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April 18 2018

Four Great Ways to Start Advertising Your App

So, your business is interested in creating a mobile app? It’s no surprise. Creating an app is one of the best things you can do for your business, so nearly every business has one! Unfortunately, just having an app isn’t enough. Nobody will download it if they don’t know it exists!
If you’re just getting started trying to advertise your app, make sure you start with these four marketing tips that are perfect for apps of all types.

Social Media
One of the very best ways to market your app, or any other kind of product or service for that matter, is to use social media. There are a couple of ways you can do this.
Start by having a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Connect with friends and followers in a meaningful way instead of being overly promotional.
Paid advertising is also an option on social media platforms. As a bonus, most platforms make it very easy to advertise and get the most out of your marketing campaign.

Make a Website Just for Your App
Your business probably already has a website, and you should definitely talk about your brand-new app on your site, but your app should have a website of its very own too.
There are a couple of reasons why your app should have its own site. First, it’s a great way to ensure your app is easily searchable on the internet. Second, you can include as much information as possible about your app on its own website.
In addition, having a site for your app shows people that it’s the real deal. With its own presence on the internet, people will feel confident that it’s worth their time.

Mix and Mingle With the Public
When it comes to advertising your app, it’s about a lot more than sitting behind a desk and typing away on the internet. One of the best ways to advertise your business is to get out there and mingle with the public!
There are quite a few ways to do this:
• Create a press release
• Host a launch party
• Conduct and give interviews to local newspapers and bloggers
• Write a guest blog

Another great way to get the word out about your app is to connect with social media influencers. It doesn’t necessarily have to be someone with millions of followers. Even getting an endorsement with an influencer in your industry with a few thousand followers can help.

List it in the App Store the Right Way
The very best, and easiest way, to get started advertising your app is to make sure its listing is optimized in the app store. That means using keywords, ratings, and detailed descriptions so that it is searchable in the store and enticing to download when found.
There are many ways to advertise your app, but if you’re just getting started, make sure you begin with these four ideas. They’ll make sure your app gets off to a running start!

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March 19 2018

Coolest Things About the Cloud That You Might Not Know

You’ve certainly heard of the cloud. Even if you haven’t, you’ve been using it for years. It’s what enables you to access information on the internet that is stored on servers all over the world.

The cloud is expanding, enabling us to do more with the power of the internet than ever before. Businesses are finding it easy to keep up with compliance using cloud-based software and companies are able to store massive amounts of information without having to house a huge server in the building.

We all have a basic understanding of the cloud, but you probably don’t know these cool things about cloud technology.

You Only Have to Pay for What You Use
Do you remember the days of buying external storage devices? The more storage you purchased, the more expensive it would be. However, most people bought more storage than they needed. It was especially difficult for businesses to gauge just how much storage they needed and how much they would have to pay to ensure they have extra storage, just in case.
With the cloud, you only pay for what you use! When you need more, it’s there for the taking. There is no longer a need to pay for storage that you won’t use.

There Are Different Kinds of Clouds
People always talk about ‘the’ cloud, but it’s a lot more than just one concept. There are actually many different kinds of cloud computing that include:
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)
In addition, you can choose to operate entirely in the cloud, use a server on your premises, or a hybrid of both.

It Can Save You Time and Money
The most convincing reason to use the cloud, especially for businesses, is because it can help you save time and money.
In addition to the fact that you only pay for what you use, a company will also save money because they aren’t spending cash to maintain hardware and subscribe to software and other services that require monthly fees. You can also scale up or down instantaneously without having to spend days or weeks planning a new strategy.

You Might Not Ever Have to Worry About Backups or Disaster Recovery Ever Again
Losing important files is a nightmare that every business shares. It would be even worse if the system was compromised because it would prevent employees from getting their work done.
With the cloud, you may never have to worry about backups or disaster recovery ever again. Although you shouldn’t depend on the cloud completely, if you choose a cloud server that provides disk-based replication, you can rest even easier.

Don’t forget that the cloud is the reason why we’re finally starting to live in smart homes that look like the ones predicted in the mid-20th century! The cloud is here to stay, which means it’s well worth your time to learn everything about how it works.

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January 2 2018

Top 10 Call to Action Examples

Top 10 Call to Action Examples

The call-to-action (CTA) is a basic element of all marketing efforts because that’s what gets the attention of your audience to take action. There are multiple examples of effective calls-to-action as well as ineffective ones on the internet. But, once you imbibe the good elements, it’s easy to eliminate the odd parts that won’t work at all.

