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Using Animations Effectively in Your Mobile App
Animations play a crucial role in enhancing the overall user experience of a mobile app. They go beyond static images and texts by effectively communicating messages and evoking emotions. The dynamic nature of in-app animations creates a more vibrant and enjoyable user journey, resulting in higher user engagement rates. However, like any other design element in user interface, mobile animations should serve a functional purpose rather than being purely decorative. How animations are utilized in mobile applications directly impacts users' opinions of your app. If you're intrigued by the potential of animations, continue reading to discover the most popular types of app animations and how they are employed in mobile applications.
Top Mobile Applications on Google Play in 2022
The Google Play Store started as Android Market on the 22nd of October, 2008, with only thirteen applications. To compare, there will be over 2.68 million apps in the Store in 2022. Nevertheless, such an overwhelming number of games and apps is absolutely confusing for users. Finding the ideal software for business or play may take time. Even the best programs may be identified afterwards. That is why Google decided on the “Best Of” awards in 2016 to draw users’ attention to clearly outstanding top mobile applications and games. The award nomination tasks imply the users’ direct participation in defining books, TV shows, movies, and apps. Play Store editors can also make up their own lists. As a result, the mixture of expert and consumer opinions does not allow the public to skip truly valuable new developments. Developers of all levels have also got an opportunity to be recognized. They are rewarded for their creativity and unique skills implemented in the most sophisticated and well-appreciated top applications for mobile. Therefore, it's the 10th anniversary of the Google Play launch, celebrated in 2022. It was in 2012 when Google Play united different categories and platforms under one roof. They were Google Music, Google Market, Google Movies, and other applications meant for the entertainment industry. This year, Google Play’s Users’ Choice awards marked the most appreciated and trending users’ content. The winner was selected via a very simple process. Compatible devices allowed users to log in and browse content. Voting took place from November 1-14. Results were released on November 30. Best Applications for Chromebook, Best Continuing, Best Narrative, and more were introduced this year by Google. It also removed such categories as Popular on Google TV and Game Changers. They also altered their procedure for the winner presentation. Now, Google announces one winner in each category and makes honorable mentions of the apps that are truly worth your attention. Here, we want to consider the top mobile applications on Google Play awarded in 2022. Gaming apps are usually ranked at the top among all Android applications due to the revenue they provide. By September 2022, they accounted for the 7th top position out of 10 other spots. Play Store editors have decided on the winner of the Best Game of 2022 award, and Google has defined the Users’ Choice Game of 2022. Let’s look at the results. Apart from game app solutions for Android, Google decided to make a choice of the best applications related to physical and mental healthcare, self-education, planning, and personal growth. These apps are appreciated for their creativity and a strong vibe of “know yourself” and “develop yourself” messages. Google has paid more attention to apps that care about users in their everyday life. Therefore, the Google Play market has chosen the winners in eight other categories. They are the following. <b>1.</b> Best for Everyday Essentials: planners, trackers, calming helpers, and plant monitoring software. Plant Parent is a winner here, and Daily Diary, Book Morning Routine Waking Up, and Sleep Tracker are mentioned as honorable. <b>2.</b> Best Hidden Gems: apps meant for social media, recovery, and meal planning. Recover Athletics is a winner, and Wamble, Little Lunches, and Linktree are honorable nominates. <b>3.</b> Best Apps for Good: meditation, mental health, and digital well-being. The STIGMA App is a winner, and Zario and Sleep Fruits have become nominates. <b>4.</b> Best Apps for Wear OS: it is the Android system for smartwatches and other wearable devices. Todoist is the best app in this category. <b>5.</b> Best for Personal Growth: apps for focusing attention, learning languages, calming down, self-improvement, and learning how to play musical instruments. The winner this year is Breathwrk, and the nominates are Ukulele by Yousician, Duolingo ABC, and Gym Log & Workouts. <b>6.</b> Best Apps for Fun: you can find apps for entertainment, workouts, and note-taking in this category. The winner is PetStar, and honorable mentions are given to Note It Widget and DanceFitMe. <b>7.</b> Best Apps for Tablets: the category includes examples of apps developed uniquely for use on tablets. Pocket is a winner here. <b>8.</b> Best Apps for Chromebooks: it is a new category for nominating apps developed specifically for Chromebooks. BandLab is a winner here. You need to know that applications developed for everyday use require great functionality and high-quality UI and UX design, with an attractive appearance and user-friendly interface. The winners meet all these demands. The winner chosen by Google Play for everyday use is Dream by WOMBO. This application is meant for the creation of pieces of art. It uses artificial intelligence, and everyone can use it to create masterpieces in different art styles based on keywords and reference images. The AI combines the entered data to release a completely unique picture. The best apps of 2022 chosen by users include Dream by WOMBO, Ukulele by Yousician, Sleep Tracker, DanceFitMe, PicCollage, Note It Widget, Daily Diary, Breathwrk, and Be Real. Be Real is a great way to share bright experiences, travels, and memories with your loved ones in real-time.
