5 Technologies That Make Your Mobile App More Marketable

The hardest part of building an app isn’t getting the project off the ground. There are tons of developers around the world who can assist you with that. The greatest challenge that any new app faces in the marketplace today is simply attracting any attention. In a world where there are tons of apps, it’s the underlying technologies that power your app that are likely make it more marketable to end users. Let’s take a look at five technologies that will help users see your app as a valued resource that they can use on a regular basis.

Analytics

You’ll never be able to improve the quality of your app if you don’t know what the end user is actually doing with it. To get a better sense of what users are doing, you’ll need to integrate an analytics platform with your app. There are a number of options available today, including platforms built by traditional analytics trackers such as Google Analytics and companies exclusively dedicated to the mobile space such as Clicky and MixPanel. The important thing, however, is that you’re using some type of analytics platform in order to have a stronger understanding of what is working best for your app’s end users.

Streaming Data

App users love systems that bring them new information in an effortless manner, and the easiest way to make that happen is to integrate a data stream into the underlying code of the app. This requires building the app to handle information asynchronously, and you’ll also need to have servers in place to send information to all of your app users. This can easily be handled with lightweight server technologies built specifically for the purpose of dealing with small, asynchronous requests, such as Node.js.

Some of the most widely adopted apps stream data to smartphones. For example, sports apps such as The Score or MLB At Bat have built their users bases by always providing the freshest data possible. It’s this sense of immediacy that allows those apps to insinuate themselves so deeply into the lives of their end users.

Voice Recognition Software

Thanks to the wide adoption of voice recognition technologies by the major manufacturers of smartphones, end users have come to see speaking to their phones as an everyday behaviour. Voice recognition software readily improves the speed and ease-of-use of your app. End users will also be impressed by the extra functionality and its simplicity, and that’s likely to raise their impression of the overall quality of the app. It’s that sense that an app is easy to handle and employs cutting edge technology that often drives users to tell others about an app, turning your user base into a base of evangelists.

Remote or Cloud Storage

Storage space on smartphones continues to be held at a premium by manufacturers, and the less space your app takes up on the user’s phone, the better received it will be. Remote storage also allows you to integrate further functionality into your website. Users can manage their data through such interfaces, and this permits them a greater sense of ownership and control over the entire app experience.

Moving users’ data onto your own storage system also creates a greater lock-in effect. Users are much less likely to switch to a different app if they have questions about how much of their data they will be leaving behind with the old app. While it’s a good idea to play nice and offer options that improve portability, even the simple idea of having to port their data to a new app will discourage many users from actually doing it.

Cross-Platform Frameworks

The world isn’t committed to one smartphone platform, and the more phones your app can run on, the more people will adopt it. When building your app, you may wish to consider employing a cross-platform framework. There are a number of frameworks that allow you to do this, include Adobe PhoneGap and Steroids.js.

 

Author:
Jessica Kane is is a professional blogger who writes about technology and other gadgets and gizmos aplenty. She currently writes for Total Voice Tech, her go to for all professional Dragon products.