Free resources for app creators
10 Meaningful Apps That Are Making A Positive Impact And Changing The World For Good
There is a new movement in the business world.
More and more businesses are acting as a force for good, to be the change they want to see in the world.
Billionaires are giving away wealth to make a huge social impact.
Social responsibility is not only becoming an integral part of many companies but the core reason for their existence.
How can technology play a role in this change?
Well, change is already happening.
Tech founders and social entrepreneurs across the world have created and are creating a new breed of apps.
Meaningful apps where the goal is not just to make a ton of money but to make a real impact in the world.
To be able to scale the impact and accelerate the speed at which they can make an impact.
These purpose-driven entrepreneurs and enterprises want to give eyes to the blind, food to the poor, health and education for everyone and more.
We are excited to take you through such meaningful apps that are making a huge positive impact and hoping it will inspire some of you to do the same.
Be My Eyes
Be My Eyes is a free smartphone app for Android and iOS that connects low vision and blind users with sighted volunteers for visual assistance via a live video connection.
It gives you, a sighted user, a chance to become a part of a visually-challenged individual’s endeavours and help them live a normal life.
The volunteers can help in their own free time and have the option to decline requests.
Also, the app can be accessed from any part of the world, allowing you to enter the languages you speak and understand.
More than 1 Million users have downloaded the app since its advent on the Google Play Store, indicating the acceptability of socially empowered apps amongst people.
Download the iOS and Android App here. Follow them on Facebook here.
App Founders: Hans Jorgen Wiberg
Orange Harp
Available on iTunes, Orange Harp is empowering shoppers to shop for more environmentally sustainable products.
They suggest the best options to buy fashion accessories, apparel, and body care items that have been manufactured locally with natural and recycled materials.
The manufacturers you will find on the app are environmentally conscious entrepreneurs, who believe in delivering simpler experiences through their products.
Orange Harp believes in giving back to the environment, not in the form of trash, but in the form of something that can be recycled.
All the partners of the app that you will find listed on the homepage have a story to tell about how their product is doing good to the fashion world and the environment we live in.
Download their iOS app here.
App Founders: Anbu Anbalagapandian
Chummy App
They refer to themselves as an urban ecosystem of kindness.
While the world is complaining about millennials and their addiction to apps/social media, chummy is proving that there are thousands of kind millennials who want to help others and pay it forward.
This app simply allows people to help each other in their neighborhood on a reciprocal/pay it forward model.
Kudos to the founders Vitali and Anton.
Download the iOS and Android App here.
App Founders: Vitalii Betin, Anton Zapolskyi
Feedie
Feedie allows you to turn your food photos into real food for impoverished kids.
Whenever you snap your food and upload a picture of it on Feedie, the restaurant will donate to the Lunchbox Fund, the creators of this app.
The Lunchbox FUND will, in turn, use the donation to feed the needy in South Africa.
Their website says that over 12 million meals were shared via their platform.
Follow them on Facebook.
App Founders: Topaz Page Green
Ludwig van Beethoven Music
Listening to music is a therapy in its own right.
However, people who have hearing disabilities, or deaf are deprived of this therapeutic experience.
Therefore, MELO Apps has come up with the Ludwig van Beethoven Music app that allows the deaf to experience the finest music.
The app intended to cater to the needs of deaf people, allowing them to enjoy music at its best.
The app connects to a bracelet that converts sounds into a series of vibrations and colors. This allows the individual to feel the music.
Download the iOS and Android App here.
ShareTree
The ShareTree app enables individuals, schools, community groups, and businesses to develop and demonstrate characters and culture of high value. It empowers the user to live a life of purpose and meaning.
The ShareTree App is a social purpose platform developed to give schools, community groups, businesses, and individuals an opportunity to SHARE their acknowledgment of others’ character qualities thereby cultivating great character; as well as SHARE their time, skills and resources by making meaningful contributions to the community through volunteering.
We worked with Sharetree over 3 years to build an Android and iOS app and also a Kiosk mode app helping the ShareTree team enable meaningful, purposeful connectedness in organizations, communities, and individuals.
CHARACTER ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND DEMONSTRATION:
The app contains a deck of 120 digital Character Cards that can be viewed and shared with others. Each contemplative card features a character quality such as wisdom, purposefulness, hope, love, courage, respect, etc. and acts as a guide to reflect on and practice specific character qualities. Users can acknowledge other users in the way of sending them a character leaf that goes up on their Sharetree. A group’s Sharetree is created automatically by collating leaves of all it’s members.
The app automatically matches users with volunteering opportunities not only based on their skill sets and availability but also based on their purpose and what global initiative they are most aligned to. This feature allows organizations to make their CSR activity most impactful.
GRATITUDE EXERCISE:
The app allows users to take up a 30-day challenge/exercise where they will cultivate an attitude of gratitude by acknowledging 1 person every day.
Kudos to the founder Steven Farrugia for his vision and we (Appomate) are grateful to be the tech partner to bring his vision to reality.
Download the free ShareTree app now to discover all the features. Take up the gratitude exercise and send your 1st acknowledgment.
Too Good To Go
Too Good To Go is a smartphone application that’s making the rounds lately.
Reason?
