Month: November 2020

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How Salesforce can benefit businesses in 2021?

salesforce

Do you in business deal with several vendors? Do you find it hard to follow up on all vendors, prospects, orders, and project deliverables? Also, is this impacting your business productivity? If the answer to these are yes, then the time is ripe for you to make a change. Businesses invest big-time on approaching vendors to invite quotations, and then focus hard on knowing about the statuses. With Salesforce at your disposal for vendor management, you can utilize any prospects and various vendors from a single location apart from dealing with your chief business operations.

Salesforce has been a blessing

Being a leading cloud computing platforms, Salesforce has totally transformed the manner in which organizations carry out business by bringing a hugely dynamic, customized and user-friendly platform for holistic implementation services, i.e. Force.com. With Force.com, developers can rapidly make and deploy ideal cloud applications that are compact, safe, and accessible and without fretting over provisioning hardware or application stacks. Also, this platform offers different tools for explaining the data model, the business rationale, and the user interface.

Two To Tango

It does not matter what you’re creating: a totally refurbished UI, merging data from several sources, or utilizing frameworks such as AngularJS, Ember, React, or Backbone, there will be scenarios where you would have to heavily utilize JavaScript. In case you are keeping a track of web development for the last few years, you would have seen the rise in the appeal of JavaScript frameworks in terms of building web applications. Currently, JavaScript frameworks have deservedly made their way into the Salesforce development lifecycle.

Top Salesforce Trends

Hence, at present it is very much obvious that it has become essential to utilize a CRM to boost sales and new customers and look after the retention rates. If someone mentions ‘CRM,’ then the first thing that comes to our mind is Salesforce, as this happens to be the czar in the CRM market. Hence, let us look at some of the famous Salesforce trends and the way businesses are going to capitalize on Salesforce in 2021.

Mobile Evolution

The trend of buying via mobile, and helping the software to back and turn the user experience convenient via disentangled interface design, began many moons ago. Salesforce will keep growing in this regard and the same thing can be expected this year. Among the mobile Salesforce prospects featured in 2021 happens to be a mobile application that helps to deal with the CRM instance on the go for all users in the system and building mobile web-pages and applications with Salesforce SDK with lesser involvement of code.

Artificial Intelligence

One of the biggest technical innovations in recent times, AI has started spreading its tentacles to the majority of the sectors. Even sales departments, regardless of any business, can derive a lot of advantages from it. Salesforce unleashed Einstein AI some time back, and while it is growing consistently, at present it is very much handy to improve the functioning of current products to derive maximum out of them. Sales Cloud permits AI to spot the ideal opportunities and offer useful insights through a sales analytics app and add more authenticity to the predictions. With this, it is possible to set automatic notifications to work on potential leads and as a result enhance the prospects of successful deals. A machine learning feature helps in case classifications and by utilizing Service Cloud, customer support representatives can solve routine cases early. Experts forecast that in 2021, executing Einstein AI into Salesforce products is going to be the most common request to Salesforce consulting companies and individuals.

Tailored to suit specific requirements

These days, it is not simply adequate to utilize a product out of the box as it is. Customization was very much there in Salesforce, but business industries in large numbers are triggering demand for certain functionalities and customizing the product in line with particular requirements, considering the array of various tools needed for a certain business to operate, such as billing systems, risk management, project management features, and other industry-specific things and workflows. It is obvious that being in the apparel business is different from being in the business offering booking services. This year, especially businesses have to seriously ponder over streamlining of their CRM. Like any software customization, you will have to get professional counseling to ensure that everything is established as per your requirements. Selecting the appropriate Salesforce consulting partner will define the success of your business. So, while taking such a call, don’t ignore the certifications and accord weightage to official Salesforce partners as this will help you in getting the desired outcomes for your business but also will save time and money for you.

Customer 360 platform

It is becoming extremely critical to nurture good ties with customers these days, as the technology evolves the satisfaction of existing customers matters a lot for businesses. This precisely the reason why assistance departments of all companies are emphasizing on offering excellent services to their clients. Currently, the Salesforce Customer 360 feature can lead to a lot of prosperity for the businesses. At the conclusion last year, Salesforce launched Customer 360 Truth edition that permits merging information of customers from all Salesforce applications at one place. By providing a unique ID to a user, you can see all previous interactions and profile details to ascertain how to provide the right solutions for any problems and display the superior level of customer care service.

