Category: Mobile App Engineering

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Making of a robot might seem to be complicated, but to create a chat bot is a much easier task these days. Chat bots are a brilliant innovation of artificial intelligence that automatically communicates with internet users to answer their questions.

Even though chat bots are AI based, they are actually made to behave like human beings. They generally perform tasks like providing information, collecting feedback from customers, guide shoppers to find products, etc.

Well, many of you might have a typical question that how can you build a chatbot for your website or mobile app?

Here we have come across the 5 best Chat Bot platform building tools, which are easy to implement or use:

1) MEOKAY

This is one of the top tools to create a simple conversational messenger bot. MEOKAY makes work easier for skilled and non-skilled developers as they can create and designs easily to make steps. It takes just minutes to build the whole conversational scenario and even build advanced dialogues for smooth conversation between the user and the chat bot

Key Features

•  Works seamlessly with messaging and comments
•  Has the capability to recognise variations in trigger words or phrases
•  On demand, these bots can push deals and offers to users
•  Can integrate with all major payment systems like PayPal, Stripe, bKash

2) ChatFuel

This is a platform that helps in creating bots for applications like Facebook and Telegram. Here conversational chats can be set, where the predefined answers are sent to the users. Till now, almost 360,000 chat bots have been created using Chatfuel with 17 million users around the world, which includes brands like British Airways, CNBC, Adidas, TechCrunch, MTV, Buzzfeed etc.

Key Features

• Quick replies are the most important feature of this platform tool, in a line chatfuel made bots can provide 1-10 replies and almost 20 symbols

• Share locations along with quick replies, which allows users to send locations to bots and save it as zip file, in any state, city, country, latitude, longitude, address, etc.

•This platform provides a phone call button, which if added to the admin panel will generate phone calls to the users’ number

• Has other features like chat room plug-in, go to block plug-in, audio plug-in, video plug-in

• Chat bots created from this platform can be used as even assistants, personal avatars, customer support, etc.

3) Botsify

This platform helps to create live support chat bots. The most important benefit of this Botsify is that it updates the chats in real-time. A simple drag or drop is enough to make the design of the template. With this tool developers one can create a Facebook chat bot without writing any codes.

Key Features

•  It is a Facebook chat bot platform
•  Easily integrate chat bots to the system
•  Simple to use interface which lets business owners build their own chat bot without any coding
•  Helps configure personalized responses, align messages, integrate with WordPress
•  Supports media contents like images, audio and video files

4) Pandorabots

Pandorabots is a web service for building and deploying chat bots. It is a free integrated development environment for building chatbots. Using this, you can create AI based chatbots for IOT interfaces, customer services, advertising, games, etc. Almost 225k+ developers use this tool and more than 285k+ chatbots are created till date.

Key Features

•  Consist of a tool called AiaaS, which helps in accessing bot hosting platform
•  To create chat bots, same contents can be used from the libraries
•  Program bots remember the relevant user information
•  Can process multilingual languages so that you can create bot for any languages
•  Deployable
•  Build natural language interfaces for connected things

5) ChatScript

This is known to be one of the best chatbot tools to create a chat app. ChatScript includes many advanced features and are intended to maintain natural conversations with the users. This natural Language tool or dialogue manager is considered to be the next generation chatbot engine

Key Features

•  Consist of a simple and easy rule layout combined with C-style general scripting
•  Built using the WordNet dictionary
•  Planner capabilities of this tool allows the bots to act in real-time
•  Capable to remember user interactions across conversational chats
•  Document mode within tool allows you to scan documents for written content
•  Can read structured JSON data from websites
•  Runs on Windows/Linux, Mac/iOS or Android platform servers, which can support more than a 1000 simultaneous users
•  This tool can involve multiple bots on the same server

A few years back, every company wanted a website and later on, it was changed onto mobile apps. But now, Mobile App Development Companies and other industries are getting into the AI & bot technology.

