App-Scoop

Having an idea is great, but you must structure your thoughts into concrete facts. You should be well aware of every aspect of your application.
We know that every idea is directly associated with revenue creation. Therefore, it is necessary to sit down and list your goals and aim attached to your app.
Here are some of the questions that you can ask yourself before going further:

    ● What will my app do?

Your application needs to have a niche that will help the users get an idea about the features they can find in it. These functionalities need to be direct and must not attract ten different application ideas.
For instance, Instagram can be easily categorized as a social media app to post photos and videos that your followers view in their feed.
If it was primarily launched with features like flight booking or inclusive gaming functionality, this might have deviated the users’ focus from the core idea of sharing photos.
People wouldn’t be able to categorize the application and eventually jump to other simple photo posting apps.

    ● What will be the face of my application?  

We understand you are not a developer or might not have any prior knowledge about UX/UI.
However, you must know what your application must look like. This will help you communicate your thoughts to the developers, and the end-result would constitute your dream’s app interface.

 2. Understand your target audience

After formulating a well-structured idea, you must jump on the rigorous research part. Your target audience is people who will use the application or whose problem you are planning to solve through your app idea.
These users can be bifurcated into various categories like locations, ages, gender, or behavioural reaction. You need to be as specific as possible to avoid any extra competition.
Most of the market has top leaders, which captures a vast audience, so you must be up-to-date on their ideologies and USP (Unique Selling points).
While researching, you should be able to determine your application’s goal and narrow down the niche to identify your target audience.
Another major thing to keep in mind is to know the future of your targeted users. You will never want to invest your money into an idea that might become inconsistent or obsolete with new technology advancements.
Try coming up with a unique USP that is different from your competitors and offer much-advanced functionality.

 3. Set a timeline

All these points might look easy, but they aren’t. The steps that we are about to discuss will give you a long list of tasks from meeting the developer to eventually launching the product.
You must acknowledge an estimated time for all these activities; this will help your mind establish time boundaries and stop you from lazing around.
The market research can take up to 10-15 days according to how vast or small your target audience and competitors are. After which, you must determine the exact timeline of your application.
Making a timetable will also give the developers or marketers an idea about how slow or fast you want to build your application.

 4. Connect to your developers to create a prototype

Now comes the exciting part, where you will give your app idea a screen. Creating a prototype means establishing a sample model of your final application.
A prototype can be majorly segmented into three unique categories:

     ● Conceptual: It is the future representation of your app that stimulates user and app interaction.
A conceptual prototype is created to establish the application’s essential infrastructure to ensure that you are happy with its beta interface.

   ● Interactive: After successfully passing the conceptual prototype, your next step would be to create an interactive display constituting designs to make the app look elegant.
It will replace the textual framework with a user-friendly interface that people will thoroughly enjoy.

    ● Animated: This is the most fascinating but challenging part where UI/UX experts add animation to the interactive protocol design. Most successful apps in the market add creative animation to make it more engaging.

 5. Create a market strategy

We cannot emphasize enough what a successful marketing channel can do to your application. Cumulatively, the Android and Apple app stores have over 5 Million apps.
However, there is a majority of applications that have never been installed. This is mainly because people haven’t heard about them and fear if the apps are risk-free.
We have a list of marketing tools that can be adapted to support your idea.

    ● Social media marketing or SMM: It is the trendiest marketing system used to attract traffic using paid ads.
According to stats, 82% of your prospects can be gathered through social media. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter allow businesses to post ads on their targeted audience’s feed.
You can make a list of all the behavioural rules that a user must take on their account that will make them a part of your ad campaign.  

    ● Google paid ads: The search engine allows you to post ads on specific keywords to attract your target audience.
For instance, if you have a food delivery app, the target word would be online food or making (the food item); these visitors are hungry and looking for a way to eat a good meal.
Ranking on these keywords will boost your sales, and eventually bring more loyal customers.

    ● Influencer marketing: Another way of informing your audience about your application could be through people they follow and seek influence from.
Influencers have unique opinions and ideas that they share with their followers who listen to them.
For instance, a comment published by Elon Musk asking his audience to join signal boosted its download by 12,000%. It is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your targeted audience.

 6. Fix your budget or find investment

Marketing and finance are the two most important pillars of any business. Building a successful application will require an inclusive combination of both these parameters.
We have already discussed all the significant investments needed while making the app. You are now in a better place to determine a budget for every aspect that has been mentioned above.
Furthermore, there are chances that you lack the required fund but still want to build your dream application.
These are some of the ways you can expand your earning potential:

    ● Ask from family or friends: This is an initial step that you can do to fill in the cash requirement. Your well-wishers might give you cash at a minimum or low-interest rate than the market standards.

   ● Engage with investors: Many organizations and wealthy individuals look for projects to invest their money to get a higher return.
Your first step would be to look for those high-class people and communicate your app idea to them.

   ● Business partnerships: If you cannot find a suitable investor, then the other option could be bringing in some partners.
These people will help you in the building steps of your application through their active participation and sharing relevant knowledge.

 7. Develop a basic version of the application

After you have successfully found your investor, it is vital that you now rigorously work towards building a beta version of the application to test its essential features.
You can choose Android or Apple as your base platform, keeping in mind your targeted audience. This is called constructing an MVP or Minimal Vital Program.
The application is made to closely identify its response from the public and other new features that could be added to ensure a smooth user experience.

 8. Analyze your success through mobile app metrics

Reflecting on your application’s performance is crucial to understand customer feedback and other additional features that you can implement in the future.
The primary parameters include
    ● How many downloaded the app?
    ● If they did, what is their activity status?
    ● And if they enjoyed using the app, have they subscribed to its paid version?
These three parameters are your guideposts that need to be taken care of while depicting your mobile app metrics.
The new users can be studied by estimating their user retention rate, which means how many times they visited the application in a day or week, or month.
If someone is continuously active on your app, they are among the very few percentages of people who can subscribe to your paid programs.
These are the loyal customers you need to nurture and provide them with the utmost value.