It is allowing restaurants, diners, and cafés to sell their unsold meals as takeaways to users.
The leftover food, which would have otherwise ended up in bins, is now making its way to tummies of the late-night snackers for unbelievably cheap prices.
The app is reducing food wastage and ultimately reducing global greenhouse emissions, by saving the food that is, simply, too good to let go of.
Download the iOS and Android App here.
Founders: Klaus B. Pedersen, Brian Christensen
Forward
Does throwing away the good items when you are downsizing hurt?
Well, we’re sure it does because someone can still use them.
However, if the yard sale couldn’t find a buyer, who will help you find one?
Well, Forward is the answer to all your queries.
It allows you to connect with people who need your stuff and the price you charge is then forwarded to the charity of your choice.
It is an app that will not only help a purpose you are passionate about but also reduce the amount of wastage.
Download the iOS and Android App here.
CharityTap
While you cannot go to every part of the world and feed the hungry, the United Nations World Food Programme can.
So, whenever you tap on the rice bowl on the CharityTap application, you are donating a grain of rice to the needy.
You can check the number of rice grains that you have donated in the Game Centre of the application and make you every tap count!
Founders: Robert Gillies, Matthew Kwong
We365
If you are an adventurous soul who never shies away from challenges, how about accepting one challenge for the environment every day?
Yes, with the We365 app, you will be given one small but significant social challenge throughout the year.
The challenges can vary from planting a seedling to finding shelter for a homeless dog.
You can accept the challenges as your responsibility towards the world and make the small changes that will count as game-changers one day.
It is so refreshing and inspiring to see more and more entrepreneurs and organisations wanting to create an impact using technology.
Support them by using their app and sharing this blog with your community.
If you like to have your app featured in our next blog, write to us as we’d love to hear from you!
If have a world-changing idea you would like to discuss, contact us or call us at 1300 781 794
4 Things Every App Founder MUST Do While Their App is Being Built
Don’t waste the most critical time of your app business journey
You can’t do everything on your own. Nobody can. The current age demands speed and specialization, so we focus on the things we’re good at, have time for, and outsource the things we don’t.
You are a business person, and you know that designing and developing an app is best left to the experts, so you’ve hired an agency to develop your app. Should you sit around and wait until you’re done?
No. But unfortunately, most founders and executives make this costly mistake. Building your app secretly is the worst business decision you could take.
There are many things you can (MUST) do while you are waiting for your app to be built. Here are the top 4 we recommend.
The first and most important?
1. Set up a Landing Page
You should be finding ways to attract and communicate to your potential audience and the first thing to create is a landing page.
A landing page is a home base — an entry point to the product you are creating. Your landing page is their first impression of your app. The most common mistake is to wait till the app is built to create a landing page. A landing page can be an invaluable asset to inform you about what to do when your app is ready and allows you to have a head start with your user acquisition when your app is launched.
What Your Landing Page Should Contain
It could contain any number of things, but while your app is being built, your landing page can help you with 2 primary objectives :
- Collecting Email addresses from people who are interested in your app/business
- Testing what marketing language works best for your target audience
Hence, at the very least, your landing page should contain a headline, a subtitle/tagline, and an email collection box.
We recommend the following:
The headline and tagline are key elements that you can A/B test. Conversion analytics are important to understand what message resonates with your audience. To a lesser extent, you can also test the List of Benefits, if each benefit has a button with a Call to Action beneath it.
The hero shot or video is a visual to catch attention. If you’re using a video, you could make it address your core issue (like https://www.toastmasters.org/) or advertise the app (like https://anchor.fm/). Good length for your video would be 2 to 3 minutes. Talk about your Unique Selling Proposition and why people should use your app.
Check out one of our landing pages on Appomate’s website that lets you download a free e-book, Create Your App and Grow Rich.
In the mobile version, you absolutely must use the need for scrolling to your advantage. The first view of your landing page could contain just the headline, tagline, and the hero shot or video, and a Get Started/Call-To-Action button.
You can see below how Google created a pre-launch landing page for the Call Joy product to get users to sign up for early access.
Below is the online proposals and documents signing platform Pandadoc collecting email addresses using a pre-launch landing page.
Here’s another sample of a landing page for a business that has already developed an app. Instead of ‘Get Started’ you might have ‘Get Early Access’ or ‘Get an invite when our app is launched’ as your Call-To-Action. But you can see how this landing page is simple and well designed.
In the above example, Anchor.fm does a lot of things right with their landing page. They keep it simple, but make information super accessible. They advertise their free service first, and their money-making service second.
Can you see all of it? Let’s take a closer look.
- The Headline — A simple statement, stated like it is fact, is universally likeable.
- The subtitle — They describe the key features of their free service. Unlimited space, automatic distribution, the ability to monetize, centralized, for free.
- A sign-up button — Many users don’t like to read a lot. For those users, the start button is front and centre.
- Links to their apps
- A button to easily switch from a competitor
- A secondary service to advertise on Anchor — off centre, to the side.
- A descriptive page for more involved users, tucked away in the corner.
- A video describing their service. Videos are more engaging than text, and are therefore more universal.
A great landing page does most of your work in converting your audience into customers. Spend time fine-tuning your landing page so that your audience takes the first step that you want them to take. When your app is ready, you want to have people ready to download your app.