Have you ever wondered why you seem to subscribe to few businesses over others, one thing for sure is that you are interested in the subject but the most important part is, these businesses were successful in grabbing your attention and encashing your interest. They do it very well by tweaking different elements of CTA, color, copy, size, shape, placement. The aim of an ideal call-to-action is to prompt an immediate action from the reader.

What factors fulfill the ‘effectiveness’ of a CTA?

• Offer something valuable to the reader – Free trial of your product
• Instruct the reader on what needs to be done
• Incorporate strong visuals
• Hint for an immediate action
• Make them more visible
• Use unique text copy other than traditional ones
• Should be connected with your goals

Let’s look at 10 call-to-action examples and take some ideas out of them:

1. Keep the CTA simple and to-the-point – Backcountry

Backcountry, an eCommerce site for adventure and specialty outdoor equipment, presents a warm welcome to the new website visitors with this pop-up, that offers a 10% off on their entire first order. A CTA button below with ‘Apply to Cart’ immediately pushes the customers to their carts with a discounted price. That’s pretty encouraging to new visitors. The CTA is right in front of visitors and freezes the background of the web page. Backcountry’s email subscription CTA does not use any text copy but just an image of an email. So, a reader understands what the CTA is all about even before reading the message ‘Stay in the Know. Sign Up for Backcountry news, sales and deals’.

2. Get personal with your customers – Agile CRM

When I come across ‘Click this’, I wouldn’t be as persuaded to click as I would when I see ‘Lizia, click this’. Humans are bound to take actions when they see their name. This is where personalization factor adds to the increase in conversions. Agile CRM, an all-in-one CRM solutions for small businesses, uses personalization in their call-to-action message. ‘Mark, You’ve got a $5 discount’ lets Mark believe that he is a premium customer to the company. This builds up the customer’s trust towards the company. And, ‘Coupon valid till 24 hrs only’ speeds up Mark to take the action.

3. Use the CTA as clickbait – ClassPass

The primary purpose of the CTA is that it should persuade viewers to click on it, so use your CTA as a clickbait just like how ClassPass does. ClassPass is a monthly fitness membership that allows customers to visit the best fitness studio. The CTA does two things – Puts an interesting offer to the visitors (a positive message) and constricts the time period for the offer (not-so-positive message). ClassPass interesting turns the eyes towards the positive message first because of the bigger font size, which convinces people to click ‘Yes, let’s do this!’. Even if customers look at ‘for a limited time only’, it only rushes them to avail the offer because they are already convinced by now.

4. Tell customers why they should click – Emailmonday

The call-to-action should tell customers as to why they should click on it. As simple as that. If there is nothing beneficial to the customers, they would not be excited to go an click the button. What I like about Emailmonday, an independent email marketing consultant, is the shape of the form. Unlike most forms which are either rectangular or square shaped, this form is spherical with the face of the business owner. The copy messages readers the true value of subscription – ‘Subscribe, because the really good email marketing tips are in the newsletter’. ‘You can Unsubscribe anytime, but you won’t even want to’ – that’s the faith you have in yourself.

5. Increase the intriguing factor – SkullCandy

SkullCandy, a leader in consumer electronics, uses an interesting text copy ‘Get the lowdown’ for delivering insider news, event info and deals information. Also, ‘Join’ sounds better than ‘Subscribe’. What’s more interesting on SkullCandy’s website is the ‘Get $10’ CTA at the left bottom, which leads to the below-landing page. It allows new visitors to refer their friends and earn $10, $30, $50 in return.

A bold ‘Get $10’ without any message is intriguing for the visitors to click it. It grabs the attention of the reader because the CTA is highlighted along with the pop-up, dimming out the background.

6. Link your goal to the CTA – Vice

The trend with most of businesses today is they just add their social media buttons at the bottom of the page, which are seldom seen by the readers. But if your goal is to increase the audience on your social media platform, how do you do that? You can turn your heads to Vice. Vice, a leading global youth media company, puts a strong visual and text copy to invite readers to like their Facebook page. The image of puppy loving its father depicts the kind of love Vice has for their audience, and since the majority audience is youth, they connect well with animals. ‘Like us like we like you’ and ‘Like Vice’ has four likes already echoing among readers to ‘like’ their Facebook page, which is their priority at the moment.