With the above platform tools, even more rapid progress is expected in the coming year. So what are you waiting for, it’s time to start building chat bot.

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Any new developer interested in mobile app development faces the following questions.

If I want to do mobile app development where should I start from? Do I have to build from scratch? What options do I have to build a mobile app? What are the pros and cons of each option?

Well, there are a few options to help you decide the approach required for building your first mobile app

Bring Idea to Reality

This is the most popular form of mobile app development. If you have an idea and if it is something which has not been done before, you can develop that into a mobile app. You can do it yourself or ask a developer or mobile app development companies to do it for you.

Pros

  • Free Hand – You can develop and make changes as you want it to be. Everything is under your control.
  • Ownership – The IPR of the app resides with you. You are the owner of the app. If the app gets popular, the source code and publishing rights can be sold to other companies/individuals.

Cons

  • More efforts – Since the idea is new, challenges to implement it are unknown. More efforts will have to be put to implement the idea. You have to take care of every aspect of design and data flow.
  • Risk – Risk is more in building an app from scratch. All the efforts may go in vain if the idea could not be implemented or users do not like the app.

Clone IT

This is another form of mobile app development where developers emulate popular apps. The idea is to take a pie of market share from the popular app by building a similar app.

Pros

  • Less Surprises – Since the idea is already implemented, the challenges are less. Hence the time to develop is also reduced.
  • Less effort – Since the app is already present, you have to emulate the functionality with same or extended features. You don’t have to put effort in conceptualizing it.
  • Less Cost – The cost of developing the app will be low as less effort is needed. Also, this app can be offered to users at a low cost. If everything is identical, the market share can be easily captured.

Cons

  • Clones vs. originals – The experience tells that clones have not been able to emulate the features and success of the original app. If you want to sustain in the market, the cloned app should be bug free and feature rich.
  • Competition– There will be other developers cloning the popular mobile app to get the pie of market share. In this case, your race is not against the original but the cloned apps. The shelf life of cloned apps is usually less. To be popular, you need to be unique from the other cloned apps.
  • Less Returns – The returns on investment will be less in comparison to original ones.

App Flipping

App flipping is a popular concept in mobile app development. It consists of 3 steps

  1. The developers can buy source code for popular app
  2. Give a makeover to the app by redesigning skins and adding new features
  3. Publish your app in the app store

Pros

  • Only design change is needed – Since the source code is d for already existing app you need not have to write the functionality again. You just have to redesign it. Change the skins, graphics and icon and you are good to go.
  • Less effort – Less effort is needed as you just have to do design work.

Cons

  • Coding Skills Needed – Since you have bought the source code, you have the control now. Any change needed to be done has to be done by you. So, you need to have some knowledge of coding.

Buy the App

You also have the option to buy the complete app and not just the source code. If complete app is d, you get the rights to use icons, names, keywords and everything else. The IPR now resides with you. The advantage is that you don’t have to redesign it since you own it now. Any benefit starts accruing from the date of . However, they turn out to be costly and you have to maintain it after . If you are not a developer, maintaining it can be difficult.

These are some of the ways through which you can start your first ever mobile app development.

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Mobile app market is on a rise these days. As a result, more businesses are venturing into mobile app development and you may be one of them. Wondering what goes into the development of a mobile application?

Well, here are the steps:

Determine What you Want to Do

Before beginning mobile app development, you have to decide upon the purpose of creating the mobile app, the techniques that will make your app successful and the platforms your app will work on. This will help you to determine the user interface design needs for your mobile app. Also, analyse the problems or needs of the audience that your app intends to solve.

Research

Do a little research to understand where you stand in the market. Analyse the success of other mobile app development companies that have created apps similar to yours. This will help you to understand the mistakes they have made and then, you can try to make it right in your app. Also, know who your potential customers will be based on research and real customer feedback and try to determine why they will be interested in your app.