2. Get regular user feedback
Development cycles are iterative. Like any creative field, the first idea does and SHOULD change and evolve into something better. As the founder, you have the ability to inform that development cycle by getting customer feedback even before the app is finished and released.
Likely, you have tested your business idea on your first customers — friends and family, or maybe even someone from the edge of your personal network. You asked them what do you think about this idea and they went “Ya, it’s a great idea. Go for it”. You should get them involved in your app development process by asking them to beta-test your app. Ask them “Do you mind being part of the app creation process and give me feedback?”. You will be surprised to hear how many people want to help.
Ask your development team to include your beta testers in the test build distribution process. You don’t want too many people in your beta testing group. 5 to 10 people who fit your actual customer persona is a good number.
Is the app intuitive to use? Are you able to do what you want to do? Is there anything confusing you? What action do you want to take on this page ? What is your first impression of the app? What general feedback do you have for me?— these are some questions your beta-testers can answer, and you will empower your development team to better realize your vision for the app.
3. Send people to your landing page
Your landing page is ready to collect email addresses, so you’re halfway there. But woah, you might still be livin’ on a prayer. You still have to get your potential customers to visit your landing page.
Ask your friends and family, “Hey do you know someone who would really benefit from this?”
Leverage your network. Word-of-mouth will ALWAYS be the best way of marketing, no matter how technology changes.
Once you gather details of these people, don’t sell them the app too soon. Just send them to the landing page and then give them a call. Ask them what they thought. See if they understood your product by looking at your landing page.
4. Build Your Social Media Network
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, Medium, Pinterest, Snapchat, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox — all of these are important, but it’s hard to manage all of them, especially without a team dedicated to handling so many channels.
Here are our three best tips on managing your online reach:
Pick Your Primary Channel
Sample everything, but pick your key targets.
Will your app primarily serve businesses instead of single users? If yes, then Linkedin is your main target.
Is your business visual (photography/ videography/ fashion/ travel/ experiences and more)? If so, then Instagram is your best bet.
Concentrate 80% of your effort on your primary social channel, and 20% on the rest. It’s important to touch everything, but people will primarily know you for one.
Now, on how to touch everything…
Share Valuable Content
Know what your target customers are interested in. Slowly build your community around your target users. You don’t need an app or a product to do this. As long as you share interesting, valuable content, you can build your following.
Unless you’re a media juggernaut, you cannot keep creating unique content for each channel.Content is either written, audio, or video. Luckily, most platforms accept some version of all three. Your Instagram photos can go on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Your YouTube videos can be cut into clips for Facebook and Linkedin, and embedded in an accompanying Medium article. Reuse, reuse, reuse.
Send them to the landing page
Ending every piece of content with a CTA (Call To Action) to check out your landing page is a recipe for getting ignored. A good starting point for adding CTAs is 1 in every 10 posts. Once every 10 posts, you can make an “ask” from your audience — go to our landing page to find out more about what we are building.
Ultimately, there are a hundred different things you can do while your app is being built. The key is to understand that your business is not just your app. It is your brand, your community, your relationship with your potential customers. Work on all of that.
By having your app be built by professionals, you allow yourself space and time for other things. Do not let that time and space go to waste.
Avoid This #1 Most Common COSTLY Mistake In App Development
This Critical Step In Building A Successful App Can Be A Costly Mistake
Your app is ready to be built, but who will build it? You turn to developers and get quotes ranging from $20,000 to $200,000 for the same app.
Who do you trust?
Should you go for the cheapest option available, or will money buy quality?
As an entrepreneur, it is absolutely important that you choose the right development team to build your app. But it isn’t easy.
Beyond price differences, different teams suggest different technologies. Your team of executives might not be technically skilled enough to understand these different technologies, and you’ll be left confused.
To help you with that decision-making process we present you with,
Top 3 Things To Look Out For When Hiring An App Development Agency or Freelancer:
1. Due Diligence towards Developer Competence
The most important thing for you to ascertain is the capability of the developer. Do they have the ability to do what you want? If they cannot deliver your vision, then it doesn’t matter how low the price offer may be. If a developer is able to execute your vision better than what you can imagine, they may well be worth a higher price.
But how do you check if they have the ability or not? You can’t just ask developers directly unless you want several “yes” answers. However, so many businesses make this mistake of just going by the words of the quoting developers.
Instead, ask for proof of skills — look at their portfolio of apps and websites. Ask them for their 3 best apps. Use it. See if you like the design and intuitively understand the UI. Have they built an app that’s better in quality and functionality than the app you are trying to build? If not, understand it’s a risk if you just assume they will deliver superior quality just for your app.
Don’t stop with just checking their apps out. Ask for references from previous customers, especially the customers of the apps you liked the most. If you are dealing with overseas developers, it’s possible that they just provide you link to apps that they actually did not work on. Contact the client of that app and ask them if they were happy with the developer and if the project was delivered within time and budget.
These 2 steps are basic common sense due diligence. But it’s very uncommon. A shocking number of founders take developers at their word, lazy to do their due diligence and $50,000 later, they experience a rude awakening.
