with an idea.

But what follows after her birth? Not all clients fully understand the scale of work hidden behind the desire to make an application.

For 9 years of presence in the IT market, our company has talked with thousands of people who want to create their own mobile product, studied their needs and developed the workflow that you hold in your hands. Following it, the chances of getting a cool result are maximum.

Further, all aspects of working on the application will be revealed to you in an accessible form. For example:

  • What are the stages of working on an application?
  • How much does it cost to develop applications of different complexity and what affects the cost?
  • How not to go broke on an application that no one needs?
  • Which platform to start with – iOS or Android? How not to become a victim of an unreliable contractor?
  • Why is cheap service not necessarily synonymous with poor quality?

The audience of mobile Internet users is growing and spends more and more time with the phone than with the computer. The younger generation, initially inclined to work with mobile devices, is also investing in its growth.

devices, and older, mastering new technologies. The Data Insight study says that the number of users paying for goods and services on websites through computers is 16 million people, and the number of mobile shoppers is 21 million people. Every year the first figure falls, and the second grows.

Data Insight also says that the absence of a mobile sales channel leads to a loss of profit of 15-30%. But we’ll fix it.

Let’s not lie: creating a mobile application for business is a long and expensive process. But you need to respond to market trends and the habits of your audience, and in the long run the costs will pay for themselves.

How mobile applications allow you to earn

There are many ways to make money on the mobile Internet. The product can be a meeting place for sellers and customers, a branded mobile application of an online or offline brand or a convenient service. There are many directions, here are the most popular:

Marketplace

The same as a market or shopping center, only on the Internet. On the terms of beneficial cooperation, you gather in one place those who sell goods, services and skills, and those who buy them. Typical representatives: Yandex.Market, Avito, Airbnb, Etsy, Aliexpress, fl.com.

Within this direction, one can single out the on-demand sphere, where a product or service is provided.

at the user’s request. The brightest representative is the service for ordering a taxi Uber. An example from Live Typing is an application for finding a technician in Indonesia MyTech.

Applications for retail brands. This is an opportunity for store owners, already existing online or offline, to sell their products to mobile device users.

Is there a mobile version of the site? Fine! But he does not always know what the mobile application can do. The application is more convenient and influences brand customer loyalty. Live Typing worked on eCommerce applications for the perfume and cosmetics stores IL DE BEAUTE and Sephora, as well as the women’s clothing store LIMÉ.

All of them have been awarded prestigious domestic awards in the field of digital products.

Mobile service.

A type of application that helps users order some service online, for example, make an appointment for a haircut, buy movie tickets, train tickets or plane, choose an excursion in an exotic country.

Among the service applications developed in Live Typing – an application for buying a subscription to cinemas “Kinogolik” and an application for buying excursions anywhere in the world RocketGo.

Applications with a loyalty program. Apps whose creators strive to maintain relationships with your audience for as long as possible. To do this, they give points, bonuses and discounts, make special offers, return money for purchases. Also popular are the Perekrestka, Pyaterochka and Azbuka Vkusa applications, and such aggregators of loyalty programs, like UDS Game, Wallet, Frendi and Edadil. There are loyalty programs in such developments from Live Typing, like ILE DE BEAUTE, Sephora and the application of the Siberian network of beer stores “Svezhev”, eGrocery/Foodtech. A growing and very broad segment of the market at the intersection of technology and everything related to food, including ordering and delivering groceries, booking tables in a restaurant and creating recipes for whole dishes and based on available products. Notable examples are Delivery Club and ZakaZaka.

Applications from these niches may differ from each other in terms of feature set and architecture, but the sequence of work on them always the same.

How to know if your business is mobile app ready

There are three signs of readiness:

1. Your product or service is used frequently.

2. You have an online store with popular products.

3. The application will make life easier for your customers.

Website statistics will help you make a decision to create an application: if every third of your clients visits it, then the application already has an audience.

And as a test shot, you can ask customers directly if they need the application and whether they will use it.

iOS or Android: where to start

There are several reasons to start with creating an application for iPhone owners:

1. iOS apps monetize better.