Bring in the Technical Team

Hold discussions with all technical teams involved in the mobile app developmentprocess. This will help you to determine whether your idea of the mobile app is practical and whether it will be a success. Also, the discussion helps you to have an idea about the time within which the app will be completed and the budget.

Sketch your Ideas

Depict your ideas in the form of rough sketches. The visual representation of your concept will help you discover usability issues if any.

Determine if your App is Technically Feasible

It’s now time to determine whether your app will function well with back-end systems. Decide upon the devices and platforms your app is going to work on.

Review the Changes Made

By now, you may have made many changes to the initial strategy. It’s time to hold discussions and review the changes.

Create a Prototype

Use wireframe tools like Balsamiq and Visio to create a prototype of your mobile app. You can then bring in real-users to test run your prototype and collect their feedback and suggestions. This helps you to have an understanding of the working of your app and what needs to be included in it.

Start Marketing

Find a place in the market right from the beginning stage of your mobile app development. This will make the job easier for you later. You can start a landing page for your app, start a blog, use social media platforms, post videos and use any media possible to let the audience realise your presence.

Design

This phase of mobile app development begins before you start coding. At this stage, the interactive features and other aesthetic features in terms of colour scheme, style, layout, fonts etc. are designed. Despite having great features, a poor UX design alone can lead to the failure of the app. Therefore, it is important to test run the designs before you fix upon a design. At the end of this phase, layouts are created to let the development team know that this is how you want your app to look, feel and interact.

Build

It’s now time to build your app. The tools and software development kits used for the mobile app development are chosen based on the platforms the app will work on and the skills of the developer. Usually, the Agile approach is used for mobile app development as it gives importance to collaboration, clarity and easy adaptation to changes.

Test

The testing process is usually done simultaneously with the coding process to determine bugs and other defects at the earliest. This can help to fix defects itself, thus saving time and unnecessary expenditure.

BETA Testing

BETA testing is a type of user acceptance testing where the app is tested among real users. It is important to perform BETA testing and garner feedback from the users. It will help you to understand what features of your app works for the targeted audience and what doesn’t.

Launch

This is the day you have been waiting for. If you are happy with your final product, wait no longer. Choose an app store and make your app’s presence felt there with screenshots, app description and title.

Maintain

Your job doesn’t end with the release of your app. It’s also important to upgrade it with new features to keep the users interested.

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Modern day businesses are swiftly adopting enterprise mobility to improve productivity, enhance customer engagement and for risk mitigation in their respective corporate workplaces. But good quality enterprise apps are scanty since the field is relatively new for mobile app development companies.

Here are the top mistakes found commonly in enterprise apps that could be fatal to efficient and effective app development success.

1. User interface issues

The enterprise app’s user interface has a direct impact on user engagement. Therefore, the user interface should be so designed that it would be easy for end users to operate them.

A. Complicating the UI: Don’t treat the UI like a junkyard, which could be littered with descriptions and controls. It will give rise to an overcomplicated user interface which will negatively impact the user experience. You should be careful while choosing the features and should think in advance about the ways of implementing them without creating visual complexity.

Read Also

    5 Things to Know Before You Start Mobile App Development

B. Prioritizing: You should definitely be careful not to include all contents/controls on the main screen of your app. Instead, learn to prioritize. More important and relevant content/controls should be displayed on the main page and connected content/controls can be provided in the sub-pages/sub-menus.

C. Make it effortless: Maintaining the ease of use is something that is very important for a good end user experience. For e.g., an app that makes you click/tap multiple number of times for getting even the simplest task done like saving a work or sharing a file could test the user’s patience. It would also waste considerable amount of time in completing a single task.

D. Poor graphics and text: The graphics and text used in the app should have good clarity. Inconsistent text formats, using text and background colours that are too bright or too dull, text that runs off screen, images & text that overlaps etc. could ruin the user experience.

E. Localization mistakes: Localization mistakes are the result of insufficient proof reading. Culturization is also an important part of this step. So, local translators should be hired for this purpose.