Professionalism is an invaluable asset, and trying to save money with an unprofessional or unqualified developer is a surefire way to waste money, take on stress, and give time for competition to get a head start on you.
2. Detailed Scoping
The second most common mistake entrepreneurs make is to provide a vague scope of their app. There are founders, executives who try to explain their idea over the phone or try to get a quote based on a 1-page brief.
Don’t do that! By doing this, you leave the interpretation of your app to the developer. Unclear instructions are a one-way trip to headache town.
You need to do the exact opposite — be hyper-specific. Create wireframes of every screen of your app, and create detailed user stories covering every feature. Then use these mockups to get a quote from your developer.
Yes, this is a lot of work, and yes, the development team has designers as well, but if you give them an incomplete brief, their interpretation might be completely different from what you wanted. Every developer you get quotes from has their own interpretation of what you want. So no wonder the quotes are going to vary a lot.
Creating a detailed document and wireframes of your app also helps you judge your own commitment to your business. Do you know exactly what you want in your app? Being clear from the start will ensure your project doesn’t overrun on budget or time.
Create wireframes of every screen of your app, and create detailed user stories covering every feature.
For example, at Appomate, we have a process called “See It Before You Build It (SB4UB)”, where we help you see your app before we write a single line of code by creating a visual prototype of your entire app. You can take this visual prototype output we create and use that to get a quote from other developers.
Remember, if a developer gives you a fixed quote without this kind of detail, but only based on a phone call or a 1-page brief, they might just be desperate to get your business, and will likely overrun on budget and time and never deliver what you want.
3. Character fit
If you knew for sure that someone is arrogant and difficult to work with, would you hire them?
The character and attitude of the team you work with is much more important than the technology they use. You don’t need to get caught up in specific tech — that world is constantly changing. Does the developer exhibit an eagerness to learn, adopt new technologies and not use legacy technology? Do they have evidence to support their use of a tech stack? If yes, then this relationship is likely to work well.
It is much more important to know if your wavelengths match. Once your project starts, you’ll be spending a lot of time with your development team. There can be miscommunication. You might change your mind about a feature, or a competitor’s action might force a change of direction.
The character and attitude of the team you work with is more important than the technology they use. It is vital to know they actually care about you and your business.
Are you able to catch up with your developer over coffee?
Can you have conversations with them outside the scope of your project to understand who they are as a person?
Do you like them?
Are they flexible enough to accommodate changes?
If the answer to any of these is ‘No’ at the beginning of the project, then it’s unlikely to improve during the work cycle. If you can’t fully trust them during the sales process, where they’ll likely be at their best behavior, then it might be best to look for someone else.
See what our clients say about us.
The more care you put into the initial process, the fewer problems you will run into later. Sadly, many founders rush this critical step of finding the right team and it could be a very costly mistake. You don’t just lose tens of thousands of dollars but you will miss the opportunity and the timing to launch your app to the market. So get out there and be smart about how you choose who to work with. Following these 3 simple steps will ensure you are making the right choice about who you want to invest your hard earned money with.
Sign up for the “See It Before You Build It (SB4UB)” and get a quote for your app.
Why You Should Launch Your App With Minimum Viable Product?
Many startups waste precious time and money by working in the wrong order: they want to perfect the product before they establish the viability of the product concept.
Many app entrepreneurs start with what they think customers want, argue over what they think customers value, and, after months or years of hard work, spending tens of thousands of dollars and build a product only to find that customers couldn’t care less about it.
So how do you avoid falling into this trap? Do things in the right order: use MVP.
What is the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) means building a product with basic yet necessary features that allows you to release it to the market immediately. In other words, It is the approach of the first building and launching an app with a minimum set of features, with the primary purpose of gaining user feedback.
Startups can minimize risk by creating a Minimal Viable Product (MVP).
A Minimum Viable Product does not eliminate the risk altogether but maximizes your return on the risk you are taking.
The term MVP seems to be coined by Frank Robinson of Sync Dev in 2001. He defined MVP as that unique product that maximizes return on risk for the customer. It was Eric Ries who popularized the term in his book The Lean Startup.
To appreciate Eric Ries’ definition of MVP, you first need to understand the ‘lean startup’ principle and the concept of validated learning.
Lean Startup Principle: MVP
According to the lean startup principle, the main thing that differentiates startups from big companies is that in a startup, the viability of the product and business model need to be proven for every product. The initial focus is on learning and proving viability, not on profits or revenues, like big companies.
Learning is validated by measuring data, and accelerated by applying that data as the product is built. Ries called it the “Build-Measure-Learn loop.” According to him, “the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning with the least effort.”
As an example, Ries notes that Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn wanted to test the assumption that customers were ready and willing to buy shoes online. Instead of building a website, holding an inventory and marketing it, Swinmurn approached local shoe stores, took pictures of their inventory, posted the pictures online, bought the shoes from the stores, and shipped them directly to customers. Swinmurn deduced that customer demand was present, and Zappos would eventually grow into a billion-dollar business selling shoes online. (By doing this, the company grew and chose to focus on a new purpose, which was Delivering Happiness. These guys understood what their Live Bigger dream was, and refocused to make it a reality. In his book “Delivering Happiness’, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares how focusing on “Delivering Happiness’ as the higher purpose helped him achieve success in business and life.)
