App-Scoop

How to develop a meditation app like Calm and headspace

Be the hectic schedule, personal or professional qualms, despite all this, a person yearns for peace of mind. And owing to the outbreak of coronavirus, attaining inner peace has become a distant dream. In today’s world, peace is not the highest goal it’s a fundamental requirement. And people would do anything to attain it. One of the easiest ways is through meditation. Owing to this the meditation app industry is seeing a steady rise. In the recent past, the top 10 meditation applications have garnered a revenue of $195 million. And since 2015, over 2500 meditation mobile applications have been launched; giving us a sense that this is the throbbing sector to encash on.

As per Sensor Tower’s study, Calm and Headspace are the two most popular meditation apps. Calm’s goal is to help you improve your health and happiness. While Headspace helps users get more goodnight’s sleep and inspires them to be happy. Headspace has over 2 million subscribers and it has been downloaded over 65 million times. Calm made an estimated $200 million in 2020. All these stats go on to show the importance of building a meditation app. In this article, we walk you through how to build a meditation app like Calm and Headspace.

9 easy steps to create an app like Calm and headspace

1. Ideate

Any goal or dream starts with an idea. Begin with an old-school method while undertaking the ideation stage. Make sure the following are answered in this process

• Who is this app for (target audience and age group)?

• What problems is this app addressing?

• Decide on the type of app to be launched

• Define your app’s pros and work on the cons if any.

• The USP of your app.

With that, there are different types of meditation apps as well. For instance: movement meditation, guided, unguided, visualization, calming anxiety, stress management, focus management, deep sleep, mindfulness, attain happiness, etc. Pick what works best for you and the target audience. You can even use different combinations to reach a larger crowd. Once these questions are answered, you will have a rough idea of how your app will look. In this stage, you can even think about hiring an application developer or getting it done internally. Hire an expert to see that points in the ideation are handled. Another pro tip will be to get a certified therapist on board, who understands the various hues of meditation.

2. Market research

To get relevant information and to take the application idea further conducting market research is an inevitable process. There are thousands of meditation applications on the Store, and your app needs to offer something different. That’s where the market research will come into the picture

• Understand the customers and their needs.

• Conduct surveys to know the market.

• Go through the other meditation application

• Have a word with industry stalwarts to get a gist of the market.

• Go through social media apps to get more ideas and information.

3. Get down to the basics

A focused approach will do wonders for the project. Begin by creating your requirement list and rough sketch that will build into a full-blown application. The next step should be gathering the right team. Getting started with the wireframe design will give a great head start to the project.

Read more: https://steelkiwi.com/blog/tips-developing-intelligent-sitemap/

4. UI/UX is key

The next process in creating an app like Calm and Headspace is designing the meditation app. The following points should be considered

• The design of the app should be serene and peaceful.

• Use minimalist design and colors like pastel tones of yellow, blue, beige, pink etc.

• Don’t overload the app with pages

• Use subtle animations.

• Using real images and videos will surely give the app a better look. For instance, using a video of the actual rain falling will help the users relax better

• Allow customization

5. Design MVP

Starting the next step by building a minimum viable product (MVP) will save your organization from running out of cash and rather help it grow manifolds. Once you map out the user flow, designing the MVP will be a piece of cake. The MVP will be a platform to understand how the users will address the app. MVP usually has minimum features. Before going in completely into your app design, this step allows you to look into the future and helps avoid mistakes.

6. Regular meetings

To see the idea turn into an application is a long process which includes several stages. Meeting at every interval reduces the number of errors, gives better ideas to move ahead, and aids in better communication.

7. Consider adding these features

What makes an application more accessible is the live or recorded video. A recorded video of a guided mediation will give a blueprint to the users of how to conduct themselves. Secondly, you can sign up with several certified yoga and meditation practitioner, or even psychologist where they can come live and give consultation to the users. A chat or call feature will make this app a sue shot hit as users normally have several queries. Addressing them will be a boon. Also, meditation is not an easy task. It requires patience, hence make sure that the videos or audios are not more than 10 minutes. You can even have an advanced version which the length of the video is longer

8. Add gamification

Let’s face it, the main motive to come up with an app is to earn money. This can happen if your app becomes famous with millions of downloads. One of the reasons why Calm has wooed many is because of its brilliant gamification method. Depending on the usage of the app and the number of sessions covered, Calm offers high scores. Habits are built by being consistent. Headspace lets you do so through gamification. With its short-term habit metrics, it allows you to monitor your current run streak, journey tracker, and goals tracker. This gives a sense of accomplishment and encourages you to become a better version of yourself. If you can offer avatars or badges it makes users reach the goal with ease.