Conclusion
We hope this post guides you through the right track to convert your dream app idea into reality. Thus, keep in mind these above-mentioned points that are important to build your application.
Contact the App-Scoop Vancouver Mobile App Developers for further details.

In this article, we will help you unleash things about digital transformation, how it can help you, and how you can incorporate it into your business.
Stay tuned!

What is digital transformation?

Digital transformation refers to a process of integrating digital technology in every corner of a business. It includes leveraging cloud services, managing remote teams with technology, utilizing more applications to make workflow easier, and so on.
According to a survey by Tech Pro Research, 70% of respondents told that they already have a strategy for digital transformation in their companies or working on it.
It eliminates usage of legacy systems, in-house software, repetitive tasks that consume huge time, and more. This process results in fundamental business changes in terms of their operation and the way they provide value to their customers.
In addition to this, digital transformation brings a culture change as well that needs companies to challenge their status quo, strategies effectively to surpass failure, and experiment often continuously.

Digitization vs Digitalization: They are not the same!

Digital transformation is not the destination; it’s the journey, the process. In this journey, you will find two stops – digitization and digitalization. And the truth is both are NOT the same.
These words have similar sounds, but different meanings and importance for enabling digital transformation.
Let’s explore each one of them.

• What is Digitization?

Digitization means bringing technology to replace the traditional brick-and-mortar business environment. It enables you to feed information on computers, replace pens with your keyboards, maintain manual documentation with emails and digital formats, and utilize cloud storage.
This way, you can easily manage everything using your computer and from anywhere across the world beyond your 9-5 job. It also decreases the workload on your employees, increases productivity, reduces travel costs, makes communication easier, and cuts off expenditure.
Hence, you will get more time for solving problems, critical thinking, innovation, client engagement, and track performance to better plan and strategize our every move. Thus, you can serve your customers better and open the door to growth.

• What is Digitalization?

Digitalization is automating your business operations with data and insights you already have processed in your database. It is actually the next step forward after you have embraced digitization into your business model.
Digitalization takes place with the help of certain software applications developed to perform specific functions such as accounting, bookkeeping, manufacturing, order management, procurement, customer contact, and more.
Instead of using a separate network of computers for every department, digitalization allows you to merge them into a single network in a standard format.
As a result, it leads to many benefits such as stronger data encryption with cloud computing, machine automation to improve outputs, better quality management and product diagnostics with advanced computers that function accurately, quickly, and reliably.
You can feed customer and sales data into systems and forward it to your marketing departments, so they use it to channelize their marketing efforts for better conversion rates with more personalization
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The advantages of digital transformation

Digital transformation is not only the next step but also a necessity to survive in the current business scenarios. The pandemic has increased market pressure with changing consumer expectations.
Hence, adapting to these changes with the help of digital transformation is needed to be in the race. These are the advantages digital transformation brings for you:

• Enhanced customer experience

Delivering top-level customer experience must be the top priority for your business.
A report says that 67% of end-customers and 74% of B2B buyers want to pay more if they get a great user experience.
This is proof that you need to enhance customer experience by working on interactions, value proposition, and deliverability. It will help improve your reputation and foster growth. 
Digital transformation is an excellent way of doing it as it increases more convenience for your consumers. You can incorporate mobile applications to increase their experience, and make it as user-friendly as possible.
For example, Uber has increased convenience for its customers with its app that users can use to get a car ride, buy a home or room temporarily. It also expanded its service with UberEats to satisfy hunger.

• Increased growth of mobile applications

Digital transformation has increased the use of mobile applications. And you know the craze for mobile phones in the world. Almost everyone has a smartphone these days.
Therefore, there can never be a better way to reach your customers than through mobile applications. When it comes to the digital transformation approach, smartphone applications are one of the best gifts.
People use it anywhere they want for whatever reasons they may have; whether it is shipping online, ordering foods, getting a cab or booking a healthcare appointment. With cloud storage, you can use your documents anytime you want without downloading and storing them. 

• Encourages progressive web applications

A progressive web app is similar to a web app that works on a browser, without requiring the user to download it from an app store.
These apps such as Google Chat facilitate innovation, including synchronization capabilities, offline features, quick updates, and more.
And digital transformation encourages the development of progressive web apps. In fact, producing these apps is profitable for SMEs as well.
Web apps open the door to new revenue channels, boost customer experience dramatically, provide advanced CRM solutions, and many more.

• Reduces costs

Apart from improving customer engagement and reputation, digital transformation helps you reduce your expenses. You can use digital apps to save a lot of your money as cloud applications allow you to pay for the services you use, unlike traditional software.
Besides, you can use these applications anytime and anywhere across the globe to cut off travel expenses as well.
You can employ marketing automation to prevent repetitive tasks like sending welcome messages and emails, searching for SEO keywords, creating dynamic content, etc. Marketing automation applications and programs can handle such tasks efficiently and accurately.
This way, you don’t need to hire more employees for these tasks and save money.

• Drives innovation and better efficiency

Applications help you increase efficiency and drive innovation. These apps also assist you to manage projects effectively and foster better collaboration. You can use the apps to manage your workflows as well.
Modern businesses use applications such as Slack, Trello, etc. for collaboration and smooth communication instead of physical meetings or emails.
For example, Bank of America uses an app that can take care of taking pictures of checks and manage them, which you deposit while transferring money to others. This way, people don’t need to visit the bank every time to handle finances.

• Helps you stand out

Consumer preferences are changing as we speak. As a result, market competition has increased to become tougher. Previously, the competition was more on product development, advertising campaigns, marketing channels, etc. 
But now, users need more customized experiences that can help them individually. This is where digital transformation kicks in with AI and ML. Companies are striving to deliver more user-centric, accessible, and convenient experiences. 
For example, Google and Amazon, among other technology giants are leveraging machine learning and IoT to understand user expectations, trends, and predictions that can shape their efforts.

How to navigate digital transformation in your business?