2. Need to support fewer device types.

3. Devices most often have the current version of the operating system.

4. It’s harder for hackers to steal users’ personal data.

5. Apps have higher quality due to picky moderation.

But the final choice of platform still depends on the purpose of the application and its audience.

Do you want to earn and bet on paying users? Choose iOS.

Are you creating a product aimed at the masses or regions whose residents are not used to or cannot pay for digital products? Are you making a service application for couriers and sales representatives and can’t afford an expensive fleet of devices? Choose Android.

Do you want to take over the world? Choose from both platforms.

Categories
App Development

What makes up the price of a mobile application

‣ Platform

The choice between iOS and Android depends on the specifics of the business and the target audience for which the eCommerce application is being developed.

There is a difference between the purchasing power of iPhone owners and other smartphone owners. The typical iPhone user earns $85,000 a year, 40% more than the typical Android user. This is reflected in spending in applications: the average check of an iPhone owner is 4 times higher. Conclusion: Your store gets more profit from Apple products.

Android has the advantage of being the world’s leading mobile operating system, reaching 74.6% of users. By making an application for Android, you reach a huge audience. But this platform has a diverse lineup, so testing and fixing bugs takes a lot of time, which is calculated in money.

By ignoring users of one of the platforms, stores lose profit. Therefore, large retailers have both Android and iOS applications. But a young business can start with just one to enter the market and attract buyers – the second platform is connected as it develops.

‣ Design

The meaning of mobile application design is not in beautiful pictures, but in creating a comfortable and understandable interface for the user. Thoughtful design accelerates the user’s movement towards a purchase. The work of the design department consists of several stages:

First, the designer describes the user scenario: he puts himself in the place of the buyer in order to understand how it is more comfortable to interact with the application. To do this, he asks targeted questions: what does the user see when the application starts? How is it more convenient for him to view the goods? How to quickly add them to the cart? The answers to them are navigation solutions that need to be implemented in the application.

Warframing is the creation of a “frame” of the application, a grid into which design elements will be inscribed. The designer schematically depicts the location of the main blocks on the screen, thinks over the logic of transition from one screen to another, adds buttons, icons and key visual elements.

Getting started on the layout on wireframe.cc

Prototyping is the creation of a color clickable prototype, which is approved by the client. Work at this stage is carried out jointly with the developers to ensure that the prototype is fully consistent with the functional task.

It seems to many that the main thing in the application is the code. But in reality, the code only serves as fuel: it allows the application to work. The result of interaction between a person and an application depends on whether the designers managed to understand the psychology of users.

‣ Functionality

The functionality of an eCommerce application can be divided into basic and advanced. The base includes everything that the user needs to make a purchase:

search for goods in the catalog;

adding to cart;

registration and payment of the order;

authorization of the user in the personal account.

This is the basis of an eCommerce application that you can sell with. But in order to be remembered by the buyer, you need to add advanced functionality: recommendations, reviews, gamification.

For the MVP version of your application and the first releases, the basic functionality is enough, and the killer features can be implemented later, at the stage of support and development.

‣ Support

Platforms release updates for their products, which means that an application that was developed under iOS 13 may not display correctly on iOS 14. Such bugs prevent users from making purchases. In order for the application to continue to make a profit, you need to support it.

Approximate cost of support is 25% of the total development price. When ordering applications, keep in mind that part of the budget needs to be set aside for this stage.

Is it possible to make an Application on No-code by yourself?

Of course, noukding, like everything else, can be learned. OK Google! But there is a trap hidden here, once you get into it, you can get bogged down in your project for a very long time, and never finish it.

The trap can be called like this: “Don’t imagine yourself as a No-code developer!”.

The main misconception that you may have while reading this article is: “Yes, there is nothing difficult, it’s a constructor! I’ll sit down and figure it out myself.”

This is not entirely true: not everyone will be able to figure it out and start “no-coding” on their own. Rather, “not only everyone can figure it out, few people can do it.”