9. Business development/monetization

If you wish to garner and engage more users, consider providing wearables. It has been in trend for a long for various reasons. It increases productivity, gives enhanced speed, encourages fitness, and gives a chance to make your app more loveable
To let the app grow, you will have to think about business development and let the cash flow. Headspace works on three business models: B2B solutions (corporate wellness schemes), the consumer channel (through the app) and healthcare (still waiting for the FDA process). To monetize the app you can enable in-app purchases, allow ads, paid downloads, SMS Marketing, get sponsors, etc

10. Performance analysis

Your work just does not end when the app enters the market. In fact, it starts post that. To keep the app in the heart of the users, analysis of the app’s performance plays a crucial role. It is a continuous process. Take the feedback seriously, and work on them. Keep giving the users what they are looking for.

Important features to include

• Meditation levels (beginner, intermediate or advanced)

• Push notification

• Motivation message of the day

• Reminders

• Track progress

• Live sessions

• Consultations

• Secure sign in

• Reports management

• Leader boards

• Use subtle animations.

• Loyalty Programs

• Use AR/VR

• Offline Playback of Meditation Tracks

Tech stack

This is the basic tech stack required to build the mediation app. Depending on your team, needs, and market research, use what best suits the application.

Programming languages: React js, Laravel, Kotlin, Java
Utilities: Twillio, Google Analytics, Optimizely
Hosting: AWS
DevOps: Parcel
Cost to create an app like Calm and headspace ideation stage 65-100
Prototyping- 100 hours
Design –90-150 hours
Front and backend development –350 hours
Analysis – 250

Considering all the factors if the developer chargers somewhere between $40-60 per hour. You will have to shell approx. $28,000-72,000

Read more: https://themindstudios.com/blog/how-to-make-a-meditation-app-like-headspace/

Final Thoughts

These days, mental health has become the utmost priority. This industry is thriving and by the end of 2022, this industry will be worth $2 billion. We at App-Scoop have first-hand experience in developing leading apps. Sure, Headspace and Calm are the market rulers, but users often look out for different apps. And we promise you to deliver just that. If you have an app idea do contact https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html our competent team to get things started.

7 easy steps to create a sitemap for your website

It is a given fact, that the look and appearance of the website are what attract the people the most. But what goes unnoticed is the behind-the-scenes preparations which make the website appealing. Known as the blueprint of the website, a sitemap which is often ignored by people is ironically something that will define the appeal of your website. Sitemaps are something that says ‘old is gold as they help your websites get noticed by Google and search engines. This article is a small ode to sitemap telling them that we haven’t forgotten our roots. Here we will take you through the basics of sitemaps and tips for creating smart sitemaps

What is a sitemap

It is a file that enlightens about pictures, media, images, videos, and other files on your website. A sitemap gives your website a structure. Basically, it guides the user with the flow of the website and helps them with their next move. As per studies, a sitemap should contain a maximum of 50,000 URLs and should be not be more than 50 MB. There are two main types of sitemaps formats HTML and XML. Further, their subcategories are:

• Page Sitemap

• News Sitemap

• Image Sitemap

• Sitemap Index

HTML sitemaps: Commonly known as ‘website archive’, HTML sitemaps are used by users to scroll through your websites. Some might say this format is outdated but they are easy to understand. It contains a list of URLs that describe your website. These give the users easier and better access to the website

XML sitemap: Like how HTML sitemaps are for humans, XMLs are essentially for search engines. They help search engines and spiders discover your page. To get noticed, XMLs provide data and a complete map. These are predominantly used for large websites


Why is the sitemap of your website important?

• Helps in search identity when new pages and updates to old pages are available

• Provides a roadmap for Google and other search engines to understand your page

• Acts as an organizer for large websites.

