“Google has started replacing some of its Android apps in Chrome OS with Progressive Web Apps!”

This news on the famous American Technology and Science-News brand, ‘The Verge’, has put light on why Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) have gained so much popularity recently. PWAs have gained more attention after the announcement of Apple to support Safari with the help of Service worker and Web Manifest. In the mobile technology, native apps are considered to be most sought after apps because of the experience they provide, however with the advent of digitalization, PWAs also are equally making mark and have come up as a cost effective way by providing a great web experience with native features. Google and Microsoft are also pushing PWAs for ensuring that businesses provide an improved web experience.

This article is a summary of what are Progressive Web Apps and their key benefits. Let us have a look at how they are gradually becoming a hot trend for start-ups as well as small and large enterprises.

What are Progressive Web Apps?

PWA is a web based application having look and feel like a native mobile app. As these are web apps they can be run from anywhere on the internet making it platform independent. The PWAs have extra features than the regular web pages, due to which they provide an exemplary user experience. They are developed using modern APIs for delivering native-like capabilities and reliability. With a single codebase, these apps can reach anyone and anywhere, on any device with ease.

In some cases, PWAs are even faster and more functional than their native mobile app counterparts. They are built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript and run on top of a script named a service worker. Chrome and Firefox are the best browsers to support them.

Here is a glimpse of the giant companies using PWAs:

AliExpress, a famous e-commerce site owned by the Alibaba Group
Forbes, a top U.S. business magazine
Pinterest
Twitter Lite
Flipkart, largest e-commerce site in India
BookMyShow, India’s largest ticketing company
Lancôme, a French luxury cosmetics brand
co.uk, a renowned real-estate firm
Features of Progressive Web Apps

There are several features and capabilities of the Progressive Web Apps which are contributing to providing an amazing web experience to the users. These features enable the PWAs to behave in the same way as a native mobile application.

PWAs can send push notifications like native apps.
They can work offline as well.
They have access to hardware features like microphone, webcam, battery status, Bluetooth, payments, biometric authentication, compass, accelerometer, gyroscope and even sensors.
They can be shared easily via URLs.
They can be used on full-screen mode.
Search engine indexing is possible with PWAs.
They have access to the file system.
They have clipboard access.
They have background sync support
Key Benefits of Progressive Web Apps

Improved Performance:

They can be quickly installed and can load instantly. PWAs cache and serve images, text and other content efficiently, which enables faster working of the apps. They are highly secure and reliable for continuous use. They provide a smooth and immersive experience to the users. PWAs don’t require a ton of a space like the native apps. They don’t need much storage on the device as well. Also, they use lesser data as compared to the native apps. As a result they give a better performance.

Enhanced Security:

As PWAs work on HTTPS protocol, they provide safe data and reduces the risk of security issues. This protocol prevents tampering of content and snooping.

Custom offline page:

PWAs can seamlessly work in offline mode thereby giving a better native like experience rather than navigating the user to default offline page of browser. It runs flawlessly in poor internet connectivity conditions as well.

No updates required:

PWAs do not have to be explicitly updated unlike native apps as they get updated automatically when connected to the internet. They are updated the moment they are loaded in the browser. This also saves the data to a large extent. So, there is no need for approval from the play stores, unlike the native apps.

Enhanced market reach and SEO friendly:

Since PWAs are accessible everywhere, they can reach a wide range of audiences at once. The business owners don’t need to launch mobile apps on different platforms like Android and iOS. They can be accessed on both Android and iOS devices through a browser. PWAs help to boost the page views. They enhance the mobile traffic, increase the engagement of the users and also hike the conversion rates. They lower the bounce rates. They enhance the accessibility and search ability of the app.

Final Thoughts:

The future of Progressive Web Apps is bright. PWAs are time-saving and cost-effective options as the developers don’t need to write three code-bases for iOS, Android and the Web separately. They eliminate the need to install or download an app from the play stores while saving the efforts of the users. They are responsive to any screen sizes.

With so many practical benefits to offer, more and more companies are moving towards progressive web apps development. There are some challenges too, but their benefits surpass these challenges.

Develop your progressive web app with Biz4Solutions, a reliable technology partner. It is a leading Texas-based web and mobile app development company having 8+ years of experience with global clients. Get in touch with us to know more.

Call them Fashionista or Shopaholic or whatever! People love to shop on-the-go! Irrespective of the time and place! At the very comfort of their homes or during the office breaks or while traveling back to their home from office! And that’s why eCommerce apps have been one of their favorites. Amazon, Flipkart, Shopify, eBay, Walmart, Groupon, Aliexpress, just name them! They have already created their success stories.

