How will Android app improve your business?

One of the most happening trends of the current time is the use of smartphones. With each passing day the market of mobile application continues in its popularity streak. In fact, gone are those days when the phone was just an over-powered toy; it has now transitioned to a productive business tool. Some stats can help you grasp the importance of smartphones in today's context. Out of the 4 billion mobile phones used in the world, 1 billion are smartphones. Within 2014 data usage in mobile will overtake the internet usage in desktop. In fact 50% of the local internet searches are conducted from these phones. Now proper applications will be able to solve many of your business problems and benefit both the end user as well as the clients.

Creating virtual office- No matter where you are, at restaurants or simply holidaying with your friends, your device will ensure the completion of your work. Our devices ensure that information can be easily and quickly accessed, making the work days more productive and simplifying interaction with the company. Virtual office space may consist of management software for client relationship, project management software, document sharing, invoicing, expenses, time tracking, etc.

Cost-effective sales marketing- You can use the various apps to let customers know about your recent launches, events, services, etc by taking advantage of the advertising opportunities given to corporate funders. The funders gain a lot through the advertising which reinforces their brand, gaining product exposure to user groups that are highly relevant.

Facilitating client relationships- Social networking strategies are greatly improved with mobile apps since they help in increase of exposure and accessibility, allowing you to connect with customers who are on-the-go. Your customer-base will be increased and you will be available all the time as apps can function offline. Moreover just a second is all you need to launch some app which is there on the home screen of a phone.

Software's new platform- With the progress of mobile technology, there is expansion of boundaries related to tablet and smartphone software. There are sector specific software for every industry and they cater to the respective market. The proprietary programs of sectors like navigational, educational along with agricultural among others have been redeveloped, thanks to the apps which has resulted in broadening of the product reach of the respective company.

Some Apps To Give You Better Business

Some apps which benefit you in your business in the long run are listed here.

Docs to go- Many of us do not like to drag our laptops wherever we go, so it is essential that Microsoft Office be accessed from mobile devices at all times. Looking at documents or editing spreadsheets becomes an easy job with the help of Docs To Go. The functionality of the application is top-notch and it also provides peace of mind when you know that you and your documents are inseparable.

Evernote- There are several times that you may have some brilliant idea for new products but lack of paper and pen for scribbling it down, which results in valuable loss. Evernote acts as a digital notebook; it can store everything like notes, web pages, photos, audio clips and PDF files. The app is easily accessible and searchable.

Expensify- Business travelers can benefit a lot with this app as it helps keep you consolidated as well as organized. It helps keep tabs on your business expenses as well as mileage through scanning of receipts with the help of the camera of your device and then importing data from bank or credit card. This relieves you of the pain of drafting expense reports.

There are lots of applications that can help make your business life simpler. In fact these days, we find it hard to function without Google Translate as well as Google Drive. This field has seen astounding growth and becoming a part of this world helps you efficiently conduct your businesses worldwide.

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What Should Be Included For Android Application Development?

As a powerful and hugely popular mobile operating system, Android attracts many developers to build mobile apps to target the mobile devices running on this platform. As the mobile platform is open source, programmers also get the option to tweak, twist and improve it according to their specific requirements. The mobile app development frameworks have further made it easier for programmer to switch to Android application development within a very short span of time.

But with every other company launching Android apps, it has become essential for developers to understand the latest trends in mobile application development. At the same time, they have to explore innovative ideas to optimize the look, feel, performance and security of the application. On the whole, a developer has to make and implement a comprehensive application development plan that must include several key factors.

Things that Must be Included in Android App Development

Mobile Payment
Mobile devices have become an inseparable part of modern lifestyle. In addition to gathering information on a variety of products or services, users also use mobile device to purchase the items on the go. So many users will love to use an app that allows them to make payment for the product or service in a quick, hassle-free and secure app. You can always consider designing apps with features of a mobile wallet that allows users to carry out financial transactions on the go, while keeping their sensitive financial data secure and inaccessible.

Cloud Technologies
Each user wants to access both personal and business data immediately regardless of his current location. Therefore, many people are using Cloud technologies to store a variety of information. As the technology enables users to access the information stored in the Cloud at their own pace and convenience, many enterprises have started investing in Cloud computing. Your Android app can surely meet the new trends in storing information when it supports Cloud technologies.

Health Tips and Advice
The busy lifestyle and packed professional schedules of modern people makes it difficult for them to follow a balanced diet and exercise regime. So an increasing number people are gathering health tips and advice by using their Android mobile devices. In addition to providing regular health tips and advice, the app will further enable the users to get relevant solutions by consulting a doctor. At the same time, the app can help users in remaining fit and active through regular exercise and yoga. You can always consider developing healthcare apps to target the users who are getting conscious about their health.

Blend Social Media into the App
Similar to mobile applications, social media has also become an integral part of modern lifestyle. Many people use social media to evaluate the pros and cons of a variety of products and services. At the same time, users also love to share their recent activities and achievements through social networking platforms. So you must consider blending social media seamlessly into the Android app. Along with allowing users to share photos, videos and posts on major social networking platforms, the app also needs to allow them access these websites in quick and convenient way.