Now that you are aware of digital transformation and how it is beneficial for your business, the next thing is to implement it and be in the race.
For this, keep a few things in mind:

• Strong leadership

If you want to incorporate digital transformation, strong leaders are needed to cut through the challenges. It’s because they are the ones making informed decisions that can help your business in the long run.
They will administer every activity from customer experience, replacing legacy systems, optimizing combinations, and improving marketing efforts to track performance and forecast the future.
For this, they need to have a stronger understanding of emerging technologies combined with management capability. This is why you must evaluate your leaders and make changes in the hierarchy, if that it takes to get the things done.

• Better business planning

Digital transformation is a continuous process. You need to make that first move, and then keep developing and exploring business prospects. Use it to think about how you can accomplish your long-term goals with proper planning and execution.
You can’t settle with the current technology because it will become obsolete in the near future. Plan on introducing new digital technologies that help your business move forward with trends.
Keep on improving consumer engagements, in-house processes, marketing efforts, payment methods, and more with the help of digital transformation.

• Prepare clear strategies

Your digital transformation strategies must be based on providing a better value to your customers. Hence, set priorities based on the planning for each department.
And when you explain these priorities and assign tasks to the team members, clarify each aspect properly, so they understand what they are doing and why.
For example, to help customers have better convenience, you can prioritize digital payments or integrate with tools like PayPal.

• Get more transparent with employees

Everyone in your team expects transparency. Don’t keep them in the dark even if you have to make some decisions that are not appreciated by all.
Due to digital transformation, positions might shift while automation may lead to elimination or merging of employees with other roles.
Whatever be the case, communicate it with your team members honestly, explaining the reasons. Instead of firing employees, you can also look for up-skilling or re-skilling them internally. Find ways you can utilize their talents to bring value in your team.

• Organize your data properly

Data is essential for your business; be it developing a new product, finding customer preferences, or optimizing your marketing strategies. And organizing data properly is also necessary for digital transformation.
Ensure data is accessible easily by centralizing repositories, sharing it with business leaders and product owners, and enhancing data integrity. In addition to this, prepare data catalogues or categorize them efficiently, so your team knows how to find the data and where.

• Empower decision-makers with agility

According to a report, 45% of executives think their company does not have the right set of technologies to deploy digital transformation.
Hence, to enable the digital transformation process in your business smoothly and effectively, you need to empower your decision-makers, leaders, and managers with some agility.
It will help them think quickly and act without having to climb the high ladder of approval from different departments or teams. Let them handle responsibilities such as profit and loss, based on which they can proceed fast, experiment more, and adapt to changes quickly. 
Provide them with the right flexibility and technology to fuel your digital strategies. Let them enable cloud technology to be more dynamic and fast, which helps you test low-risk, cost-effective projects.
Allow them to connect SaaS apps, customer databases, applications, big data analytics, etc., to get a better customer overview to deliver an improved user experience. 

Conclusion
​
Embracing digital transformation has become essential, especially after the global pandemic. It is the key to proving fast, improved, and tailored customer experiences.
Hence, implement digital transformation in your business as early as possible to steer clear of the competition.
​​Contact the App-Scoop Vancouver Mobile App Developers for further details.

What are Mobile KPIs?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are certain metrics or parameters that help you determine how your mobile application is performing, future predictions, fix issues, and improve its overall functionality to reap better ROI.
Some mobile KPIs are:

• Business metrics
• Performance metrics
• Engagement metrics
• User-centric metrics

A study showcases that about 80-90% of downloaded applications are only used once before users delete them.
Hence, you need to measure the performance of your app and improve every area where you can.
Determining these parameters will help you guide your development, design, and marketing teams in the right direction where they can increase the better value proposition to users. It can also attract the resources and attention of more shareholders, buyers, and investors.
Ultimately, your mobile app will generate more ROI to you, in addition to better brand awareness.
So, let’s breakdown each of these mobile KPIs and understand how they can help you achieve your goal.

• Business metrics

Your app can be considered successful if it can generate decent revenue and ROI. For this, you need to calculate some business metrics such as cost for every acquisition or retention, lifetime value, etc.
Business metrics are necessary to determine the monetization potential of your mobile application. They help you make data-driven decisions in addition to predicting financial problems that might surface.

So, let’s review what business metrics you are required to measure in order to achieve better app success.

    1. Cost per acquisition

Cost per acquisition means how much investment you have made to acquire new subscribers or users.It’s essential to track cost per acquisition because once your app is ready, there are certain costs associated that drive people to install your app, be it marketing efforts or anything else. You need to calculate the average cost you spent on each app download.
Start by calculating costs on app development, design, maintenance, and marketing efforts for each download over a certain time period. This time period can be the same as the time period of your revenue measurement. And it can depend on the nature and type of your business.
Ideally, this cost per acquisition must be as low as possible. And, it must also be lesser than customer lifetime value, which we will discuss next.

    2. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

After you acquire a customer, you need to determine how much financial value those customers can generate for your business.
To be precise, it focuses on measuring the amount of money you can expect to derive from consumers on average.
CLTV is an indicator that helps you gauge whether or not you are spending more money to acquire customers than generating value out of them. Your CLTV must be more than the cost per acquisition if you want to remain in the profit quadrant.

• Performance metrics

The mobile KPIs based on performance focus the way your app operates. It is important to measure these metrics because they help you gain deeper insight into all the functionalities and operations of your mobile app, along with the issues that may arise.   
By determining performance metrics, you can better optimize your application. You can fix issues like frequent crashes, longer loading periods, etc. and make it seamless for the users.
This way, your customers enjoy using your application, and chances of retaining users increase more. For this, you need to track some performance metrics as explained below:

    1. Crash rate

You must keep an eye on your mobile app to determine how many times it crashes in a day, how often, doing what activity, how many users, and more. You can further breakdown this based on the device like what is the number of crashes on Android devices or iOS, and so on.
Frequent crashes disrupt the user experience, frustrates them more, or may even cause data loss. These are enough reasons to drive the users away, hence, affecting your ROI.
But, if you monitor this metric, it will highlight the potential issues, and your team can fix them sooner. You can also measure deeper insights, including crash costs.

