During these tough economic times many of are us are paying more and more attention to financial news and financial advise from experts. Yet, we often still feel lost. Why? Often we’re getting mixed messages. Mixed may be putting it lightly. Sometimes the advice is down right conflicting.Here’s an example:The Wall Street Journal ran a story one day titled “Leverage, Baby!” that encouraged more and not less debt.The next day U.S. News & World Report ran “How to Plan for a Double-Dip Recession” and the advice? Pay off debts as quickly as you can. On one side we’re being encouraged to spend more to avoid a further recession and on the other side we’re told to buckle down and lessen debt to prepare for an even worse recession to come. What’s a consumer to do?Let’s look at each position and argument more closely to see to whom and when each applies.The advice in the Wall Street Journal article “Leverage, Baby!” is targeted to “sophisticated, disciplined investors who have lived and invested within their means.” Christopher Jones, a New York financial planner with high-net-worth clients says,” “Most important, there’s nothing inherently wrong with leverage, or borrowed money.”This advice applies to people who understand and have the capacity to take on debt and can tolerate the risk. For these people “Now is an ideal time to leverage cheap dollars to buy into areas that can produce much higher returns over the longer term,” Jones says. Especially with mortgages at 4.9% this may be the time to buy or refinance.The news from the US & World Report about another recession is likely not a “the sky is falling” cry. Although some analysts, like Moody’s Economy.com say there’s just a 23% chance that we’ll be in a recession six months from now, others don’t agree. There are several signs that illustrate the likelihood that we could have a double dip recession.
We’re likely to see a negative impact here from the debt problems of Europe in countries like Greece, Spain and Italy.
Increasing federal debt seems to be making investors wary.
The housing crisis hasn’t seen the light at the end of the tunnel.
Government stimulus package spending is slowly trickling to an end.So for those of us who don’t fall under the disciplined investors with room for risk category, what can we do to make ourselves more recession proof?Turn “savings” into real “savings.” What does this mean? Often we say we “saved” dollars by using a buy one get one free coupon at a restaurant or we’re told that we “saved” dollars when we use coupons at the grocery store. To turn savings into real savings we have to actually put it into savings, no matter how small the amount. Otherwise our savings really just means delayed spending money that is spent somewhere else.Practice patience. A low interest rate still isn’t a deal if you can’t make the payments months from now. Put off making new purchases like furniture or vehicles if things are already tight and the future is so unpredictable.Keep liquid money. Staying liquid means keeping some money easily accessible if times do become bad. Don’t have everything tied up in stocks, bonds, investments, or mutual funds where it could be at risk or would take too long to access if needed during a further recession.One up your education. Now may be the time to get a degree, certification or licensure to be ahead of the games when companies do start hiring again.Start a side job. If you are always needing a little more money, consider starting something on the side. Whether it’s summer lawn car, selling on eBay, offering summer child care or tutoring or finally taking some of your handmade hobbies to a community show, a side job may help you make ends meet and be a saving grace if things get worse.Consider these 5 tips to keep yourself protected from a further recession. Applied all together, they may just help you keep a handle on “what’s in your wallet”.

Once the app is downloaded, you have little time to take a sigh of relief, and then again start focusing on making things easier for the them till their goal is achieved.

According to the AppsFlyer, an app marketing company, the global uninstall rate for apps after 30 days is 28%. Entertainment apps are most frequently deleted, whereas apps based on Finance is least frequently deleted. No matter which app category you belong to, your strategy should be to remain in the mobile phones of users for a long time, and not just sit around but to fulfill your purpose as well.

If we analyze the encounters of users with an app step by step, it can help us unveil the critical factors that influence mobile app audiences, so that we can work upon those and achieve our purpose. Here are the details:

Step1. Finding Your App in Appstore

For this, we have to first find out what exactly users type to search an app. Based on a research, it has been found that 47% app users on iOS confirmed that they found the app through the App Store’s search engine and 53% app users on Android confirmed the same.

What have been their search queries? Interestingly, as the per the data provided by the TUNE research, 86% of the top 100 keywords were brands.With little scope for non-branded categories, most of the keywords were either of games of utility apps. Common keywords in the non branded category are: games, free games, VPN, calculator, music, photo editor, and weather.

Leaving brands aside, if we analyze the user-type of a Non-branded category, we will get two types of users:

1. Users are informed, and they know what they are search

2. Users are exploring possibilities, have no precise information in mind.

If you are a mobile app development company, targeting non-branded users, then your efforts must be directed to creating apps that compel these two types of users. To do so, we have to analyze once they are on an app store, what keywords they use to search. Regina Leuwer, with expertise in marketing & communications, bring some light to the subject. She reached out Sebastian Knopp, creator of app store search intelligence tool appkeywords, who shared with her the data of unique trending search phrases. And according to that data, in 2017, there were around 2,455 unique search phrases trending in the US.

Now, if we study these data to get information, we will find that name of the app is critical to attract the attention of the users.

If your app belongs to non-branded category, then make sure your app name is similar to the common search queries but also unique in comparison with your competitors. So that when your app name is flashed, they click it on to it, finding it purposeful and compelling both.

Step 2. Installation

Remember your users are on mobile devices has limited resources, from battery to storage and RAM to Internet. Everything is limited. So better create an application that is easy to download or say get downloaded with 5 minutes. One critical advice here:

1. Keep the application file size small.

If you are a developer, use APK Analyser to find out which part of the application is consuming maximum space. You can also reduce classes.dex file and res folder that contains images, raw files, and XML.

Step 3. Onboarding

After the user has successfully downloaded your mobile application, don’t leave anything on assumptions. Guide them properly. This you can do through an onboarding process, where users can learn the key functionality and where to begin with the mobile app. Below are the 3 things you need to keep in your mind when creating an onboarding process for your users.

Short and Crisp: The entire guidance of features and functions should be completed within few seconds, with easy options loud and clear option to skip.

Precise Information: Don’t introduce them to the app. They already know what they have downloaded. The objective to inform about the key functions and features.

Allow Users to Skip: Let the tech-savvy users skip the intro. Your app is to meet their requirement and not to have a friendly session.

Step 4. Purpose and UI
Here, the stage is set for your app and it is the golden chance for you to impress your users. What is needed here is the collaboration between purpose and UI of the app. It totally depends on the problem-solving capability and ease of use of the mobile app. Interface design plays the critical role, allowing the users to access features of the apps easily and quickly to perform the task for what they have downloaded the app. When it comes to interface design, make sure that the design is interactive and task-oriented. Here are some factors that you must take care off while creating mobile app interface:

1. Usability: The Mobile phone is an epitome of convenience and if your users find it difficult to use your app, then there is no way there are going to make the space for it in their mobile phones. From screen size to the color of the app, there are many factors that are equally critical and need attention.

2. Intuitive: To create an intuitive User Interface, you have to read the mind of the users, and develop a model based on that. The next should be precise, clear and ‘obvious’ in an interface.

3. Availability: Key features should be hidden in the drop down menu or even if so, it should be obvious for the user to look into the drop-down. An intricate work of design and research is required to make essential features available for the customers and they don’t need to navigate here and there.

If you need more help with the user-interface and innovative ideas for a mobile app, write to me [email protected] and I promise to get back to you with interesting mobile app designs.