Payment Gateway Integration in Mobile Application
No matter what kind of application you are developing for mobile devices - be it an e-commerce, music streaming, or travel app - you need to provide your customers with the opportunity to pay for goods or services they have chosen. Most payments nowadays are made via mobiles. It concerns retail sales, customer services, or any other types of merchandise. The customer experience has to be smooth here to provide sustainably high conversions to your business. Statistics argue that about 55 percent of all sales were made online in 2021, and this amount is continuously increasing. Therefore, your company’s mobile app has to integrate a convenient and easy-to-use mobile payment processing gateway. We are not speaking now about the in-app buys of digital products. Most of them are performed via Google Play Store for Android or Apple’s App Store for iOS. These well-appreciated and massive platforms have their own software and solutions for meeting all their purposes. This article explains how to incorporate online payment gateways in your company mobile app to purchase real items and services like T-shirts, hotel rooms, and train tickets. You also need to know the most popular payment gateway providers and how to pick the best one for credit card payment Android or iOS integration. Let us introduce this technology that helps make debit or credit card payments on mobile phones or websites. It is essential for your company’s extension and increasing revenue, too. Understanding how it works is important to make the right decisions on how to improve your business performance in this way. A payment gateway collects financial information from customers with the help of the frontend development in your mobile application and transfers it to the payment processor or bank that is meant to accept this payment. Such transactions should be safe and secure, so making mobile app payment integration protected is one of the most essential tasks of all experienced developers. The e-commerce payment gateways work in the following way: <b>1.</b> A buyer chooses a product or service and adds it to the shopping cart on the online store or service-providing website. <b>2.</b> The cart is connected to a specific payment gateway service that asks the user to provide credit card information. <b>3.</b> The user fills in the information and checks out. <b>4.</b> The gateway sends this request to the bank that has issued the card. <b>5.</b> The bank approves the transaction, and the payment is transferred to your company’s merchant account. A merchant account is a very important part of the entire transaction alongside the gateway service provider. You need to choose the type that best suits your commercial needs and security purposes. There are two basic types of merchant accounts - dedicated and aggregated ones. Hence, let’s look at both of them in detail. All gateway providers, such as PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, and others, are interested in the best functionality of both a gateway and a merchant account. The latter is the place where the money should be transferred after the customer’s payment was approved and stored there until it is transferred to your bank account. Therefore, a merchant account is not a bank account. It is meant for sales and payments and accumulating money from them. Only after the payment arrives at your merchant account and is not withdrawn, it can be transferred to your bank account. You may wonder why this additional layer is needed. The most essential reason here is that your customer may want to return an item or refuse the service and ask for a refund. You can make this refund easily from the costs accumulated in the merchant account. All other accumulated costs will be sent to your bank account. Therefore, you need step-by-step integration of merchant in-app payment to ensure it works smoothly. A dedicated merchant account is made specifically for your business, so you can directly control all the financial operations. It also allows you to correct errors occurring in transactions or debit the costs if you have to pay back a refund. All the transfers will be faster - you can complete them within a day. However, you will need to pay more for opening and maintain such an account. That is why many businesses prefer to open aggregated accounts. They are more extended because they collect funds for multiple merchants. Such an account is less expensive, and you can receive approval for its opening within only 24 hours, while it will take you a few days to approve a dedicated account. In addition, an aggregated account does not require as much KYC (Know Your Customer) documentation as a dedicated account does. Anyway, the choice is yours, and you have to consider all pros and cons of both variants.