    2. Application loading speed

Application loading speed means how fast your mobile app loads along in accordance with its features. It is important as nobody likes a slow app that takes forever to load.
You could revisit the past where we had to roll our heads wondering when this page will load. But gone are those days; we have technologies that ensure it no longer must be the case. Otherwise, people start abandoning slow-loading apps.
Ideally, your app must load within 2 seconds. But if it is higher than that, consider optimizing this subject to reap better profits out of your app.

    3. API latency

API latency refers to the time an application takes to make a user request to an API and receive a response from it. 
Latency must be minimum in order for your app to serve your customers well as no one likes waiting these days. Many app makers are now optimizing their apps for one second of latency, as zero is not yet possible.
If it takes over 3-4 seconds, you need to work seriously on the API latency to provide users with better usability.

• Engagement metrics

The ways users interact with your mobile app is another essential metric you need to track. This is done to ensure they utilize your app and remain your loyal subscribers for you to get better success rates.
For this, you need to understand the usage patterns, in-app behaviour, how much time they use the app, how long they use it, and more.
Monitoring these insights help you improve your app functionality, fix certain areas, optimize it so users can best utilize all the features.
This way, you can have a larger user base and better app monetization strategy for your application. Hence, measure the metrics like:

    1. Retention rate

Retention rate here means how many users revisit your mobile app in a given timeframe. It’s not necessary that they will use it every day, but might use it when in need. So, you need to monitor your retention rates as well per month, year, or quarter.
Another way of measuring your retention rate is to push an update notification and watch your users respond to it. 

    2. Session length

In the world of mobile applications, session length means how much time your subscribers or users spend using your application in a single session. You can calculate it by marking the time when a user launches it, to the time they close it.
When you track app session length, you can discover potential revenue streams via app flows. The goal here is to find a way through which the users spend more time on your app if you serve certain services that require this user behaviour like social media.
But the case can be totally opposite for other industries like Uber. Here, the goal would be to help users find a ride quickly to serve them better.
Hence, session length is not universal and can vary from one industry to another. This is why you need to keep calculating it on average to understand whether your users like your app or not and present more relevant content for them.

    3. Session interval

Similar to the session length, there is one more metric called session interval. It is the time lapse between two app sessions. It will give you an idea of how often users open your mobile application and use it.
This metric is great for industries where users do not need to open the app every day or at least not like social media. They use your app when they need it. Use this metric to optimize your user experience while encouraging them for more openings with useful more materials.
For example, you may gain insight like tablet users tend to have long session intervals. It’s the sign that you need to optimize your app design for tablets.

    4. Time-in app

Track time-in app metrics to understand how long users spend in your mobile application over a certain period of time. This metric helps you measure user engagement and usage trends.
Use this data to learn what a user does with your mobile app, what sections they love exploring, and more. This way, you can guide your developers to develop and design upcoming app versions based on these trends and user expectations.
For example, if users from a specific location use your mobile app for longer durations, you can check screen flow patterns of those users, how many purchases they make or just explore the app.
This data helps you add more value to users and drives better user experience for that location. You can follow the same procedure to determine the in-app time for other user segments and improve your app engagement.

• User-centric metrics

To get a better understanding of your app user base, you need to monitor user-centric metrics. Measure how large your user base is, how frequently they use your mobile app, and where they are located on the global map.
These insights help you understand user behaviour, which your app development team can utilize to create more personalized elements in the app. As a result of this, retention rates and engagement rates increase.
Therefore, consider measuring user-centric metrics such as:

    1. Active Users

One of the most crucial metrics you need to measure is how many active users engage with your mobile app.
According to a report, about 28% of applications are uninstalled within 30 days of their installation.
It implies that not only attracting users to your app is necessary but maintaining their trust with powerful usability works in the long run.
For this, there are two things to measure Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU). These things help you understand the importance of user engagement for your mobile app by reflecting the total number of users who engage with your mobile app daily and monthly. 
Use the data to work in the areas requiring improvement. However, DAU and MAU may depend on the industry. Mobile applications for social media like Facebook will have higher DAU and MAU, but for healthcare, food delivery, etc., things might change.

    2. Acquisition and Retention

The number of new users who installed your mobile application on their devices is what we are referring by ‘acquisition’. It may happen through paid campaigns, organic search, or word-of-mouth campaigns.
Track how many users you acquired per day or month, through which marketing channel, and from which location. It will help you guide your marketing efforts on the right path.

​    3. Churn rate

Tracking churn rates are as important as your acquisition and retention rates. It is actually just the opposite of retention rate. It is the rate with which users uninstall your mobile application or cancel its subscription.
You need to keep an eye on this metric because it directly affects your revenue and business. The reasons can be many like poor usability, app crashes, lack of fresh content, better app in the market, and more.
However, sometimes it becomes difficult to understand the exact reasons. But if you keep a sharp eye on all the metrics, it will be easier to spot issues and fix them. Thus, you can work on getting better retention rates with the help of this insight.

Conclusion

Tracking metrics associated with your mobile app’s performance, user experience, engagement, and cost expenditure is important.
If you only focus on development, design, maintenance, and marketing without measuring how your users and subscribers are responding to your app, you will never know where you are lacking and why you are not achieving the desired profit out of it.
Thus, keep an eye on these 12 mobile application KPIs to improve your application in 360 degrees and fix issues to provide a better user experience. And when all these things are met, you can expect to witness better ROI and profit margins.
Contact the App-Scoop Vancouver Mobile App Developers for further details.

There are over 7 Million apps combined on Apple and Google Play Store, and most of them use animation to make their mobile apps look more presentable. Animation not only makes navigation easier but also enhances the user experience.

The ZURB foundation quotes “We’re no longer just designing static screens. We’re designing for how the user gets from those screens to actually view [the] content.”

1. User engagement:
Every application should have features that help users engage on the platform. Many social media apps have now become a selling space for businesses, and an effective user engagement insight helps them in assessing their performance among targeted customers.
Take the example of Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, users can react to posts, which boosts social interactions.

2. User experience:
95% of mobile apps get abandoned in their first month of usage as a result of bad user experience.
In-built animation plays a vital role in enhancing the experience of the users on the application. It is the face of the application and directly connects the users with the functionality of the platform.