Marketing Automation

This has to be highlighted, as this year we might see the proclivity to assign the resources to strategic goals and improving normal tasks devoid of human intervention. Marketing Sales Cloud can enhance marketing campaigns by helping you to dispatch automated emails, arrange customer data to offer targeted discounts, perform A/B tests, and many more things. That is the reason why business owners’ and marketers’ will be focusing on the same this year.

Finally

As a leading phenomenon in the CRM market, Salesforce will set new trends in almost all the industries. Having said that, the enhancement of the current Salesforce features, and the new releases are very important in helping businesses to grow further.

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7 Ways To Bypass Mobile App Usability Problems

Bypass Mobile App Usability Problems

Introduction

In the contemporary scenario, digital experiences, especially mobile, are wholly entrenched in daily functions; With people being themselves oblivious of the difference between the digital world and actual world. Usability is integral to mobile app development and helps in enabling smooth user experiences. Navigation is not to be ignored in a mobile app as it can seriously dent the product’s user experience (UX). This article strives to offer an overview of mobile app usability and seven ideal practices to deal with general usability issues.

What do you mean by Mobile App Usability?

Usability is explained as the ability to evaluate the ease of use of a system. Usability leads to the efficacy, capability, and contentment which enables users to accomplish certain goals. Mobile app usability is a part of UX that builds the whole tie between a user and the product. Mobile app usability enables learnability. A successful app must be intuitive, and the user should be able to handle the same without much difficulty. In case a user experiences an issue, resolving the same should not consume too much of time. Mobile app onboarding helps guide users through a mobile app, improves usability, and recover from errors.

Principles Guiding Mobile App Usability

Several factors help in a mobile app’s usability that will have a bearing on the operational efficiency and help a user accomplish goals. A usable interface should ideally have three main results:

Mobile app usability helps the user to be at home with the user interface (UI)

Users should achieve anything with minimum fuss using the app

Apps have zero scope for error. In case of any malfunctions,everything regarding the same becomes immaterial.

10 usability heuristics regarding user interface design

Our team gave ten usability heuristics guiding user interface design,

1. The System Status has to be very clear

System components and forms should be highly visible to make user aware of the context. The system has to inform the users about what is happening via proper feedback.

2. Keep It Simple

The system should converse in the language that could be easily understood by users. No usage of any incomprehensible technical jargon. Keep it simple and make information appear in a natural and proper order.

3. Users can err but you can’t

Users at times resort to actions in an app that they never desired to. In case of a mistake on the part of the user, ensure an imminent “emergency exit” without any kind of explanation. Mobile apps must possess undo and redo functions.

4. Maintain Certain Consistency

Consistency happens to be a bedrock of an ideal UX design as it brings down confusion. Uniqueness has to be maintained in an app to make it distinct from other apps. However, regular components in an app should not be diluted, to make your mobile app’s appearance consistent. This comprises visual, functional and external consistencies. Typefaces, fonts, buttons, and labels have to be uniform. With consistency, users can use existing awareness while using your mobile app.

5. Keep Errors At Bay

It is better to avoid mistakes or glitches from cropping up. Do away with error-prone situations or examine them and provide users with a confirmation option prior to carrying out an action.

6. Recognition Not Recall

Make user’s to think less by having objects, actions, and options clear. The user should not be forced to memorize information from one part of the application to another. Instructions have to be easy, clear and very much accessible at all times.

7. Flexibility And Efficiency Of Use

The system should be equally accommodative to both fresh and experienced users. Also, Permit users to personalize regular actions.

8. No Unwanted Info

No irrelevant or rarely sought info please. Such unnecessary inclusion can dilute the impact of relevant information. Clutter is curse as far as design is concerned. Each extra button, image, and icon turns the screen ugly and the product’s user flow very complex. It’s a must to do away with anything that isn’t needed for the mobile app design. Always go for a simple and intuitive design.

