Google’s Who's Down App Hit the Play Store

Google has covered all the bases when it comes to apps — it's hard to think of a mobile software category the company doesn't have an offering in — but its engineers are still spinning out new ideas. The latest to see the light of day is called Who's Down, although for the time being you're going to need an invite before you can start using it. The App is accessible only by invite; the app aims to make meeting up with friends easier by quickly seeing who's available — and more importantly willing — to hang out. The app does this by giving users a switch they can flip whenever they're down to hang, setting a time period and waiting for friends to do the same. You can even chat with friends willing to meet up via a conversation window within the app. Google hasn't yet declared anything official about the app, so it may be an experiment. It's an interesting idea though and could give the tech giant a small foothold in the social networking space that it's been trying so hard to get into.

5 Ways for Bootstrapped Start-ups to Get Through the First Year

In the eyes of an investor, a bootstrapped start-up that has proven stable and successful within the first year is powerful. It not only raises confidence in the product and the leadership behind it, but also indicates that any invested money will likely not be thrown away.

Ultimately, when it comes to working with investors, it's important to prove that a start-up and the people behind it not only know how to spend money, but know how to bring in additional money.

To successfully bootstrap a company in its first year, it's important to consider a few things:

1. Cut the nonessentials and focus on immediate needs. There is nothing more important to start-up success than the talent that makes it all possible. Avoid any unnecessary expenses, such as office overhead or "frills," to free up money to invest in better talent.

Virtual offices will allow team members to work together from anywhere in the world and are extremely cost-effective. Ultimately, cutting costs wherever possible will more likely enable worthwhile investment in a larger team, which will be the catalyst to growth for the company.

2. Focus on two types of talent: engineering and marketing. An innovative and savvy engineer knows the ins and outs of mobile apps and understands what users truly want and need. An intelligent and driven marketing professional understands the market and how to reach the desired target audience.

With these two power talents working side by side, any product has a good chance to be successful.

3. Don't cut corners. Investors need to know the business and its leadership are stable and legit, so do everything by the book. Once they get involved, investors will want to see paperwork, as well as profits and losses and balance sheet reports right off the bat. This should be a priority from day one.

Find an accountant and purchase good accounting software to ensure that records are clear and corners are not cut. This will also allow for extra time to tend to other important matters within the start-up.

4. Cover the legalities before it's too late. It's critical to ensure the product or app is covered and that there are no loopholes that would allow someone to steal its name or intellectual property once it takes off.

During the planning phases, when speaking to potential investors, partners, or developers, it's also wise to use a confidentiality agreement to ensure everything stays within the four walls. Additionally, copyright any sketches, mock-ups or documentation of the product during development stages.

5. Utilize freelance consultants. Skilled freelance consultants offer additional niche talent only when it's needed. Build and keep a solid list of trusted and intelligent freelancers who can be utilized when the time is right. With the extra cash flow freelancers provide, start-ups have more ability to hire the best full-time staff needed for success.

It's no secret that the first year for a bootstrapped start-up will have many highs and lows. Despite the uncertainty and exhilaration that comes with those highs and lows, it's important to stay focused on what's needed to get to the next step.

Eventually, those steps will likely lead to talking with investors to get the start-up to the next level. Cutting no corners from the very first day, bringing on the best talent and preparing for failure and success will prove to an investor that the product and those behind it have what it takes to succeed.

Indian consumers increasingly comfortable using mobile apps for managing finances

Amdocs released the results of a new survey around mobile financial services (MFS), which revealed that Indian consumers are increasingly comfortable using mobile applications for managing their finances, and paying for utilities bills and household groceries. The survey also found that Indian consumers are increasingly using social networking channels to buy products and services advertised on social networks, pay utility bills, and transfer money to friends and family.

Conducted by analyst and consultancy firm Ovum on behalf of Amdocs, the survey focused on both users and non-users of mobile financial services in India.

