Thanks to technological advances, remote work has been on the rise for the last few years, and with good reason: it has been proven that companies offering the option to work remotely see a 25% decrease in turnover. In the US, there are plenty of companies that are fully remote and most companies work with at least a percentage of remote workers. It is not shocking to hear that a great number of those companies work in the development field. However, there are also difficulties that come with working with a remote development team. This is why, in this article, we’d like to share some tips to help you create the best remote development team possible.

1. Communication with a remote development team

Communication is an essential factor in any team, but especially so when it comes to remote work. In this case, it is better to over-communicate than to risk some details slipping through the cracks. It is also important to provide regular feedback.

2. Take different time zones into account

On the topic of communication, while one of the advantages for remote workers is that they can work from anywhere, there is a clear disadvantage in having members of your team spread through different times zones. You should make sure to schedule regular communications in the time zone that is most beneficial for all members. Make the most of the hours when all team members are working simultaneously.

3. Don’t micromanage

Nobody likes to be micromanaged, but it is an easy trap to fall into when dealing with a remote development team. Make sure you hire people you can trust and show that trust by empowering them instead of double-checking every move they make.

If your company is not fully remote, it might be best to have your lead-talent in-house and have the remote workers be an extension to maximize your junior developer capacity. This way, the in-house senior developers can be in charge of major reviews and testing.

4. Hire the right people for your remote development team

As we’ve mentioned, you need to be able to trust your remote team members. This means you should pick developers with the right set of skills for your project. Remote developers should have excellent communication skills and, if you are going offshore, you should make sure they have the right level of English to avoid any miscommunication.

5. Provide room for growth

Your company culture should include opportunities for continuous learning and growth to keep your team motivated. This could include anything from online courses and workshops to having knowledge-sharing sessions. Having said that, promoting knowledge sharing is also a way to ultimately add to the growth of your product.

6. Define work procedures for your remote development team

You should have clear guidelines from the get-go in all fields, including productivity, teamwork and accountability. This will ensure the whole remote development team has the same expectations and know what needs to be done and how.

You should also set clear tasks and answer any questions that may arise in as much detail as possible. Answer emails promptly and don’t leave anyone hanging as the team will depend on the information they receive from you. Moreover, consider applying agile methodologies and study how to implement them.

7. Find the right collaboration tools

There is a myriad of collaboration tools available for remote teams. You should focus on your remote development team’s needs and figure out which ones will work best in your particular case. However, there are some essentials that you should incorporate, like an email service, a tool to share files, an instant messaging and video conferencing platform, and project management software. There are many options you can choose from, regardless of whether you are looking for an all-in-one solution (such as Hive or BasicOps) or prefer to use different tools (such as Trello or Jira for management, Google Drive for sharing documents and Zoom or Slack for communication).

8. Keep relevant documentation

As we’ve mentioned, it’s important to define work procedures. However, for these procedures to stick, it is important that you document them. In fact, pretty much everything you discuss should be written down. Make sure you are keeping up to date with the appropriate documentation so your remote developers can refer back to it when necessary as well as comment and provide feedback on it.

9. Use alternative methods to get your point across

Although it is very important to keep documentation, a picture is also worth a thousand words. Pictures, videos or screenshots may prove to be a lot more useful than long documents or email chains when it comes to explaining something or trying to make a point to someone on the other side of a screen. Not to mention, it saves a lot of precious time.

10. Build rapport

After-office meetings or casual Fridays are not an option for most remote teams, so you will need to find other ways to build rapport. Building a personal connection means increased trust and morale, as well as making self-organization easier. You should take the time to get to know each remote developer in your team. You should also make sure to schedule regular video conferencing meetings so remote workers can have face-to-face interactions. As a matter of fact, it is even a good idea to include some 1:1 sessions so they can get to know each other. With new members, you can easily break the ice by having them write an intro blog post to introduce themselves to the rest of the team.

11. Build a culture and share company values

Another important factor to consider when creating a remote development team is making sure everyone is aware of and shares the company’s values and culture. This will help remote workers feel as much a part of the team and the company as those working on-site.

Final thoughts on the best remote development team

As you can see, most of the rules that apply to an on-site team also apply to a remote one. The main difference is that you have to put more of an effort into making sure all relevant information is getting across and everyone feels involved. Not interacting face-to-face with everyone on a daily basis makes it harder for a team to succeed. However, there are plenty of tools to help you create the best remote development team possible and work towards an even more successful development company.

The post The best remote development team appeared first on asap developers.

Last month, it was once again time for the Mobile Growth Summit 2020. With an abundance of incredible speakers, talks and panels, we thought we should share some of our highlights. In this article, we’ll be focusing on one talk and one panel: Building Retention Strategies that Work and Converting Free Users to Paid. We hope our article can give you some tips to improve your user retention and monetization strategies this year.

What is the Mobile Growth Summit?

