Tips to Provide the Best Website Experience

There are many benefits to a custom web app, but a publisher must give it careful thought in order to realize the intended gains. The first thing to think about is the purpose of the app. One that's made to increase a company's visibility will necessarily be different from one that is meant to have paid access or support ads. Thought also needs to be given to the intended audience and what is likely to appeal to the people in that group.

Apps to Increase Visibility

These are almost always offered for free, but that doesn't mean that you should go too cheap with them. After all, if your free app is always crashing or only works on one browser, it will make your entire company look slipshod. A free app that is used to increase your branding needs to be highly polished and free of glitches. It will also need ongoing support and updates, though with free offerings, this aspect almost never goes on as long as it would with a paid version.

It's important to tailor the function of this sort of app to meet the needs and tastes of the desired audience. There's no point in releasing a viral game that will appeal to teenagers if your main business is supplying concrete to home builders! Instead, offer tools that will help your usual customers in their normal tasks. For that concrete company, a good app would be a calculator that helps builders find out how much concrete will be needed for whatever size of foundation they intend to put under their latest house. Other companies should offer tools that fit their own clientele in a similar way.

Of course, the function of the app is just one part of it. Its overall look and feel is also important. Go for a style that fits the personality and age group of your current customers in order to help draw more of the same to your business. Avoid the temptation to try to look "super cool" unless it actually fits your business - what one group of people thinks is awesome may strike another group as too immature.

Apps for Sale or Ads

The other main category of apps is meant to be sold or supported with advertising. With web apps, "sale" takes the form of selling access rather than literally selling instances of the programs. This means that support and updates must keep going on as long as enough people have a subscription. Popular apps of this sort can keep going for years.

Ad-supported web apps aren't nearly as common as they once were, but they still exist. Like paid-access ones, they also require ongoing support and debugging in order to keep people logging in. Ignoring an app once it has been fully debugged won't work because eventually, its capabilities and overall design will become dated.

There is a lot of latitude when it comes to the function and design of paid and ad-supported apps. Unlike ones meant to promote a business, they don't have to look "businesslike" in the corporate sense. Many online games take this form. That said, they do have to look polished, be free of glitches, and appeal to their intended audiences. Therefore, it's still important to make sure that they are professionally designed. You will also need to be sure that your intended audience will really be interested and that the market isn't already saturated with 10,000 variations of the exact same thing.

Contact us for specific ideas for an app that will meet your needs, whether those needs are related to corporate branding or the simple desire to have thousands of subscribers to your web app. We'll be glad to help you decide on all of the details and then build the app you desire!

Like any other artisan work, it takes years to mature in the "art form" of user creation -- but these five tips will provide rock-solid principles that will point you in the right direction or, at the very least, provide some helpful reminders:

Tip #1: Go for Simplicity

You could make the case that novelists are the ultimate "user story" creators. If you've ever tried to write a novel -- a truly, reader-centric, riveting, fully operational story -- you know it takes a tremendous amount of planning and development, one sentence, paragraph, page, and chapter at a time.

But when it comes time to pitch that story to agents and editors, every novelist must have one indispensable skill: they must be able to sum up the story -- yes, the entire novel -- in one sentence. This magic sentence contains all of the ingredients: protagonist, the conflict that rises against the protagonist, and the goal that motivates the protagonist to overcome that conflict. It's all about who, what, and why.

In a certain sense, it's no different for user story creators. Until you're able to reduce your entire concept into its most elemental properties, you likely don't have a clear enough vision of the project.

All About Agile offers this tried and true formula that uses a one-sentence summary to establish the premise for your user story: "As a (user role), I want to (goal), so I can (reason)."

As the article author notes: "This [one-sentence summary of the premise] helps to ensure that the requirement is captured at a high level, is feature oriented and covers who, what and why."

Tip #2: Think As If You Were the Stakeholder, Not the Developer

We all develop bad habits, and even the best user story creators can nurture them without realizing it. One of the most problematic bad habits is viewing a user story from the developer's point of view and not the perspective of the user.

As AgileModeling observes: "User Stories should be valuable to the user (or owner) of the solution. They should be written in user language. They should be features, not tasks."

Tip #3: Don't Think of It as a Contract. Be Flexible.

If we approach user stories with rigid parameters, it could sabotage our ability to get the job done and get it done well. Every team member must establish an attitude of total flexibility and collaboration beforethey walk into the room to begin work on the user story.

