Category: Mobile App Development

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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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Powerful ways to convert and retain app users through personalization

Powerful ways to convert and retain app users through personalization

There are 4.5 million apps on leading app stores and this only proves that the competition is only getting fiercer and fiercer. Companies are totally aware of the same as they vie for customers’ attention for their own mobile creations. The present pandemic has only increased this competition as apps have become the chief source to communicate with the external world.

The entities in the e-commerce, health, fitness, and media and entertainment domains, the pandemic has proved to be a boon. With consumers depending a lot on the digital touch points to communicate with brands, many enterprises witnessed digital traffic rising like never before.

To illustrate with an example, there was a 25 percent increase in eCommerce app installations during the pandemic (Q2 vs. Q1 2020), 7% more than the usual times. Once you attract the users’ attention it becomes imperative to retain them as well.

An effective manner to regularly drive user engagement, conversions and retention is by adopting app personalization into your mobile strategy. This write up tries to explore three ways to retain your fresh app users with personalization.

3 Ways To turn and retain users via Personalization

Deploy Voice To Add Personalized Touch to Search Experience

It is predicted that with the conclusion of 2020, 50 percent of search will happen through voice technology. Also, as per A December 2019 survey of Comscore Mobilens Plus, US smart speaker owners have begun using their devices to ask regular questions, stream music, and have updated info on sports, traffic, and weather and other things. Each voice search query requested by a particular user gives an intimation about their imminent requirements, needs, and preferences. Utilize this data to quickly generate product or content advice on the basis of partial or full search terms, assisting users to find what they want quicker. It needs to be kept in mind that these recommendations are becoming precise with every eventual search action of a user, aiding you to cut down the distance from product discovery to purchase.

Fully Extract The Potency Of Predictive Guidances

As competition and traffic to digital platforms spikes it only makes sense to employ advanced technology like AI, which offers an option for businesses to connect with users in a big way, apart from enhancing profitability. AI and machine learning-powered apps enable entities to fully extract the data gathered through online traffic and mobile devices to take user experience up by several notches. By deploying AI you can figure out trends and offer advice to make more logical and relevant options to get involved with your users. Netflix is a classic example that uses AI in an entertainment/media app, customize video content to suit personal preferences and contexts. As a result, the concerned or relevant product or content guidance get featured at the top.

Customize App Navigation Experience To Suit All

We know how useful users’ search, browsing, click pattern, and consumption history are. However, you can even personalize the way your users navigate your mobile app. Rest of the criteria such as gender, buyer personas, timezone, seasons/weather, etc. can be fully exploited to personalize the banner images, graphics, CTAs, popular products, offers, etc.

It is even important to utilize insights from your users’ most regular ways towards conversion to cash in on their navigational sojourn properly. If the navigational journey becomes more personalized, then there is a high prospect of your users finding what they need.

Last But Not The Least

The mobile app users desire and seek an excellent, customized user experience from the initial app launch itself. People in domains such as health, fitness, and media and entertainment the above-mentioned statement has a lot of relevance, especially in the post-Corona scenario. As we embrace the new normal, it’s a must to opt for consulting assistance. Our qualified and experienced mobile experts can work with you and answer any of your queries round the clock.

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How is NFC different from other payment mechanisms?

How is NFC different from other payment mechanisms?

Introduction

We have heard a lot about Apple Pay and Google Pay. However, does anyone know what they represent? They are nothing, but NFC mobile payment types. NFC happens to be a major technological breakthrough, which has given consumers the facility of tap-and-go. At the heart of every mobile action is a tiny microchip and radio antenna performing the tap-and-go functions that is near field communication (NFC). This encryption technology is changing the manner in which users are obtaining information, offering payments, and exchanging data across devices. This write up is nothing but a genuine effort to intimate people about the entire spectrum of the NFC mobile payments.

What do you mean by NFC?

This is nothing but a mechanism that permits contactless communication to facilitate data exchange between devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. With NFC at your disposal, you can simply wave your phone in the direction of an enabled device and exchange information without the need of a connection. Given the ease and swiftness, the technology has become a widely used one.