Animation Effect
The choice of Android apps varies from one user to another. But most users decide about downloading a mobile app based on its look and feel. So you must explore options to optimize the aesthetic appeal of the application, along with its features, functionality and performance. Many reports have highlighted how animation effect can make an app look attractive and exciting. So you must consider designing apps with adequate animation effects to impress users belonging to different age groups.

The must-include things for Android app development keep changing on a constant basis. Also, these factors are affected by the frequent changes in user choice and technologies. So each developer must stay tuned to the ongoing trends in mobile application development to build a powerful Android app that will surely attract and impress users.

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Guidelines for Android Mobile Design

Android offers an outstanding platform for mobile design and goes a long way in creating an effective app that offers a brilliant experience across numerous devices of diverse combinations of aspect ratio, pixel density and screen size. The diversity of Android throws a number of challenges to the designer and here we bring to you some crucial guidelines in terms of pixels, user experience, layouts, styles and themes that need to be considered for creation of successful Android apps.

Pixels

An app’s perceived quality is largely dependent on the visual design, which also enhances the usability. Most of the developers are well-versed with the UI patterns, but only a handful has the requisite visual design skills. You need to concentrate on the following in order to deliver an experience that is aesthetically pleasing.

• Nice Scaling: The Android platform comes with diverse screen densities, with no definite resolutions for targeting but a measurement format for layouts widgets and graphics that is somewhat density independent. So, it is always advisable to optimize the graphics for a varying range of screen densities. Make sure to test the designs across low-end devices and optimize resources that do not scale well.
• State Friendly: Significant confirmations of selections and clicks are provided by the touch states. During customization of the widgets like buttons, the creation of drawables with respect to all required states such as disabled, pressed, focused and default is crucial. The size is also a significant factor. Touch targets should usually be minimum 45 density pixels in height and width.
• Use Fonts: Roboto and Droid Sans are the two major fonts of Android. However, any fonts can be roped in for an application in TTF format.
• Utilize 9-patch Drawables: These facilitate stretching and scaling of PNGs in a pre-defined manner. Markings alongside the top-left edge outline the stretchable regions. Optionally, the padded content region can be defined through markings alongside the bottom-right edgings. 9-patches are crucial for creation and customization of UI widgets.

User Experience

As is the case with any other platform, Android app development has conventions and patterns. These help in formation of expectations regarding the behavior of an unfamiliar app.

• Design of User Flows: Android apps contain a set of screens, at the basic level. Navigation within the stacks is possible with the help of buttons, list items and action bar icons. There is also the up affordance which facilitates the navigation along the information hierarchy. It is good to try user flows with prospective users through mock-ups or wireframes and iterate. Ideally, prototypes on real devices should be leveraged because the same facilitates testing within realistic mobile environments.
• Use of UI patterns: UI patterns should be considered as tools rather than constraints, because they provide recognizable hints regarding interaction and navigation, maintaining platform consistency. Some of the common Android patterns are the action bar, the dashboard pattern, the workspaces pattern and the ribbon menu. These are the most effective tools for carving out app navigation and layouts.
• Design Responsively: With varying screen areas, Android is somewhat similar to responsive web design, wherein rendering support to each screen is the target. You can avoid premature optimization through focusing on popular devices and target users. The ideal option is to target middle sized popular phones and then go for requisite optimization with user flows and alternate layouts for specifically small tablets and devices.
• Comprehension of Mobile Interactions: Users interact with mobile apps in a different manner than with websites or PC software. In case of mobile apps, most interactions utilize touch input and are often capable of measuring in seconds.
• Optimization of First Use: Installation of apps often is a response to real world problems. So, it is always wise to render a feel of the experience. You can also think of launching a tutorial with the app.

Layouts, Themes and Styles

Let us now discuss some of the best practices for crafting performance-oriented and maintainable layouts. The commonly used layouts are Linear Layout and Relative Layout, and sometimes Grid Layout.

• Automation with framework: The Android framework makes room for automated resource switching revolving around the folder structure. This implies that there is the possibility of having distinct graphic layouts and assets for diverse screen sizes as well as densities.
• Extraction of values: Keeping the layout XML free from dimensions and colors is a good practice. You can separately define them and reference in the layouts, thereby enhancing the visual consistency and ensuring that things are easy to change at a later stage. Extraction of these values facilitates dimension switching across diverse platform versions, orientations and screen sizes.
• Use of themes and styles: An effective means to ensure a maintainable XML layout is to segregate the positioning concern from the styling concern. Every Layout View is required to possess a height and a width attribute. Sets of attributes that recur can be moved to styles whereas widget styles that universally occur across the app may be moved to the theme.
• Optimization: The merge and include XML tags facilitate the dropping of reusable sections of UI into the layouts, thereby minimizing duplicate XML as identical set of views appear in manifold layout configurations. Lint is a comparatively new addition for Android Developer Tools, which creates warnings regarding potential performance optimizations after scanning the project resources.
• Debugging: The Hierarchy Viewer tool makes it convenient to spot bugs through inspection of an app’s layout tree.

Hope you are now acquainted with the major tools and techniques pertaining to Android mobile design. Remember that the most effective apps rely a lot on clean visual design and platform consistency.

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