As this article points out: "User Stories are not a contract. They are not detailed specifications. They are reminders of features for the team to discuss and collaborate to clarify the details near the time of development."

Tip #4: Rely on Teamwork When You Write Your User Story

Tip #3 segues nicely into #4. It's all about teamwork. If we slip into a put-this-into-the-assembly-line-and-walk-away mentality, we miss the point of agile development and user creation. Getting the product owner involved is the key.

As RomanPichler.com recommends:

A user story is not a specification, but a communication and collaboration tool. Stories should never be handed off to the development team. They should rather be part of a conversation: The product owner and the team should discuss the stories, or even better, write them together. This leverages the creativity and the knowledge of the team and usually results in better user stories.

Although human nature sometimes shrinks away from collaboration -- after all, we get a little nervous when too many cooks step into the kitchen -- we must remind ourselves that this "kitchen," the user story, thrives in a wide-open, flexible, collaborative environment.

For more information on how to write user stories for use in agile development, contact us and learn how our talented, hard-working team of agile experts can help.

Although Uber and AirBNB grab most of the headlines about new tech disrupting the transportation industries, there's much more happening in those industries behind the scenes. Apps are changing everything from maritime shipping to the trucking industry, and companies are taking advantage of new app technology to compete with the likes of Uber. It's a beautiful example of how free market competition creates higher quality products and more alternatives for consumers.

More Transportation Options for Riders

The Beck Taxi Mobile App, a company that caters to Canadians and competes with Uber, brokered a deal with PayPal and integrated a new in-app payment solution that will allow users to e-pay for their ride conveniently. They can now take their taxi without ever having to take out their wallet. This convenience gives Canadians an event stronger variety of transportation options, and it gives Uber stiffer competition north of the border.

Private companies aren't the only ones pushing back against Uber. Public transportation agencies, which have lost riders because their commutes takes much longer and are less efficient than app-driven on-demand transportation, are partnering with TransLoc to create an app that brings a similar on-demand possibility for public transportation.

FastCoExist.com explains how the new public transportation app, slated to be released for a few agencies later in 2015 or 2016, works:

Riders using TransLoc's app, currently a prototype, give it permission to follow their route as they ride. That data builds maps that agencies can use to make routes more efficient, and eventually offer on-demand services. Someone could, for example, someday use the app to request a bus, and the system could quickly crowdsource a route to pick up several riders with a small bus or van.

Some industries, however, have had a less constructive response to the intense competition from Uber. The taxi companies in the City of Boston, for example, are pursuing legal action to shut Uber down, claiming that Uber's drivers are operating illegally.

Uber's response to the taxi companies?

Build an app.

If that seems a little tactless, from Uber's point of view it's common sense: if the taxi companies are upset about Uber, why don't they improve the way they serve customers by creating their own mobile app technology?

Safer Shipping Lanes

It's easy to forget that many of the goods we depend on come from ships. ReCAAP has created a new mobile app for the shipping industry that makes their long journeys across thousands of miles of ocean much safer, as MarineInsight.com noted: "The ‘App’ enables the ReCAAP ISC to share the latest Incident Alert...with a wider readership from the shipping community and facilitate quick access to updated information."

In addition, users can use the app to quickly submit safety alerts to the nearest ReCAAP "Focal Point," which then disseminates the alert broadly to the entire shipping community. It's user-generated, crowd-sourced safety on the high seas.

Grizzled Truckers in North Dakota Oil Fields Geeking Out on Tech

The stereotype that people who love tech live in offices and make pilgrimages to TED conferences and SXSW needs to change. Other people love tech too -- like the leatherneck truck drivers who handle the demanding, sometimes dangerous trucking routes in the remote oil fields of North Dakota.

As a hard-working team of analysts, engineers, and designers, we were particularly proud of what we achieved with our LoadLog app that we built for a trucking company that ships supplies into the gas and oil fields of North Dakota.

Our app is a hybrid online application that uses an SMS communication channel. When you're dealing with midnight trucking runs through freezing winter conditions, you need something that gets information to the truckers reliably, and SMS is much more reliable in rural North Dakota than the usual web communication. The app automates the driver's load logistics and driver tickets, and this reduces the time-waste for the truckers who, before the app, were constantly filling out paper tickets.

And the app is a miracle for the dispatchers. They simply log into the application dashboard to see the location of every truck, and to also track the truck's progress in its workflow. They can also use the app to issue new tickets to those truckers in real-time and calculate average delivery times.