Some services have a very complex interface and feature set. For example, you definitely won’t understand Bubble if you don’t enthusiastically dig through a bunch of obscure buttons and are not ready to go through dozens of tutorials and paid courses.

But that’s not the point. The main thing is that you must be a developer by nature. This means that you need to have certain character traits and mindset.

First of all it is:

  • perseverance,
  • persistence
  • high level of learning
  • willingness to spend hours doing boring and monotonous work to correct their own mistakes,
  • fanatical dedication (combining programming with an active social life is very difficult)
  • And last but not least, talent and the level of code or nocode knowledge matters.

No-code and Low-code are indeed easier than traditional programming, but they are not elementary.

Therefore, my advice: if you do not have a sincere craving for programming, I do not recommend following the desire to “Make candy without spending anything”. It is better to turn to professional visual programming studios.

Otherwise, you are guaranteed to stall at some stage and will be forced to turn to professionals for a paid revision of your “art”.

And this refinement will cost you 1.5 times more, because the developers, you know, are not happy to delve into other people’s “Augean stables” at their standard rates.

Remember – the miser pays twice.

By ordering a product from scratch from No and Low-code development studios, you will get it faster and better than sitting down to figure it out yourself. This will allow you to direct your energy towards those business processes that you are really good at and will benefit your business.

Summary

So, I summarize!

What makes No and Low-code preferable to traditional coding:

  • Time to market speeds up – you can launch a project many times faster and make changes, receiving feedback from the market along the way.
  • Low rates of nocoders and reduced man-hours make no-code development 4 times cheaper than on code.
  • Potential financial losses are minimized in case of failure to pass the MVP stage.
  • Low-code is a flexible approach to the implementation of an IT product that allows you to resort to different product release strategies depending on current capabilities and planned results.
  • The American market of No/Low-code development sets the trend for the growth of the sphere.
  • Even large companies like Google and Amazon have already released their constructors! Is this not an indicator of the relevance of the topic.

*****

That’s all! Soon I will publish an article with a detailed description of the technical implementation of the Skyeng functional clone, the “Online School of Children’s Speech Therapy”, which we created on Bubble in 3 months, reducing the development cost from $23,000 to $3,500.

Have you heard of No-code/Low-code before? Have you met him at work? Have you ever experienced a collapse of an IT startup due to lack of funding for development? Would you order the development of your product on No-code/Low-code?

Briefly Top 5 reasons why your store needs a mobile app:

  • Mobile apps reduce your customer acquisition costs.
  • The conversion rate and LTV in applications are higher than on websites, which means that the application brings more profit.
  • Applications provide an opportunity to study user behavior in detail and test marketing strategies.
  • Thanks to the application, your store will be close to customers 24/7, and a person will be able to shop at his convenience.
  • Any smartphone user can become a client of your store – you get 4.3 billion potential buyers.
Categories
App Development

Mobile applications – the way to the heart of the buyer

The relationship between a person and a brand is almost personal. Shopping in our favorite store is like talking with friends for us – it relaxes, gives pleasant emotions and a sense of security. But first, the application needs to win the trust of the buyer: send notifications in time, show the price with all possible discounts, find the nearest pickup points, correctly orient users on the delivery time. And of course, be convenient and understandable to use.

If you’ve developed the right eCommerce app, people will come back to shop for you. What will the store get from this?

Increase conversions and LTV.

Regular customers know your product, appreciate the service, so they do not need to be convinced of something – they already trust you. People purposefully come for a purchase and make it. Due to such user behavior, the conversion of the store and the life of the buyer increase.

Reducing acquisition costs.

 Re-attracting users is cheaper for the store, so even such giants as OZON and Wildberries are fighting for regular customers. Hence loyalty programs, special offers and discounts that activate repeat purchases.

 From the experience of stores, we can say that the costs of such promotions pay off.

How to get a lost customer back

American businessman John Shoal says that “acquiring a new client is about 5 times more expensive than keeping the one you already worked with.” Referring to the study by F. Reichheld and W.E. Sussers, he argues that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profits by up to 100%.