Some simple examples of MVPs include
- AngelList: AngelList is a marketplace that connects startups and investors. The problem they’re solving is that it’s hard for both sides of the marketplace to find each other. To test and prove their assumptions, they created an MVP: they made manual email introductions to startups looking for funding and investor looking for investments.
- Uber: The MVP version of Uber, which is now the fastest-growing app in the world, was launched in 2010. The app simply allowed the user to find drivers. It didn’t have any fancy features you see today like fare splitting, rewards, etc. Also, there was no app for drivers. In the early days of Uber (Ubercabs), Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanik himself was cold-calling cab drivers, met them and signed them up
Acquiring the MVP mindset
You need the right mindset to build the MVP version of your app. If you are a perfectionist, then prepare yourself now, because you won’t be creating the perfect app. The goal is to release a product as soon as possible and to learn what you need to learn. Accelerated learning should be your #1 objective, and MVP is your best method for achieving this end.
One of the common concerns associated with MVP is that releasing an imperfect app too soon will alienate customers, and you’ll lose them forever. This concern assumes you already know who your customers are, how to reach them, and that they care about your product so much that they would be turned off forever. The good news is this isn’t proving to be true; most product startups are taking the MVP path, and success has not been shown to be hampered by early versions.
The benefits of releasing the first stage of an app fast, without its bells and whistles, are quick feedback, knowing what your customers really value and test all your assumptions. It’s important not to get caught up in details of branding, cosmetic bugs, and the like while launching your MVP. You must think big for long-term, but think basic for the short term.
MVP Benefits
Having fewer features allows you to:
- Test your assumptions about the product and market with minimum investment
- Get the product to market faster
- Reduce wasted time and money in building the wrong features
- Reduce development, quality assurance, and customer support costs
- Make learning easier
MVP Assumptions
- Building a product that is new to the market. Not knowing if demand exists for the product.
- Having a great team to build and sell the product’s vision.
- Following a Build-Measure-Learn loop by implementing analytics to gather data and make changes to the app quickly based on that data.
MVP Challenges
- The founder’s passion for the idea and the team member’s pride in their knowledge and experience stacks one idea on top of another, resulting in a big features list for the MVP. You need to be discerning and say ‘no’ or ‘later’ to some good ideas.
- It’s difficult to choose one segment of your customer base to test. Your end product might fit a wide swath of customer types, but you need to focus on one segment for the MVP and build to their preference. Similarly, amidst the growing number of platforms and devices, (ios, android, windows, web) you must limit the MVP to one or two platforms.
- The challenge is to build the smallest product but at the same time provide an enjoyable customer experience. What is the minimum user experience your customers would expect from your app? How the app works are as important as or more important than what the app does. App users are used to great apps. MVPs, though still small, need to be built to an excellent standard. Users won’t use apps that aren’t easy and intuitive to use.
Your focus is to provide the most important features and functionality to show the user what is possible and get feedback that teaches you about your product viability.
MVP is not necessary for every startup. For example, your app idea could be based on an existing app and making it better. You already know there is demand for the product, and your strategy may simply be to create a superior product and offer it at the same or cheaper price. In such a case, MVP may not play a significant role, and you may have to create a full-blown product with all the bells and whistles. You have to know what you know as facts and what your assumptions are. MVP is more useful when there are more assumptions.
Image from Fast monkeys blog.
Conclusion
Equipped with the right understanding of MVP, you can minimize your risks and maximize your investment. We also highly recommend these 2 books, “Lean Startup” by Eric Ries and “Hooked” by Nir Eyal for all the aspiring app entrepreneurs to gain a deeper understanding of MVP and many other valuable startup principles.
Written by: B Kris, Founder – Appomate.
What Type Of Mobile Apps Does Appomate Build?
Enterprise Apps
- Optimizing internal business processes
- Creating new income streams
- Improving customer experience and/or employees engagement
Here are some examples of the apps we built
ADIDAS
Appomate designed a tablet application which integrates with the Adidas stores existing inventory system. Stores can now sell their full range of products irrespective of the size of the stores. The app provides delivery options in-store pickup as well as home delivery.
THE BRIEF
Adidas stores cannot possibly stock their entire range. Thousands of visitors were visiting stores but not buying due to the right color or size being unavailable. An in-store e-commerce option needed to be developed which allowed Adidas to sell their entire range to its customers in the ultimate buying state.
OUR SOLUTION
Appomate designed a tablet application which integrates with their current inventory system to sell their products at their stores and deliver to customers home or a store pickup later. The tablets are locked for the app alone which essentially made the tablets as customer facing sales kiosks for their stores.
TECHNOLOGY & SERVICES
- ERP Integration
- E-Commerce Integration
RESULTS
- 30% Increase in in-store sales
- 1000% Increase in customer sales engagement
- 10 weeks saved in manual allocation per year
- 100+ new online customers every day
SAFETY FOOD ZONE
Food safety and related issues are a billion dollar problem. Businesses risk being prosecuted and consumers being hospitalized. This app in conjunction with the infrared sensor makes food safety processes reliable and quick. Records are available for businesses in real time to maintain full compliance with government regulations.