3. User response:
When a person performs any action on an application, it must respond to the step taken and show the relevant results.
An efficient motion design will help the user in proper navigation by making them understand the connections between all the interface elements. It provides a systematic display of options to make the app attractive.

Types of animations

1. Structure & Navigation: Most mobile apps have a very structured framework that is made easy through animation. It simplifies the process of navigation for the users and helps them in finding elements that are hidden in the structure.
If you notice Spotify, it works on a very structured framework that allows users to access all the options through its in-built animations. 

2. Visual feedback: Users expect applications to respond to their actions through visual or audible feedback. It offers them a feeling of control and also indicates that the app is working fine.
Like when you click on the “Add to cart” option on a shopping app, it instantly notifies you that the action has been processed.
On the other hand, users can get extremely irritated if they do not receive such notification as feedback. It leads to a bad user experience and even deteriorates the application’s image before the users.

3. Fun animation: These motion designs are unique and basically made to captivate the users. The animation can be anything from drag and drop or 3-D design that instantly makes the user more connected and creates a fun environment on the platform.
However, the designers must ensure that the important features of the mobile app are not hidden due to extensive animation.

4. Function change animation: Every mobile app has multiple icons that perform a specific purpose. All these small elements contain function animation that responds when a user clicks on it.
You must have noticed that many app icons change colour or design when you take action. It is done by the designers intentionally to make the application more interactive.

5. System state animation: Whenever an action is being processed at the backend of your application, it must inform users about the ongoing process. It will ensure that the mobile app is running smoothly and not frozen.
For example, if you are recording audio in WhatsApp, the app will show you a wave indicating that the data is being recorded and will process as soon as you click on the send button.

6. Hierarchical Animation: Every icon present in your application is a stepping stone for the next option. This means all the elements need to be properly connected to ensure smooth animation.
So, if a person clicks on an icon, the next option should arise from its side and not abruptly from anywhere on the interface. The animation should possess a system hierarchy of the elements.

7. Visual prompt: Some animations can drop clues as to how a user can interact with certain elements. It becomes essential if your app design has some unpredictable patterns that not all users can understand in one go.
Hence, if you create a visual prompt to guide your users into taking an action, user experience elevates.

Major principles of Motion Design

1. Ease in / Ease out: When an object moves from one pointer to another, it takes a negligible step back and moves with a certain velocity to reach the other stop.
In the same way, you cannot establish a movement in your animation without giving it some extra time for acceleration and deceleration. It will ensure a smooth swing without making it look unreal.

2. Anticipation: Most apps do this for new users who might know the features of a platform. As the term suggests, ‘anticipation’ means prediction. The in-built animation will suggest some prompts actions that the users can take to move forward.
For example, the UNO mobile app helps the user understand the game by predicting future steps.

3. Timing: It is one of the major principles to align all your animation in appropriate places to make it look real.
The animation that you create must be inspired by the principles used in real life. All the objects in this world do not move in linear motion, so you can create a curve to make your animation look natural.

4. Movement trajectory: You must have a specific movement trajectory of your animation. This pattern should be followed throughout the mobile application to ensure all your animations are in sync with each other.
Real objects have a very flexible trajectory, whereas mechanical objects are mostly less flexible. You can decide on a single type of movement that your animation will possess throughout the application.

5. Focus animation: It is used to draw user attention to a particular spot. Many mobile apps use this principle to highlight any major point that the user might miss in the pool of information.

6. Exaggeration: It is similar to the above point. This principle is also used to attract users to acknowledge certain details on the interface by enlarging it.

7. Overlapping and follow-through: In the real world, objects take time between the movement made to reach from one point to another. You need to keep this in mind and design an animation that looks natural.
You can do it through the follow-through method, which is adopted by many famous mobile applications. The movement of your animation should overlap with each other to ensure there is no open end visible to the users.

Major pointers to consider before enabling in-app animation

1. Target audience: You must be well aware of the needs and expectations of your target audience. The animation must bridge the gap between the users and the interface.
For example, if your target audience is kids, then fun animation can be implemented to make the platform look more exciting.

2. Only when necessary: The animation used in the application must solve a purpose. It should be in sync with all the other animations. Do not just split out animation anywhere.
It will only distract the user from the app and deteriorate their user experience. It should make the process of navigation simpler by providing a captivating interface.

3. Be natural: All the animation used in your application must look natural and work on the theories of real life. Unreal animation does not attract users and pull off their minds from the application.

4. Consult experts: Building a mobile app is hard and implementing animation is harder. Your mobile application will be a platform where all your target audience comes together.
So, if you are stuck somewhere, take help from experts to enable animation that is smooth and works on real-world concepts.

Conclusion
The use of animation in mobile apps has become popular, and this sector will continue to boost in the years to come.
Building a platform that contains user-friendly animations can boost user experience immensely. It will make the navigation process much simpler without a doubt.
Thus, incorporate animations in your mobile apps that can resonate well with your audience and keep them more engaged.
​​Contact the App-Scoop Vancouver Mobile App Developers for further details.

Cloud migration can be done by all kinds of businesses, regardless of their size. It offers a reliable, secure, and scalable platform to an enterprise.

The following article is a step-by-step guide that will help your business migrate from on-premise to a cloud platform.
​
But,

• Secure: Cloud is more secure than all other traditional platforms.
  In a survey conducted by Microsoft Office 365, it was concluded that 94% of SMBs found the cloud as a secure online space to store all their business data.
  Most cloud service providers keep user security as their primary goal.
• Scalability: The Cloud platform allows you to scale-up and down according to your business requirement. You can adapt to new market changes without feeling chained with your network assets.
  ​
• Cost-effective: Switching to a cloud platform will help you reduce all your extra operational costs. In the cloud, you only pay for the services your business consumes.
  Another survey done by Microsoft Office 365 quotes that 82% of SMBs felt a reduction in their cost, and 70% have re-invested that money into the business.

Step-by-step Guide on how to Migrate on the Cloud

1. Define the horizon of your cloud migration

Your first step towards a successful migration is evaluating your application. You must bifurcate the application into the valuable and non-valuable pile.
The software used in the application should comply with the cloud platform. If all this feels overwhelming, you can use the TIME quadrant.

