How to Market Your Ecommerce App?

by actovision | Apr 4, 2022 | Uncategorized

1. Generate Awareness before App Launch

Running an exhaustive marketing campaign before releasing the app is a great strategy. It will keep your customers curious and all excited. Take the market by storm with a solid marketing strategy. Announce it on your website, including the news in your newsletter, and post on social media – there are different ways you can make people aware of your app launch. You can even create a video with glimpses of the app’s screens.

Here is a pro tip. Avoid publicizing a specific launch date until the app is completely ready and glitch-free. Things may happen during the development process that is beyond your control. Promising an app launch and failing to meet it will make a negative impression on your brand.

We know it might be difficult to run marketing campaigns when you are busy focusing on your business. Engaging professional digital marketing services will fill this gap and reduce your hassles.

2. Optimize App Listing

Google Play boasts of having 3.6 million apps while Apple App Store is the second-largest app store with about 2.7 million apps (source: App Radar). In such a competitive landscape, it’s challenging to drive visibility and installations without proper optimization practices in place.

Here is a checklist for app store optimization:

Pay attention to the app name and description. The name should be relevant to your app and easy to read. Including keywords in the app name and description may translate well. For instance, if your brand name is ABC and it is a food delivery app, you may use ABC – Food Delivery App for the app name. Make sure to limit your app name to 30 characters.

Keyword research is crucial for app store optimization. For this, you need to evaluate the main features of the app, synonyms describing its features, app category, commonly used terms for the app, and so on.

The app description should be clearly structured. Using bullet points will be a good idea. Ensure to limit the app descriptions to 4000 characters.

Earning positive reviews is a crucial part. Therefore, pay attention to the users’ feedback and improve your app. Focusing on reputation management will be a good idea.

3. Promote Your App on Your Website

This is the easiest and one of the most effective ways to promote your app. Create a prominent banner on your site to promote your app. Clicking the banner should take the users to the app download page. This will cut through their hassles of opening the app store, searching with the app name, detecting your app amidst the rest and installing it.

In order to drive more installations, you may allure the visitors with attractive offers. For instance, you may offer 15% discounts if people purchase from mobile apps. Such incentives will encourage people to install your app.

4. Leverage Paid Ads

Paid ads can greatly boost your marketing efforts. Here, you have to pay the search engine, social media, or third-party website for every click you earn. We will explore Google Display Ads and Facebook Ads below.

With Google Display Ads, you can reach out to people who are likely to be interested in your services or products. To run Google Display Ads, log in to your Google Ads account. Click on Campaigns then select New Campaign. Now, pick Display Network Only as your campaign type.

Also, since Facebook has a wide pool of users, running paid ads on this platform is effective for eCommerce businesses as it enables them to reach out to a huge audience.

With Facebook ads, you can classify and target the audience based on gender, age, country, culture, etc. In order to run Facebook ads, go to Ads Manager, select App Installs as the objective of the campaigns, fill out the criteria for the target audience, select a specific format section, and fill in the details of the ad (text, headline, CTA). That’s all, now you can run it.

5. Adopt Email Marketing Strategy

Ecommerce businesses can be benefitted from email marketing. Sharing the news of new line of product launches, discount and sales notifications, order confirmations, order status, and product restocking – email marketing can help to convey various information to the customers. And such emails usually have high opening rates.

Your app marketing strategy can be integrated with email marketing. Simply add a line in your email informing the existence of your app and share a link so that people can easily install it. You can even share the benefits of installing the app, e.g., a 10% extra discount on ordering from the mobile app. Again, while sending a confirmation email, you may add this line: “track shipping status directly on the app”.

Usually, emails are sent to the consumers who have earlier purchased from your website. Therefore, they have a high chance to install the app and place the next order from the app.

6. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is predicted to grow 72.5% in 2022 (source: Tinuiti). Influencers are non-celebrity individuals who have a large follower base on social media, blogs, and YouTube. They can hugely impact purchasing decisions of the audience. That’s why they play a vital role in today’s marketing strategy.

Reach out to the influencers who operate in your niche and gain your audience’s trust through them. There are various tools available in the market to find out influencers. Discount codes, product giveaways, exclusive collections, and affiliate links are some of the common strategies you can adopt.

While these are some of the most effective marketing strategies for an eCommerce app, we encourage you to explore the dynamic arena of digital marketing and drive success for your business. Let us know which strategy you want to adopt next!

Benefits of Web App Development

by actovision | Nov 11, 2021 | Uncategorized

From large enterprises to small and medium scale businesses – all are leaning towards building a web app to enable the target audience to access their online destination effortlessly. If you are looking to engage web application development services anytime soon, this blog is a must-read. Here, we will explore some of the crucial features your web app should have. We will divide the blog into two aspects: technical components and features. Let’s check them out.