The Mobile Growth Summit is a worldwide event held in the UK, Canada, Singapore, New York and San Francisco, among other locations. It is a non-vendor conference that spans over one or two days and is aimed at helping mobile marketers and developers connect with and learn from professionals in the industry. MGS covers topics such as user acquisition, retention, engagement, monetization, and analytics related to mobile, retail, and e-commerce brands. Last February, the 2020 San Francisco edition took place on the 12th and 13th at the Hotel Nikko San Francisco. It hosted over 1000 attendees and included over 900 companies and more than 80 speakers. This edition was packed with speakers from great companies like Google, LinkedIn and Bank of America.

User retention strategies

The Building Retention Strategies that Work talk was given by Brennan Clark who specializes in using growth marketing and acquisition to feed retention. Clark leads user acquisition for Sago Mini and Toca Boca, two mobile game app companies for children. Together, these companies have developed 75 mobile apps and garnered 320 million downloads. They are also within the top 10 kids app publishers (Toca Boca is in 1st place, while Sago Mini is in 6th).

Before getting to the core of the issue, Clark made a few important points:

1. Every business is different, and this is something you should keep in mind regarding strategy. If your mobile app monetization is based on ads, your revenue will come from usage. On the other hand, subscription-based apps will get their revenue from monthly payments, which could render usage theoretically be irrelevant.

2. Retention is part of growth, it is a pulse of whether you have a good mobile app or not. Moreover, retention impacts user acquisition. Basically, you need retention to be able to afford and scale user acquisition.

3. When it comes to running experiments for user retention, don’t be disappointed if you don’t get the results you expected. You might find results that hurt retention but can increase your conversion rate and could still work in your favor.

After these few points, Clarke dived into four different user retention strategies that we’ll summarize below:

1. Set expectations: when it comes to showing what your app can do and how it works, you should use video, not overpromise or hide pricing and definitely invest in app store listings. Deceptive advertising makes users churn quickly and cause trust in marketers to continue to fall, therefore hurting retention. Clark advises doing your research by walking a user through the pre-install flow and having them describe the mobile app experience they expect based on the app store information. This will help you see if you are on the right path to setting the right expectations.

2. Improve the onboarding experience: To do this, you should remove anything that isn’t essential and also understand the goal of your onboarding process, which will vary from one app to another. It’s important to give users what they need to get the most out of your mobile app and to do it quickly and efficiently.

3. Segment your revenue attribution: You should do this at least by geographical location, channel and platform as this will help you make decisions to build campaigns and tailor in-app experiences for specific markets.

4. Tailor experiences at scale: You should leverage user data to drive value. To do this, you’ll first need to make sure you are collecting the data you need. Once you have that data, you should use it to personalize the experience across all touchpoints. Some examples of tailored experiences are tailored retargeting experiences, tailored push notification experiences (which increases open rates by three times) and tailored email experiences (which gives you a 41% higher click-through rate). You should strive to identify any areas where you can increase personalization and run A/B tests to measure retention.

User retention and how to monetize free users

The Converting Free Users to Paid panel had Ehren Maedge, North America VP for MoEngage, as a moderator. The panelists were Lane Colyer and Nathan Sann, Co-Founders of Growth Instincts, a growth partner that aims to help mobile marketers in converting free users to paid.

1. Where to start

The first question posed by Maedge was where to start. Just like Clark did in Building Retention Strategies that Work, in this panel, Colyer also highlighted that every app is different. He argues that, because of this, you should start by looking at why people are coming to your app in the first place. At the same time, there was also an emphasis on the customer onboarding experience, but this time with a focus on the best way to get customers to perform a transaction. In fact, it was mentioned that users should experience the core couple of principles of your app within the first couple of days of using it. If they don’t, you should experiment with onboarding and segmentation.

2. How to deal with different levels of engagement

Once you’ve handled onboarding, you should think about different usage levels and different levels of engagement for different people. If users are regularly engaging with your mobile app, don’t overload them with notifications. For less engaged users, other strategies apply. Here, you should look into your different channels (push, email, SMS) to bring back customers and increase usage frequency, as well as getting your product front of mind again.

3. What issues may I come across

Sann explains that early purchasers are the perfect customer and that you should be looking at patterns of usage as well as the key events that led these customers to that quick purchase. In principle, this should be quite simple to look at. If it’s not, your app may not be correctly tooled to determine users’ journey to making a purchase, or it might even be tooled too well and giving you too much noise. If the latter happens, you’ll need to strip out some details to get to the relevant information. For this reason, setting up a taxonomy from the get-go is important.

Another issue Sann focuses on is the freemium model. In these cases, a lot of users are happy sticking to the free features and don’t make the jump to paid users. What you should do is find the core values these people are latching onto so you can realign with the product team. This should help you add value to that core feature and then introduce it through an upgrade pack. He discourages making it a paid option, as that would actually be counterproductive. Sann emphasizes that Integrating your product marketing team with your product and development team is essential.

4. How to get a large pool of existing active users to buy

The Growth Instincts co-founders explain that free trials for subscription-based products are sometimes not effective. This is how they came up with the idea to introduce the concept of a retrial, which proved incredibly successful. User conversion on the second trial outperformed the initial one by 20%. It turns out that people needed a bit more time before making the decision.