"Although active MFS usage remains modest in India, what stands out from the survey is that the majority of the active base  have already embraced more advanced mobile financial services and associated m-commerce applications, including social commerce," said Eden Zoller, principal analyst with Ovum. "Service providers must ensure they have a well-drawn out product road map to carry users along the MFS adoption curve, from simple to more advance applications."

Key findings include:

§  Consumers are getting comfortable using mobile apps to manage their finances: 34% of respondents say that they are very comfortable using mobile apps to manage their finances, while 27% are somewhat comfortable. However, this number is less for unbanked respondents, of whom 27% are very comfortable with mobile financial services, and 19% are somewhat comfortable.

§  Social networking channels are popular for financial transactions: Buying products advertised on social networks is the most established type of social commerce payment service, and given the high growth of social networks in India, this is set to grow further. The respondents showed the highest usage for buying products/services advertised on social networks (33%), followed by usage for paying bills via social media (30%), and transferring money to friends and family (17%). In terms of future adoption of social commerce in the next 12 months, 18% of respondents say they are likely to buy products and services on social networks and transfer money, while 17% say they would use these channels to pay bills.

§  Encouraging trend for digital payment for utilities and household groceries:  In-person payments still dominate shopping in India and cash is by far the preferred payment instrument; however the use of digital and mobile channel for utilities bill payments and buying household groceries is growing. Twenty-seven percent of respondents pay their utilities bills online using their laptop or desktop, while 19% use mobile banking to pay for them. Twenty-one percent of respondents say that they buy household groceries online and 17% use a mobile app to pay for it.

"A sizable population in India is gradually moving towards the cashless economy, even though financial inclusion still remains a challenge for majority of the people," said Sharath Dorbala, head of sales, marketing and products for mobile financial services at Amdocs. "The market trends indicate that a mobile financial services solution that can integrate well with social network platforms can be a boon for Indian mobile financial services providers, as most of the online transactions will happen on mobile devices in the future."

Starting a Successful App Business-Choose Your First Platform Wisely

Competition in the app business today is so fierce, you have to develop no less than the possible best and most fluid app ever to stay in the game. Fact of the matter is every platform has its own unique set of required coding skills. There are only 3 stores to sell your app: Google Play, App Store or Windows Store. Decide in whose hands you want to put the fate of your app by answering these questions.

Want to Get Rich?

The revenue generated at the Apple App Store to Google Play is at a ratio of 8 to 1. Apple does pay more for top developers who build their apps to be sold, not downloaded for free. The Windows 8 Store is still small in terms of its revenue, but it allows apps to run simultaneously on a PC, tablet and Smartphone – more mediums, more downloads.

Paid or Free (with ads)?

The majority of Android apps from Google Play are free and reliant on monetizing through advertising. You may even make more money than you would from selling your app upfront. As for Windows, there aren't many ad networks which support Windows 8's funky ad formats. So you'll probably want to sell your app for a fixed price.

Want to Play or Get Real Quick?

The Apple App Store does have notoriety as a hard nut to crack, especially for new developers – more reluctant to promote the new guy. If you want to generate a decent amount of downloads in a faster time frame, go for Android.

Be Professional – Users love to use simple, professional apps. Have the best possible app in your niche.

Balance monetization and annoying your paymasters – Don't annoy your users with too many ads or in-app purchases when going for free apps with ads. Also changing your monetization scheme during an update will make you lose users.

Be transparent when using ads – Write about every monetization plan or in-app purchases you're using in your app's description page. Users will see from the permissions needed anyway.

Update often, but not without a reason – Constant improvements keep users. Also start working on an update when the number of users, or ratings, are dropping.

Support and Respond – Support as many devices and device screens. Respond to your users' feedback via e-mail or comments. 

Designing Cloud-Based Products: Does Hardware Even Matter Anymore?

Entrepreneurs are building cloud-based products for customers with an ever-growing list of ways to access those products. There's the web browser, tablets, smart phones, phablets, wearables, browser apps, plugins, bookmarklets, etc. Who knows what devices will deliver software products in five years.