7. CTA at right in the center – Prezi

Prezi, a SaaS company which offers cloud-based presentation platform to its customers, puts the CTA ‘Try Prezi Next free’ right in front of your eyeballs which works as an awesome lead magnet. The moment you enter the website, that’s what you see at first look. When you use more than one CTA, it’s good to connect them to the same landing page, so that it impacts on conversion and also does not confuse customers. Here, ‘Get Started’ and ‘Try Prezi Next free’ both land on their pricing web page, which shows comparisons of their different plans.

8. Match up the colors – Magento

Most marketers don’t pay close attention to the choice of colors they use in their calls-to-action, not anymore. Some say green works better than red and vice-versa. Whatever color you use, they should not be too bright but pleasant to the eyes. Magento, a provider of cloud commerce innovation, uses an orange color which matches with their logo. The color scrolls the eyeballs to ‘Sign up for webinar’, ‘Magento’ and ‘see a demo’ which exactly is their aim – to seek attention. Both CTAs are easy to find because of their color and placement. The actions are linked to their goals of – increasing the audience to the webinar and reach their demo target for the month.

9. Show more love – Popsugar

Popsugar is a global media and publishing company which creates content across entertainment, fashion, beauty, fitness, parenting and more, for women. Their call-to-action is full of hearts which relates more to its women audience. And of course, the text copy of this slide-in pop up ‘Get your daily beauty fix’ is what we women need, so send more of that

10. Tell what your business does – Instacart

When I look at some websites, I don’t understand what their business is all about until I turn few web pages. That involves time and not many visitors would be interested to look up for information, so there you are letting go of potential customers. Instead, try what Instacart does. Instacart, an online grocery delivery business, tells what it does in their CTA in exactly seven words ‘Get your groceries delivered from local stores’. The placement of the CTA is also at the center with a free delivery option for first orders. It has this function of enabling and disabling high contrast, for good visibility.

All the above-mentioned businesses follow the best practices and test and test and test their calls-to-action to generate more revenue. Try and use these ideas in designing your next call-to-action and measure the results. Don’t forget to come back and tell us how it went.

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December 27 2017

10 Ways Progressive Web Apps Will Replace Native Apps

Progressive web apps (PWAs) are poised to topple their native app, soon-to-be predecessors from their throne atop the best mobile app development strategies pyramid. In other words, move over native apps, your younger and better-looking sibling is taking over. That said, don’t start pulling your hair out if your business has already invested in the development of a native mobile app. Your money hasn’t gone to waste. There’s still significant value to gain from having a downloadable native app. Mobile apps, no matter the breed, are going to enter a hybrid period where consumers expect both a native app experience and a progressive web app.

The future beyond that period, however, points towards a PWA-dominated landscape. In this discussion, we’ll take a look at ten reasons why PWAs are better than native apps and create a better app-like experience for customers.

1. The World Is Increasingly Mobile

At first thought, this may seem like a win for the native app column, especially when you consider that 87% of an average user’s time on their mobile device is spent on native apps. But, we’re also hurtling towards app fatigue. App fatigue is caused by two things:
1. There are too many apps on the marketplace (over 1.5 million)
2. Most users have downloaded “enough” apps on their phone

As more and more people shifted to browsing and using their mobile devices, app developers slammed the marketplace with apps to meet this demand. Many users are reaching critical mass with the number of icons and apps that they’ll allow to populate their mobile devices’ home screens. Thus, it’s becoming incredibly difficult to convince customers to commit to downloading a new app and crowding their screens even more.

2. Search Algorithms Will Favor Mobile Soon

Towards the end of 2016, Google announced that it would shift its search engine indexing algorithms to mobile-first indexing. This change is predicted to occur in 2018 and will mean that Google will look for a company’s mobile website or experience before its desktop website. You’d be hard-pressed to find better evidence than that of a mobile future. For companies with PWAs, this change is huge because it means that your app-like experience will soon be discoverable by Google and other search engines. This is a luxury that even native apps won’t be able to compete with.

3. Fewer Clicks Means Easier Accessibility

Search engines are just one way for users to connect to your PWA. These web-based apps have always had a key benefit over native apps: accessibility. Think about how many steps are involved in downloading a native app to your mobile device. You have to access your device’s app market, search the app, download the app, accept permissions and so on. Each step is a chance that the would-be user decides it isn’t worth it. PWAs, on the other hand, are accessible the moment a user learns of its existence, by accessing the experience through a URL link.