5. How to get return buyers

As a final point, if someone has already bought from you, you already have data available on them to use as a starting point for your remarketing (like what they are interested in or when they are most likely to be active). That said, it is important not to let too much time go by between the initial transaction and working towards a second one if you want to get those users back.

User retention and monetization final thoughts

The Mobile Growth Summit San Francisco is a great conference to attend when you’re looking to grow your mobile app business. They are always right on the money with relevant topics like user retention and monetization. These two areas are key for your mobile app to succeed and these talks provided a great way to keep growing them. You can watch more of this year’s talks on the MGS’s Youtube channel.

The post MGS San Francisco 2020: working on user retention and monetization appeared first on asap developers.

Thanks to technological advances, remote work has been on the rise for the last few years, and with good reason: it has been proven that companies offering the option to work remotely see a 25% decrease in turnover. Moreover, as we know, working with agile methodologies is the best way to make the most of your resources, decrease the risk of failure and improve your chances of succeeding. It is a faster, more efficient, and more productive way of developing any software. However, implementing agile methodologies for a remote agile team teams does come with its challenges. In this article, we’ll focus on six tips to help you on this front.

1. Foster communication

Fostering communication is essential for any remote agile team, but even more so when it comes to an agile one. The success of a remote agile team depends highly on personal connections and mutual understanding. You should foster communication across all roles by creating opportunities for the team to interact and get to know each other through video conferences, 1:1 video chat sessions, internal blogs or video coffee breaks.

2. Use an online planning board

A planning board is the basis of any agile team. When it comes to working remotely, there are plenty of options to create an online board to manage each project. Jira and Trello are both examples of excellent tools to help you with this area. Jira is almost plug-and-play, giving you the freedom to choose between a Scrum and a Kanban board while customizing many of the details. Meanwhile, Trello is simpler and allows you to create your own board from scratch to meet your specific requirements. It also has the added benefit of being free, unless you require extra features or integrations.

3. Have daily standups and iteration planning meetings

Just because you’re not in the same office, it doesn’t mean you can’t still have daily standups. You can easily use Zoom or Skype to set them up. However, when dealing with a remote agile team that spans different time zones, make sure to schedule communications in the time zone that is most beneficial for all members.

The same applies to iteration planning meetings. They can easily be done online with a video conference call, aided by screen sharing. To make the most of them and ensure they go smoothly, you should make sure there is someone leading the meeting. It is also a good idea to record the meeting for team members to have as reference later on.

4. Foster self-reliance and self-organization

Just like in any agile environment, each remote agile team member needs to be able to take ownership and responsibility for their work organization and environment. This means you need to work on each member’s self-reliance and self-organization as these are essential qualities that have a considerable impact on your project. You should focus on laying ground rules from the get-go, writing down expectations, and making the most of the daily standups. These are tools that will help you work on these abilities and check where each member stands.

5. Define your acceptance criteria

Defining acceptance criteria is a cornerstone of any successful development team. But, when it comes to a remote agile team, it is even more important that everything is crystal clear from day one. You should define all acceptance criteria in extreme detail and add it to the relevant ticket on the planning board. If you share the criteria during the iteration planning meeting, make sure the product owner is present to clarify any doubts that may arise.

6. Document more with remote agile teams

Most agile teams do well enough by documenting just the basic requirements. That said, when working on a remote agile team, documentation becomes all that more important and you should strive to use it as much as possible since remote agile team members don’t have access to a quick on-site explanation of a complex concept. You can also use alternative methods—such as pictures, videos or screenshots—to explain a specific concept or make a point to someone on the other side of your screen.

Final thoughts on remote agile teams

Agile teams run by the same rules whether remote or on-site. However, you’ll have to put more effort into implementing the appropriate tools and making sure all information is getting across when working remotely. Not interacting face-to-face with everyone on a daily basis makes it harder for any team to succeed. However, there are plenty of tools to help you create the best remote agile team possible and work towards an even more successful development company.

The post Remote agile team appeared first on asap developers.

In previous articles, we’ve looked into how to promote your app in the app stores, particularly with keywords, and the ins and outs of running ads for iOS and Android apps. This time around, we want to focus on Google Play keyword monitoring so you can make sure your strategies are working. But first, let’s recap.

What are keywords?

Keywords are the words app store users will likely choose to search for your app. For Android, they are included in the app name and short and long descriptions. The iOS store, on the other hand, has a specific field for keywords, while also considering those included in the title and subtitle. Keywords should be words (or phrases) that are relevant to the content you are providing and, at the same time, terms that come to users’ minds first when looking for an app that includes what yours has to offer.

What does Google Play expect of keywords?

When it comes to keywords, Google Play takes almost every piece of text from your app’s page into consideration. Although, as we’ve mentioned, the name, short and long descriptions are the key players here, the developer’s name and the URL can also be used to your advantage. All of this means that it is advisable to use long-tail keywords as they will help you stand out from the competition. Furthermore, since both descriptions hold the same weight, and there’s no specific field for keywords, it’s important to keep keyword density (i.e., how many times a keyword is used) in mind. You should repeat these words about 4 or 5 times throughout the descriptions.  You can see Google’s specifications on their website.