Technical Components of a Web App

Service Worker

The service worker facilitates offline work mode and background syncing. It paves way for application shell or interface caching so that the app instantly loads during repeat visits. Relevant dynamic content like images, shopping cart, chat history, checkout, etc. can be loaded later when the connection is restored.

Web App Manifest

A web app manifest (a JSON file) gives the app a mobile app like interface appearance. With it, you can control the way your web application will be displayed to the visitor. Usually, the display features a full-screen mode without a visible URL bar. The file is a prime location for the web application’s metadata. You can also define a splash screen along with a theme colour for the address bar.

Transport Layer Security or TLS

Web apps leverage TLS or Transport Layer Security protocols. It is the standard of robust and secure data exchange between two apps. The integrity of the data demands installing an SSL certificate on the server and serving websites via HTTPS.

Must-Have Features in a Web App

1. Serverless Cloud Architecture

Serverless technology is bringing a revolution in the realm of software development. This enables accessing data with minimal or no hardware constraints. It has ample benefits over traditional on-premise systems. Therefore, an increasing number of businesses are using cloud technologies to build web applications.

Adopting a cloud-based architecture gives businesses a break from the complexity of setting up or dealing with complex servers. Further, it offers adequate security, flexibility, and scalability to a web app.

2. Mobile-First Interface

Gone are the days of the traditional belief that people access a website from a desktop or laptop. In the first quarter of 2021, mobile devices generated 54.8% of global website traffic (source: Statista).

A web app must be ready to welcome people coming from smartphones or tablets. A responsive UI design is no more a luxury but a necessity. With the rise of IoT, a web app can be accessed from other devices like wearables, refrigerators, or smart TVs. A dynamic web design built with a mobile-first interface is lightweight and can fit in any screen size.

3. Push Notification

Push notification is no more exclusive to mobile apps. This is great news for businesses as they need not launch a mobile app or wait for people to install it into the phone. The users can get push notifications from web apps as well. These greatly enhance user engagement.

Also, the process is fast and simple. With a one-click-opt-in feature, the users can enable push notifications. These seem just like from an installed mobile app and do not require the browser to run in the background.

4. Chat

These days, integrating a live chat or chatbot has become essential. People do not often call a business or drop an email. Should they fail to find something on the web app, they prefer to ask via the integrated chat feature.
Remember, if their queries remain unanswered, they may not interact with your business and simply bounce.

To avoid this, it’s better to integrate a chat feature on your web app. You can even integrate your business WhatsApp (or any other messenger that you use) so that people can instantly contact you.

5. Search Engine Optimization

Without search engine friendliness, your website will not be visible to a wider audience and it will affect the number of traffic you receive. If you don’t want that, ensure that your web app is optimized for the search engines. Here is a detailed guide to an effective SEO strategy.

• The site navigation should be logical and enable the search engines to crawl and index.
• Use schema.org metadata that is relevant to the web page content. It will enhance your appearance on the SERP (Search Engine Result Page).
• Place scripts outside HTML document. If JavaScript and CSS are not externalized, they can add multiple additional lines of code in the HYML document which will make crawling slower.
• The web pages should not use fragmented identifiers since Google will simply ignore them.
• Block pages that you don’t want to be crawled or indexed.
• Implementing image alt attribute is a must.
• Provide canonical tags while serving content from different sources so as to avoid duplication.
• Follow the W3C standard that focuses on writing semantic markup. This is great for SEO.

You can also engage SEO services after the web app is built in order to enhance its ranking on the SERP.

Best Way of Mobile App Security

by actovision | Nov 9, 2021 | Uncategorized

With the rapid increase in cybercrime, security is no longer a feature in a mobile app. It is the bare minimum. Advanced features and high-end functionalities will not provide an out-of-the-box experience to your users if it fails to ensure their safety. Since most of the apps ask for access to the device features such as the gallery, location, and sensitive information like password, UPI/credit/debit card details, etc; a minor security breach will not only cost you bucks but ruin your reputation.

Here is a complete checklist of security best practices for your mobile app.

Proven Techniques to Enhance Mobile App Security

Write Secure Code

A code full of bugs and vulnerabilities allows the attackers to break in. The attackers can reverse engineer the code and tamper with it. A study by Infosecurity Magazine finds that malicious code affects over 11.6 million mobile devices at a certain point in time.

If you want to be an exception, start with a powerful code right from the beginning. For that, it’s always recommended that you engage professional mobile app development services. The developers will repeatedly test and fix bugs so as to minimize the risk.