The interesting part is that for any given piece of software, consumers are accessing it via different devices for different reasons. They'll use the mobile phone app for a certain task while using the desktop for something else. Or they'll use the tablet app for one thing, but the mobile phone app for another. These are the behaviours that must be understood to deliver a satisfying and delightful product experience. Entrepreneurs need to know which device customers are using to build appropriately.

Customer research and data analysis has showed that customers are doing specific accounting tasks on specific devices. Extracting trends from your app analytics will help you understand how your customers are accessing the product and what specific tasks the doing. When the product is in its infancy, without a significant dataset, ask your current and potential customers what they might use your tablet app for versus what they'd use your Smartphone app for. Have them tell you what they'd expect to get out of the desktop app. You'll likely be surprised by their responses and you'll have a better idea of how to build.

11 Useful Tools for Building a Mobile App

You cannot build a mobile app in isolation using just the native developer kit. Building an app requires that you have the right tools to deliver efficiently on every aspect of its life cycle.

Developing your first app can be a daunting experience, especially when you do not have enough knowledge of the tools available. Adopting these third-party tools will help you get to market quickly so that you can focus on getting the product/market fit for your app.

Prototyping your app gives you clarity on its every aspect, feature and the user flow. You need to have this bit sorted even before you approach a developer for building the application. The more clarity you have on your requirements, the more precise your timeline and pricing estimate for development.

1. Proto.io lets you create a full mobile-app experience without coding. What you get is a complete user flow and navigation of your app with interactive elements such as gestures and touch events to make it interactive.

2. InVision is another tool that allows you to create a fully interactive app prototype. The free tool also allows you to interact with your team members through a collaborative framework.

3. POP helps entrepreneurs, designers or even students to transform their pen and paper ideas into a prototype. If you started by sketching on a notepad, simply import it into this app by taking a picture.

A/B testing. The only way to know if something is working in your app is to test and measure it. You need to keep testing until you reach the desired result.

4. Amazon A/B Testing. Amazon has a free scalable tool for creating and running in-app experiments.

5. Heat maps highlights the hottest areas on your mobile app, letting you track gestures, device orientation, user flows (navigation) and engagement.

Mobile backend. If your app requires users to sign up to use or any data is stored externally, then you need to build a backend. This means additional costs as well as signing up with a hosting provider. Early-stage mobile-app start-ups now have the option of using a third-party mobile-backend-as-a-service (MBaaS) provider to minimize those costs and develop quickly.

6. Parse. One of the most popular apps using Parse is Instagram. It gives you a great deal of flexibility along with a very easy to use iOS and Android developer kit that automatically takes care of synchronizing your app's data with its cloud database.

7. Kinvey excels in the third-party integration provided through the platform. With Kinvey, you can pull rich video content from Bright cove's App Cloud.

8. Xamarin has an impressive set of clients such as Rdio and MarketWatch using its backend. It's helpful if you're building native iOS or Android apps in C#.

9. Flurry is a free tool that gives you insights into your users and app performance. You can track every menu tap, understand the user path, create funnels to optimize conversions and create user segmentations.

Marketing. Most often, the mistake that most entrepreneurs make is to think about marketing only after their product is live in the app store. You should start marketing the day you put your app into production.

10. Hello Bar is the simplest way to drive visitors to your highest-converting landing pages. It also helps you collect more emails and get more social shares.

11. Fame Bit connects you to YouTube influencers to create content that is shared a huge network.

 

Mobile Marketing: Correct a negative image

The mobile revolution has made it clear to brands what an amazing platform it is for them to reach consumers and communicate their ideals, message and values. But as is usually the case with new emerging technologies, we are really only beginning to discover the many opportunities the small screen has to offer. Mobile can do far more than just bring your brand's image to new audiences -- it can help build it. Listed below are a few examples for potential reputation hazards and how the right mobile-marketing techniques can help shift these negative perceptions and save the day.