What are Google Play Search Ads?

As we’ve seen in previous articles, with 1.5 million apps in Google Play, search ads are a way of increasing visibility for your app in the store and also aid organic discovery. Most app downloads come from searches in the app stores, which makes Google Play Search Ads a big plus since your ad will appear whenever a user searches for a certain keyword. To achieve this, you’ll only have to pay a set price up to a previously set budget. Moreover, you will also receive reports to help you improve performance.

How can you monitor keyword performance in Google Play?

After covering all of your bases, and regardless of whether you’ve done basic keyword work or invested in search ads, you should certainly invest some serious time in monitoring keyword performance. Here are a few tools that can help you with this, listed from lowest to highest budget.

• To kick us off with a free option, for those whose apps are linked to their website, Google offers Google Search Console, which is considered to be extremely accurate. What’s special about this tool is that it also takes into account personalized search results, which is a big plus. You should also note that several other paid tools allow for integration with the Google Search Console, which is a nice perk.

• TheTool is another great option that is still on the affordable side, starting off at just $29 a month. You can use it to monitor your keywords in 93 countries and it includes the Google Play Console integration we mentioned above. In addition to its keyword tracking capabilities, it offers a wide variety of features such as keyword suggestion, keyword density, user ratings and conversion tracking, as well as a handy helpdesk. If you’re not quite sold, they offer a 14-day free trial so you can test it out. You can take a closer look at all of their plans here.

• With wider price ranges, Mobile Action is an all-in-one marketing platform that allows app publishers to manage both their app store optimization and their ad campaigns. It offers a 7-day free trial after which their prices go from $69 to $599 depending on which of their three startup plans you choose. Some features are common to all plans, such as competitor and keyword monitoring, Slack integration, and keyword suggestion, translation, and metrics. Strictly regarding Google Play keyword monitoring, this tool lets you track between 100 and 6000 keywords depending on the plan.

• Moving up the ladder, Sensor Tower is an app analytics platform focused on organic user acquisition, app performance and managing reviews. They offer App Store Optimization and App Monitoring for small businesses in addition to enterprise optimization. They have two plans for small businesses: Pro (around $80 per month) and Business (around $400 per month), both with a 14-day free trial. The plans offer keyword monitoring (although in varying amounts), in addition to email alerts and support, keyword research, spying, and optimization.

• Under the tagline, “A solution for every business”, App Annie is one of the most comprehensive keyword monitoring tools in the market. Its features include app store optimization and tracking, downloads, app usage, and revenue estimates, among countless others. The platform has over 1 million customers that use it to analyze over 14 million apps worldwide. Because of the highly customized nature of their services, pricing is quoted on a case-to-case basis. Moreover, they do not offer free trials nor monthly subscriptions.

It’s good to note that some of these platforms, like App Annie, have a free plan that provides you with basic data and insights to monitor your keywords, including a blog and extra resources. This means that, if you’re low on funds but are willing to put in the time, you might still be able to extract some valuable information without delving into your bank account early in the process.

Google Play keyword monitoring Final thoughts

App store optimization is an essential part of any mobile or web app’s success and it remains so throughout its lifespan. One of the key factors to succeed in Google Play is to focus not only on finding the right keywords but also on monitoring them. We hope the tools for Google Play keyword monitoring we’ve presented can help you make a difference in your app’s performance.

The post Google Play keyword monitoring appeared first on asap developers.

We pride ourselves in always being up to date with the latest updates from our favorite networks and, in this article, we’ll be focusing on React Native’s latest command, called React Native Doctor, which is great for troubleshooting and fixing errors.

Let’s start with some context: the last stable version of React Native is 0.61 (which includes the fast refresh feature that we love so much). This version doesn’t come with the doctor command in the CLI, but the good news is that you can still use it by running `npx @react-native-community/cli doctor`.

The version that will include the doctor command by default is version 0.62 which is a current RC and will probably be ready soon. This command will come with the CLI and you’ll be able to execute it by merely writing `react-native doctor`.

Now, let’s go into more detail.

Supported checks (as of now)

doctor currently supports the following checks:

• Node.js (>= 8.3)
• yarn (>= 1.10)
• npm (>= 4)
• Watchman (>= 4), used for watching changes in the filesystem when in development mode.

Specific to the Android environment:

• Android SDK (>= 26), the software runtime for Android.
• Android NDK (>= 19), the native development toolkit for Android.
• ANDROID_HOME, the environment variable required by the Android SDK setup.

Specific to the iOS environment:

• Xcode (>= 10), IDE for developing, building and shipping iOS applications.
• CocoaPods, a library dependency management tool for iOS applications.
• ios-deploy (optional), a library used internally by the CLI to install applications on a physical iOS device.

How does it work?

The doctor command, as mentioned in the React Native blog, supports most of the software and libraries that React Native relies on, such as CocoaPods, Xcode and Android SDK. 

By using this command, you can discover any issues caused by the development environment and fix them automatically.