2. Absence of a purpose

All apps should have a well defined purpose and should do well defined tasks, but it is particularly important for enterprise mobile apps. Business owners often get satisfied with apps that are mere copies of third party business apps. These apps won’t be efficacious for your particular business needs.

Recommended Read

         The 14 Crucial Steps of Mobile App Development

Every business requires unique business apps based on its environment, processes, work culture, and other such factors. So it is better to hire your own mobile app development team for your specific business app.

3. Lack of metrics

How are you going to understand the performance of your app or a business process if you do not have a proper mechanism to evaluate the success or failure of the same? Inorder to recognize the usefulness of your app or determine the value of processes, there should be regular analysis and reporting in place.

4. Security threats

Business apps must possess an intact privacy and security policy. The app should be free from all the major security and cyber threat vulnerabilities. Apart from that, the app should not allow unauthorized access or leakage of private data to third parties.

5. Crashing

App crashing is a very common issue, but it cannot be neglected because this will affect the overall productivity of a business. Efforts should be made to figure out the real reason behind sustained app crashes during the testing phase of mobile app development. They can be primarily due to issues that are too apparent like bandwidth problems, bugs in the app, memory unavailability, device incompatibility etc. These problems could be avoided if adequate measures are taken.

6. Help Menu

A well written, easy to understand, error free, comprehensive, step-by-step help menu is inevitable for every business app.

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Just imagine the pain that goes behind developing a mobile app. Sadly, in spite of best efforts, a lot of mobile app development endeavours end up as big failures. In most of these cases, there were the lack of a proper development plan. It is essential that you decide upon the importance of various facets of your project before proceeding with its implementation. Here are some of the major things that you need to keep an eye on before doing anything else.

1. Well formulated purpose  

A project without a purpose or without some value could never do well in the market, and it will soon get buried into the depths of the digital app stores. So, it is highly recommended that you ask yourself the question, “why you are building your app” a few times before you start planning further.

Read Also

         5 Tips to Ensure Mobile App User Retention

The app you make should solve an existing problem. You don’t need to strictly avoid imitation of an idea. People will admire your app if it provides a solution that is more interesting or easy.

2. Learn to plan from within a budget

The line between possibility and impossibility should be clearly drawn at the beginning of mobile app development itself. Blindly imitating all the features and functionalities of successful apps that you find in the app stores without questioning its practicality could cost you heavily later, when you try to implement the design.

You should understand the importance of working from within the budget you have in hand. Otherwise, if you spend too much for design extravaganzas or app features, you will find yourself in need of money to do activities that gains importance towards the end phases; especially marketing.

3. A good market research

People believe that the only thing that a market research helps in knowing is whether a demand gap exists or not for a particular product. Well, this is not necessarily so. A market research will help you to devise a good marketing strategy based on your study and observations of specific markets. You could also get feedback from public about the qualities and enhancements that are expected from the kind of apps that they already use. This way you can create apps that are unique or different.

Recommended Read

         12 Reasons You Should Convert Books To Mobile Apps

As most of the existing and successful apps have several drawbacks, you can offer your brand that solves those issues. For e.g., you can develop apps that give good performance and new features. They are likely to get much attention as people would probably have settled down with some app, because they had no other choices. Once they can get their hands on improved and more useful apps, what could deter them from giving it a try?

4. Early marketing

Marketing should not be left out for the last phase of mobile app development. Do everything you could, to get your app noticed during the first week of your app’s launch itself. This would mean getting the word out early. The general trend is that if you can not get a good buzz around your app during the initial months of its release, you won’t be able to hope a recovery by updates, even after the best marketing efforts.

5. Pricing your app

You might be very much excited about getting huge returns from your app right after its launch in the app store. But how could you expect to get a good return from an app that is priced too high for the particular market that you are targeting?

