App Development

Apple now lets apps send ads in push notifications

Apple will now allow push notifications to be used for advertising, so long as users agree to receive the ads first.

As spotted by 9to5Mac, Apple updated its App Store guidelines today with a change to its traditionally strict restrictions around push notifications. Apple has long banned apps from using notifications for “advertising, promotions, or direct marketing purposes,” but that changes today. Apps can now send marketing notifications when “customers have explicitly opted in to receive them.” Users must also be able to opt out of receiving the ads.

The change follows a couple incidents over the past two years in which Apple bent its own rules by sending out push notifications that read a lot like ads. Since other companies’ apps could be banned or have their push notification privileges revoked for that behavior, the moves were criticized as another example of Apple getting away with special treatment because it controls the platform.

Apple’s intention has generally been a good one here — no one wants to be spammed with notifications, especially not marketing messages they didn’t request. But the flat out ban led to some ambiguities that this new policy may be able to clear up. Can a retailer use a push notification to tell you about a sale, if you’ve already installed their app? Can Amazon encourage customers to buy a new phone through its app, as it recently did? Some of these notifications might be useful, and Apple’s new policy could let them through while giving customers control over whether they actually see them.

There were a handful of other updates that came down from Apple today, too. 9to5Mac says that Apple set a deadline for when Sign in with Apple has to be implemented: April 30th. The single sign-on system is supposed to offer a more secure alternative to Facebook and Google sign-ins, which are widely offered as a quick way to get people using a new app.

Apple also said it will more heavily scrutinize fortune telling and dating apps and will reject them if they do not “provide a unique, high-quality experience.” They’re now included under the same spam rules as fart and burp apps.

Another added rule bans apps that can be “used to commit or attempt to commit crimes of any kind by helping users evade law enforcement.”

Original website: http://bit.ly/38nyOCv

| Mary Chan | March 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

WOLL, cookware app with social sharing function

WOLL, a well-known Germany cookware brand released its’ app on Google Play store and Apple App store. Woll aims to create a healthy lifestyle platform which educates healthy cooking concept, provides discount price to exchange cookware, and to share cooking knowledge & healthy cooking recipes.

Healthy dining is very important for busy families in the modern world. The cooking method and cookware become a fundamental and important part of healthy dining obviously. All kitchenware sold in WOLL are international well-known brands which assure quality. For instance, 100% German made cookware brand WOLL, ergonomic cutting board brand Epicurean from America, stainless steel kitchenware brand Triangle from Germany, gadget brand ZYLISS from Switzerland, and lifestyle brand Full Circle from HK, America and etc.

WOLL will upload healthy cooking recipes and healthy life content to the “healthy cooking” column regularly. Besides, users can share their cooking experiences with photos to the “self-cooking space” and gain support via clicking “like”. Users can view other users’ posts to gain inspiration. Through the interaction with other users, both of them can receive benefit.

The app also contains “exchange center”. Users can earn diamond points through different methods. For example, register for WOLL app, share the posts in “healthy cooking’, upload posts to “self-cooking space”, share product information and join different activities. The diamond points earned can be exchanged for cookware for free or up to 50% off discount. After purchased any WOLL cookware, consumers can register for warranty in the app.

To start a healthy lifestyle through cooking, download WOLL mobile apps via Google Play Store or Apple App Store at once!

Refer to : https://www.facebook.com/wollhongkong/

Apple become China’s largest Western software seller, thanks to booming App Store

Geographic appstore estimates spanning multiple companies and platforms suggest that Apple’s App Store, buoyed by growth beyond just games, is the top individual seller by company in China, but not by platform.

In a report by AppAnnie, China is suspected to have exceeded the U.S. to become the largest market for the iOS App Store, pulling down between $5 billion and $6 billion in revenue. Should Apple not grow its share, and merely maintain, given existing smartphone market expansion trends, this puts Apple on a track to garner $16 billion in purchases by 2020.

Ben Schachter from Macquarie Research, looking at the report, claims that revenue from all Android stores combined will exceed that of the iOS app store in 2020, pulling down around $20 billion. However, Schachter believes that Apple will still hold the largest share when measured by company going forward.

Historically, the China market has been dominated by entertainment, but this trend has started to shift. Unexpected growth has come from productivity apps, buoyed by the proliferation of 4G in nascent markets.

Other markets pursued by Apple aren’t expected to grow quite as quickly as China has, however. As cited by both App Annie and Schachter, India’s app store will climb to only $2.1 billion in total, across all companies and platforms.