React Native Doctor Video

In this video, you can see both the execution and the response after running the diagnostic. You can choose the f option to fix all the issues found by the command and as a result, as you can see, there aren’t any more issues to be fixed. 

There are some issues doctor cannot fix, but in that case, this information would be displayed with the corresponding link so you can fix them manually. 

Doctor Command

Why is React Native Doctor so important?

Before the doctor command, we used to execute `react-native info`, which would end up only providing us with only information and no further action. 

Using the `doctor` command automatically fixes errors with your development environment in a similar way to how `brew doctor` works. 

React Native Doctor final thoughts

This might seem like it’s not a big deal, but by running doctor, you can spend more time building your apps rather than fixing the issues, therefore making the development process a lot faster and entertaining.

The post React Native Doctor Command appeared first on asap developers.

Django is an open-source Python web framework that has been gaining a lot of popularity lately. It has been used extensively by companies such as Mozilla, Spotify and NASA, as well as within our team. This framework was built by experienced developers and aims at using automation wherever possible to speed up web development and let developers focus on the important stuff. It is fast, secure and versatile. In this article, we will be focusing on the top 9 reasons why we think you should be using it.

1. Built with Python

Because it was built with Python, the Django framework inherits some of this programming language’s most interesting benefits. As we’ve mentioned in a previous article, some of Python’s main advantages are that it’s widely adopted, it’s considered to be quite easy to both read and use, and it’s ideal for machine learning. So, if you’re already coding with Python, Django will be easy to learn. And, even if you’re not, it shouldn’t really pose a challenge either. As an added bonus, Django being built on Python also means that, if you’re in the market for new developers, it should not be difficult to find some that are proficient in this framework.

2. Excellent community

As expected with most open-source projects, Django has a great community of users and backers. Therefore, there is a massive amount of material and resources on it (everything from documentation and tutorials to videos and articles), as well as meetups and workshops. This means that if you happen to come across any issues, someone has probably tackled it before, and will be willing to help you out. You can take a look at Django’s official community here.

3. Highly secure

This is a major selling point for the framework, as it is quite hard to find any security loopholes. Django has strong encryption packages and protection against common attacks (like XSS attacks and Clickjacking), as well as a solid user authentication system. Moreover, it hides your website’s source code and notifies developers of various common security mistakes.

4. Great set of libraries

Another great advantage of stemming from Python and its wonderful community is that Django has numerous useful libraries. Some of the most popular ones include the Django REST framework–aimed at building application programming interfaces–, and the Django CMS–focused on website content management.

5. Good for SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential piece of web marketing and, therefore, it is something you should always keep in mind. It is a good thing, then, that Python’s human-readable code gives it an advantage when it comes to search result rankings. Moreover, Django has several SEO tools, including a module called Django SEO framework that helps you reduce page loading times.

6. Highly scalable

Scalability is rather important when it comes to developing web apps. Django includes a series of default components that can be unplugged and replaced for more specific solutions, making scalability effortless. The framework also has the ability to handle traffic and mobile app API usage for a whopping 400 million users, therefore maximizing scalability and minimizing web hosting costs. What is more, Django lets you use plugins to extend your web app, and there are countless packages available to help you scale up your product.

7. Based on the DRY principle

The DRY (don’t repeat yourself) principle encourages developers to reuse existing code, thus reducing errors and simplifying maintenance. This makes Django time-efficient and perfect for high load systems.

8. Django Default admin panel

Django includes a default admin panel to help you manage your application. As well as saving you a considerable amount of time, the panel makes the work dynamics between developers and non-technical staff much smoother as they can immediately start working together on content and processes. You can, of course, modify and adapt the panel to fit your needs.

9. Django Portability

As Python runs on virtually any platform, such as Mac, PC and Linux, so does Django. Therefore, no development or production environment is left unsupported. If that wasn’t enough for you, Django also includes an ORM (object-relational mapper)—a layer between developer and database—that makes it possible to move projects between databases by merely changing a line of code.

Final thoughts on Django

Detractors of Django might be quick to point out that it is not well-suited for small-scale projects, is monolithic, and does not include default support for real-time web apps, but we think the pros far outweigh the cons. As we’ve seen, Django has countless major advantages and access to a never-ending supply of resources, making it a wonderful framework when it comes to web app development. If you aren’t using it already, we hope we were able to at least make you a bit curious about trying it out.

The post Django: Top 9 reasons why you should use it appeared first on asap developers.

In previous articles, we’ve covered the difference between user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) as well as the importance of UX design. As technology keeps rapidly moving forward, designers must keep up to date with the changes it brings about. In this article, we’d like to peek into the future and share the UX/UI trends we believe you should watch out for in 2020.

1. Complex and purposeful animation

While in the past complex animations meant longer load times, today that’s not a major concern, particularly with the rise of 5G. Moreover, if a picture is worth a thousand words, an animation could be worth that much more. That being said, we’re not talking about just any high-quality animation, but one that tells a story and engages users. If you manage to design an animation that meets this criterion, it will help users contextualize actions and processes providing them with a better experience.