THE BRIEF
Food safety is a major issue when it comes to running a food business. Companies need to comply with the food safety programs, and the existing processes were complex and antiquated. Operating a restaurant for over 20 years, Nick Liolios understood how the whole process could be redefined with access to the right technology.
OUR SOLUTION
Appomate worked with Nick Liolios (Founder, Safety Food Zone) over a period of two years to develop the most advanced technology to streamline the food safety process. We built all the food safety program requirements into an app and also integrated it with a temperature sensor via Bluetooth connectivity. All data is now available in the cloud for real-time reporting for compliance measures.
Why Your Mobile App Needs Maintenance – [Complete Guide]
Many app entrepreneurs assume that their work is finished when the mobile app goes live. Little did they know that Mobile app Maintenance can play a critical role in their overall app success story. After developing their great idea, finding the money to help bring it to life, polishing all the bugs out of it, and getting it live on app platforms, the work is far from over, and a different stage of the journey begins.
Once your app is live, it is living in an environment of users, devices, and operating systems which constantly change.
Why your Mobile App needs Maintenance – three main reasons to keep your app alive:
- Whether your app is iOS or Android, device specifications like screen size, resolution, and operating systems are always changing. You must update your app so it stays compatible and works as expected.
- Feedback from your users will alert you to new scenarios, ideas, and bugs that you never knew existed.
- Regular app improvements are critical to staying relevant in the market. They allow you to communicate with your users, motivating them to be active in your app instead of competing apps.
How to Keep App Maintenance Under Control?
There are four main areas to set up and use that will help you keep the app maintenance under your control, instead of the other way around. They are:
- Documentation
- Proactive testing
- Source code version control
- Support system
We’ll look at each in turn.
Documentation
This is a process to start early in your build process. You document your app features and functions in a requirement document. You also document information and make comments within your source code, so anyone can understand the code quickly. Good developers maintain proper documentation that pays dividends for the lifespan of your app. Every time you make changes to the app, you must change the documentation to reflect it or at least update your documents every three to six months.
For instance, what happens as team members come and go? It’s almost certain that different people will work on your app over time. Good documentation saves hundreds of hours of time in analyzing, understanding, and explaining the app to new team members.
Proactive testing
Before you go live, you will test your app using a variety of popular devices and operating systems. But as the environment in which the app lives constantly changes, you never stop testing. Regular proactive testing ensures you find issues before your users do. This will allow you to prevent negative reviews on your App Store page.
You’ll test your app, not only to see that it works as you intend but also to see what happens under heavy usage. This is referred to as load testing. Is there enough memory in your server? If the usage increases by 1000% overnight, will it crash? Load testing is done by creating an artificial load (instead of real users) on your app and servers by using software tools. This allows you to prevent the app and app server from going down when usage spikes unexpectedly.
Source code version control
As the developers work on your app’s code, they have different versions of the code which relate to different versions of your app. Your developer should maintain each version with information on what part of the code is changed, added, or removed, and why. Without it, things can get messy.
For example, say the new version of your app includes a camera integration feature. If this feature update is affecting the performance of other parts of your app, you may decide to go back to the previous version. Source code repository tools allow you to do that easily by maintaining source code versions effectively. There are many free and paid tools, based on the features they offer.
BitBucket and GitHub and are very popular in the app startup community. You can search online for a variety of options.
Support system
Before you go live, make sure you have a great support system in place. This is the foundation of providing good support to your users, as well as maintenance to your app. Support systems (also called issue tracking or ticketing systems) allow you to record and maintain the status (open, in-progress, resolved, or closed) of every issue that arises in your app. All your maintenance tasks, like bug fixing, performance improvements, user experience improvements, and new features, can all be maintained in one place.
There are plenty of systems available. Atlassian’s Jira and Freshdesk are really good for this purpose. You can see a comparison of a number of options here.
Maintaining your app can become a wild octopus. Setting up the processes and tools we’ve reviewed here will let you tame the beast before it unleashes havoc on your app.
Maintenance Issues Processes:
Support system guidelines
To ensure support systems are useful, you need to use them correctly. Let’s take a closer look at the process involved as maintenance issues arise, are tracked, and get resolved in the support system. What I share here is just a method and there are a number of methods and steps you can use for this purpose.
There are five main steps to tracking issues in a support system:
- Logging
- Categorize and prioritize
- Fix
- Test
- Deploy
Logging the issue
When someone spots a problem, they create a “ticket” to log the issue and start the process. Tickets can come from your own team, while testing the app, or, after launch, from end users’ feedback, and are recorded in the issue support software.
In fact, you can even allow your users to log issues directly into your support system. You’ve probably experienced this if you’ve ever emailed a support request on a software company’s website and received an email in return giving you a reference number for your ticket. Many support systems, like Freshdesk, allow your users to report issues directly from within your app and logs them automatically to your support system. At this stage, the status of the issue is marked “Open.”
Categorize and prioritize
Once a ticket is logged, the support team analyses and categorizes it. Maintenance tickets can be classified into three main categories.
- Functional issues: A feature in your app is not working as expected. Examples include “User is not receiving notification,” or “User is not able to flip camera from back to front when they tap the relevant button.”