Bad service

Bad service sucks. It provokes frustration, anger and all kinds of other negative emotions in consumers; so naturally, it's one of the main reasons for customers to perceive brands in a negative light. Many brands aware of this have turned to mobile to improve customer service and rekindle consumers' positive connotations with the brand. Banks, fast food chains and other companies are hopping on the bandwagon with mobile apps that allow users to perform tasks and access information that otherwise would have required long hours or arriving at a store front and using the help of a representative. Cutting long waiting times is nice, but when the waiting game is something you simply cannot avoid, turning it into a fun experience could do wonders for your brand's reputation. 

An old, outdated vibe

Mobile is about making everything more accessible and strengthening the relationship between consumers and brands. "Old" industries who turn to mobile are not only making service more accessible to users but have a real chance of disrupting markets that haven't changed for decades.

In recent years we've seen traditional industries make it back into the front line thanks to disruptive mobile products. The real estate and banking industries, for example, seemed boring and old just a couple of years ago, but now, apps services are a hot commodity.

Offending public minorities

Hyper-targeted mobile media campaigns can help you publish backlash. Thanks to the abundance of user data collected by mobile devices, unlike any other advertising platform out there, mobile provides marketers with the luxury of selecting a certain chunk of the public they'd like to interact with.

22 Quotes to Inspire Your Marketing Efforts

We all need inspiration on a day-to-day basis, be it in our personal lives or to do our work. And especially if you're trying to build a successful business, start-up life can be quite daunting. One of the toughest aspects of building a mobile-first business is trying to get customers to use your app and get them to come back to it again and again regularly.

Here are some awesomely inspiring quotes from some of the best entrepreneurs and marketers to help you with inspiration while marketing your mobile app:

1. "Content is the atomic particle of all digital marketing." -- Rebecca Lieb

2. "When you start with what's at stake for the buyer, you earn the right to their attention." -- Jake Sorofman

3. "SEO is not something you do anymore. It's what happens when you do everything else right." -- Chad Pollitt

4. "The key ingredient to a better content experience is relevance." -- Jason Miller

5. "Your website is your greatest asset. More people view your WebPages than anything else." -- Amanda Sibley

6. "People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it's surfaced through friends and people they know and trust." -- Malorie Lucich

7. "Increasingly, the mass marketing is turning into a mass of niches." -- Chris Anderson

8. "Focus on the core problem your business solves and put out lots of content and enthusiasm, and ideas about how to solve that problem." -- Laura Fitton

9. "If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing." -- Guy Kawasaki

10. "You can't expect to just write and have visitors come to you. That's too passive." -- Anita Campbell

11. "Word-of-mouth marketing has always been important. Today, it's more important than ever because of the power of the Internet." -- Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett

12. "As you've noticed, people don't want to be sold. What people do want is news and information about the things they care about."-- Larry Weber

13. "To be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products." -- Brian Halligan

14. "Marketing is telling the world you're a rock star. Content marketing is showing the world you are one." -- Robert Rose

15. "Not viewing your email marketing as content is a mistake." -- Chris Baggott

16. "The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics who never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors who want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision, and make something for the long haul. Because that's how long it's going to take." -- Seth Godin

17. "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department." -- David Packard

18. "What you prefer or what your designer prefers doesn't matter if it's not getting you conversions." -- Naomi Niles

19. "If your stories are all about your products and services, that's not storytelling. It's a brochure. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger." -- Jay Baer

20. "The key is, no matter what story you tell, make your buyer the hero." -- Chris Brogan

21. "I don't care much for best practice. I care about conversions. That's why I test." -- Michael Aagaard

22. "Don't be afraid to get creative and experiment with your marketing." -- Mike Volpe

 

5 Myths of Enterprise Mobility in a Mobile First world

Despite having a clear understanding of the benefits of mobile-first, the majority of the organizations still have an ad-hoc approach to app development and are only beginning to consider platform selection to help them to formalize their mobile strategy. Most of the companies start looking at Mobility as a mere "problem solver" rather than creating a complete blue-print of the mobility strategy and the core benefits that the organization aims to achieve.