4. Shareable

People like to share the latest “new” thing they’ve discovered, read about, bought, tasted, touched, etc. That’s why every social media platform ever to make it big has a share function and why there are options to share this blog post at the bottom of the page. People like to share apps too, but native apps’ lack of accessibility has made this difficult. You can’t just send someone a native app. You can only tell your closest friends to check it out; it is then on them to visit the app store and see for themselves what the app is all about.

PWAs are unique, compared to their native counterparts, because they can be accessed through a simple URL link. This means that sharing a PWA experience is as easy as linking someone to a news article.

5. Usable Across More Platforms

The other detriment to native apps’ shareability is that not all apps function across different platforms. If your friend has an Apple device and you a Samsung, there isn’t a guarantee that they can get the same apps that you love on your Android-powered device because the language on their Apple devices is different. Native apps get their name because they require a native programming language. This restricts the types of devices that can “read” and allow the app to run.

Progressive web apps are unique because they don’t require any download or programming language to read. It is all web-based. Thus, not only can you easily share a PWA experience, but there’s a much higher guarantee that the recipient will be able to access the app-like website.

6. Minimal Storage Required

PWAs don’t require any sort of download; a user can access the entire experience right in their mobile web browser. Part of the app fatigue that many mobile users are facing is lack of storage. Between the apps we download, pictures/videos we take, documents we save and every other item taking up residency inside our mobile devices, we’re creating storage needs faster than the newest models of smartphones can keep up with. If a potential user has to decide between downloading your app or keeping photo #3,047 of their cat and an auto-tuned version of Beyonce’s Single Ladies saved on their device, it isn’t going to be a hard decision for them.

If you want to “download” a PWA, you can save a URL shortcut to your home screen. This functions exactly like any other icon for an app does on your home screen. When pushed, it accesses your favorite mobile browser and brings you to the URL of the PWA. Storing a URL link requires much less space than downloading an entire native app.

7. Faster Load Times

Once a native app has been installed on a mobile device, and the user has successfully committed to the whole download process, the waiting still isn’t over. The load time of native apps can range, based on the app’s size and robustness. Yet, any wait is a long wait, especially for something that you’ve already waited for to access and download. Again, progressive web apps have the edge; they load in about the time it takes to load a webpage, which with an average Internet connection is just a moment or two. For businesses, this means customers never have to wait to access your app experience.

8. Faster To Develop

Not only are PWAs easier and faster to locate and load, but they are also quicker to make. This makes them exceptional for one-off campaigns, new product releases or any other occasion where you need to bring an app to market very quickly. However, this perk does hint at the downside of PWAs; they lack the performance and number of robust features that native apps are capable of. While PWAs are more straightforward to develop, part of their ease of development is because they can’t handle a lot of the harder-to-code features that native apps can leverage.

9. Cheaper To Make, Easier To Maintain

The speed and ease at which a PWA can be developed means cheaper costs. This is excellent news for smaller businesses that have been kept out of the mobile development game because of the costs of creating a native app. Progressive web apps are also easier to maintain for both users and developers. Users don’t have to repeatedly update their app in order to get the latest features; updates are immediately applied to the web-based experience the moment the developers publish them. The developers of PWAs experience far less time to produce each update or provide general maintenance to the app.

10. PWAs Still Deliver A Lot Of Value

As mentioned earlier, PWAs do lack in one major category: performance. Native apps are capable of doing more and offering more than progressive web apps. That said, don’t count the more nimble PWA out of the count for features. First, PWAs already provide a lot: push notifications, app-based loyalty programs, location-based services and messages, even interactive games and other media. Second, PWA’s are relatively new; there’s still significant developments underway and there’s plenty left to be discovered about the capabilities of web-based apps.

It isn’t hard to envision a future where the gap between PWAs and native apps, regarding performance, is much smaller than it is today. However, even if such a future is never actualized, most businesses can service all of their app needs inside a PWA environment.

Conclusions

If you’re a business that is looking to enter the mobile app space and you are trying to decide between developing a PWA or native apps, the answer is easy. PWAs have lots of value presently and far, far more to come in the future. Unless your app is going to house a lot of deep, sophisticated features, a native app simply isn’t worth it. Not only do they cost a lot of time and money to develop, but it is also becoming harder and harder to encourage downloads. As PWAs gain popularity, that difficulty is only going to rise. You can also easily develop and launch PWAs without coding with an app builder.