Here is how it works:

• Tolerate: This quadrant includes all those apps that neither provide value to your business, nor you can move them into an online space.
• Invest: Put all those apps that offer high value to your business but require some adjustment to produce maximum output.
• Migrate: Some apps are valuable to the business and do not require any extensive changes.
• Eliminate: Ditch all apps that do not add any value to your business nor produce output even with high investment.

Make sure all these applications are not negatively connected. For instance, migrating an app must not affect the functionality of any other application.

2. Set parameters to define cloud migration success

Before actually migrating to the cloud platform, you must set definite and measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

These are some of the parameters your business has to achieve after successfully migrating to the cloud. The KPIs will help you identify all the shortcomings and establish a definite plan to work on.

These are some of the KPIs you can set for your business:

• Overall uptime is the total percentage of time your application was accessible to the end-users.
• Average Response Time is the time taken by the server to give a response to the action made by a user on the application.
• Peak Response Time is the longest time the server takes to respond at a specific time or occasion
• Hardware cost
• Error rates and types
• Memory and CPU usage
• Network latency is the delay made to a user’s request by the server
• Monthly billing
• Staffing cost
• External cost for storage, electricity, etc., and many more

3. Choose between Multi-cloud or Single cloud environment

This is the most important step that will set up the base for your cloud-based business. You can either choose between multi-cloud or a single cloud platform.

A multi-cloud platform is setting up applications on different cloud providers, whereas a single cloud is purely dedicated to a single provider.

Select a type after carefully analyzing both the platforms. The next step is to ask your developers to integrate all your applications with the chosen cloud API.

But, make sure you select the most appropriate cloud type because once all these changes are made, it will be very time-consuming for an application to switch to another platform.

The multi-cloud platform is of three types:

• Separate cloud for different applications
• Splitting up your application and running in varied clouds
• Using multiple cloud platforms simultaneously

4. Select the most suitable cloud provider

After you have selected a suitable cloud type, your next step is to choose a cloud service provider that complies efficiently with your business.

You can go with any of the three mentioned below:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS): It is a market leader that offers expertise services, including networking, storage, content delivery, machine learning, and analytics.
  The platform is easy to use and simplifies the process of migration. AWS is trustful, reliable, secure, and scalable; all the basic things you need.
• Microsoft Azure: The platform offers an uptime of 99.95% and ensures maximum security. But you need expert IT professionals to manage the cloud system efficiently.
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP): It is a cost-effective platform that offers high performance and stores data needlessly. You can perform live migration without worrying about downtime.

5. Identify the extent of cloud integration

When you migrate your applications on the cloud platform, there can be two levels of integration.

• Shallow cloud integration: It is also known as “lift and shift”. This is when you migrate an on-premise application to the selected cloud platform without making any changes. You do not exploit any extra features offered by the cloud provider.
• Deep cloud integration: In this, the developers not only migrate applications online but also make use of all the services offered by the platform. Again, you need IT experts to perform this operation.

6. Establish a performance baseline for your application

Migrating your application is itself a complicated process. Hence, you need proper guidelines to measure the performance of your decision.
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It becomes a necessity to set performance baselines for all the KPIs mentioned above. It will help you analyze the post-migration performance and identify the areas which need improvement.

You must also decide the duration of your measurement. If you go for a short period (like a day), you will be able to conclude faster, but the data might differ from reality. To get accurate results, you must collect data for a significant period and then analyze results accordingly.

7. Come-up with a structured data migration plan

It is difficult to sync cloud platform with on-premise application majorly because of these problems:

• When you have moved your application to the cloud, but the data-access is still available on-premise
• Or, maybe the service access is on the cloud, but your application isn’t.

What can you do now?

• Shift all the data of your consumers on the cloud platform,
• Cut-off all the connections with the on-premise platform eventually
• Allow your data consumers to only connect to the cloud data, and
• When the situation is under control, you can disable the on-premise version.

8. Automate migration

Migration is not an easy process; you need to perform heavy data transfers that require expert guidance. Multiple tools help an organization increase the speed of migration, lower migration costs, and reduce all kinds of migration risk.

Using an advanced migration tool increases the success rate of migration. You can choose any of the service providers mentioned above, keeping in mind your business requirement. It will replace a lot of manual work and allow your IT professionals to manage the cloud environment easily.

9. Test your cloud migration strategy

Before migrating all your data to the cloud, you must test and analyze the performance of your application. It will highlight all the difficulties your cloud platform might be facing.
To conduct a test migration:

• Establish your cloud platform
• Identify the data or app that you want to transfer
• Migrate the selected data to the cloud
• Measures the performance
• Make all the changes required and check the insights
• You are now ready to migrate

10. Migrate

After all the above-mentioned steps are complete, you can now migrate all your heavy loaded data into your cloud platform. Make sure you evaluate all the KPI parameters and ask your IT experts to keep an eye on the cloud environment.

Conclusion
Cloud migration can be your first step towards adopting a technology that is secure and cost-effective. It is surely a complex procedure, but you can easily switch all your data by following all the step-by-step guidelines correctly as mentioned above.
​Contact the App-Scoop Vancouver Mobile App Developers for further details.

1. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence is a part of computer science that mimics human actions but has the ability to perform complex artificial intelligence.
Some of the most common applications that will popup are Siri, Replica, Google Assistant, etc. But with the enhancement of new technologies, AI will now be available in cameras, user predictions, or voice translation.
The collaboration of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning helps in identifying user behaviour and suggesting products, keeping in mind the previous searches. Big applications like Netflix and YouTube use AI to predict future shows that a particular user will want to watch after analyzing their previous choices.
Many apps are now ready to launch AI build Chatbot that will provide a human conversational experience and help them in case of any issue. 