ECommerce solutions have literally been the game-changer for both, customers as well as the business owners. It’s no surprise that businesses are increasingly investing in eCommerce mobile app development. But the question is how to go about it?

In this blog, we have outlined essential steps needed to architect an alluring eCommerce app, along with the development mistakes that can badly affect the app.

Essential Steps to Create an Amazing eCommerce App

Before knowing these steps, it is of utmost importance for the business owners to do thorough research on multiple factors that are mentioned below. Market research will help you to set better business goals, lower business risks, boost customer satisfaction, improve decision-making, outsell competitors, and ultimately make more sales.

Now, let us have a look at the crucial steps that must be followed to create an impeccable app.

Come up with an idea

The first step in this process is to decide the idea and the goals for the app. What do you want your eCommerce app to look like, what should be the overall concept of the app? How will you measure the progress of the app? What are your KPIs? Do you first want to develop a Minimum Viable Product? Using a Business Model Canvas (BMC) can help you understand some important aspects like value prepositions, revenue, customer segments, etc. So having a well thought out idea in place is very important to avoid unnecessary expenses later.

Decide your target audience

For whom are you creating this app?
What is their average age?
What are their interests and preferences?
Which products do they like and have already bought?
How will they find us?
Is your service B2B or B2C? Accordingly, the choices of the target audience will change.
Look at which mobile and web eCommerce platforms are being used by your target audience.
Answers to such questions will help you to streamline your development process, shape your eCommerce app correctly and even improve the app marketing.

Also, studying the buyer persona is essential to know your ideal customers. It includes needs and preferences of the potential customers, their motivations and similar data which will influence every factor in the eCommerce mobile app development journey.

Know your Competitors

List out your competitors and do a thorough analysis. Look at their products and services and see what attracts the buyers. Study their business model. However, don’t duplicate their features, business models, etc. Competitor analysis will help you to enhance your research, navigate different challenges in the market, improve your products and services and stand out amongst them, giving a competitive advantage.

Must-have app features

The next step for an eCommerce app development company is to determine the feature requirement of your app. A few of the must-have features that you should include in your app are:

Product List and categorization
Search Bar and Filters
Push Notifications
Multiple Payment Options
Wishlist
Look-books
Easy Checkout
Social Media Integration
Review and Ratings
Business Intelligence Tool
Ratings and Reviews
Synchronization across apps and websites

Decide technology based on budget

To determine the process and the budget, ask yourself the following questions:

How much time and resources are you willing to invest in?
Do you want to create an MVP model with the least features or want a feature-packed full-fledged eCommerce mobile app?
Do you want to develop native apps for both Android and iOS platforms? Or want cross-platform development? Do you also want a PWA?
Do you want an expensive backend development with low maintenance or high maintenance third-party APIs having a comparatively low budget?
Are you looking for hybrid app development for better time-to-market or native app development for better sustainability?
Do you want to make a bespoke app by hiring a brand new team or go for a SAAS solution?
Once you decide on the above questions, there are different pricing models available to choose from. They are scope based, time-based, fixed price models, or you can opt for dedicated resource hiring.

App development

After doing the thorough research on the above enlisted points, you can now finally start the design and development of your dream eCommerce app.

Follow these tips for a good end result and unparalleled experiences to the users:

Ensure that the app has user-friendly navigation
Remove the excess clutter from the app
Incorporate app templates to speed up and streamline processes
Focus on personalizing the customer experience
Give a personal touch to the app with Live Chat support.
Use alluring images and animations for better impact
Avoid using contrast color combinations, fonts, layouts, etc.

Market your app

Marketing the app is equally important as its development is. After all, getting more downloads, views, purchases is the final aim of the app development. One can create buzz about the app even before the release of the app. Some of the strategies used for successful marketing of the apps are content marketing, SEO optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, paid advertisement, app marketing, etc.

Publish the app

Finally, you are all set to publish the app on different mobile app stores like AppStore and Play Store. You can go on the app stores and sign up on their accounts, pay their registration fees, write the description and privacy policy for the app, upload the screenshots of the app interface, upload the app, specify the pricing of the app and your app will be published after it meets the set standards.

Final Words

Architecting a fully functional eCommerce app out of an idea is quite challenging. It requires considerable planning, time, efforts, finances and most important of all, commitment. In the complete development journey, greater focus must be given to the target audience. Along with the incorporation of interesting features, optimal design, exhaustive testing, powerful marketing, etc. are the factors that can lead to a roaring success.

