Tips to help your Android app stand out
According to Statista.com, there are more than 2.8 million apps on Google Play Store and 2.2 million on App Store. But then how many of these do we get to hear of? Half a thousand at most.
It hasn’t even been many years since these mobile application stores have existed, and the competition is already fierce enough to compel one to push their limits way off in order to get little recognition in this horizonless digital world. But does this necessarily apply to every mobile application out there? Isn’t there a way we could guarantee our product’s success? There certainly is, and it is simple: equip your mobile app with features that leave a mark since the very beginning, and you will witness tremendous recognition in no time.
Can’t wait to know what features we are talking about? Here are those features, listed in a sequentially sensible manner.
We guess, by now, you are already hooked on to 3D Printing, in case you did not hear much about it. Now let us take a closer look at this technological breakthrough:
Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
Choosing the right development environment could be one of the long-term core strengths of your mobile app. Mobile app developers usually go for iOS, Android and Windows operating systems. However, recently, Nokia has announced that it has finally come to terms with Google’s Android and would be selling only Android and classic Symbian phones, which may come as late but a wise decision.
That means the game is mostly limited to iOS and Android. Now for these two, you have many low to average options, but the most prominent integrated development environments are: XCODE for iOS and Android Studio for Android. As per its official website, Android Studio is the official IDE for Android that supports C, C++, Java, and recently, Kotlin. The portfolio supported by XCODE majorly includes C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Java, AppleScript, Python, and Ruby.
Social Media Login:
The very first thing a user sees right after launching the mobile app for first time is the ‘login screen’. Think what could happen if they get entangled in this first step itself. Simply put, irrespective of how well you crafted it, your app is doomed because users gave up in the first step itself.
Be smart and adopt social media login. Social media login is a great way to let users cut to the chase, by allowing them to login with their details stored in social media databases. This way they don’t have to manually input information in the fields; saving them time, effort and most importantly, mood. Here’s a presentation of which platforms are used the most for social logins.
As quite apparent from the chart, Facebook and Google Login are the most popular among all social login options.
Interface & UX Design
Post login, the first thing user comes across is interface. We are not suggesting that the interface should necessarily be out-of-the-ordinary, but it should at least give a clear idea of the app, shall have ease of operation, and must, in layman tongue, have a direction. On the contrary, it shall not be too ripped at the same time, or it may put the visual communication and user experience out-of-order. The app must have a perceptible process flow with features lined up in an organized order.
For the best user experience design, some of the crucial factors top app developers need to work on are information architecture, user research and problem-solving capability of your app.
Personalization
Although personalization features may not seem important, they are sort of a notion that this app has been built exclusively for them, and the maker does care about the user’s visual preferences. Not much, just in terms of how the app looks, you can allow the user to change skins, font, background colour, notification sounds etc.
When it comes to personalization in terms of user intent, user-based suggestions, suggestions based on past purchase history, the involvement of Artificial Intelligence is indispensable. Most of the applications from sectors like E-commerce, Health & Fitness etc., have instilled advanced Artificial Intelligence in their apps for the same, and have seen insane growth in sales and customer engagement.
Quite logical apparently, a survey by Accenture says 75% consumers prefer buying from businesses that recognize them by name and personal preferences. Another huge stat coming from Gartner, says that businesses with personalization facilities would reap 15% more profit by the end of 2020.
Performance
So, by now, the user is acquainted with your app and has started using it; this is when the performance factor kicks in. According to a general survey, mobile apps that take more than 3 seconds to load have higher abandon rate. Also, those with less than 2 seconds of load time are much preferred, comparatively. Faster load times, smooth transitions, less RAM usage, optimized battery usage and many other contribute to whether your app would rise or fall.
There are also some other intrinsic factors that top app development companies use to determine the performance of your app, such as ListView Scroll, Latest Doze Optimization, Layout Hierarchies and more. To improve the ListView Scrolling, you can create a background thread that keep the main thread free from excess load. The latest android smartphones now come with Doze Mode Optimization, which cuts off network access for most of the apps when screen is off and also restricts their access to CPU-resources to save more battery than ever. Layout Hierarchies can be verified for loopholes with ‘Hierarchy Viewer’, which allows you to find spots where you app is dragging.
Regular Updates
Everyone could use a change every now and then. In fact, they do demand a little tweak here and little there, to feel updates. You could give them the change, or they can change the app, catch the drift? That’s how important updates are when it comes to user engagement. Although updates can’t be accounted as features, with an update you can introduce new features that have been missing or fix the bugs that have been ruining the overall experience.
Search, Sort & Filter
In case your app is of the type that has an inventory of items, you just cannot afford to skip on search, sort and filter. Among hundreds and thousands of products, a customer would be baffled for obvious reasons if they are looking for a specific product on your app, which does not allow sorting and filtering. These are many types filter layouts used by the best mobile app development companies, but the one most common used in e-commerce android mobile apps is Full-screen filter, which has a separate layout for choosing from among a detailed list of filters. There is another that is called ‘Filter Form’ for advanced filtering options, which is used usually not needed by general consumers.
We at FuGenX – one of the leading mobile app development companies – create not just apps for your customers; we build experiences.
So if you are planning to get a mobile app for your business that works like a charm, drop a mail at info@fugenx.com or quickly fill this form to let us know more about you and your vision.