But what if the user forgot about the app after the first purchase? Adjust analyzed 8 billion app installs worldwide and found they were deleted within a week of being used. The reasons can be different from objective (abundance of advertising, little memory, incompatibility with the device, inconvenient interface) to subjective (don’t like the design, don’t have time to use it). The task of the marketing department in this case is to reach the user.

For example, Lamoda – the largest multi-brand online clothing and footwear boutique in Eastern Europe, allows you to find things by photo: the user uploads it to the search bar and gets similar options. The minimalistic design of the catalog helps to focus on shopping, and the photo gallery swipes into the preview without going to the product card. The price in the catalog is indicated taking into account the Lamoda Club loyalty program, and the application gives a discount on the first purchase. In addition to these applications, people often buy goods on AliExpress, ASOS and order food through the Delivery Club. And they do it from the phone. Why? Find out in our roundup of popular eCommerce apps. Barrier-free shopping is a trend that eCommerce applications are developing. The task of designers and developers is to make sure that the user can make purchases without thinking about what his next step will be. Intuitive interface, personalization, loyalty programs, and checkout in two clicks are needed in order for the purchase to turn into a reflex.

According to the recent research

There are many ways to return a lost customer, but for some reason, marketers pay undeservedly little attention to remarketing and retargeting.

Tools from Google Ads, Yandex.Direct and Facebook work on the same principle: these are advertisements that personally appeal to people from your target audience.

Imagine that a user is looking at a product in your store app, but is hesitant to buy it. On other apps, it’s caught up with your product ad: “You’ve been looking at jeans recently. We give them a 15% discount. The user clicks on the ad and is returned to your app via a deep link, a URL that takes the user straight to the purchase screen.

Without the application on the phone, this scenario would not exist.

The role of a mobile application in your business

Thanks to the mobile application, a person carries your store in his pocket: he can make a purchase at any time, arrange delivery, and receive privileges and discounts for the next purchase. But the idea of ​​a selling application is not limited to a convenient service.

First of all, the application is necessary for business. It strengthens the connection with users, forms a loyal audience and has tools to increase profits.

A mobile application gives businesses a huge scope for studying user behavior.

The application has tools to return users to purchase.

Due to the loyalty program, the application increases the conversion and frequency of purchases.

In the application, buyers go through their shopping journey and complete all actions faster than on the website.

The application provides an average check 130-140% higher than on sites and their adaptive versions.

A mobile application is an independent sales channel that adapts to each customer. In it, you can study user behavior in detail, implement new marketing strategies and maintain constant contact with people.

What is the price of a mobile application

The price of developing an application depends not only on the time that the team spends on the project. The price is affected by its complexity, the number of supported devices and operating systems, and the experience of developers… In the article, we analyzed how these factors work with examples, so that you can imagine approximate prices and terms for developing applications and make the right management decisions. In the meantime, let’s talk about what makes up the price of a mobile application.

‣ Country and developer experience

The price per man-hours depends not only on the experience of the developer, but also on the country in which he lives. The developer exchange Arc Formerly Codementor found out how much freelancers get per hour of work in different countries:

Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand – from $70;

France, England, Canada – from $65;

Russia, Belarus, Ukraine – from $25;

India, Pakistan – from $15.

Developer rates from Pakistan are at least 30% lower than in Switzerland. Does it mean that it is more profitable to hire those people whose services are cheaper? Averaged data hides significant details: time zones, language barriers, skills. When choosing a developer from another country, it is important to consider these factors in conjunction with the development price.

But to create a good application, one freelancer is not enough. You need a team with competent analysts, programmers, designers and testers who will take care of your application at all stages of development.

Categories
App Development

Everything about developing a mobile application for an online store

Attracting a customer to an online store is expensive, and the application is a great way to keep it. If you do not make an application now, then soon there will be no one to sell, because the buyer is rapidly turning into mobile only. 5 more reasons to start mobile app development today

According to App Annie

Users choose apps because it is more convenient and often more profitable to buy in them:

  • Users have the opportunity to buy goods at any time and in any place.
  • In applications, it is more convenient for users to compare products and prices.
  • In-app purchase saves time that people would otherwise spend traveling to the store.
  • Applications support the loyalty program, hold unique promotions for regular customers.
  • Applications show the entire range of products in the store: in stock and on order.

eCommerce apps are not popular because of marketing campaigns, advertising, or a capitalist conspiracy. They are popular because it’s easier for us. Smartphone is always there. The personal user experience of each of us proves that reaching out and placing an order is much easier than going shopping in a store.