The world is faced with a crisis that it never imagined, even in its worst nightmares. As the government officials take strict actions to curb down the coronavirus-spread graph (which is soaring despite all efforts), everyone can feel its impact in all aspects of life. While individuals are asked to stay home and gain all insight only through digital channels, businesses are required to pivot their marketing plans swiftly. Here, we are not encouraging anyone to exploit the current situation. But we are certainly helping them make the most of it. If you are also an organization feeling the impact of the pandemic, here are some things you can do to improve and optimize your digital engagement during this pandemic.

Engaging with your potential prospects digitally is the sole way left for businesses to connect with them and attract them. As all other forms of traditional marketing are stalled in this pandemic, now is the most crucial time to be visible digitally.

Why Digital Engagement Is Important Today
As the coronavirus pandemic has created global unrest among the businesses as well, there are many companies that are withdrawing their business contracts and revoking several deals. During such times of catastrophe, it is imperative that you keep the trust of your clients. In fact, it is situations like these that can help you strengthen your relationship with your customers. Social distancing and quarantine might be hindering you from meeting your clients in physical locations, staying in touch with them wouldn’t be such an issue digitally.

You do not want your competitors to snatch away your loyal customers just because you got too busy in the transition. These confusing times are when they need the most reassurance.

And it’s not just about customer retention! An effective and smart digital engagement strategy can also prove worthy in gaining new customers. How? Let’s find out.

As a majority of the offices have shifted their operations to homes, there are others who did not have the right tools and technical assistance to work remotely. So, they had to shut their offices altogether. You can leverage this opportunity and gain an edge over your competitors.

While major markets like the US and UK are drastically hit by the pandemic and most of the organizations have stopped their business altogether, there are other markets that are still active. You can capitalize on these markets that are active by letting your content tell them that you are open to business.

How Inbound Strategy Can Help?
Inbound marketing is the most effective way to reach out to your target audience. You attract your clients by offering great content that is useful for them and build trust among them. As you are giving them helpful information, you naturally become the first choice whenever they want to make a buying decision. So, with inbound marketing, you can actually pull people towards your brand.

During these times of crisis, all businesses are affected due to the economic downturn. Instead of creating new budget plans for outbound marketing, the best way would be to help them out and ensure they have someone to rely on.

Most of your targeted clients would not be looking aggressively to seal new deals, however, they would certainly be using this time to learn more about what they want. By creating useful content for them, you can reach out to them and win their trust. So, whenever the lock-down goes off and they make their mind to get the service, you are the first company they contact.

How To Correct Your Inbound Strategy
During these times of unrest, your regular inbound marketing strategy would cease to perform as no person is in the right set of mind. They are not looking at content the same way as they did two months back. So, your regular content strategy wouldn’t work. These are some quick and smart ways to correct your inbound marketing strategy during this novel coronavirus pandemic.

Change Your Messaging Right Away
No matter what strategy you had at place initially, it is imperative that you change your messaging right away. You need to keep your content positive and reassuring in these tough times. Make sure that you have put this message forth that you are operating during these tough times and can be approached for any assistance. Be positive and make sure your clients feel reassured. If you are into inbound marketing, there could be no better way to attract more potential customers than by showing them how you are combating these situations. Inbound marketing is about providing the right content to the right audience at the right time. So, change your messaging to meet the requirements of the present times.

You can show how you have changed your way of working, how you are combating it, share your experiences to help others, and support your team at the same time.

Tweak Your Buyer Demographics
While your base buyer personas would still remain to be what you have created during the initial marketing phase, during these global times, tweaking the buyer demographics a little bit could be a smart move. Your focus right now should be on those who are looking for these services, as their regular providers have ceased to be active. Check out the change in consumer buying behavior and tweak your targeting. Approach the active demographics in the best way they are consuming information.

The challenges and problems of your buyer personas have changed all of a sudden. Delve into these challenges and tweak your strategy accordingly.

Focus On Building Relationships
Instead of focusing on progressing the sales or qualifying leads, your focus should particularly be on building stronger bonds and relationships with your prospects. The marketing teams should tweak their pitch to take a more informative approach. The information collected from the discussion and the concerns raised by the prospects should be passed on to the content team so that they can create content on it.

Make Your Business Fit The Big Picture
There are several ways you can make your business fit the bigger picture. For example, restaurant owners can start promoting their home-delivery options, gym owners & trainers can give online workout sessions, e-commerce firms can show how they are following the safety precautions in their deliveries and much more. It is important that you are agile and swift in pivoting to this situation. This is the time when people are more centered on looking for services that can help them so show them how you can help.