Any gain in the China market will help to expand Apple’s Services business, and fulfill CEO Tim Cook’s prognostication that it alone will be the size of a Fortune 100 company before the end of 2017. In a previous analysis, Schachter said that the App Store model is “one of the best business models ever created.”

http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/04/13/apple-now-chinas-largest-western-software-seller-thanks-to-booming-app-store

| Mary Chan | April 19, 2017 | Leave a comment | app development app development

Why you need MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and Prototype while developing your app?

Can’t wait to get your new idea to the market? Honestly, the market is already littered with apps that went all-in and failed to meet customer needs.

In order to minimize the aforementioned risk and to show a successful “Proof Of Concept” (POC) to your investors. You need to launch the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) & Prototype as to obtain consumer feedback first and furthermore to modify your app based on those received comments and responses.

Mobile application development is a great example of MVP concept. Years ago, native apps were designed and coded according to customers’ specifications. However by the time the app got completed, customer and market needs might inevitably changed.

Now you have three choices: 1) You can build a basic app (MVP or Prototype), 2) enhanced, or 3) with ultimate level, all-in! To be a MVP, the mobile app only need those basic functions, by no means to have the fully featured product at the very beginning stage. Thus, when you start with the MVP, you can limit your risks, both time and money, by reducing your initial investment and on the other hand maximize your returns by producing a more desired finished product in future based on the MVP.

Although wireframes could show the blueprint and the texture of the design, nothing brings you closer to your desired app than prototyping. The app may look great on the screen, but you never know if it works on end users until the clickable prototype. Prototypes not only use to help on providing the “Proof Of Concept” (POC), more importantly as to show any usability flows behind the wireframes and the concept.

App Promotion App Promotion Brand Building Online Marketing | admin | July 5, 2016 | Leave a comment

You Can’t Afford Any of These 4 Mobile App Design Mistakes

Mistakes made in the past can come back to haunt you in the present. This fact remains true for mobile app design as well. Designing errors can come back to impact the popularity of your app. They could be the difference between success and failure.

Yes, designing errors can destroy your app. In the cut-throat world of mobile apps, you cannot afford to make these errors. As a business, you’re going to spend a lot of money to build an app and you expect it to deliver high ROI. This won’t happen, if you’ve an app whose design is not up to the mark.

Let’s take a look at four such design mistakes that have the power to break your app:

1. Disregarding first impressions.
Think love at first sight, think app design. Saying your app is going to face a lot of competition out there, is an understatement. The competition is going to be humongous. This is why first impressions matter. Your primary aim is to make sure your app captures the attention of users as soon as they open it.

This is important because app abandonment rate is as high as 20 percent across all categories. If you don’t want your app to be a part of this 20 percent, start focusing on making a great first impression on your users. This can be done by ensuring your app loads quickly and still takes users through engaging animations that hold their attention.

2. Ignoring onboarding.
Designers forget that the app’s target audience will be using the app and its functionalities for the first time. While the app’s usability seems like a breeze to the designers and developers who’ve built it, the same might not be true for first time users. These users expect a walkthrough that illustrates the app’s features.

If you haven’t given the necessary importance to “onboarding”, you might lose out on a potential user who is looking for a demonstration of what the app does, to make better sense of its features and functionality.

There is a school of thought that says the “need to onboard a user” essentially means an app’s design isn’t user friendly. While that argument does have some merit, one needs to understand that “app use” must be stress-free for everybody. This is why onboarding is critical to the success of your app.

3. Lack of consistency.
Designers have this tendency to go overboard with their creativity. This leads to a situation wherein the app suffers from designing inconsistencies. The background color differs across all app pages, different typography is used all over the app and navigation patterns differ across the app.

If your application design suffers from inconsistent use of design elements and features, its UI goes for a toss. This means your app will require a steep learning curve that’s not appreciated by users.

4. Thinking through the Web UX Prism
There are occasions when mobile app designers tend to forget they are not creating a desktop app, but a mobile app. A mobile user has different expectations from an app as compared to somebody who’s using a desktop/laptop. The former do not have the luxury of larger screens, which means you need to focus on design minimalism and ensure only the most relevant design elements are visible onscreen.

You also need to keep minute details in mind, for example the width of the human finger to design the “hit” area. Make all clickable buttons as large as possible so that users don’t encounter the “fat finger problem”.

So, there you have it, four design mistakes that you must avoid at all costs. A great way of ensuring you don’t make these errors is putting yourself in the shoes of target users. It is user-oriented design that will help your app attract and retain users.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243252

| Mary Chan | May 17, 2016 | Leave a comment | google @en

Does ‘pay by app’ mean an end to shopping queues?