• Brings in traffic and crawlers

• Acts as an effective planning tool that makes content organization easy.

• Works hard to find alternative language versions of your page.

1. Plan in advance

A stick in time saves nine. It goes without saying that your website design and creating a sitemap should go hand in hand. The sooner you start it, the better it is for your project. Take extra care while designing your sitemap, as it will help make the website free-flowing. Jot down everything thing that comes to mind, take regular team meetings and brainstorm ideas.

2. Build a purpose

Defining the purpose of the website makes it easy to create the sitemap. All these things go hand in hand. Once your purpose is defined carry on with the following tips

• Research is the key. Understand your customers and market.

• Use SEO-rich titles to get noticed

• URLs shouldn’t be more than 50,000.

3. Categorize your content

Categorizing your content will probably be easier once the website structure is defined. Take an idea of how the flow of the website will be. Gather your team to identify your primary pages- about page, contact page, home page, blog page etc. Before you begin with the next step you should have a tree structure of how your sitemap will represent your website,

4. Alternative method

By now if you feel like creating a sitemap is getting tedious you can opt for using a sitemap generating software. This makes the process easy, saves time, and gives valuable insights. Following are the top sitemap-generating software

• Dynomapper 50,000.

• Slickplan

• Mindnode

• Writemaps

• DSL Speed Sitemaps Generator

5. Home sweet home

Search engines traverse through your homepage to put you on the map and get visibility. Putting your sitemap here on the homepage is a great idea. This should be your starting point. Make sure that there are no missing links.

6. Get coding

Each page is important as it will attract users as per their preferences. Once that is structured. Let’s get coding the URLs. If you have any knowledge of XML or HTML, you can easily design it on your own. Or else you can use the sitemap generator software.

7. Validate the code

We are human after all and we do make mistakes. Regularly scanning the process or code for mistakes bridges the broken links. The sitemap must function flawlessly for the search engine to track it. Hence there is no room for error. This also includes thoroughly testing the sitemap before making it public. Lastly, you will have to add the website to the root folder once all the boxes are ticked.

Read more: https://steelkiwi.com/blog/tips-developing-intelligent-sitemap/

In Conclusion

An organization has to do whatever it takes to get its website great traffic. Of course, there are several parameters to take into consideration but creating a smart sitemap is almost like half the battle won as it sets a flawless foundation. So, pull up your socks and get working on the sitemaps. Rather let us ease your pressure. Give us a chance to help you out with the sitemaps. To know more contact our experts at https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html

How blockchain will revolutionize the banking industry

Blockchain is going to change everything more than the internet has..
-Brock Pierce

A wise person once said – the old question ‘Is it in the database?’ will be replaced by ‘Is it on the blockchain?’. As a matter of fact, this situation is already changing, and many are a witness to it. The concept of blockchain has revolutionized the banking industry. And to be frank, blockchain is the present and the future of technology.

The reason blockchain has received such applause is that it aids in verification and makes the process of traceability a piece of cake. Let’s be honest, in today’s world, these two processes have become the need of the hour. Now, let’s talk numbers. Within a matter of a few months, the worldwide spending on blockchain solutions will reach a whopping amount of $11.7 billion. And by 2024, this market is predicted to garner a revenue of over $20 billion. These figures talk for themselves and give us more than enough reasons to embrace this technology. Being a part of this will surely be beneficial for all. Right from the realm of medicine to the world of art, everyone is striving hard to incorporate blockchain in their operations. When they know the returns are priceless, it is imperative to integrate them. The emergence of blockchain converts any process into a secure, sellable asset. And why should the banking industry stay take a backseat when it comes to blockchain? The advantages of using blockchain in banking are immense. It increases security and speed, traceability, fraud prevention, manages risks etc. Here are the reasons why blockchain will change the world of banking.