2. Artistic and animated illustrations

The era of stock images is ending and illustrations are taking over. A high-quality illustration adds a human touch to the user experience, making it feel authentic, and, as a consequence, helping add value to your product. Unique graphics capture people’s attention and make you stand out from the competition. To keep in line with our previous UX/UI trends, you can also add motion to illustrations to help bring your products to life and improve engagement. Again, 5G is of great help with animated illustrations in mobile and web apps as you are no longer restricted by the limitations of 4G.

3. Split-screen and asymmetrical layouts

Over the last few years, asymmetry has been growing in popularity and 2020 might be the year it really takes off. This goes extremely well with the rise in split-screen design as these two UX/UI trends add character and personality to your product, while also leaving a lot of room for creativity. We’re not going to lie, it does take some work to find the right balance, particularly for mobile apps, but, once you do, the possibilities are endless.

4. Less contrasting gradients

The less is more philosophy is making its way to gradients, with a turn to less contrasting, low-key colors. This is a progressing trend, with 2019 having already taken a step back from the bright shades of 2018.

5. Breaking typography rules

Text is an important part of design and should not be taken lightly. Handwritten fonts have been gaining popularity as they make products more approachable. Plus, breaking typography rules (for example, by using odd spacing and sizing) turns text into an art element instead of a merely informational one, adding to this effect. As long as you maintain readability, feel free to play with fonts and join this trend.

6. Empty space

Some products choose overcrowded designs, which leads to users not being able to concentrate properly in any one thing. This is because empty space is important when you want a specific element to get all the spotlight. There are, of course, varying degrees of empty space you can use depending on what you wish to accomplish, but whenever you want to make a specific object or idea stand out, this is the way to go. Just make sure you are focusing on the right object or idea.

7. Personalization

Mass production is a thing of the past and, over the last few years, we have seen personalization progressively grow in all aspects of life. The same is true for apps; users are increasingly demanding a personalized approach with a lot of companies focusing on niche markets. Mobile and web apps that deliver a custom experience that keeps in mind users’ particular interests and needs are more likely to be successful, and this should definitely be part of your UX and UI process.

8. No loaders

With 5G technology coming into play, loading times have gotten shorter and shorter, and loaders have become unnecessary. However, if there is a specific section of your product that takes a little longer to load, we recommend using creative and original animations to help you keep users engaged.

9. 3D graphics

3D graphics have evolved significantly over the last decade and can be found anywhere from movies to videogames and ads. Mobile and web technology also grows at a fast pace and is now ready to take on 3D graphics. If you wish to create and integrate 3D graphics into mobile and web apps you will, of course, require specific skills and a lot of hard work, but it will most likely be worth your effort. 3D makes for increased interaction and engagement and adds a greater sense of realism.

10. Storytelling

Any good user experience design includes storytelling. It plays a pivotal role in any successful app as it helps you create a positive relationship between your brand and your users, as well as making it a lot more memorable. Storytelling is a powerful marketing tool that will continue to grow in 2020.

11. Accessible design

There are millions of people around the globe with permanent and temporary disabilities. However, the mobile app industry has been slow to accommodate these users. Adopting an inclusive mindset when developing your product means you will be able to develop an app that is convenient for all users. From gesture recognition technologies and voice input to accessible audio or video elements, and high-contrast color combinations, technology has come a long way in giving us the tools we need to make our apps accessible and we should definitely work towards applying them.

12. Dark themes

Over the last few years, many apps have included a “dark mode” to their design which has been gaining a lot of popularity with users. You should, of course, make sure to complement them with bright accent elements and the appropriate typography to ensure a readable design. In any case, just like many large companies, dark themes are something you should consider when designing your app.

13. Virtual and augmented reality

VR and AR have had a good few years. Virtual reality has made a lot of progress, particularly in the gaming industry, while the leading tech companies are currently investing considerable amounts into augmented reality development. Facebook is delving deep into VR, while Apple has released ARKit 2, an AR toolkit. A good example of implementation is IKEA’s app, which lets customers see how a piece of furniture will fit into their home before buying it. User interface designers should certainly dive into these fields.

Final thoughts on UX/UI trends

As you can see, some UX/UI trends have been in the making for quite some time, while others are giving a fresh look to our mobile and web apps, particularly with the help of 5G. We hope you are as excited as we are to take on the challenges 2020 will bring for UI and UX design.

The post 13 UX/UI trends to watch out for in 2020 appeared first on asap developers.

As 2020 kicks off, many mobile app awards have announced their 2019 winners. While there are many ways to get recognition when it comes to mobile apps, winning an award is definitely at the top so, in this article, we’d like to share the Best Mobile Apps of 2019 according to the Best Mobile App Awards. But first, let us give you some context.

The Best Mobile App Awards

The Best Mobile App Awards were born in 2012 out of the need for a central authority to select the best mobile apps and app developers out there. The idea was to create a single place where people could find the latest and best apps without browsing through countless apps in the stores; as soon as the site was online it received a large number of visits and it has since become a success. It is run by a group of expert designers and developers who are leaders in the industry and serves to highlight and promote those apps that really deserve it, giving every app a chance to get their turn in the spotlight.