Don’t Forget Social Media
As people are quarantined, being online is the only way to stay connected. They are using social media for everything- from cutting their boredom to consuming information; they are using social media now more than ever. Check out what the trending hashtags are and create content according to the same. Use these hashtags to reach a wider audience base.

Share pictures and images of your employees working from home and create posts that garner more audience related to the trending hashtags.

Share Employee & CEO Interview Videos
Video marketing is one of the most engaging ways to reach out to the customers in these tough times. You can have video interviews of your employees explaining how it feels to be working from home or how they are working dedicatedly to continue serving. Moreover, an effective way to reach out to your teams and your clients is to get a video interview of your CEO where he/she is explaining how they are keeping their teams motivated during the pandemic.

We Can Help You Improve Your Digital Engagement
Digital Marketing Services

Stay On Top Of Your Prospect’s Mind
As the world and all business operations have apparently come to a standstill, the chances of you becoming obsolete for your prospects are pretty high. But you would certainly not want that. Stay in touch with your prospects through social media, emails, or any other form of media. Going into hibernation would not work. You need to be active and let your prospects know that they need to have no worries.

Smart PPC Marketing
PPC marketing, earlier considered a form of outbound marketing, is one of the most effective inbound strategies during these tough times. As per a senior PPC manager, the cost-per-clicks have reduced by around 6 percent across a majority of verticals in the past one month. This could help you cut down your digital marketing budget as well. Many of the other advertisers would go offline and stop their marketing campaigns during these times. You can seize the opportunity and grab the attention of your potential customers through PPC.

Be Empathetic In Mail Campaigns
Email campaigns are gaining momentum during coronavirus pandemic. However, messaging plays a huge role in getting a response. First off, you need to create a mail campaign for all your existing and potential customers and lead generation. Here, you should just send out a mail showing your true concerns and ensuring their safety during the pandemic.

If you are planning to launch a new email marketing campaign to get more customers, it should also be empathetic and not just show you taking advantage of the situation. Be sensitive and not salesy to stand out.

Be Fluid In This Fluid Situation
It is important that you pivot during this unrest. Only those businesses that are able to find ways to be fluid and connect with their customers will thrive. You also need to be fluid and change your strategies. Whether it is about pushing special discounts through PPC and social media ads or creating content that doesn’t directly promote your products. You can send out information, finance advice, human resource advice, and much more to ensure your clients stay in business with you.

Use Down Time To Improve Brand Image
Your brand image is something that you can certainly work on during this unrest. You would not be that active on a majority of the campaigns. So, this time could be easily utilized in improving your brand image. You can put forth good content, seek out good channels and outreach to them, showcase your support to the world, especially your clients.

Optimize Everything Online
Starting right from your buyer persona and the keyword search to your landing pages, blog pages, and everything else, keep optimizing. This is the best time for you to get ahead of your competitors in SERP rankings with organic SEO so that if any prospect types a certain keyword, you are the first thing they click on. Whether we talk about your blog content and pages to your website content and landing pages, optimize it all. Be strategic with your optimization.

Engage Digitally To Stay Ahead
Your prospects are online in the digital ecosystem and it is your time to connect with them so that you can convert and delight them later. More businesses than ever have allocated resources in digital marketing to keep the information flowing and making a more powerful impression. Clients are more unlikely to reach out to you. So, you need to reach out to them now.

We know these times are challenging. But with the right inbound marketing strategy, you can still make your business flourish. Do not pull back on your marketing altogether. Play it smart and be there for your clients and prospects by showing empathy. Connect with them like never before and you will have clients for years to come.

What makes a holiday wonderful is those family trips that can help you refresh and spend time with your loved ones, while for travel businesses, this means Gold!

With the market flooded by millennials today, customer tours are on the high. Custom tours are those tour packages that are specifically designed for consumers according to their preferences and schedule. That is the sole reason, consumers search for experiences than the actual hotels.

Today, travel businesses around the world are building experiences rather than tours and travel packages. This has led to the acceptance of intelligent technologies like Artificial Intelligence into the design structure of these experiences.

Intelligent Travel Agents(ITA):

Intelligent Travel Agents or ITA is the amalgamation of ML(Machine Learning) and the travel-purchase behavior of the consumers. This is considered as a radical innovation as it ensures consumer engagement through “Smart Services”.