Frankly, it was a game-changer for the company, and it's a powerful enhancement for the trucking industry.

Let Us Help You Create Your Next Big Idea

If your business needs a mobile app to make as big a splash in your industry as these apps did in their industries, contact us to find out what amazing things we can build for you.

Now that Apple Watches have had a few months to saturate the market, not surprisingly, word is getting out about some especially cool apps for Apple's new wearable.

And in case you need a little inspiration for your own app creation brainstorming, here are a few of the most innovative Apple Watch apps on the market today.

1. Know When It's Going to Rain in Your Location (Down to the Exact Minute)

If you're the kind of person who loves taking quick walks outside during your work day but you live in a region whose weather is temperamental and hard to predict, the Dark Sky app for Apple Watch might become your best friend. With a simple tap of the wrist, Dark Sky will let you know if it's going to rain or snow in your location. It can predict the chance of rain for your location down to the exact minute.

2. Control Your Car

If you've ever seen the classic "Knight Rider," David Hasselhoff's character Michael Knight was famous for communicating with his car Kitt through his watch. Well -- as this Denver news story noted -- if you're an owner of a Hyundai, Volkswagon, Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and BMW, your Knight Rider dreams have come true. You will be able to use your Apple Watch to do things like start your car, adjust the temperature before you get in, check the status of systems or the status of the car's battery, and other fun features short of driving the car remotely.

3. Dictate Notes and Other Evernote Tasks

Evernote, on their website's announcement for its new Apple Watch app, makes an excellent point: Apple Watch apps are not meant to replace iPhone apps; they're meant to compliment them. And that's exactly how Apple intended it. The new Evernote Apple Watch app will have some cool quick and easy features that will delight fans of Evernote (and possibly lure others who haven't discovered Evernote yet). As theEvernote site explains:

The iPhone and Apple Watch versions of Evernote work together beautifully. Dictate notes, perform searches, and see recent content on your watch when you need it. Set reminders and check items off your list without ever taking out your phone. Start reading a note on Apple Watch, then continue reading it on your iPhone with a swipe of the lock screen. It’s one app that moves with you from wrist to hand and back again.

4. Something for the Star Gazers

As GeekWire noted in April 2015, the Sky Guide app for the Apple Watch will be a delight for budding astronomers.

This app also belongs firmly in the category of "built to complement the iPhone app, not replace it." The Apple Watch Sky Guide app doesn't duplicate the iPhone app's function of locating constellations by lifting your phone to the sky. No one will be lifting their watch above their head, in other words.

Instead the app focuses on other cool functions. For example, with a single swipe up, the app summarizes at a quick glance everything happening in the sky above your specific location. If you allow it, the app also sends automated alerts to your Apple Watch when, for example, the International Space Station is going to fly over you and be visible to your specific location. It can do the same for eclipses and meteor showers, and all of it is tailored specifically to your precise location.

We Can Help You Enter the Exciting New World of Wearable Apps

Contensive's talented, hard-working team of engineers, analysts, and designers wants to work with you to build something amazing. Contact us to learn more about our mobile app development services and discover what we can do together

Looking for a set of tools that smooth the long and treacherous journey of app development? Look no further.

Here is a collection of 5 cutting edge mobile app development tools with powerful and easy to use frameworks that eliminate the need to learn the complexities of Objective-C (iPhone) and Java (Android). To make your life even easier, many of these tools provide back end cloud services, which do away with the need to build your own database and maintain your app.

Spend less time on manually coding, building and maintaining infrastructures, and more time on creating an awesome app.

Sencha Architect

Sencha Architect helps developers accelerate the HTML5 app development process for both desktop and mobile applications. It comes with drag-and-drop features and a variety of editable and completely customizable app templates to help you get started. The automatic coding generation saves developers time on manually coding while optimizing it for high performance and eliminating human error.

The Visual Theme Builder provides several professional designed themes that you can customize to match your vision and/or the look and feel of your company. Developers can also add custom components to the already existing list of framework extensions Sencha provides, letting the framework handle the layout, widget management, and event juggling.

Corona SDK

Corona SDK is a cross-platform tool that works on all devices (from iOS to Kindle Fire) and is designed for super-fast game application development. It has all the usual features for creating an app, including an indispensable OpenGL engine specifically optimized for 2D graphics. It combines powerful tools like Photoshop and Illustrator and allows you to simulate your app in a real-time, physics engine.