You may want to create a "mobile center of excellence," but its charter shouldn't be to own everything mobile.  That model simply won't scale. Instead, a mobile center of excellence should serve as an enabler, used to:

·         provide standards and guidance

·         facilitate knowledge sharing

·         offer common means to easily access corporate data

·         supply reusable mobile services (e.g. notifications, storage, offline sync)

·         set a common analytics/measurement approach for mobile initiatives

·         establish outsourcing options for extra capacity

·         ensure security

Here are some of the persistent myths surrounding the building of enterprise mobile apps for today's mobile-first cloud-first world:

1.     Enterprise apps take lot of time to develop and deploy

Industry received wisdom dictates that apps, especially those designed for enterprise, can take at least half a year to build and launch. With some organizations requiring anywhere from 10-100 apps to serve different business units, the time required to build apps can appear prohibitive.

2.     It's too complicated for apps to access legacy systems 


Enterprise organizations that have already made large investments in legacy systems such as ERP and are hesitant to develop mobile apps that cannot seamlessly plug into these existing mission-critical technologies. Enterprises must look at a platform that has capability to integrate into diverse ERPs or legacy systems with an API infrastructure that allows integrating legacy systems easily. 

3.     Mobile app developers must keep up with a myriad of coding languages and frameworks – it's impossible

Learning new development languages in order to build individual apps for each device platform can be tedious, and for some enterprises entails constantly hiring fresh developers with different skill sets. When creating hybrid cross-platform apps, developers often employ as many as 10 different coding languages for enterprise app development projects. To simplify development, developers can use mobile app platforms using a 'bring your own toolkit' approach that allows them to use the languages and toolkits they are most comfortable with. Choose a platform that allows developers to use both native as well as hybrid development environments.

4.     Enterprise apps are always data-heavy, placing high loads on handsets and backend systems.

The best mobile app platforms take large amounts of data from the backend and transmit a small filtered set of data to the handset: reducing overall demands.

5.     Companies need a Chief Mobility Officer to successfully handle company-wide app development

This myth assumes that one central figure will successfully oversee app development and deployment across the enterprise. By collaborating and using the same technology standards and requirements, a Mobile Centre of Excellence or Mobile Steering Committee can guide mobile projects across multiple business units without creating new silos. This has elevated mobility to a strategic level. Companies should look more to cloud based and agile mobile application strategies to support their growing mobile workforces, without which enterprise productivity and profitability improvements will suffer.

Why businesses fail to capitalise on mobile apps

Businesses must maximize mobile app management or risk wasting investment and disappointing users. This is according to a recent study which seeks to explore how companies are applying digital technologies to improve organisations.

According to the study, the vast majority of executives surveyed recognize the value of mobile apps for their business but few are well prepared to successfully deploy and maintain those apps. Despite the overall enthusiasm for mobile apps, widespread adoption and use of apps within the enterprise has yet to occur.

Within the enterprise, app adoption is far from widespread. The most pervasive types of apps – productivity, operational, management and customer facing – were reported as being currently deployed. One possible reason that mobile apps aren't more pervasive in the enterprise is that many companies have yet to put in place measures that facilitate successful adoption. Most organisations lack a comprehensive strategy at the start of any mobile app project, or do not have the in-house skills to look after the management of applications post-launch.

Lack of internal skills when developing, building and managing apps is a challenge for them. Businesses are not keeping a close eye on their apps. They see high customer demand for effective mobile apps, but despite those mobile apps cannot be appropriately secured for business purposes. To get the best results from apps, businesses must do rigorous testing before launch and robust app management once deployed. Not only does this help to provide the best possible user experience, but it will also help make sure that security challenges are addressed as an ongoing priority.

Many companies are neglecting to continually improve their existing apps. So, they risk wasting their investment. Mobile apps should be considered as part of a broader enterprise IT and digitization strategy from the start. To get the greatest value from apps, businesses must implement strong testing and ongoing app management programs, in order to provide the best possible experience to all users.