Its way of functioning

It is very convenient to conclude that NFC is nothing but another form of Wi-Fi or Bluetooth technology. All the three work on the mechanism of wireless communication and data transfer, however there is a difference. The NFC functions by utilizing electromagnetic fields, but both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth rely on radio transmissions. NFC happens to be a section of RFID (radio-frequency identification), a technology that helps spot things via radio waves. RFID is not a new phenomenon, in fact, the technology has been in vogue for decades in the form of activities such as scanning things at grocery stores and luggage on baggage claims. The basics behind the technology are very similar, but the operation is restricted to the extent of proximity. For the majority of users the proximity control is an important security aspect considering the crucial part it plays in mobile payment.

Types of NFC devices

NFC devices are of two types: active and passive. Passive devices comprises things such as smart posters, merchandise beacons, and contactless POS terminals. These can make available information for active devices, but cannot obtain external information. As for Active devices, they can dispatch radio-frequency currents that communicate and get data from enabled hosts.

Not a mere digital wallet

NFC can be easily restricted to the aspect of mobile payment, but the reality is that it can be used in many other arenas apart from tap-and-go purchases. NFC can be a potent tool for interactive marketing. Armed with NFC, marketers can easily reach out to their target audience by using instant data and delivering personalized messages. With the help of NFC, it becomes easier to promote loyalty programs and cut out the possibility of gathering multiple rewards cards. The NFC’s ability to engage customers can be best illustrated with the real estate market. By tagging NFC on real estate, signs, or listings a buyer can be helped in various manners. Apart from providing details regarding a property, agents can also give images, floorplans, graphical representation of the whole property, and other things buyers would love to know. This type of interaction can be a very meaningful way to establish valuable connections between brands and their consumers.

Security Concerns

It can be worrisome for some people to perform transactions via mobile phones. After all, everyone desires safety of their data and money. Even with banks and credit card safety is of paramount significance. As far as electronic transactions are concerned there is a modicum of risk. However, payments made via NFCs are considered they are very safe and secure. The data in an NFC transaction is encrypted and dynamic, implying that it keeps on changing, dissimilar to the data on a swipe card, which happens to be static—data remains on the rear of your card. So, NFC is a mechanism that ensures secure monetary transactions.

The way of functioning of Dynamic Encryption

Instead of storing the credit card number of the device, mobile payments utilize something called tokenization. In case of Apple Pay, once a snap of a credit card is taken and loaded into their iPhone, Apple dispatches every particulars to the bank pertaining to the card or network. After this, banks and networks hide the bank details through a series of randomly generated numbers. The number is then sent to Apple, which programs it back into the phone of the user. This implies that the particulars of the account on a phone can’t be exploited by the scamsters. Whenever there is a transaction, the phone dispatches a short-term number to the point-of-sale and this can be used only for that particular transaction. This number is different for any new transaction. Thus the encryption process involved severely restricts the risk of manipulation or theft. On top of this security feature, Apple Pay is also fortified by Touch and Face ID, fingerprint technology of Apple. This means even if you misplace or lose your phone, nobody can do anything with Apple Pay. As it requires either your fingerprint or face to recognize your identity. This also explains why the Apple Pay functions only with the latest iPhone models, that comes with the added layer of protection like Touch ID.

Google Pay and HCE

Contrary to Apple Pay, Google Pay works with HCE, or host card emulation. Over here, the user’s physical card is imitated in a different manner as the account information is kept in the confines of the cloud, as against the device. In this payment mechanism as well a certain degree of tokenization comes into play as the payment data is kept safely in the cloud, however the tokenization method is also cloud-oriented, which according to a few is not that secure.

Emvco

EMVCo enables worldwide interchangeability and availability of safe mobile payments. The organization is gradually progressing towards stating the architecture, specifications, needs, and type approval processes to complement the EMV mobile NFC payments. These include:

  1. Needs related to the sanctioning of product type
  2. Prime operational criteria for mobile devices
  3. Substantiation processes of a Cardholder
  4. Certification needs like a security assessment for the SE having the payment application
  5. Needs for recognizing EMV application on an equipment
  6. Conforming to a reference application activation user interface (AAUI) on the mobile phone

What future holds for NFC

In the times to come , NFC has a huge opportunity to eliminate every cash card in your purse. Considering the current scenario, the various digital technologies are quickening the prospect of a cashless society. NFC mobile transactions not only lessen the variety of surfaces we come into contact with (i.e., credit card, POS terminal, etc.), it is also very convenient, quick and safer. The time is ripe for companies to look for every possible way to integrate NFC into their mobile strategies. With NFC at your disposal, a safe, swift and smart money exchange environment is within your grip.