Month: August 2020

How Cloud Applications Can Help Bring Mobility and Agility

“Cloud hosting” is no more a buzzword or a passing trend. It’s truly come of age, with Gartner predicting the public cloud market to grow by 6.3% in 2020. But why this sudden craze for cloud hosting, have you wondered?

It’s quite understandable. Cloud hosting provides agility and mobility to businesses. It enables companies to adapt and respond faster to evolving market conditions and customer behaviors. By harnessing cloud-power, businesses can gain a competitive advantage, which is so essential today.

Apart from that, here are the main advantages of being an “agile” business:

  • Revenue grows faster
  • Business costs reduce
  • Reputation management becomes effective

In this post, we will discuss why businesses need to be “agile” and how the cloud helps them to ace this area.

Top Ways How Cloud Applications Make Businesses Agile?

Take a look at the main benefits of cloud applications to businesses.

  1. They Facilitate Easy Scale-Up and Down

There are times when your business may need to scale operations and resources on-demand. By hosting your software on the cloud, you ensure that you are paying only for the resources that you are actually utilizing. In this way, cloud apps minimize wastage and overheads in a big way.

On the other hand, if you maintain huge infrastructures on-premise, there arises a problem of redundancy when you have to scale down operations. You not only lock a lot of capital in procuring extra resources that are no more productive but also incur maintenance costs to keep them running.

  1. They Make Business Data Available Anywhere, Any Time

With the cloud housing all your business data, your teams can work remotely from any location. Internal and external collaboration on projects is possible when data is decentralized as with cloud applications.

Your time-sensitive work can go on uninterrupted since all related information is available in the cloud. Inter-departmental projects can run seamlessly if project managers configure data-access permissions correctly.

Compare this with in-house data hosting. A lot of additional work and time gets wasted in getting access to siloed data. Plus, changes and updates done to data do not get reflected instantly and universally, which can be a problem, especially for projects spread across different departments or time zones.

  1. They Ease Testing and Updation

Updating systems becomes easier with cloud applications. This is especially true for managed cloud services. When a cloud service provider looks after the updation part of your business, your teams are free to invest their time and expertise in productive tasks. This improves the overall productivity of your business.

Testing is also a breeze when it comes to cloud applications. First, you can reduce capital expenditure (CAPEX) since you don’t have to buy or maintain costly testing equipment. Second, tested solutions can be quickly deployed since the cloud manages them. Last, your entire testing environment becomes more responsive and cost-efficient.

  1. They Reduce Complexity of Business

In a survey of business executives, 66% of respondents said that cloud applications reduce business complexity. But how does that exactly happen? Cloud makes your business processes simple, improves the distribution of resources, facilitates collaboration between teams, speeds up rollouts of complex business processes, and boosts the ability to access and share business data.

  1. They Optimize IT Budgets

Since cloud applications run on the pay-per-resource model, they are more economical for budgeted organizations. You can control capital expenditures on resources and limit usage to stay within your set budget.

Plus, you can easily allocate budget for resource expenditures and do financial planning more efficiently. In this way, you can keep a margin for unexpected expenditures and avoid cash crunch.

  1. They Help in Long-Term Strategizing

IT teams are not burdened with maintaining resources and infrastructure. They have the bandwidth to devote energy to customer communications and business planning. In this way, you can meet organizational goals more efficiently.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, the cloud boosts business agility and mobility in many ways. That’s why many businesses are moving their operations from on-premise to in-cloud. By doing this, they gain a competitive edge, reduce capital investment, allow teams to collaborate better, facilitate proactive decision making, and plan business processes with ease.

Are you thinking about migrating to the cloud as well? If you need assistance or guidance for the big move, feel free to reach out through the comments section. We are always happy to help our readers. Rest, watch this space for more ground-breaking posts on cloud computing and other IT aspects.

To know more about iView Labs, kindly log on to our website www.iviewlabs.com and to get in touch with us with your queries and needs just write us an email on info@iviewlabs.com and sales@iviewlabs.com.

Download the latest portfolio to see our work.

