What you see is what you believe. If you see an inspiring image, you will put it on your home screen, if not; at least the image is in your mind. If you see a disagreeable image, you will distract from it quickly within a span of few seconds and also, you swear that you will never see the image again. Am I right or wrong? It is your nature and also it is your users’ nature. Attractive and influencing app screenshots leaves a good impression in mind while unpleasant and horrible screenshots generate reverse results. Don’t take app screenshots so lightly because when users land to your app page, they first get interact with images, then description, then reviews & ratings and finally download (if everything seems fine to users’ eyes). So, if your images are not pretty, forget about the further steps which generally take users towards app downloads. No more further diversions. Let’s have a look on creating app screenshots that actually sell your app.
Main Screen Depicting “What Your App does” App’s main screen is most commonly used for screenshots and also in various image-necessary parts of app marketing. That’s why main screen image is more important than others. Design a main screen of your app in a way that it depicts the key feature of app or it must tell what your app does or how it can be useful to users. It looks quite challenging as you have to take care of your brand image and also the main feature of app. Nothing is impossible, if you raise a little bit creativity while creating a main screen as your main screenshot. Capturing Features with What Your App Involves After a main screen, turn your focus on creating screenshots portraying other app features. These images must include features that your app serves. Make sure all of them are easily understandable. Slides to Showcase App’s Behaviour May be your app contains some taps or scrolls that make real changes in content. If your app possesses something like this, then showcase them to the users. Create slides or shots in motions where one image shows the tap and another shows the effect of tapping. It will add more fun to your app screenshots and to your app as well. Text to Describe App’s Screenshots Use the remaining space of screenshots to describe them in a beautiful manner, just to add an extra layer of information. Bottom Line Attractive app screenshots account for good number of app downloads; rest depends on the quality of app and its ability to serve the purpose. To take maximum advantage of your app screenshots, put the main screen at first followed by the others in sequence. Make screenshots extremely easy to understand that surely take your users directly to download button.
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App Marketing, Mobile App Monetization When you are trying to decide whether you need a mobile app or a mobile website for business, you have to consider lots of factors ranging from cost to the development cycle to the targeted audience. Mobile website and mobile app both have their own advantages and disadvantages which one has to evaluate to reach the final decision. You can either create a mobile app or a mobile website or both, looking at the current needs of your business. Key Difference between Mobile App and Mobile Website
Before analyzing the ups and downs of mobile app and mobile website, you have to understand the key difference between them so that you can take decision more confidently. A mobile website looks like any other website; just a difference is that a mobile website is designed for handheld devices or you can say for touchscreen devices like smartphones and tablets. Like any other website, a mobile website also includes text, data, images, videos, call-to-action, location-based mapping, etc. Mobile app is a type of software that users download and install on their mobile device. Mobile apps can be used without internet connection. Users don’t require opening browsers to use the mobile apps. To get an a mobile app for the particular operating system, users can visit various portals like the Apple app store, Google Play store, Blackberry App world, etc. Apps are also efficient enough to integrate contents like a website or much more than that. Advantages & Disadvantages of Mobile Apps Advantages
Advantages
You will find the answer of this question within the criteria of what you want to build or what your business needs. For instance, if you have plans to create a game, an app would prove to be a better choice or if you want to deliver mobile-friendly content across the wider audience, a mobile website is more preferable. In some cases, you might require creating an app as well as a mobile website to fulfil your business needs and connected goals. Statistics: Mobile Apps and Mobile Web
In a quickly evolving mobile market, a mobile presence is must via app or a mobile web or both. You can’t assure whether your decision is right or wrong, but looking at the current stats, benefits and shortfalls and most importantly, your business needs and user’s expectations will take you close to the right choice. Image Credit: www.kauferdmc.com After spending a couple of weeks or months in app development, finally you are ready to reveal your app in front of the general public. No doubt that you have taken a good care of everything from design to usability during the development process, and also, you have a mastermind marketing plan for instant results as soon as your app hit the market. What about beta tester? Imagine a moment, when your sister is playing with a pre-release version of the app, and she is telling that one of the main feature is not working well and there are 5 spelling mistakes in the settings menu. The app is used only once from a single device, what if it is used in multiple devices and each user is complaining for different types of non-working features. This might panic you, but this can become a reality, if you tend to ignore beta testing. App beta testing refers to inviting users to test a pre-release (not yet officially released) version of your app. So, where you will get the users (app beta testers) for app beta testing? Beta testers should be the people who can take your task (app testing) seriously and tell you truly about how the app works or does it mistaken with any defined feature. Here are some easy ways to find beta testers for your app. Begin with Social Media
Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are the most suitable social media networks to get started with. Don’t worry, if you don’t have a large audience in your connections, you can still make the maximum use of them. On Social media, you have to search for the people – searching with keywords relevant to your app. And don’t forget to determine their device or OS, they are using as it must be compatible with the app. Whenever you find a new user, send them a pre-release version of your app and request them to use it at once. After some time, you can send them a message regarding how was the experience with app. If the social media users have actually used your app, they will definitely reply you and share with you about their real app experience. You can also join communities, having an audience – you want to target. Participate in the discussion held by communities to familiarize yourself and your app with the others. Find Out Other App Developers and Publishers Being an app developer or appreneur, surely, you have some developers and publishers in your connections who can be your next app testers. Now is the perfect time to extend your relationship by letting them test your app and share their own experience with you. App developers and publishers can easily find what the qualities and faults an app contains. You can easily take the advantage of their talent for necessary improvements in your app. Reddit Your App Reddit is a primary source of articles where you will find hundreds of articles with the comments by users. You can also post something related to your app like what are its features, when it will be released, how it is beneficial and so on. Users interested in your app will definitely read the post and place a comment with regards to their views and opinions for app. That users can be your beta app testers and it will be easy for you to convince them as they are already convinced with your post. Beta Testing Services Beta testing services will perform all the above mentioned activities or more than that on behalf of you, but it will cost you a little money. Finding beta testers with your own will cost you a little bit time and effort that you can skip by joining beta testing services. Essential Preparations Before you actually start your search for beta testers, prepare yourself with the list of things – required to take care of.
Finding beta testers is quite easy if we use some tricky methods. We are surrounded by many people using different types of mobile devices. We can tell them to test the app and divert the same in their friend circle. To extend the circle of app testers, turn to social media and other online sites where users spend their maximum time. Prepare a checklist before browsing for app testers and launch your app, once the app testers approve that all the features and functions are working well. Apple's latest mobile operating; iOS 8 grabbed much attention of iOS users, app marketers and advertisers. This time with iOS 8, Apple concentrates on several new features and functionality not only for iOS users but for app marketers. In this post, you will learn about new features introduced by iOS 8 and their support for mobile app marketing. 1. Adding Videos of App in App Store
Now app developers and marketers are allowed to keep a video on Apple app store as a part of app trailer. App videos let the user understand what actual experience the app is going to deliver. If users find the features they are looking for in the videos, they tend to install an app without thinking a twice. If its a gaming app, its video must be exiting and made on the basis of real app playing. But as always notified, Apple brings features up with some restrictions. However, the restrictions are not yet declared. 2. Selling App Bundles Not only a single app, Apple now allows you to sell a bundle of apps created by you. Looking at the portfolio of your apps, many users like to purchase them all at once but at a discount price. Apple is going to solve the problem for users and for app creators as well. 3. Widgets Surely, you all know about widgets, how they work and why you put some of them on your home screen. Generally, users put some important widgets on their homescreen because they want to use some features as quickly as possible without opening the particular app. Just like Ebay – its widget allows the users to change their bid on an auction instantly without touching the actual ebay app. Apple has added some more functionalities to app widgets, might be a good news for app marketers as they can think of ideas to reach users more speedily. 4. Extensibility Extensibility refers to ability of app functions to be made available in other apps. Like Instagram features can be accessed through native photo app. This cannot be called a marketing tool, but still it can be used as a part of marketing as features of one app will be extended to other areas of a smartphone, creating more reliance among users for your app. Conclusion Apple has a long history of classifying what can be and what cannot be. With new iOS 8 features, Apple built a pillar for iphone app marketing, but it still holds a secret on restrictions might going to take place with these features. At present, it's a good news for marketers, but they can't proceed without reading the rules and regulations generated by Apple on such. Image Credit: gadgethelpline.com Deploying thoughtful app marketing strategies has become one of the most critical considerations for developers these days. The way to the top in the app store has narrowed down to such an extent, that there is no other way for the niche apps to stand out other than making their utmost presence felt in the market. Certainly, developers require to pay close attention to the entire process, from strategizing to implementation of app marketing tactics, to witness precise results. Hence, the process can be divided in three different phases. That is, actions to be taken during the app development process, at the time of launch and after the app is released in the market. Now, go through these three stages closely in the form of app marketing checklist. A complete list of app marketing strategies and tactics that every developer should count on. Stage 1: App Development/ pre launch This stage mainly deals with major integrations in the application that will produce better app marketing resources for the app.