9. Tackle Error Deftly

Error tackling leaves a lot of impact on UX. Inadequate error handling together with incomprehensible error messages lead to frustration and turns users away from an app. Always keep in mind that users are not tech-friendly to find out errors. So, tell users what’s wrong in simple language. Every error message has to show:

What caused error and why

What an user should do to fix the problem

10. Help And Documentation

It is a good idea to communicate with a system without documentation, at times it becomes necessary to offer documentation. Any such info has to be easily accessible, fixated on particular tasks and not be too large.

7 Ideal Practices Regarding Mobile App Usability

Factoring in Nielsen’s heuristic principles, the following happens to be seven best practices to deal with regular mobile app usability problems.

1. Attain Cross-platform Compatibility

A usual grouse with mobile users is an app that does not work for their model of smartphone. Android and iOS, for example, are two diametrically opposite platforms.

It is not possible to clone an iOS app for Android and vice versa. Every operating system follows totally different programming, design, and interface aspects. For example, navigation varies on each platform dramatically. So, you have to create an app to have a native feel so that users can communicate properly.

2. Provide Value Straight Away

In case you wish to retain new users for your app, you have to ensure that they spot the value in the beginning itself, ideally during the onboarding process. If you can’t make users remain with you initially, then you will lose them forever. Hence, it’s important to ensure that you provide imminent value. Good user on boarding brings down the rate pertaining to abandonment apart from accelerating long-term success metrics like user retention and lifetime.

3. Smooth Navigation

Poor navigation is a sin, so just avoid that in mobile apps. The user should face no problem while trying to find what they want, the navigation should be as smooth as possible. While concentrating on usability, ensure that your products or services are easy to find. Keep in mind complications can lead to abandoning your app.

4. Clear & Concise Content

It goes without saying that content has to be simple while designing apps for mobile. Also, the content has to be relevant to the users as it should help users achieve certain objectives or find something they want. Consumers require full information for purchase, and not having basic information can lead to a poor conversion rate.The content has to be in sync with mobile app style,it can’t be a simple cut, copy version from the web. Avoid cramming excessive content inside the app as it can annoy users to a large extent and force them to stay away from the app. So, follow the rule that minimal is sufficient and maximum can be chaotic.

5. Bring Down The Amount Of Steps

Steps involved in finishing an action have to be lesser and make sure that they don’t frustrate users. It is always better to cut down on the process and keep finding ways to ease the same further. Even an extra button, image, and icon can turn the screen and the product’s user flow is very complex. It’s in your best interest to have a few important content and interface components. Therefore adopt a simple and instinctive design. As for e-commerce or retail apps, checking out can be a bit tedious. You need to key in your residential address, email address, and give an affirmation that you chose the apt product all along using a small screen. This process can be simplified further by making an account through a Facebook login. Devising your app with a convenient checkout option will even prompt users to buy more in less time.

6. Decrease The Scope of Scrolling

Prioritizing Content helps greatly to the usability of an app. Users should access most of the information within their screen size. Scroll down option should be avoided as much as possible and used only in rare cases, however, side-scrolling can be done away with. If someone wants to scroll sideways, it usually makes valuable content invisible.

7. Give Due Importance To Landscape Orientation

While building a mobile app, most of the people don’t give importance to landscape orientation. A good mobile app should be accommodative towards both portrait and landscape to cater to all the demand, especially for an app having video content.

Avoid Testing At Your Own Peril

The vital thing to do to test usability is to utilize mobile A/B testing platforms. A/B testing permits you to collate two or more variations of a certain app design or layout. For instance, you can examine the potency of buttons and how they vary in boosting conversions. Which design layout converts more users? Rather than surmising what users want or desire in your mobile app, test to clarify these conjectures. Therefore to enhance mobile app usability, you cannot ignore testing.

Finally

The success of mobile apps depend on simply one major thing: way users view the product. The usability helps a user evaluate your app on the basis of the ease of use, utility, and efficiency and overall experience factors. Usability can turn a new user into a loyal one, long-term customer, and eventually swell your bottom line.