1. Faster payments

Many have been seen yawing while completing a banking process. Well, such kind of user behaviour is a sign that the banking system should take into consideration the user’s time. Incorporating blockchain enables transactions without a mediator or correspondent. This makes the payments faster, at a lower fee, and ensures customer satisfaction. Particularly when it comes to international payments, some banks take a backseat. This decentralized ledger payment provides a solution for time and money as well. Once this problem is solved, banks don’t have to worry about third-party verifications. This makes the process faster and easier. Bicton Cash and TRON enable users to enjoy low-priced transactions. Considering the average banking payment system, Bicton takes merely 10 mins, barely hours in worst cases. That’s something to think about.

2. Loan Credits

Blockchain is legit helping us break barriers. From busting the myths to securing the future of the users, this technology surely streamlines all the processes. Traditionally, to underwrite loans, a credit reporting system was a must. As blockchain opens up new doors of opportunities, the possibility of faster and peer-to-peer lending, and other processes can surely come to reality.

3. Clearance and Settlement Systems

When it comes to transporting money internationally, one only hopes that the process to be hassle-free, secure, and quick. A normal bank transaction takes a toll on a person, imagine what sort of impact it would have will sending money across the world. That’s when Blockchain makes an entry. It has the leverage to make the transaction secure and swift. The icing on the cake being Distributed ledgers has the potential to even reduce operational costs. There are stories where blockchain has showcased its ability to overcome unforeseen problems and associated risks. For the digital assets to get more clarity, the banking industry should invest in this system.

Read more: https://www.dqindia.com/top-5-uses-blockchain-banking/#:~:text=A%20blockchain%20is%20made%20up,ledger%20across%20a%20computer%20network

 

4. Enhanced Remittances

Remittances play a great role when you consider a country’s GDP. As per a report by Dev.Team.Spaces, the remittances money involved is somewhere around $1 trillion. Let’s break it down, Haiti has one of the world‘s highest remittance vs. GDP rates, some 29% of its entire GDP.

In the Philippines, it is at just over 10% while in Mexico it is 2.7%. When put into perspective, remittances account for 0.7% of the entire world’s GDP each year. The amount indeed is mind-blogging. And if this money is handled efficiently, it can create a source of income for millions in developing nations. As a study published by OECD, the use of blockchain while handling remittances efficiently gains cost reduction and improved customer experience in the process of onboarding a customer.

Although there are a few banks that still handle this with the MTO-Model, there are several that operate using blockchains such as Abra, BitPesa, and Circle. The outcome will surely benefit all.

5. Secure System/Fraud Prevention

With every invention in technology, there comes the aspect of fraud that always haunts people. As per the United Nations, around US$2.6 trillion is stolen through corruption and an estimated US$1 trillion is paid in bribes. It is said that an organization loses 5 per cent to fraud each year. What blockchain brings to the table is security owing to its decentralized storage of information. Further, as it stores customer information in different blocks, it plays a great role in safeguarding customer details. And integrating smart contracts also ensures safety measures. Adhering to ‘Know your Customer’ (KYC) adds to fraud prevention where blockchain can showcase its talent.

6. Fundraising

Captial-raising is crucial for any organization. But many know this process to be lengthy, time-consuming, and exhausting. Addressing the financial market evolution, companies that use blockchain to enhance this process have seen a positive impact. They can leverage options such as Equity Token Offerings (ETOs), Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs), and the latest sensation and one of the most used options Security Token Offerings (STOs) (STOs). STOs offer impartiality, support innovation, and transparency all the while keeping the integrity intact. Although, ICOs rose high when they came into the market. In 2019 it raised $371 million which is almost 95 per cent less than the year before.

 

7. Trade Finance

When someone utters the word bank, invariantly, one pictures tonnes of paperwork apart from the fact that the process is tedious. The advent of blockchain will certainly make the trade finance industry more alluring and all things good.

• Smart contracts will make the flow of the process less cumbersome and reduce the number of human errors.

• This will surely lend a helping hand to security. Further ensuring the clients’ and employees’ peace of mind

• Improved transparency will boost the trust

Read more: https://www.cbinsights.com/research/blockchain-disrupting-banking/#securities

Final thoughts

Change doesn’t happen overnight. For blockchain to become a mainstream method in banking, this process has to tick off several boxes and build a reliable ecosystem. This process can disrupt the industry only if it woes the customers. Once this process settles in, the returns will sky-rocket. To know more contact our experts at https://www.app-scoop.com/contact-us.html