Contactless payments may be all the rage these days, but you still have tap your smartphone, smartwatch or card on a terminal of some kind.And at busy times, this can mean standing in queues or hanging around for ages waiting for the restaurant bill to arrive.All that could be about to change.”Payments are vanishing inside apps,” explains Dave Birch, a payments expert at Consult Hyperion. “That’s where all the interesting stuff is going on.”Apple, Google and Samsung have all anticipated the significance of this and offer in-app payments via their own apps.
The services like Android Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay all rely on the contactless payment infrastructure – embedded near-field communication (NFC) chips communicating transaction data with a payment terminal.
Yet NFC isn’t exactly new technology, and adoption rates for some of these services have not been stellar so far. Plus, US contactless infrastructure lags behind that of Europe.
Which is why alternative approaches – such as in-app payments – that do away with the need for point-of-sale hardware completely are causing such excitement.
Cash direct
This approach is also being adopted for easy person-to-person payments. “Everything [the user] can do within the banking app, he can do within the keyboard, our keyboard,” he says. The payee doesn’t need to have Paykey installed to receive the money – but he or she would need to be a member of the Paym database, which links UK bank accounts to mobile phone numbers. The Paym service currently has 3.2m users. Other person-to-person apps, like Venmo, are also hoping to corner the market for such transactions.

And when EU regulation comes into force in 2018 requiring banks to provide access to data for third party app developers, companies like Facebook or Twitter may well start incorporating payment functionality within their own apps.
“Once you can connect Facebook directly to your bank account, why would you go to your bank app?” asks Mr Birch. What price convenience? But there’s another issue at stake with mobile payment apps, besides convenience and functionality: security.”Mobile apps are miniature web apps, so there are many vulnerabilities associated with those,” says Tom Kellermann, chief executive of security investment fund Strategic Cyber Ventures. Around half of mobile payment apps have not had their code effectively audited for security flaws prior to release, he believes. Image captionDespite the rise of smartphones, about 85% of global transactions are still cash-based Users are also at risk of having banking credentials stolen after downloading malicious payment apps masquerading as official ones, he warns.
Mr Kellermann says his advice to users would include:

avoid using public wi-fi wherever possible install security software on your smartphone use strong passphrases on banking apps avoid leaving Bluetooth on when you’re not using it.Security issues aside, there can be no doubt that the smartphone is transforming the way we pay for things and send money to each other. But don’t write off cash and cards just yet, says Ann Cairns, president of international markets at MasterCard. She points out that around 85% of the world’s transactions are still in cash. “And that figure isn’t going down,” she says. There is also a great deal of costly infrastructure in place to handle card payments, so retailers will be reluctant to jettison all that immediately. But as ever cheaper smartphones come onto the market, mobile payments are only set to grow.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35933801

| Mary Chan | April 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

Here’s which smartphone apps have the most usage on iOS & Android

Today has shared the monthly report on both smartphone and app marketshare. The data released today reflects the three-month average ending in December of 2015. The report breaks down the top smartphone platforms, manufacturers, and perhaps most interestingly, the most popular apps…

Facebook remains the most used app on smartphones, reaching 76.8% of all smartphone users that are 18 or older. Facebook Messenger comes in second place with 62.5%, while apps from Google round out the top 7.

Apple Music, which accounts for anyone that uses the Music app on iOS, even if they don’t use the streaming aspect, achieved 32.2% reach during this time. Apple Maps came in slightly lower at 29.1%, compared to the 50.9% of Google Maps. The extra reach of Google Maps, however, is likely due to the fact that the app is available on both iOS and Android.

One interesting thing to note, however, is that these reach percentages only account for smartphone users 18 years or older. This restriction likely skews data somewhat. For instance, Snapchat does not make the list of the top 15 most used apps, despite it being one of the most popular and fastest growing apps among teenagers. Likewise, Twitter comes in 15th place in this ranking, but would likely place higher if the data accounted for users under the age 18.

Apple still holds the title as the top smartphone manufacturer this time around, although it did slip slightly. The report shows that Apple holds 42.9% of the market, a 0.7% change compared to the previous month’s report.

On the Android side, Samsung, LG and Motorola all saw minor increases of 0.8%, 0.5%, and 0.5%, respectively. It’s worth noting that the data released from last month also saw Apple decline by 1%, making it back-to-back months of decline for the company. Nevertheless, it still leads overall.