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5 reasons why in-house mobile app development is ideal

5 reasons why in-house mobile app development is ideal

It won’t be an exaggeration to say that mobile apps have, literally, taken over our lives. With four billion people online and 31 billion linked devices, mobile apps are emerging as the most sought-after means of doing business for everyone from your customers to allies to your workers. As per Yahoo Flurry’s State of Mobile report, consumers in the US at present are on mobile devices for over five hours daily, and 90 percent of their time on mobile is consumed by apps. As a result, the time spent on mobile web browsers has come down by several notches to mere eight percent. Due to the craze for apps, your website is having a tough time to retain traffic. This explains the potency of apps in these times.

In case you’re not into creating customer-facing or enterprise-facing mobile applications already, the time is ripe for you to do the same. So, here are five reasons why training your staff to create apps in-house will be ideal for you.

1. All are into apps

According to Gartner, 79 percent of organizations which were surveyed have hiked their mobile expenditure by 36 percent since 2015, and by the conclusion of 2017, 25 percent of enterprises will have their own app store to deal with corporate-approved apps. As per a new study by Wakefield Research of 1,000 executives at entities with more than1,000 employees dissects the the business demand:

97 percent of executives stated that employees or classification inside their organization have sought new mobile apps or app features.

98 percent of executives are of the view that their company would immensely benefit from certain kinds of mobile apps.

2. Enterprise apps enhance capability in the domain

If you have safe apps on phones or tablets they offer the best method to connect workers and exchange instant data and business intelligence. With proprietary and safe mobile apps, data can be evaluated and updated quickly by salespeople, technicians, partners and others who want instant and genuine information to finish their processes, at any time and from anywhere in the globe.

3. Customers are largely turning mobile

These days purchases through Mobile are going above in-store and even website-oriented buys. Reason for this revolutionary change happens to be young adult consumers. “People are increasingly preferring mobile purchases,” says Sachin Gupta, CMO at Code Brew. “69 percent of millennials buy from their mobile phones and this trend is going to rise by many manifolds by 2020.” As per Google’s Mobile Path to Purchase report, 26 percent of consumers consider a mobile app as the point of beginning when it comes to search with the objective to buy.

4. Mobile apps boost loyalty among customers

Apps go a long way in enhancing customer loyalty. The logo of a company’s mobile app on their phones makes an impression on them constantly. And if the app is linked in anyway to your company’s loyalty program, it leaves a positive effect. As per a report by SmallBizTrends 70 percent of smartphone users are using their smartphone to gather points to earn discounts. These also facilitate smart location-triggered features such as geofenced push notifications of discounts and reviews.

5. Third party app development can be costly and inefficient

Assigning mobile app development would come across a convenient strategy, it has its own drawbacks. According to Wakefield study, 96 percent of companies who enlisted the services of third-party vendors faced problems, such as:

Development costs spiked considerably (43 percent)

Huge maintenance expenses (41 percent), and

Deficit in customizable options (39 percent)

Moreover, 92 percent stated that the third-party came up with applications that was way below their expectations.

Opting for external vendors or developers also entail a lot of risks. These could be anything from inferior product quality, rampant delays as a result of different time zones and source code insecurity,including the problem of traps that make customer information available to hackers for misuse. So, these kinds of risks are not worth taking up.

Tips regarding app creation internally

Looking for app developers to work for your company is any day desirable. But, the short duration or seasonal type can turn this into an expensive affair. As per Glassdoor, the US national average wage for a mobile app developer in 2017 happened to be $92,067. This implies that you are paying more than $19,000 extra simply to onboard that new employee prior to even writing a line of code. Also as per the Wakefield study, 42 percent of businesses who outsourced their mobile app development said they don’t have adequate skilled staff and that is why they opted for external sources. However, mobile app development skills are very convenient and affordable to gain. Training your company’s entire IT team in every aspect of mobile app development (including the latest Advanced Java, Python, Selenium 3.0 or Angular coding), will be more cost-effective than the hiring expenses of one new employee, excluding their salary.

Conclusion

Mobile apps are increasingly turning out to be extremely necessary for businesses. By outsourcing mobile app development your company is leaning heavily on another business and turns everything into a costly affair and even endangers your code and customer data.

Selecting new employees is also very expensive, however upgrading your staff with the existing technologies of mobile app development can be a good business proposition. The dynamism and cost-effectiveness your company enjoys turns you very competitive and facilitates fresh mobile marketing prospects.