The company provides a cloud service that lets you store all information from your game. You can also create leaderboards, track achievements, integrate social networking channels, and offer chat sessions using the Lua code, an easy to learn language.

Telerik

Telerik (once Icenium Mist) is a browser-based tool lets you build and test your app on all mobile platforms without the need to buy any additional hardware. It provides a single, reusable HTML5/JavaScript code base that includes built-in simulation, debugging and deployment tools. With Telerik LiveSync, you can instantly experience your code, while also skipping out on most of the manual process of building and deploying your app.

Telerik also provides plugin for Visual Studio, Sublime Text, and a Command Line Interface (CLI) that can enhance and work alongside your existing IDE. The Appbuilder can also integrate with Angular, jQuery mobile, Ionic and Kendo within a productive PhoneGap/Cordova development environment.

Parse

Most of tools mentioned here are concentrated on creating the front end, interactive side of app development. Parse, however, focuses on building the back end, offering a set of powerful APIs that can store, track and analyze data for your app. Parse also provides push notification services, a cloud database, and seamless interaction with the major social networks.

There are 13 native SDKs for mobile, desktop, and IoT devices that eliminate the need for complex infrastructure regarding your server-side interaction, allowing you to focus instead on building the front end of your app.

Appcelerator

Appcelerator provides both front end and back end services, which allow you to build, test, measure, connect and tune your app. It provides a single Javascript code base that contains a large collection of widgets that can be strung together to build native mobile apps for iOS, Android, Windows, BlackBerry, and HTML5. Appcelerator also offers real-time mobile analytics for every native app you build, regardless if built on their platform or directly with a native SDK.

Their set of cloud applications can do everything from storing information, monitoring data, and even sending emails. Specialized tables also help you better manage your social media accounts, featuring geographic information and photographs for each of your "friends".

Now that you have a list of tools to choose from, you just need to get the most out of your design. For assistance and support and just good advice, contact us to help you make a great mobile app.

12 Stats about responsive web design that will make you look smart around the water cooler

Ask a marketer about important digital trends, and we guarantee that responsive web design will be among their first answers. And it's easy to explain why: the last two years saw a dramatic shift toward mobile internet usage, culminating in Google's now-infamous "Mobilegeddon" algorithm update in April that threatened to banish non-responsive websites from the front pages of its search results.

So when you hear about responsive design, it's not just a buzzword. In 2015, it should be an integral part of your digital strategy, regardless of your industry. So the next time a co-worker brings up the concept during a water break, here are 12 stats about responsive web design that will make you look smart around the water cooler

1) 90% of internet users use multiple screens.

When users visit your site, they won't just be on desktop computers. They'll be looking at your content from laptops, tablets, and mobile devices, expecting it to look and read just as well on each screen.

2) Easy access to most devices is the #1 priority of web developers.

Given the first stat, this one shouldn't come as a surprise. Web developers all industries noted in a 2014 study that their biggest challenge and priority is to make their site user-friendly for users of all devices. The best way to do so? Responsive design.

3) 62% of mobile-optimized websites increased sales.

Mobile is no longer an option. Designing your website responsively will directly lead to increased sales and ultimately helps your business.

4) 52% of users would not return to a site if the mobile experience was bad.

On the flipside of the previous point is the fact that if your site is not optimized for a pleasant mobile experience, you will lose users (and ultimately sales) as a direct result.

5) Half of all consumers take a non-optimized site as an indication that you don't care.

Here, we have the explanation for point 4: if your site is not optimized for their mobile devices, your users will take it personally and think less of you as a company. No less than 48% reported that they take it as an indication that you don't care about them.

6) If your website doesn't load in 3 seconds, 40% of users leave.

Slow load times are among the safest guarantors of losing visitors. And here's the problem: a static site will take longer to load on a mobile device than its responsive counterpart. If your site is not responsive, you risk losing a significant chunk of your potential customers.

Now, let's look at some of the statistics showing how responsive design can improve your website.

7) 69% of users want bigger buttons on mobile.

As we all know, a touch screen is a bit more difficult to precisely navigate than a mouse or touchpad. That's why comparatively bigger buttons are imperative for a pleasant mobile experience, and they are easy to implement with responsive design.

8) Three quarters of users want an experience customized to their screen.