This popular competition has several categories and the great added benefit that some of its awards are monthly or seasonal, so you don’t have to wait a whole year if your app missed the submission deadline for the yearly ones. The yearly awards—which are open until December 31st—are currently Best Mobile App and Best Mobile Game. In this article, we’ll be focusing on the winners of the Best Mobile App of 2019 award.

Best Mobile App Awards 2019 winners

The 2019 competition saw 37 nominees fighting for a spot among the top three apps of the year. Let’s take a look at the ones that made the final cut.

• Zoho Show

Zoho Show is a free app developed by Zoho, an Indian software company with over 50 million customers that was founded in 1996, back when it was known as AdventNet Inc. Zoho Show is an online platform that lets you create, collaborate and publish presentations and is also compatible with PowerPoint. The app is available for both iOS and Android across all devices (including Android and Apple TVs) and even has an extension for Chrome. Zoho Show has already gained more than 10 million active users worldwide.

Other noteworthy features include scribbling to create custom shapes, options to shape and format pictures, smart elements and infographics, custom animations and auto-embedding of YouTube videos.

• OfficeSuite

This subscription-based office platform prides itself on having the richest feature set compared to any other Microsoft alternative. It was developed by MobiSystems, a company founded in 2001 that has garnered 300 million users to date. OfficeSuite is the most downloaded office app on Google Play and is, of course, available for iOS as well. It lets users view, edit and create Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents and is integrated with File Commander. This mobile app is compatible with all Microsoft formats as well as RTF and ZIP, among several others. It is the only office app to include an integrated PDF editor, which means users can perform advanced PDF operations. OfficeSuite also offers up to 5GB of free cloud storage with automatic synchronization in addition to giving users the option to store their files in Dropbox, Drive and OneDrive. As if that wasn’t enough, it is available in a whopping 68 languages.

• upday for Samsung

upday is a news service that combines journalism with machine learning and is aimed exclusively at Samsung devices. Born out of a partnership between Axel Springer and Samsung, it was launched in March 2016 and, although it’s restricted to Samsung phones and is currently available in just 16 European countries, it has already reached over 25 million monthly users.

The app is divided into two sections: a personalized automated section called “My News”, and an editorial one called “Top News”, which is curated by an editorial staff of journalists. upday currently has over 4,000 integrated publishers and comes preinstalled in the latest Samsung Galaxy smartphones; users can activate it by simply swiping right on the home page. The app also gives users the possibility to follow their favorite topics, share articles and hide sources.

Other winners

With such big players among the winner roll, the lineup for Best App of 2019 may look daunting, but don’t fret: up-and-coming apps also managed to snatch awards this year.

SnapLinx won the Best New Mobile App award just last January after being released in November 2019. This server-based app lets you share files and links with nearby smartphones, even between iOS and Android devices.

On the design front, TakeMyFlight and Evolt Active took the Best Designed Mobile App award last January as well. TakeMyFlight is a marketplace for unwanted flight tickets developed by Studio Lemnos, while Evolt Active is a health and wellness app released just last year.

So, as you can see, there are plenty of opportunities for less established apps to get in the picture.

Final thoughts

We hope these winners have inspired you to up your game and find new ways to show your work to the world. And, in case you want to aim for more than just one accolade, you can check out our article listing several app award options to help you gain exposure.

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We recently shared an article on how to integrate Chromecast into a React Native app; today we want to show you how to give your application the AirPlay functionality to connect your music and video streaming content to the famous Apple streaming device: the Apple TV.

As you know, the Apple TV is television’s best ally for the Apple ecosystem, providing the AirPlay service that lets you stream multimedia content from your Apple devices—including your iPhone, MacBook, iPod, iPad and iPad Mini— to your Apple TV. Quite recently, in 2019, a new generation of televisions was released whose software includes the new AirPlay version, AirPlay 2. These televisions are manufactured by companies like Samsung, LG and Sony.

React Native Libraries for Apple TV

To successfully integrate Apple TV services to your React Native app, you’ll need two libraries: one that will allow you to make the connection between the device and the Apple TV and another that will be in charge of sending the video and controlling it remotely through the app or the Apple TV remote. Let’s take a look at them. 

‘react-native-airplay-btn’ library

The library in charge of the connection is the ‘react-native-airplay-btn’ library. Basically, what you’ll have to do is import the library that lets you render the AirPlay button, which the user will press and a native popup dialog will open to show the devices that are currently available to make the connection.

It is advisable to restrict the display of the button only to iOS devices as there’s not much of a point in showing it on devices running on an Android operating system as there is currently no AirPlay support for that platform.

Let’s take a look at how to install it:

$ npm install react-native-airplay-btn

or

$ yarn add react-native-airplay-btn

Linker

$ react-native link react-native-airplay-btn

Integration snippet:

‘react-native-video’ library

Once you have connected your device via AirPlay, you’ll need to be able to send the content and play it on the Apple TV. To do this, you can use the ‘react-native-video’ library, which will allow you to use and render a player for mobile phones and is also fully compatible with streaming playback to the Apple TV. The videos and/or music that are played on the Apple TV through this library will not be played on the device; this happens automatically when the library detects that the content is being played somewhere else.