2. 5G implementation

Major mobile selling companies like Motorola, Samsung, and LG have already launched devices that can support 5G technology. In October 2020, Apple came up with iPhone 12, 12 Pro, and 12 pro max that support 5G connectivity.
If you thought, 4G was fast, then think again because 5G is fastest. 4G was able to deliver an average of 100+ Megabits per second (MPS) and 5G stands out at delivering 10 Gigabits per second (GPS) which is 100x faster than 4G.
Due to this advancement in technology, developers can build games that are 3D integrated along with pre-installed Augmented Reality. The app development industry will evolve with building apps that will give users a platform where they can launch an app that can run in 4K format.

3. M-commerce

M-commerce or Mobile commerce is estimated to reach $3.5 trillion in 2021 and these stats will only grow in the coming years. The pandemic has forced people to depend on online platforms to purchase items and 72.9% of the global sales are made by mobiles.
So, this year the business owners should focus on building apps that will enhance their audience reach and eventually improve their sales. But if you don’t have enough funds to launch your own mobile app then you can build a website that is mobile responsive.
It will allow your business to be accessible on both desktop and mobile phones. After you have grabbed a good market size, there will always be a scope for your business to get its personal mobile apps.

4. Wearables

Wearables can include smartwatches, fitness bracelets, and healthcare monitors. For the longest time, Apple was one of the best wearables offering companies in the market but in the last years, the game has totally changed.
The company sales dropped up to 10% in 2020 because of some very affordable wearable options launched by Samsung, Huawei, and Garmin. But the trend of wearables has increased alone in the US by 15%.
Due to covid, people are now more inclined towards health bands that can give them real-time changes occurring in the body.
Research conducted by ReportLinker said that the market for wearables reached 16.12 billion in 2020. The audience requires more advanced technology integrated bands that can detect specific problems in time.

5. Internet of Things (IoT)

If you are unaware of IoT, it is a platform that connects everything to the internet. You can either receive and send information or do both. Some of the major IoT devices are FitBits, smartwatches, Home security, AR glasses, Activity tracker, and many more.
The market for IoT platforms is about to reach $1.6 Trillion by 2025. With the advancement of technology, people are connecting more and more household items to IoT platforms. Major smart home devices like Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa are installing more advanced sensors to allow the user to perform tasks at their fingertips.
Research shows significant development in the medical sector that will allow patients to connect with doctors without being able to be physically present.

6. Event streaming

The pandemic has forced people to avoid all physical gatherings and shift all our meetings and events online. Due to which the market of the live streaming industry has splendidly grown by 99% in 2019 as compared to 2018.
Many companies are conducting their meetings online on various live streaming platforms like Kinesis, confluent, Apache Kafka, confluent, and many more. Through these applications, you can easily be part of all your favourite public events.
All of them come with some exceptional functionalities such as allowing people to interact between the events through the ChatBox, speakers can change turns smoothly, you will also be able to ask questions directly to the panellist.
The covid situation is here to stay for a while and these options can fill the gap between things that you are not able to do because of the pandemic.

7. Instant apps

One out of every four users abandons the apps with the first use. It can be because of various reasons like low storage, security issues or if they don’t like the app. The instant app is presently available only at Google Play Store.
When you search for an app, the store will show you either to install or try it. So, if you use the latter, the application will open in your phone in its beta versions helping you in understanding whether to install or not.
Many enterprises have launched their try-on apps to reach their target audience and make them appreciate their value. These demo apps are in trend right now and will mostly grow in the coming future.

8. Cloud Native

Cloud-Native is a platform where the code of an application is written without the developers needing a server to host their apps. Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS are some of the major Cloud-native solution providers.
One of the biggest advantages that cloud-native has against these servers is giving developers the freedom to scale upwards or downwards according to the traffic received. With the launch of 5G technology and in presence of advanced IoT platforms, the market is filled with the opportunity to exploit the advantage of cloud-native.
Research shows that 32% of enterprise applications will be built on cloud-native platforms in 2020. This is because of the flexibility and scalability option cloud-native provides to its developers.

9. Beacon technology

Beacons can be classified under transmitting gadgets that send notifications to other gadgets in its range. The Beacon technology can be easily integrated with your enterprise apps. It helps businesses send messages to people who are nearby, informing about their offers and discounts.
This technology is now becoming a need with 40 Billion Android users asking queries about Beacon-content from Google every year. It is a small device that is made up of batteries, radios, and CPU.
A beacon continuously sends signals to reach a prospective device and when it connects, the device starts sending messages that are inbuilt in its memory.
Marketers spend billions on online marketing platforms like Google ads but it is essential to put an equal amount of effort into technologies that will grab and make customers walk your store. Beacons can be your out-of-store marketing platform to send messages that market your store and also satisfy your customers’ needs.

Conclusion
The need for Mobile Apps is never-ending and will always grow. But if you are a developer, it is essential to keep track of these trends to produce applications that will be beneficial for your targeted audience. These trends are about to give tough competition to the existing technology, and will eventually lead to launching apps that are advanced and more efficient. 
Contact the App-Scoop Vancouver Mobile App Developers for further details.

It gives rise to the need for building a mobile health app for your hospital. There are already 3.18 lakhs of mobile health apps (or mHealth apps) available in all significant app stores with its market expected to reach 132.2 Billion in 2023.

mHealth apps help you in connecting with doctors virtually and prescribing medicines without having to physically reach the hospital.

1. Hassle-free Online booking

Building a hospital’s app will help patients to easily book their appointment with the doctors. The app can bifurcate appointment booking procedure into multiple departments or based on the availability of the doctors.
Every doctor will examine a fixed number of patients every day and slots will close down as the count reaches the limit.
Whereas in the offline method, there is always confusion about the status of the doctor. Launching a mobile app will immensely reduce the burden on the receptionists and allow them to focus their time on other productive works.

2. Improved efficiency

In a mobile app, all the information is systematically placed which allows doctors to easily analyze the patient’s health conditions.
Not only this, the apps must contain a user id which is a compilation of all the lab tests, prescriptions, detailed info about the disease, doctor’s emergency number, and many more to help patients in case of emergency.
This makes a synchronized relation between the doctor and the patient. You can also build a dedicated mobile app only for the hospital’s staff to ensure proper communication. It should contain a texting feature so that the nurses are not wasting time looking for doctors. The app can also include an unavailability list so that all the staff is aware of each other’s timings.