How to Keep Your Mobile App Popular After Launch
Your communication with the app developer should not finish after its launch. Even if everything goes smoothly and your mobile application is popular among the customers during the first days of its performance, you need to consider how to keep the users interested in it further. We want to give some simple tips on how to make an app popular after its launch and keep up its popularity. You will need your developer to make updates and modifications all the time, especially the first two months after its start, so bear that in mind. Recent research has shown that about 80% of users lose interest in any new app after one or two weeks. So, you may ask, ‘How to make my app popular for a long time?’ The answer starts with the first positive impression that may keep the users’ interest longer. Therefore, what do you need to consider to make a good first impression? The first thing is to explain why the application is helpful and provide clear and straightforward instructions on how to use it. Give examples of various scenarios in which the app can facilitate the customers’ life. App developers should also take the importance of the first impression into account. Users should be positive about its usefulness right after the installation. Make the onboarding process for them as easy as possible. The clear and understandable interface can add a lot to this. There may be a problem with making the first impression if the content is not visible at once. If users see it within its performance process, they may not understand how it works and how well they can use it. That is why all the parts and steps of the onboarding process should contain direct and real-time data. If all the information is time-sensitive, users will see what to expect and how they can make use of the application right now. The clear presentation also helps explain the core functionality related to many external factors. Users can see what kind of content they can expect and whether it will solve their issues or meet all their needs. That transparency will increase the app’s popularity and, accordingly, the company’s revenues.
Final Questions to Ask Before Building a Mobile Business App
You can hardly imagine a brand-new business without a mobile app developed specifically for it. According to recent statistical data, Android users have access to more than 2.8 million apps, while iOS can offer over 2.3 million apps available in the Apple App Store. Here is the point where all the problems start. Though about 83% of business owners regard apps as an indivisible part of their company’s progress, more than 80% mobile apps are entirely abandoned right after the first use of them by clients. Moreover, the situation is becoming worse day by day. The first issue most apps experience relates to poor UI/UX that can bore clients to death. That happens because the managers and decision makers have not properly researched what their customers need. On the other hand, the customers have access to thousands of apps that represent well-established companies, so they may not need it anymore. Nevertheless, every company strives to enhance its presence on the market, so its managers rush to software developers for apps. They spend a lot of money. App development is not cheap, indeed. Survey results show that an average commercial app can cost from $25,000 to $1,000,000. If the mobile application is not popular, it is a huge waste of money. So, the decision to start such a project is not always considerate because most business people do not realize what questions to ask before building an app. That is why, before making any decision and investing money into the useless app design, ask these 5 questions to your business analyst or client to determine how useful the app will be for this specific business. Even if a potential customer has hundreds of apps available on their device, they utilize only some of them. They tend to remove those ones that are never used but occupy a lot of space. That is why the possible functionality of your would-be project can be one of the most important questions to ask a client before building an app. It is a responsibility of a software developer to find out how often the customer wants the app to be used by their clients. The use of it just several times per month will not provide a desired result. That is why it is also important to know what can bring a user back to the app. Some business managers, however, do not think that such a question is relevant to their position. However, this opinion is wrong. Even if the development is meant for the company’s internal use, the manager needs to have an accurate plan of how it will be used. Moreover, there should be a plan on how to bring the user back to the app after the first try. The research shows that most applications are entirely abandoned after the first use - the percentage is 80% for enterprise apps and 25% for consumer ones. The average number of uses is about 11 times all in all in 63% of consumers. That is why there are two key aspects that can increase the number of uses - how well the application can solve the user’s pain and whether the software is delivered with clear and intuitive navigation. That is why the clean and straightforward design is an essential part of every development.
Questions to Ask a Mobile App Development Company
Do you need a new mobile app for your business? Do you know what you are going to use it for and what characteristics it should possess? You also have to decide how you are going to get your app and what the mobile app development process is going to be about. These are the main questions you should ask your potential app developer and receive consistent answers to them. Mobile applications are meant to work with small wireless devices, such as tablets or smartphones. The development process is similar to that used for other applications for desktop and web. However, the process differs significantly because the app will be used on these devices, so it should take advantage of their features. For example, it has to make use of the iPhone accelerometer if it is developed for gaming. The most prominent mobile platforms now are iOS for Apple devices and Android designed by Google. These platforms have the in-built features and applications. The future app design should take into account that iOS already has a full web browser and the Apple App Store, while Android gives access to the Google Play Store. All other apps that can be developed for these systems may use these preloaded features.