Stage 2: App Store Marketing/ launch App Store optimization serves some of the most crucial components of app marketing that have a major implication on the app's discovery in the app stores.
Stage 3: Post-launch App Marketing Once the app has been launched in the market, the developers need to constantly pay close attention to buzz marketing, user behavior and ROI analysis.
There are many reasons that can lead your app to failure, and closely paying attention to these aspects can simply lift your app from the bunch of unsuccessful apps to the group of the most popular ones. Read more! You have almost spent all your energy in terms of time and money to create an ingenious app with the aim to see it outshine the rest. But shockingly, things don’t turn out they way you had expected them to be. No, it isn’t just you who has faced a setback. There are a lot many apps that have been through this situation only to find out which aspects they were lacking in and what did actually go wrong in the entire process of developing an app! Here are some of the top reasons for app failure and how they can be dealt with. Being unresponsive towards serving a responsive app:
You have conducted certain tests to verify that your application is performing just perfectly on particular devices, some networks and even fewer operating systems. But certainly not on the entire spectrum. As a result, your app welcomes a major problem as it fails to perform across the wide scope of devices, networks and operating systems that are being profusely used by the mass. This means you managed to gain an install, where in the user indulged with your app on the iPhone for the first time. It worked just fine, but when he decided to indulge with the app for the second time on an iPad, he didn’t find the app performing as well as it did on the iPhone. Consequence? A sheer disinterest to even contemplate to open the app for the third time. This lack of consistency in performance is a sign of an incomplete app development strategy. The idea is to strengthen the development strategy by paying close attention to the real user performance. Every developer should keep in mind the fact that user experience varies in almost every different combinations of OS, networks and devices.
Choosing an inappropriate monetization model: Planning a monetization strategy for your app is a crucial part of the app development and mobile app marketing process itself, as newer monetization models such as freemium and in-app ad revenue models have a major dependency on the quality of the app features. While the monetization aspect can be experimented to an extent, it is important to first know where do you stand in the market and an app marketing agency can guide you well by analysing different aspects in the market. If you are an already known company and have a considerable amount of followers, offering a paid app might just work for you. People know your worth and hence they might decide to pay for your valuable offering. However, the same strategy might not work for a startup company as people hardly know you and the lack of trust factor will stop them from spending on something that they aren’t sure of. In such cases, it is always advisable to opt for a freemium model which can later be monetized in accordance to the business model. If you are offering an enterprise application, it might not be an 'everybody' stuff, but it is sure to attract specific set or subsets of users. These users would buy your app if you follow your free app by a paid one. However if you want to monetize something as common as a game application, the entire idea and the favourite elements of the application might ascertain your monetization strategy. Example- Hill climb racing or candy crush. You’ve worked hard to produce quality app, but what about the app icon design? You thought that paying attention towards keywords optimization is enough for app store optimization. But that isn’t the fact. Yes, your app discovery in the app store and other search engines majorly depends on the app title and other meta data of your app. But at the same time, your app icon is playing a critical role in the app store unlike other search engines. On the app store, people encounter the image of the icon first and then everything else. What if you fail to impress them at that instance itself? Hence, every developer who tend to look over the importance of the design aspect during app store optimization should consider it as a significant component to bring in more clicks followed by increase in installs. App marketing can be dealt later. Let us first concentrate on app development. Really? This is the most common and biggest mistake that every developer is prone to make. What is the meaning of developing an affluent app that is to serve the greatest purpose to the mass when people are not even aware about its existence? It is equal to owning a restaurant that serves the best food in the town but fails to bring in customers. Why? Because people never came across its being. The idea is to be in the crowd to attract the crowd. And, it will be possible when you market your app with a budget in mind and with a well thought out plan to deploy the best mobile app marketing strategy. Hence, it makes a wise decision to start working on the marketing aspects and development process of an app altogether. Here are some major tips on keyword optimization that will guide you to drive better app discovery for your app in the app stores. App store optimization is one of the key factors of mobile app marketing. It is a procedure that is leveraged by the usage of appropriate keywords to improve the visibility of an app in the app store. Yes, it is very much similar to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a process that is being widely used by online businesses to grab the top slots on the web search engines. Before plunging on to the answers to ‘How to’ of the keywords, we would first go through the 'Why' should you make considerable efforts towards selecting right keywords; a critical component of App Store Optimization.
How to select keywords for your app name:
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