A "regular" (read: old) mobile site that simply duplicates content in a slimmer but static format does not work if your users access it from their tablets, phablets and smartphones. Instead, you need a site that automatically fits their screen, eliminating the need to scroll left or right in any scenario.

9) 74% of users still want a full site.

Another reason against a mobile site or simply adjusting your regular site to fit smaller screens: as it turns out, users still want to have the option of going to the full site to do more in-depth research if need be.

10) 44% of users find navigation on a mobile site difficult.

This is where you can stand out. With an effective, responsive navigation, your website can increase the chance that users turn into customers after you offer them a fulfilling, stress-free online experience.

11) 40% of users go elsewhere if the first Google result is not mobile-friendly.

You can find out whether your site is mobile friendly enough for Google with this quick test tool. If it isn't, you may want to think about responsive design.

And now, a final statistic:

12) Only 55% of companies currently do mobile testing.

Considering all the stats we listed above, that's a shockingly low amount. How do you know if your users' mobile experience is satisfactory if you don't run the tests yourself? Fortunately, that's where we come in. If you are looking for responsive design that incorporates testing into the entire development process, contact us.

Are you looking for a way to expand your business, broaden your audience, and increase your sales?

Websites are not only an excellent way to achieve this, they're a necessity in today's hyper-competitive markets. You may already have a website, but feel overwhelmed by the number of phases involved in the website development process.

To help you out, here is a breakdown of the 5 most important steps in the website development process to get you started.

Purpose

What is the purpose of your site? Is it to host a blog and engage an audience or is it a company profile complete with product descriptions. What are your goals? To improve sales, position yourself as a market authority, or to increase brand advocacy? And finally, who is your target audience? What are their interests, their needs, and possible perception of your brand? Answering these questions during the planning phase of the web development process ensures your objectives are clear and measurable.

Ideally, you want to limit the number of your goals and keep them as simple as possible. Otherwise, you could spread your resources too thin, rush the design, and not adequately address the main purpose of your website. So start by creating a summary that outlines your company, its background and history, while highlighting the unique value your products and services can provide to your audience. This will set the tone of your key messages you’ll use to attract and interest your audience, while also distinguishing you from any competitor’s you have.

It’s also recommended you work with an SEO consulate to effectively target your audience and help your website’s visibility in ….

Site Architecture

This step sketches out the overall navigation structure of your site, providing you with a detailed view of key pages and of content that will appear throughout the site. It doesn’t involve any design elements, but focuses on the sitemap and wireframes of your pages, laying out the foundation of how you want your site to look.

At this step in the development phase, you should consider the relationship between pages and their positions. For instance, will you have the most recent blog posts displayed at the top of your site or a company video showcasing your product? Will your navigation buttons sit at the top or beneath your logo?

The purpose and goals of your website will determine its design. To get some ideas, freely browse some Wordpress websites or even competitor websites to help you flesh out the design.

Visual Design and Development

With a solid blueprint, you can begin the next step in the development process: the visual design. This step is about visually conveying your company’s brand in a way that appeals to your audience. In fact, the first impression visitors have about your company is determined by how the perceive the design.

The average visitor spends 8 seconds on a page before clicking somewhere else. With such as small frame of time to capture the attention of your audience, your content and media need to immediately seize their interest. For the best advice on how to do this, look to social media.

For instance, photos make up 93% of the most engaging posts on Facebook, with an 87% interaction rate from users; tweets with images get 18% more clicks and 150% more retweets than tweets without images. Furthermore, the average internet user spends 88% more time on websites with video than a website without video.

Use similar visual tactics on your website to effectively capture the attention of your audience.

Testing and Launch

You need to make sure that your site is functionally properly, there are no broken links or missing elements before it’s launched. It’s recommended you place your site on a private server and only share the web address within your company.

This will allow you and other team members to view your site and find any issues that could make a bad impression on your brand. It’s also critical you review your site on multiple browsers and devices to ensure there are no redirects or errors that undermine the user’s viewing experience.

When you do launch your website, keep in mind the project is far from over. There are bound to be mistakes only your users find, so it's important you encourage feedback and do your best to immediately fix any problems. As traffic grows, you can start using that data to make any adjustments to your design in order to optimize the user experience. From here, come the headache of website maintenance, requiring a different set of skills entirely.

Need support along the way? At Contensive, our talented team of engineers, analysts and web designers can ensure your website progress forward, offering you complete transparency through the process. For ongoing support and user training, contact us today.