Let’s take a look at how to install it:

$ npm install react-native-video

or

$ yarn add react-native-video

Linker

$ react-native link react-native-video

iOS installation

React Native 0.60 and above

Run pod install in the ios directory. Linking is not required in React Native 0.60 and above.

React Native 0.59 and below

Run react-native link react-native-video to link the react-native-video library.

Android installation

Run react-native link react-native-video to link the react-native-video library.

Full code integration snippet:

Apple TV & React Native Conclusion

With these two libraries working together, you’ll have your video/audio application fully connected to any AirPlay-compatible devices in no time. Keep in mind that, as mentioned above, TV playback can be controlled from the player <video/> that sends the content to the TV, but as AirPlay is a service that is interconnected and shared between all Apple devices on the same network, you can also control the playback from any Apple device (such as iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple Watch, etc.) that is connected to the Apple TV at the time of playing the content, which gives you greater freedom of control. If you’d like more information about Apple TV App Development, feel free to contact us online, we’d be happy to help.

The post How to integrate Apple TV services on a React Native app  appeared first on asap developers.

Today’s app market is highly competitive. Tens of thousands of new apps crop up every month just in Google play, and very few actually succeed. If you are hoping your app will be one of those that make it, you’ll find that product-market fit (PMF) is essential. In this article, we’d like to focus on what PMF means and how to make sure your mobile app has it.

What is product-market fit?

Product-market fit is about having the right product for the right market. Even though there’s no clear consensus on how to measure it precisely, there is no arguing that when you have PMF, product purchases and growth tend to soar. When you don’t, the opposite will happen as customers are not getting the value they want out of your product. PMF doesn’t just mean having users who are willing to pay for your product, it often also means having happy customers that will spread the word, and become your greatest salespeople.

Measuring product-market fit

As we’ve mentioned, there is no consensus on this area. Nonetheless, some experts have laid out some guidelines. For Reforge CEO Brian Balfour, you can validate the level of Product-market fit (PMF) through a qualitative survey, engagement indicators, and analyzing your retention curve (you’re looking for one that flattens out). On a different note, specifically for P2B products, Andrew Chen focuses on how to establish a pre-existing demand through search volume analysis regarding the solution your product provides. He suggests using the Google Keyword Tool to determine whether users are really looking for what you are trying to sell them.

Product-market fit for a mobile app

So, how do you determine if your mobile app has product-market fit? Well, drawing on what we saw above and suggestions from other experts, here are a few strategies to help you out.

1. Checking the keyword search volume in the app stores

If you haven’t launched your app yet, this is an excellent starting strategy. Both Google and Apple have data available on this front and there are also tools such as Mobile Action or Sensor Tower that provide data for both stores and can come quite handy. There is no one perfect tool to carry out this research, which means you will have to do the legwork by compiling data from different sources, but if you do it, and you do it well, it will all be worthwhile.

2. Analyzing app store conversion metrics

This is something you can do when your mobile app is already up and running. Both the App Store and Google Play produce data, such as conversion rates, that you can use as leading indicators, which you can then compare to the average in your category. If your conversion rate is not as good as you’d like it to be, don’t panic just yet, as you can always work on app store optimization and find ways to improve conversion.

3. Studying mobile app retention benchmarks

As we saw with Belfour above, having a retention curve that levels out is actually a good thing. Although, of course, it might be a while before you can see this play out. You should also study where your retention curve levels out since that is also an important factor. This is where mobile app retention benchmarks come in. With them, you can focus on early metrics like day 1 or day 7 to give you an idea of how you are doing early on compared to other mobile apps. This will let you adapt and readjust if things are not going as well as you expected. Adjust and AppsFlyer are a couple of companies that periodically publish useful app retention benchmark data.

4. Looking out for Sean Ellis’ 40 percent rule

According to Sean Ellis and his startup pyramid, a good way to measure whether you’ve got Product-market fit (PMF) or not is carrying out a survey to check how users feel about your product. If at least 40% of your users would be “very disappointed” if they did not have access to your app anymore, then you’re definitely on the right track.

It is important to note that we don’t advise you use just one of these four strategies. When it comes to mobile app performance, the more the merrier. Also, keep in mind that you should compare yourself with other apps in the same category as yours that have similar usage patterns, so you get more reliable and useful data.

Product-market fit is forever

It may sound like you should only focus on PMF before launching a product or just after starting out, but it is actually something you should never take for granted. Markets and trends change, which means your product will need to adjust accordingly to stay in the game. Moreover, you may want to add on to your app or expand to new markets, and this  also means working on your product-market fit. For all these reasons, PMF is something you should keep in mind throughout your product’s lifespan.

Final thoughts

Succeeding in the mobile app industry is not an easy feat. It takes a lot of work before and after releasing your product into the market. Product-market fit is one of the many tools that will give you a fighting chance out there. We hope this information has proven useful and that you can apply it to your app if you aren’t doing so already.

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