Simply put, PWAs are the next evolution of the app experience, and they will thrive where native apps have failed by being easier to access, share and produce, while still maintaining the same level of value that native app users have long enjoyed.

About Author:
Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of Bizness Apps, a company that helps small businesses build mobile solutions to compete with big brands. Their mobile app building platform makes it possible for everyone to create a mobile app for their business. When he isn’t helping small businesses, he is out surfing in the Pacific Ocean.

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December 24 2017

Smart Blogging Tips for Small Business Owners

Blogging is a great way to create content that will bring traffic to your website, and start selling online. As a small business, you’ve got a lot of competition out there. With these blogging tips though, you can stand out from the crowd and show your readers why they should buy with you.

Blog Regularly
The first thing you’ll need to do is decide how often you’re going to blog. Can you do it daily? Weekly? Bi-weekly? Now’s not the time to make lofty goals that you can’t possibly reach. Be honest with yourself about how much time you have to dedicate to this project of your business. If you can only blog once a month, stick to that goal. The key is to update regularly, so search engines can see you’re a current site and rank you accordingly and send potential customers to pages of your business’ blog. To do this you can create your blogging or content calendar and write down all the dates and ideas you have.

Get Those Backlinks
One of the best ways to get readers to find your business’ blog is to get backlinks. These are links on other sites that direct readers to your own blog. As well as helping you find readers that way, they also help your SEO as they show you’re a reputable site. One of the best ways to do this is to create your business’ page on different trusted directories. Also, to show that you’re an expert in your business niche you can guest blog on other websites. When you do this, you can provide a backlink in return on your site. Ensure you’re citing their site properly when you do so, so they get the benefit of it. Use a tool like Cite It In to help you do this and to cite references to stats and recearches.

Think About Length of Posts
There’s a lot of debate about the length of posts you write for your blog. Which is best? Shorter blogs are good as they condense a lot of information into a short space. This is perfect if you’re writing for people who are on mobile, as many of your readers will be. Longer posts, though, are better for going into more detail. And some topics need fewer words. Just keep an eye on your length with Easy word count as you write.

Write Quality Posts
Yes, that’s easier said than done. However, readers can tell if they’re reading a quality post within seconds. If they’re not, they’ll just click away. Ensure that you’re writing posts your readers can use. They should be informative and entertaining to them and give them something that they wouldn’t have had before visiting your blog.

Beware of Plagiarism
Plagiarism is becoming a big problem online these days. Even if you’re actively avoiding it, you can still be caught out. Search engines will rate you down if you’re found to be using other people’s work and passing it off as your own. To avoid this, it’s a good idea to run your writing through a plagiarism detector such as PlagScan or Academized before you publish it.

Watch Your Grammar
Good grammar is the basis of any good blog. Without it, your writing won’t look expert or professional, which is what you need. Even more, grammar mistakes can drive customers away from your business. That’s why you need to have a good handle on your grammar. Check your writing to see if there’s any grammatical mistake before you publish, and work on improving your weak points. Services like State Of Writing and Grammarix can help you improve your grammar, and the quality of your writing.

Become the Go to Blog in Your Area
Whatever your business blog is about, you should aim to become the go-to blog in your business niche. Are you selling children’s craft materials? Then you can be a blog full of ideas for school and at home crafts, updated with the seasons. You want people to come to your blog, as you’re the one with all the ideas and information that they need and the product. Think about what you can bring to your niche, and make yourself indispensable as a blog.

Proofread and Edit Every Time
Before you post anything to your blog, ensure that you’re proofreading and editing it before you do so. You may think you’ve written the piece well, but there’s sure to be a mistake or two that you won’t spot until you make the post live. As mentioned above, mistakes make you look unprofessional and that’s the last thing you want. Give yourself time to sit and proofread your writing, ideally at least 24 hours. This means you won’t be editing in a rush, where you might miss something. If you’re unable to edit yourself, services like Paper Fellows and Big Assignments can help.

These tips are all recommended by expert bloggers, so you should try them out for yourself. Getting started is easier than you’d think, and once you’re writing you’ll find that there are lots to say about your subject. Give your readers what they need and they’ll keep coming back for more.

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