- Performance issues: For example, the app opens too slowly, freezes, crashes, or logs users out. Performance is a moving target; speed or other performance markers may be acceptable now, but expectations a year from now may change significantly. Proper maintenance keeps your app performing up to user expectations.
- App enhancements: Good maintenance includes regular updates. Adding features based on user requests and market research keeps users engaged. After categorization, each ticket is prioritized according to the severity of the issue. The commonly used terms are critical, major, and minor.
- Critical issues are those which stop the user from using the application: crashes (app closes automatically and exits the user out of the app), freezes (app becomes unresponsive to all interactions), servers/websites going down, etc.
- Major issues are caused when the main features of the app do not perform as expected. Issues that recur frequently may also be considered major.
- Minor issues could be simple UI glitches or problems with less important features of the app. Issues that occur very occasionally may also be seen as minor.
- At this stage, when your support team is working on an issue, they change the status of the issue from “Open” to “In progress.”
Fix and test
Once tickets are prioritized, the developers have an order in which to address them. They fix the problem, test their fix, and submit it for User Acceptance Testing. The team may change the status of the ticket to “Fixed” or “Pending approval.”Only after the product owner or typical users test the app and say the problem is fixed is the issue considered resolved and marked “Resolved.”
Deploy
Now the fix is deployed to the App Store or Google Play in-app update. The ticket status is marked as “Fixed-deployed” in your issue support system. If the same issue occurs again, you can also Reopen an issue that was Closed or Resolved.
Now the stages and the words used for the status are just examples. Different systems use different words. The key is to have a system and a process so anyone in your team including your users can know the status of a ticket by simply logging into the system. Without such a system and process in place, maintaining a live app can become very challenging.
Conclusion:
Aside from the technical environment, the market also changes. New compliance requirements are introduced. Competitors introduce cool new features, and you need to match or exceed them. Users request new functionality and contribute fun ideas.
In short, maintenance is required for however long you want your app to stay usable and relevant in the market.
But that’s good news! It keeps your app active and profitable, and it builds a community just waiting for your next app to be released.
Writing Credits: B Kris, Founder, Appomate.
3 Funding Options: How to Raise Captial for your Mobile App Startup?
How should I raise funding for my mobile app startup?
This has been the question asked by most of the app entrepreneurs. A recent study by US Bank study, Jessie Hagen, says 82% of the startup fails because of the cash flow problems.
Raising capital could be the nightmare but as app entrepreneurs, if you have taken the leap to start up your business. Raising capital need not be as scary as starting up. In fact, it’s not rocket science. If your App idea has validated the product market fit, we are sure you will succeed in raising capital for your app business.
In this blog, we explain the key issues to explore before choosing your funding options, and the different options available during the life cycle of your app business.
Below are the three questions that pop up when you think about raising capital:
- Should I raise funds for my app idea, and if so, how much?
- When is the right time to get the funding for my app idea?
- What’s the best way to find money for my app?
The answer to these questions really depends on where do you see your app business in 10 years. Your decision-making becomes much easier once your vision is clear.
TO RAISE CAPITAL OR NOT TO RAISE?
If you want the app to provide a good lifestyle with less working hours and steady cash flow for yourself, you’re better to self-fund as much as possible. It is possible to fund a successful business without external investment.
- Markus Frind founded the dating site Plentyoffish in 2003, and built it to a very profitable company without any external funding. In 2015, he sold it to the Match group for $575,000,000 U.S. in cash.
- Zoho is a very successful Enterprise software company with hundreds of thousands of users which never took any external funding, and founder Sridhar Vembu shared he has no interest in funding (or an exit strategy) in spite of getting calls from investors every day.
Of course, many people launching a tech start-up don’t have the option to fund the project themselves.
RAISING MONEY: WHEN DO YOU START?
This is a very difficult decision which weighs on the reality that the sooner you raise funds the quicker you can release your app vs. the fact that the sooner you bring an investor on board, the less you have to show them which generally5 results in them asking for a larger share of your idea.
A rule of thumb is that the best time to raise funds for an app idea is to ensure it’s there before you need it. Note that it’s a fact that getting investors on board when all you have is a great idea has its own challenges.
The best case scenario is that after you have spent a little time and money on things like an app prototype or generating data to show there is a demand for your product you can raise funds without giving away as much of your equity.
3 Main Funding Options
There are three main funding sources for tech start-ups: crowdfunding, angel investors, venture funds, and “going public,” or IPO. Let’s look at each.
Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is a way of attaining capital from a large pool of individual investors, friends, family, etc. This funding option also leverages the networks of these individual investors, increasing your reach exponentially. There is no limit on how much money you can raise using crowdfunding.
However, most crowdfunding platforms impose a time limit within which the target has to be achieved. Therefore, it is important to be reasonable with your funding goal. Also, running a crowdfunding campaign involves a learning curve and takes a lot of time, so be realistic about that as well.
There are two types of crowdfunding options available.
- In reward-based crowdfunding, entrepreneurs offer rewards that supporters receive if the funding goal is attained, such as t-shirts, experiences, or the product itself when it’s complete.
- In equity-based crowdfunding, entrepreneurs offer equity in exchange for capital if the funding goal is attained.