Library Usage

It’s important to be extra careful and test the code thoroughly before using any third-party library in your app. While libraries are extremely useful, they can mess up your app security.

A single flaw in a library may enable the attackers to remotely install malicious code into an app and crash the entire system. Therefore, it’s better to use controlled internal repositories and follow policy controls during acquisition so as to protect the apps from vulnerabilities in a library.

Data Encryption

Every unit of data exchanged over your app should be encrypted. It is the process of converting data into coded information or ciphertext so as to protect its confidentiality.
The ciphertext can be decoded with a unique decryption key. Therefore, other than the authorized users, any third party can not decrypt stolen data.

High-End Authentication

Whether you are investing in Android or iOS app development services, it’s important to ensure that the app has a strong authentication system.

Authentication refers to various identifiers (password, biometric, etc.) that create a barrier before entering into a system. While app usage is becoming more seamless than ever, a layer of authentication can add to the security of the app. For instance, a strong alphanumeric password, dynamic OTP, fingerprint verification, retina scan, etc. can be used as powerful authentication systems.

Implement Cryptography Tools and Techniques

Key management is an essential element should you seek to enhance your app security. The experts of iOS and Android app development services suggest not to hard code the keys since it will make the attackers’ job easy.

It’s important to store keys in secure containers instead of storing them locally on the device. Also, you should use the latest and reliable APIs like 256-bit AES encryption along with SHA-256 for hashing.

Use Authorized APIs

Unauthorized APIs are loosely coded and can pose threats to an app. The hackers can enjoy a privilege and attack the app. For instance, caching authorization information locally can help programmers easily reuse information while making API calls. Thus, it makes the developers’ tasks easy.

On the flip side, the attackers can find a loophole in it and hack the system. Therefore, it’s better to use APIS that are centrally authorized so as to ensure maximum security.

You can take a look at this blog to find out how to build RESTful APIs for mobile apps.

Test Repeatedly

There’s no substitute for continuous testing. Repeated testing will help to find out new loopholes and deal with the emerging threats. Invest in emulators, threat modelling, and penetration testing so as to find out the vulnerabilities in your app. Fix these with each update and issue patches as required.

Further, if your app is built with outdated technology, it’s important to migrate to the latest technology. For example, if you have a cross-platform app built with Flutter, it’s time to hire Flutter developers and upgrade the app to Flutter 2.

Taking security as the fundamental element in app development is a necessity these days. And this trend will continue to grow with the rise of IoT in app development as it enhances connectivity and compatibility of an app with lots of devices. We hope that our guidelines have helped you to understand how to strengthen app security.

Cost Effective Mobile App By Using Ionic Framework

by actovision | Apr 6, 2020 | Uncategorized

In the past few years as low cost yet powerful mobile devices have become widely available, the use of smartphones as well as mobile apps has increased exponentially. Consequently, in parallel to the development of native apps, the trend of developing HTML5 based hybrid apps has also seen an increase, for the latter provide cost-effective alternative solutions for developing cross-platform mobile apps. This is where Ionic truly shines as an open-source software development kit that helps developers to build effective hybrid apps that have the look and feel of native apps across all mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows, etc.)

A small intro

There are many tools to build hybrid apps for various mobile platforms but very few easy and effective ones to build hybrid or browser-based apps with the smoothness and UX (user experience) of a native app. This is where Ionic strives to fill the gap by providing a framework, which is based on existing AngularJS based tools to give you a familiar feel. Besides, it adds many spectacular features on top of the familiar ones as well. These features allow you to develop compelling UI elements for any app that you are working on for cross-platform deployment.

Easy if you are already familiar with HTML

Ionic is primarily built as a hybrid app development platform and uses HTML5 & JavaScript at its core. Thus, if a developer knows HTML5 & JavaScript, then working with Ionic should be a familiar experience. Although it is known for its simplicity, it is very flexible and effective in building rich hybrid mobile apps across all major platforms. Ionic can support –

• A wide range of commonly used mobile UI components
• High-quality animations
• Exquisite designs

Since Ionic runs on HTML5, it does require a native wrapper. The commonly used ones like Phonegap or Cordova can very well suffice for this. We at Webguru Infosystems are specialized in this framework and can easily help you to build hybrid apps across various mobile platforms.

UI – Unlocking the true potential of Ionic

Ionic has many mobile user interface elements that are very native styled. The screen layouts can easily be made similar to a native app on both Android and iOS platforms. Thus, Ionic opens the door to a whole new world in this area.

Since Ionic is built on a familiar technology of HTML5 and JavaScript, it enables businesses to develop their apps only for a single time as it can then be deployed on multiple platforms such as Android and iOS with the help of native wrappers. Along with this, Ionic being open source also provides a huge resource and support community with an ever-growing knowledge database.