In terms of the top smartphone platforms, Android still holds the lead with 53.3% of the market, an increase of 1%. Apple’s iOS accounts for 42.9%. Again, that’s a 0.7% decrease compared to last month.

With arguments of “peak iPhone” floating around, these numbers are somewhat interesting, but in the long run, minor marketshare fluctuations are nothing to worry too much about.

http://9to5mac.com/2016/02/04/most-popular-smartphone-apps/

| Mary Chan | February 5, 2016 | Leave a comment

Discovering Opportunities To Drive Your Mobile Web & App Optimization Strategy

With the steady rise of mobile search, SEO practitioners these days need to consider how to optimize both their websites and apps for mobile search visibility.

Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm update, released in April 2015, gave a boost in mobile search results to pages with good mobile user experiences. Along those lines, Google has sought to increase the visibility of app content within mobile search results through app indexing. Thus, it’s key to have a strategic approach to our mobile optimization efforts — both on our websites and apps.

The now more mature mobile web and app optimization tools make this analysis possible, and straightforward, too.

1. Which Are Your Industry’s Top Mobile Web & App Competitors?
Let’s start with the fundamentals by identifying your competitors in mobile web and app search visibility. Are your competitors the same for both mobile web and apps? Are they the same as your desktop search competitors?

2. How Does Your Overall Mobile Traffic Performance Compare With That Of Your Competitors?
A question that arises frequently at the beginning of a mobile optimization process is, “What type of traffic can be expected from the optimized mobile presence?”

Although there’s no completely accurate way to answer (as it depends a number of factors such as your own efforts, your competitors’ activities, audience trends, industry seasonality, search platforms, algorithm updates and so on). That should give you an idea of what is achievable if you maximize the visibility of all your channels:

Mobile Web Traffic Potential
You can do something similar with your mobile app competitors and look at installs, active users and sessions. This data can also provide a reference to take into consideration:

Downloads Estimation App

For apps specifically, it’s good to look at traffic from within app stores, as well. SimilarWeb lets you see this information not only for in-store search, but also for all in-store related traffic.

3. What Are Your Current Mobile Web & App Search Rankings Versus Your Competitors’?
Once you have identified your competitors and their overall performance, you can dig deeper and analyze rankings. Look not only at your own mobile search rankings and trends, but at those of your competitors, too.

Mobile App Keywords

Besides in-store rankings and keywords, it’s also possible to obtain external search queries from search engines referring traffic to your mobile app (and your competitors).This will give you a much better understanding of the keywords generating visibility to your app presence and how your competitors are leveraging it already:

Mobile App In-Store & External Search Keywords

Now is also a good time to identify queries for which your competitors are ranking higher than you in mobile web search results and for which they have lost their rankings. You should strengthen your presence for these queries, and in cases where they have lost rankings, take the opportunity to fill the rankings gap.

4. How Does Your Mobile Search Visibility Differ From Your Desktop Search Visibility?
Take the keywords that you have identified in the mobile search analysis above and compare them with the top ones that you have been prioritizing in your SEO efforts until now. Are they different or the same? Use your current organic search traffic engagement and conversion metrics to prioritize keywords that will likely bring you greater benefits.

5. Which Of Your Best-Performing And High-Priority Pages Are Still Not Mobile-Ready Or Mobile-Optimized?
Once you have the keywords that you should target for your mobile optimization efforts, identify which pages you should be optimizing for them, and determine whether or not they are already mobile-friendly.

You can automate this by aggregating the relevant or already ranking URLs for the keywords you want to target and importing them into URL Profiler. From here, you can easily verify if they pass Google’s “Mobile Friendly” validation and their “Mobile PageSpeed” score by integrating with Google’s API.

6. Which Of Your Competitors Are App Indexing, And How Significant Is The Impact? For Which Of These Queries Are You App Indexing, Too?
Besides prioritizing those queries for which you have identified there’s a high interest in both mobile app and web search, you should also take into consideration the ones that your competitors are already targeting and benefiting from.

http://searchengineland.com/discovering-opportunities-drive-mobile-web-app-optimization-strategy-237625

| Mary Chan | January 13, 2016 | Leave a comment

People Spent an Insane Amount of Money on Apps This Year

Apple device owners spent more than $20 billion in the App Store in 2015. Apple users broke App Store records by spending more than $1.1 billion on apps and in-app purchases this holiday season.

That figure includes money spent during the two week period ending on Jan. 3. New Year’s Day was the biggest day in App Store history, with more than $144 million spent in the 24-hour period.

Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president who now leads the App Store, said that Apple device users spent more than $20 billion in the App Store throughout all of 2015. That’s double the 2013 figure.

Apple is now busy expanding the App Store to new platforms, like the Apple TV. The early crop of Apple TV apps already provide some insight as to how apps behave differently on the TV versus the phone.

http://time.com/4169153/apple-app-store-stats-2015/

| Mary Chan | January 11, 2016 | Leave a comment | apps hk apps hk apps hk apps hk apps hk apps hk apps 製作公司 @en apps 製作公司 @en apps 製作公司 @en apps 製作公司 @en apps 製作公司 @en apps 製作公司 @en HK 開發 APP HK 開發 APP HK 開發 APP HK 開發 APP HK 開發 APP HK 開發 APP hong kong app development hong kong app development hong kong app development hong kong app development hong kong app development hong kong app development review review review review review

Start-ups refocus on mobile web as app-only strategy loses fizz

With apps losing their novelty and e-commerce firms revisiting their mobile web strategies, Google has emerged as the winner retaining its dominance of online ad. Apps as e-commerce companies told anyone who cared to listen, were the future. Many put their money where their mouths were, altogether withdrawing from the mobile web.

Now, as apps lose their novelty, and as smartphone users uninstall apps to clear up memory, these companies are revisiting their mobile web strategies. Start-ups across the board, especially those that had moved unevenly towards the app, are scrambling to improve their mobile web offerings.

Earlier this year, companies had reduced resources and efforts towards mobile web, and the app-only strategy was taking centre-stage. But increasingly, we are seeing re-prioritization of mobile web and companies are giving equal attention to mobile web again.

Nobody is saying apps aren’t important. But it has become crucial for start-ups to have functional and well-designed mobile websites or web apps.

Few predicted this shift, which wasn’t even on the radar of many start-ups a few months ago. The mobile web never died, and for those who moved to app-only…it was a faulty decision in the first place. For service providers like us, it is never an either/or choice. Slowly you are seeing a lot of innovation happen on the web; for instance, there are app-like features now available on the web.

India is expected to have close to 400 million mobile Internet users by June 2016, according to a report released in November by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and market research firm IMRB International.

A majority of these users will access the Internet only through their smartphones. With the growing popularity of mobile apps, which many say offer a superior customer experience than conventional websi-tes, start-ups shifted their pro-duct and business strategies towards the app at the expense of desktop and mobile websites.

During the funding boom of 2014-15, many investors regarded the number of app downloads as one of the indicators of a start-up’s performance. Entrepreneurs and marketing heads rushed to maximize app downloads. Soon, however, it was evident that they didn’t necessarily result in high growth.

Consequently, the focus moved to usage and customer engagement. In this scenario, many start-ups and their investors have accepted that their expectations of an app-only world haven’t materialized. There are several reasons for this. Many first-time Internet users, especially in smaller cities and towns, prefer using their mobile web browsers to shop and surf the Internet rather than download a multitude of apps on their low-cost smartphones that have limited storage.

Customers also tend to get rid of most of the apps they download because of the inconvenience of frequent app updates and the limited storage space on phones, studies have shown. Now, many start-ups are moving to building mobile web apps, which can potentially offer the convenience and superior experience of so-called native apps, but without their limitations.

A few business-to-business (B2B) start-ups are also increasing their focus on the web.

As long as you can offer an app-like experience, mobile web is better for customers and companies. Customers don’t have to keep downloading updates and they save on space. For companies, it’s cheaper to build a mobile app compared to a native app. The shift back to mobile web will also affect advertising and marketing spending.

Mobile web continues to be a way for consumers to engage with content. When it comes to monetization, it will continue on both. Still, there are people who believe that apps will eventually call the shots.In the mobile Internet world, it is an app war. And in an app war, you can’t win by betting on a mobile website.

http://www.livemint.com/Companies/LQEj72VEodIgrCscvSB07O/Startups-refocus-on-mobile-web-as-apponly-strategy-loses-f.html

Apple now lets apps send ads in push notifications

WOLL, cookware app with social sharing function

Apple become China’s largest Western software seller, thanks to booming App Store

Why you need MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and Prototype while developing your app?

You Can’t Afford Any of These 4 Mobile App Design Mistakes

Does ‘pay by app’ mean an end to shopping queues?

Here’s which smartphone apps have the most usage on iOS & Android

Discovering Opportunities To Drive Your Mobile Web & App Optimization Strategy

People Spent an Insane Amount of Money on Apps This Year

Start-ups refocus on mobile web as app-only strategy loses fizz

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