Some popular crowdfunding platforms include Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Popular crowdfunding platforms specializing in mobile apps include:
- Appsfunder
- Appbackr – Surf
- Appsplit
- Angel
Angel investors
Angel investors are wealthy individuals who invest in start-ups in exchange for equity in the start-up company. These investors generally invest in the early stages of funding, providing seed funding anywhere from $25,000 to $1,500,000.
To look for potential angel investors, do an internet search for angel investors in your city. Don’t write them a cold email; see if you have can get an introduction from a mutual contact. Use LinkedIn to find out if you have a mutual contact, and to research the angel investors that you’d like to target. Go to events they go to, network, and ask them out for a coffee.
MELBOURNE ANGEL INVESTOR GROUPS
Venture funds
Venture capital funds typically come into play after seed funding. Venture capitalists obtain funds from a plethora of sources, such as foundations, wealthy individual groups, endowment funds, etc. They invest much larger amounts than angel investors. Venture capital firms invest in businesses, not ideas. They care about the ability to execute. So get your idea built, get customers, create revenue, and then approach VC firms.
Below are some VC firms in Australia.
Initial Public Offering
IPO, or Initial Public Offering, is when your company shares are sold to the general public, usually with the help of an investment bank. This is when the founders and investors monetize to get a return on their investment. A company selling common shares is never required to repay the capital to its public investors. The ability to quickly raise potentially large amounts of capital from the marketplace is one reason many companies go public. The disadvantages of going public are that the founders lose a lot of control over their own business, and are subject to much higher legal and compliance requirements.
Some noteworthy Australian start-ups that went public includes:
- Started in 2002 in Sydney, Australia, with a $10,000 credit card, the founders say that the company has always been profitable. In December 2015 the company went public, selling 22,000,000 shares at $21 a piece, raking in $462,000,000 at a market valuation of nearly $4.4 billion.
- Founded in September 2011, founder Ruwan launched the platform in July 2012 and went public in just three years, in October 2014. The IPO raised $4,000,000, valuing the company at $30,000,000. It received a lot of criticism because it was too early and had only 64 paying customers at the time of IPO.
Alibaba and Facebook are two of the biggest IPO’s ever. In September 2014, Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company went public in the US NASDAQ exchange at $21.8 billion, making it the biggest IPO ever at that time. When Facebook went public in May 2012, it raised $16 billion.
Fundraising is an essential skill for most start-ups. It isn’t enough just to build a fantastic app; you need business skills to build a sustainable company. Putting some time and research into fundraising from the start can help transform a great idea into a successful startup.
If you want to learn more about the different stages of funding an app startup, read about it here.
Xamarin vs PhoneGap: Which Cross Platform Software is right for You?
As Startup founder or developer, we always had this question?
Which cross-platform software is right for my app/app business?
With the increasing trend in using cross-platform software, Xamarin and PhoneGap seem to top the charts.
This is definitely because of two reasons:
- The developer can create one source code for an app, which the platform then converts into the code for the native environment.
- The developer can reuse code that’s already been written, letting the platform handle the compiling. This makes it faster and more cost-effective.
Building apps in HTML5, HTML5 packaged (PhoneGap), Xamarin or even going Native (iOS/Java) each has distinct advantages and disadvantages when building an app.
It’s up to each “app-renuer” to decide the level of look, feel and functions they desire for their app, versus the money and time they are willing to spend towards it.
While it’s obvious that there are no universal app solutions with each any app project having different requirements we have found more and more projects are being developed on Xamarin since they were acquired by Microsoft in March 2016.
We recently posted an article about Xamarin and how using it can reduce the time and budget requirements when building an app, but how does Xamarin compare to other cross-platform tools like PhoneGap?
Xamarin
Xamarin is a C# (Windows) based solution for cross-platform apps development. If you are developing using Xamarin, you are making apps in a native language which means increased reliability, flexibility, and faster performance.
Xamarin is widely used for development, testing and monitoring of cross-platform apps.
Using the capabilities of C# and wrapping all native iOS and Android libraries allow Xamarin to make changes, over the course of the project lifetime and making improvements to the application rather quickly.
The code base is shared so the main effort needs to be focused on UI implementation for different platforms. Since all the native features are supported in the end apps, they look and perform in a native way.
Xamarin provides us two clear advantages:
- It saves time in development which in turn reduces your clients’ overall costs.
- We can efficiently create compelling native experiences across iOS, Android and Windows Mobile using a common codebase (C#) then roll it out to practically any mobile platform.
PhoneGap
Using PhoneGap for app development the developer will be coding in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, etc. adding the files to a local directory (similar to building a static website) and developing the app as a hybrid app.
PhoneGap can be a little easier to learn and therefore some developers can code quicker with PhoneGap than Xamarin. This sounds great to a developer. However, this ease and speed come as a result of PhoneGap not having the flexibility that Xamarin provides. This includes the inability to code natively for some components of the app.
The fact Xamarin allows the use of the native code for components like keyboards, design elements, etc. mean the native elements coded within the Xamarin app will be much faster. The look and the feel of the app natively adapt the device and the probability of facing ‘bugs’ is very less.
The native possibilities of Xamarin also allow a much greater ability to integrate with other devices.
Below we have created a table comparing the performance of applications built with PhoneGap vs. Xamarin which will help you to choose the right cross-platform software for your app.