App pricing could vary by and large based on the particular platform, industry and country targeted, purpose fulfilled, demand for the app for doing the particular task etc. Saying that, it is advised that you should not price your app too low also. You can give your app free for trial, but pricing it too low will make doubts in the customer’s mind about the quality of the app.

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Mobile app development has been sought by the majority of businesses these days. Fortunately, many business owners have realized that it is hard to survive the battle in the market without abiding by the business tactics and measures that are prevalent today. Even though this is a very thoughtful decision, a lot of failures are still visible.

Analysis shows that one of the main reasons contributing to app failure is the ignorance of the app development process on client side. They jump straight away into project proposal and app development, once they find a suitable mobile app development company, without examining if their expectations are actually practicable. Most are not interested in acquiring any knowledge of the details of development or procedures involved. They basically just want to an app, like they any commodity from a retail store.

Read also:

 5 Reasons to Outsource to a Mobile App Development Company

Each of the app development process is something that has a highly individualised nature and the outcome has a huge dependency factor in several of the decisions taken during the inception phase. This infographics will give you an awareness of the most important steps followed under the mobile app development process.

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The demand for attractive, innovative, and flawless apps are increasing day by day. But, for beginner developers it could still be a great concern choosing their initial platform of mobile app development.

Windows app development is a lot more comfortable and organized as compared to development in other platforms. It is better and easy with the availability of a wide range of tools for development. The best thing is that the most popular Windows app development tool, MS Visual Studio offers Android and iOS app development support.

Windows is the Right Platform for Beginners

It is the best platform for amateurs to start their journey. Unlike in Windows, the IDE for Android is too slow. Android plugin and toolset has got a lot of bugs and lacks many features compared to Windows. Also, Android emulators will take too much time to load up in contrast to Windows emulators which loads at lightning speeds. And the IDE’s for Android apps are built for single use – making Android apps alone.

Some Benefits

Given below are some of the top benefits in using Windows platform for development.

  • You can use C# and C++ for development. C# is a very flexible and versatile language as it fixes java’s weaknesses and offers further functionality.
  • Virtual studio is a lot more stable and mature IDE.
  • Visual studio allows you to build not just Windows phone apps, but Windows desktop apps, WPF apps, games, console apps, Android apps etc.
  • It alerts about errors in the code without having to run it. Also, it provides instant context-aware help while coding.
  • XAML gives a more natural interface.
  • In Windows, UI creation will be a direct procedure using it’s drag and drop tool.
  • Microsoft’s design guideline is stable, unlike the one with Android, which constantly changes and requires you to redesign your app often.
  • A large number of tutorials are available on the Microsoft virtual academy and MSDN library.
  • Another cool feature that comes with Windows 10, is the universal nature. With Windows universal app development, the single app you develop will be supported on PCs, mobiles, Kinect, as well as Microsoft band.

Some Concerns

If you think whether opting the Microsoft ecosystem is as lucrative as choosing Android, the answer would be a clear No. There are several factors that pull MS backwards. Windows app market share is so low that it is barely visible.

PCs are no more hub of computing technology. The present and immediate future belongs to mobility. Google and Apple have long established their kingdom on the mobile platform. Unfortunately, there were not much conscious effort taken by MS under Steve Ballmer to win over the mobile platform.

Another thing that makes Android important for a developer is that Windows phone development will make you bear the extra costs. Annual fee payment for Windows is $99 compared to Android, which is cheaper at 25$ for lifetime.

It is a fact that Windows can come nowhere near in terms of popularity and market share of these blue chip companies. So, there are fewer developers and fewer devices which lead to less demand and uncertainty. Yet, constant attempts are being made for a comeback under the leadership of Satya Nadella.

What’s Best to be Successful as a Developer

For beginners, the best advice is to start with Windows app development. Learning Android can be inevitable as you progress with your career. But to get there you should learn the patience and knack to go forward.

Windows IDE is the best learning platform, supplemented with the wide collection of tools available. It will boost up the passion young developers have.