3. Better audience reach

Developing a health app is the best way to attract audiences from regions who don’t even know your hospital or the services you provide. A mobile app can be downloaded by anyone and if it provides quality features to the user, there are high chances that they might physically want to visit your hospital.
People living in remote areas find it very difficult to reach hospitals for their routine check-ups but the hospital’s app can offer them a smooth video calling experience with the doctor, avoiding unnecessary travelling. Small features like this can make a lot of difference and attract a wider audience towards your hospital.

4. Handy Bill payments

Waiting in long queues just to pay bills is a tedious task both for the patient and the office staff. It becomes difficult for big hospitals to manually keep track of all payments without doing an error.
The bill payments structure has evolved and it now requires a lot of documentation, including health insurance or any previous benefits bagged from the hospital is necessary to be mentioned in payment forms. Maintaining all this paperwork is very time-consuming.
When developing a mobile app, you can ask the developer to integrate a smooth channel for the timely payment of bills. It will release pressure on the finance handling staff and allow them into other essential tasks.

5. All-time support

A mobile app allows patients to be connected with the hospital 24*7 and ask for help whenever required. It must contain multiple functionalities that allow patients to book appointments, see doctor’s schedule, bill payment, video calling with doctors, emergency call, and many more.
Consider having a combination of both free and paid version inside the app so that your hospital benefits with the revenue generated.
Your aim should be to simplify each process for the patient even before physically visiting the hospital. The easier your app is for the public, the more interaction you will receive.

6. Keep track of your patient’s health

Your health app should contain a patient column where they can log in with the user id provided by the hospital. It will give them a brief about their health condition and mention daily tips to improve it.
The doctors can keep track of their patients whether they are following all the directions or not. You can integrate specific alert alarms when the patient misses their medicine time or a check-up video call with the doctor.
These things show that hospitals care about the patients’ health and aim to provide faster recovery. This, in turn, increases customer loyalty.

7. Self-promote your hospital

If you provide some extraordinary features like the ones mentioned above, there is no way that your patient won’t be happy with your services. They will speak good things about your hospital and improve its brand value in the market.
Customers’ testimonials are the best way to gain trust in the audience. Your app should contain a column where the patients can give their valuable feedback. It will help you identify any shortcomings and give you a direction where people are facing problems. Genuine, constructive comments are as important as any good feedback.

8. Educate people to reduce unnecessary pressure on the hospital

A hospital is a very crowded place but is mostly filled with hyper-active patients who reach the hospital now and then due to a lack of minimum education about their health.
Your health app can mention some common diseases with their symptoms so that a person can understand whether to reach the hospital or not.
It will eventually reduce pressure on the hospitals and allow doctors to focus on patients that require immediate medical assistance. You should keep updating your app to educate more and more people about multiple health problems.

Case Study of some successful Mobile Health apps in the market

1. Aetna, iTriage

iTriage is launched by Aetna – a health insurance company. It helps patients find detailed information about their health conditions and therefore gives them a step-by-step guide on how they can treat it efficiently. iTriage identifies health complications at an early age and tells when to visit a doctor.

2. Cerner, CareAware Connect

It is an application that allows proper communication between clinical staff and ensures that all the relevant information reaches the right person in the shortest time.
The device contains multiple functionalities like staff assignment, on-call schedules, nurse calls, automated health records, secure messaging, and voice communication.
The website claims that CareAware Connect reduced nurse walking steps by 50%, hence allowing them to take better care of the patients rather than running to find the doctor.

3. Patients Safe, Patient Touch System

Patient Safe helps clinical staff to enable smooth communication between their team members. It allows patients’ information to be sent to the doctor through the texting platform. Along with this, there are various features like SMS paging, nurse alerts, voice calls, and lab results.
For enterprises, it becomes easy to transfer roles and integrate user information with Active Directory (AD).

4. Epocrates

Epocrates is a great application for the normal public to get clinical support and maintain a strong virtual relation with physicians. It provides detailed information about most of the diseases along with some instant treatments you can give to the patient.
The application also offers a list of alternative medicine a patient can intake in the unavailability of the prescribed one. Epocrates has been used by over a million people and all its content is made by experts.

5. Isabel

Isabel is mostly used by doctors to match symptoms with diseases. The website claims to provide 96% of accurate matching and contains information about 4000 causative drugs and over 6000 diseases.
Isabel is continuously updated to include the latest diseases, which will help doctors get the perfect match.

Conclusion
Mobile health or mHealth apps have become very popular among people as everyone has now started to recognize the importance of keeping themselves healthy.
So, having an app allows you to adopt new technology that will result in reducing unnecessary crowds and enhance your hospital’s efficiency, management, workflow, as well as customer loyalty.
​​Contact the App-Scoop Vancouver Mobile App Developers for further details.

A good mapping tool will multiply your business productivity and speed up the process of 
transformation. The two best mapping tools in the market are Mapbox and Google Maps. 

The following article will tell you the pros and cons of both the application and help you decide 
which one you should choose for your business. 

Conclusion
You must have now understood the difference between both the mapping applications – Google Maps and Mapbox. Your selection must totally depend on your business requirement.
Thus, if pricing and location are not your problems then Google Maps will work the best for you. But if you live in a developed country and have access to both easily, you can also consider Mapbox.
​​Contact the App-Scoop Vancouver Mobile App Developers for further details.

One such medium is smartphones. Mobile applications or customized mobile websites have become an extension of companies these days and have been instrumental in driving revenues.

Concluding Remarks
Mobile apps vs. websites in terms of UX or user experience is an exhaustive debatable topic, with each side having a fair share of advantages.
In reality, choosing one of them depends highly on your business goals.
The graphics and the processing is better done on mobile, therefore, you can prefer going with a mobile app to leverage its computing power. It will help you engage and interact with your customers better and drive loyalty.
On the other hand, a mobile website could relay similar features that are not resource-intensive. It will help you provide mobile-friendly content that your audience can find useful and eventually become your customers. 
​​Contact the App-Scoop Vancouver Mobile App Developers for further details.