Some advantages of Ionic mobile app development services

• Ionic easily provides familiar codes from components such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript among others, which are specifically optimised for mobiles.
• Hybrid apps need to be developed just once through the Ionic framework and the same code base can be used to build apps on all major mobile platforms. This results in a faster turnaround time.
• CSS code, which is specifically optimised, easily delivers the same look and feel for an app across various mobile platforms thus bringing about a uniformity.
• Hybrid apps developed within the Ionic app development platform have simple and uncomplicated structures despite having a rich interface. These help in providing an enhanced UX.
• The integration between AngularJS and Ionic results in a type of code which is more manageable and thus easier to handle. Changes, additions or updates can be made far more quickly due to this.
• As it employs the common tools of the industry, namely HTML, CSS and JS, and a single code base, the cost for Ionic app development services is much lower.

The significance of HTML5 is going to grow in the area of mobile app development. The Ionic framework enables businesses to take advantage of this existing and proven form of technology to give a more seamless UX of their apps across multiple platforms.

When you choose the Ionic framework to build your app, Webguru Infosystems can help you bring your idea to fruition quickly and effectively. You can avail Ionic app development services from Webguru Infosystems and in the process, get your work done by some of the most seasoned professionals within the industry.

Why Security of Mobile Applications Has Become Important?

by actovision | Apr 3, 2020 | Uncategorized

Are you convinced that your life has become easier than before due to the increased usage of mobile apps? Well, you must accept that statement with a pinch of salt, for the growing use of such apps has been followed by higher incidences of data theft/breach as well. Surprised? Then hear what the experts have to say, for according to Gartner, around 75% of security breaches especially at the endpoints are due to the misconfiguration of mobile apps (Ref: https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2753017.) Also, according to a report of BI Intelligence, the total revenue loss due to mobile fraud in 2016 was up to the tune of $350 million (Ref: http://bit.ly/2ct4luH).

Why mobile app frauds take place?

In recent years, the easy availability of low cost yet powerful smartphones has meant a greater number of people have access to them. This, for the customers, has created a greater appetite for apps that are aesthetically pleasing, seamless to navigate and have advanced features. As a result, business enterprises are under tremendous pressure to reach out to these customers on the go with new mobile apps by using technologies such as the Cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), Analytics or at a nascent level even Artificial Intelligence or AI.

This rush to come out with new mobile apps at the drop of a hat and to be a step ahead of the competition means stringent security checks are often overlooked. This is done in favor of considerations such as faster time to market and a higher ROI. Since, many of these apps hold sensitive customer information such as credit card details, the lowering of built-in security checks has given rise to higher incidences of security breaches. This has made the mobile application development companies incorporate stringent measures to outsmart the hackers and gain the trust of customers.

Methods used by cybercriminals to steal sensitive data

Social Engineering: Attacking mobile apps by exploiting their technical flaws through malware, viruses, worms, and trojans is a less trodden path by cybercriminals compared to the stealing of information by manipulating the psychological aspect of users through social engineering. In this, users are tricked into revealing their sensitive personal information through techniques such as Phishing, Wateringhole, etc.

Spyware: This technique is used more at the enterprise level where tricksters infect business apps used by employees with malicious spyware to steal sensitive business and personal information. Some of the examples are CoolWebSearch, Gator, 180searchAssistant etc.

Mobile Botnet: If your mobile is not protected by an antivirus, it can be infected with a mobile bot or malware targetting your smartphone. The compromised smartphone will then be connected to the servers controlled by the botmaster or a cybercriminal(s) siphoning off personal information and even money. For example, a mobile botnet called HummingBad (now back as HummingWhale) had infected over 10 million Android smartphones in 2016 resulting in a profit of over $300,000 a month for its makers (Ref: http://bit.ly/2nTSBo3).

Consequences of a security breach

Hacking into mobile applications is carried out with an alarming regularity but enterprises are able to discover it quite late when the damage has already been done. There can be serious consequences of compromising with mobile app security as listed below.

Loss of revenue: At an individual level, a compromised mobile app (banking, e-commerce, utilities etc) can result in money being siphoned off from bank accounts or digital wallets. However, at the business level, the loss of revenue can happen when

• Sensitive business information gets stolen through spyware or mobile botnets.
• Customers discard the mobile app and opt for the rival one after coming to know the mobile app is not secured.

Brand value hit: If customers are in the know of a mobile app being compromised in terms of security, then the brand value of the enterprise or the mobile app development company behind the app takes a hit.

Face lawsuits: Customers or business entities can file lawsuits against the mobile app development agency or the company running the app for compensation.