Why mobile application is better than adaptive layout and mobile site

There are three scenarios for moving eCommerce to mobile devices: the responsive web version, the mobile site, and the app. To understand which option will be useful for business, you need to consider the functionality of all three.

Responsive website

A responsive website is a website that adapts to the screen of a smartphone. It doesn’t provide a new user experience or offer features that make it easier to buy.

The amount of information in the responsive and web versions is the same, so the smartphone spends a lot of time loading the page. People are very sensitive to the speed of Internet services, any freeze causes tension and boredom, and this interferes with the purchase.

Adaptive layout does not make the user session more comfortable: only visual changes occur that do not affect the connection between the brand and the person.

Mobile site

A mobile site is a separate site that is developed for smartphones and tablets. The identification mark is the m.site.ru subdomain (and its variations). A mobile site can run faster due to lightweight code and simplified design.

The content of the mobile version duplicates the desktop version. The site owner has to do double work on promotion, adjust optimization so that resources do not compete with each other.

Instead of one site, the store receives two resources, for the support and development of which you need to pay. At the same time, the mobile site, as well as the adaptive one, does not have functionality that can affect the relationship between the seller and the buyer.

Mobile Application

Unlike a mobile site and a site with an adaptive layout, the application is designed to involve the user in the purchase. An application on a smartphone is embedded in a person’s personal life. The store icon is always in front of our eyes, and the application itself reports events and updates through push notifications, bringing us back to shopping again and again.

Navigation elements in eCommerce applications have a typical layout: the user knows in advance where to look for the catalog, tabbar, and “Add to Cart” button. We memorize the purchase algorithm at the level of physical actions and can repeat it “automatically”.

The application responds faster to our actions. And this applies not only to the speed of working with the interface. The application remembers information about the buyer: name, contacts, delivery addresses. The person specifies the data at the first order and never returns to this task.

With the help of personal discounts and a loyalty program, the application can tie the user to itself for a long time. Offers in which we see benefits for ourselves increase the number of orders and the average check in the store.

The application does not require re-authorization, and sites periodically throw customers out of their accounts, so we have to spend extra time logging into the online store.

And a small bonus for the seller. In the application, the user makes more spontaneous purchases, because all the features of the application indirectly work for this: push notifications, a recommender system, customization, personalized offers, discounts, banners on the main screen.

Thanks to these factors, buyers move through the sales funnel faster and complete the targeted action more often, so the conversion in applications is higher than on websites.

Statistics speak in favor of mobile applications. 85% of users prefer to buy in apps because it is more convenient, faster and easier than on a website. eCommerce applications combine the best of offline, web and social networks and provide it to the user in a convenient and concise manner.

The most popular eCommerce applications.

Based on the 2021 Data Insight and App Annie rankings, we have identified the top 3 apps in the ecommerce market

1. Wildberries

For the convenience of the user, a detailed system of filters has been created in the application catalog. You can search for products here using a photo, a QR code and by voice request. By pinching a product card in the grid, the user opens a preview – gets quick access to a large photo, brand, price, and the “Add to Cart” button. If the product you need is out of stock, the Recommendations will tell you how to replace it. When placing an order, the application remembers the user’s data, and the next time the fields are filled in automatically.

Hold the card – open the preview

2.OZON

On the main screen, the user sees special offers from the store. Banners, product selections and stories involve a person in a purchase. Above them is the search bar. The search query is refined using filters and categories. The product card contains all the necessary information about the brand, price and discounts. If the user is connected to the loyalty program, the application will show the price with a coupon discount – you can apply it immediately on the product card. The application remembers your card details, delivery address so that you do not waste time placing an order.