For example, you are at the airport, waiting for your flight and suddenly your entry gate to the flight is changed, you are instantly notified through an ITA regarding the same, without you even leaving your Social Media site.

ITAs uses machine learning techniques to identify the optimum pricing, comfort, and relevance to any particular traveling activity through real-time data analysis and processing through an algorithm trained for the same.

Take an example of the “Virgin Trains Alexa Skill”, launched in 2018, it allowed the passengers to book their tickets directly from Amazon’s Alexa device. This is a prime example of an ITA operating through an intelligent voice bot.

Travel Intelligence-The Personalized Learning:
Artificial Intelligence technologies have a wide acceptance in the business of tours and travels, due to their ability to learn from the real-time data and come up with unique and relevant solutions for the consumers.

There are three different learning models in the Artificial Intelligence that needs to be explored for designing algorithms that can use real-time data to learn specific travel knowledge and use the same to provide more personalized experiences to the consumers.

These three models are:

Supervised Learning
Unsupervised Learning
Reinforcement Learning

Supervised learning uses the data available to train the machine under human supervision. The unsupervised learning model helps machines to learn on their own without guidance or human intervention. But, reinforcement learning targets a particular dataset for training the machine for specific scenarios.

When it comes to travel intelligence use of any of the above machine learning algorithms can be used based on the type of personalization required.

Real-Time Preferences:

In the travel and tourism business, the necessity of real-time preferences have gained traction. Especially in the costing and expenditure aspects of the business, real-time preferences have played a huge part.

Just take an example of online taxi-booking services, transport is an important aspect of any travel and tourism business and this has been revolutionized through the on-demand business models equipped with ML tools that help dedicated app developed through a mobile app development company to predict the total fare of a ride by taking into account all the real-time preferences of the riders.

Self-Optimization:
Once these intelligent machines account for real-time preferences they tend to self-optimize making the very consumer searching for the right experience to be their travel agent. They provide a bouquet of product bundles in the most optimum possible way.

These machines can convey their bundled packages through a mobile interface, voice assistants or other intelligent means. They also impact the consumer’s travel behaviors and purchase behaviors.

Value-Added Services:

A concierge of services is offered by the tours and travel businesses these days like in-flight support, luggage support, lounge access, hotel transfers, medical support during tours, etc. With travel intelligence, these services can be further enhanced.

As these intelligent machines, use real-time preferences as the reference data to train the algorithm for self-optimization and provide enhanced value-added services.

The Role Of Virtual Personal Assistants:

VPAs or Virtual Personal Assistants are the new revolutionary technology that is changing the fundamentals of the purchase behavior of consumers. Current VPAs in the market are Amazon’s Alexa, Apple Home, Google Now, etc. These VPAs understands the natural language voice controls and processes knowledge acquisition.

With the intelligence in their algorithms, these VPAs can be leveraged by the tours and travel businesses to recommend products and activities related to travel. Many enterprises and businesses around the world are already using such technologies for marketing and even sales of the travel business.

Chatbots and Travel Businesses:
Chatbots have become quite useful in the current market scene, as many consumers and travelers always need real-time assistance with their issues during the travel. Chatbots can provide real-time assistance during the travel and also recommend personalized packages to the consumers.

One of the important aspects of intelligent systems is collecting important user’s data, this can be achieved with a series of questionnaires that occur during a chatbot-to-human conversation that almost replicates the natural conversation. Chatbot often excels at natural interactions and collect user’s data that can help the chatbot’s algorithms to learn from them.

Top AI travel companies:
Hopper-Boston & Montreal
Pana-Denver & Colarado
Baarb Inc.-Los Angeles & California
UTrip-Seattle & Washington D.C.
Claire-San Carlos, California
Amtrak-Washington D.C.
Hipmunk-San Francisco, California
Instalocate-Palo Alto, California
Mezi-Sunnyville, California
Signing Off:
The cycle of travel intelligence leading to the integration of real-time preferences and further self-optimization that leads to enhanced value-added services certainly leads to revolutionary change into the travel-distribution and travel-behavior of the travelers. Artificial Intelligence has truly transformed the travel business into something more than a regular business activity.

There are concerns around the data protection and regulation in the adoption of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technologies that can expose the user’s data to data risks and identity thefts.

But, many regulatory bodies around the world are in the process of developing data regulations for data collection, mining, and analysis in the most secure manner to ensure proper adoption of such intelligent technologies with security and safety. So, if you are into a travel and tourism business, just go for an AI-based model to rip the fruits of intelligent labor!