5 Tips for Easy User Onboarding

So you built a software application successfully? Great, that’s good news. But are you confident that you can convert sign-ups into active users? Are you sure your app can onboard users smoothly, convince them of its unique value proposition (UVP), and get them to start using it from the get-go?

Before you answer those questions, take a look at the stats on user onboarding:

  • 25% of apps are abandoned by users after the first use itself. 
  • 77% of people uninstall an app within 72 hours of installing it.

We don’t want to sound negative but the truth is that user onboarding is a sore point with app vendors. They often find it challenging to retain and turn first-time users into loyal users. 

That’s why, in this post, we will explain 5 effective tips for user onboarding, with relevant examples from super-successful apps.

Let’s get started.

How Can You Onboard Users Successfully: 5 Tips

Here are the best practices of user onboarding that every app developer should follow:

  1. Keep Things Simple

In a Clutch survey of 501 app users, 72% of respondents said that a quick and simple onboarding process plays an important role in their decision to keep using the program. 

Keep the onboarding steps to a minimum and ensure that they can be completed within a minute. Ask for personal contact details (mentioning reasons why they are needed) and show only essential UI elements in the first use. Try not to overwhelm new users by asking them for unnecessary permissions. 

For instance, a movie-booking app needs only location-access and SMS-sending permission. They should skip requesting permissions for contacts or camera. Those can come at later stages once users are comfortable and confident of the app.

Example: WhatsApp

WhatsApp’s user base is unbeatable. According to their CEO, Jan Koum, one of the biggest reasons for the app’s success is its simplistic onboarding process.

The app self-detects the SMS with the verification code that is sent to first-time users. This means users need not leave the app interface and dig through their inbox for the SMS.

  1. Allow Skipping Steps

Many tech-savvy users don’t like to be hand-held through the onboarding steps. They like to explore their new installs themselves. To such users, give the option to skip whole or part of the onboarding process. There is no burning need to take them through the grand tour when they are impatient to try the app for themselves.

Vevo, the popular music-streaming app, found that logins increased by 10% when they included the “Skip” button in their app. If you’re not clear about your users’ preferences, conduct usability testing with different variants of the onboarding flow. Then, deploy the variant that works best for your users.

Example: Slack

Slack puts users in the driver’s seat by giving them a “Skip the Tour” option in every screen of the onboarding stage. Users can move to the main interface as soon as they feel confident enough to start using the app. 

  1. Ask for Permission

It’s a good practice to ask permission before sending push notifications to new users. 

The Clutch survey we cited earlier found that 4 out of 5 users like to know why an app needs to know their personal details, payment preferences, or device permissions. In fact, this small step can improve opt-in rates in a big way.

Example: Letgo

Letgo is a reputable portal for buyers and sellers of used items. Instead of accessing users’ inboxes directly, they send notifications to them every time a customer expresses interest in their listed items. In this way, users feel they are in control of their app engagement.

  1. Demonstrate Value Instantly

People install your apps for a reason. They have certain expectations from your app. If the app is unable to fulfill these expectations promptly, customers churn quickly.

So, think of an efficient way to demonstrate value to new on boarders: set up a features carousel, product walkthrough, or new-user registration. Just focus on showing what benefits uses derive from the app.

Example: Venmo

Venmo is a payment wallet with social-sharing capabilities. It lets users share their payment histories with friends. To reinforce their app’s credibility, on the first screen itself, Venmo shows social proof about how popular and reliable their platform is. This inspires confidence from new users who are apprehensive about sharing their payment info with a new app.

  1. Provide Incentive for First Conversions

Encourage users to keep using your apps, give them incentives to convert for the first time. 

For example, you can provide exclusive features or promo codes to users who fill out the registration form or make their first purchase. Other incentives can be loyalty points or in-app credit.

Example: UberEats

Uber’s food-delivery brand, UberEats, make the onboarding process really frictionless for new users. 

As soon as users register, they are welcomed with a coupon for a $20 discount on the first order. If that’s not enough to entice users to order, a list of nearby restaurants displays on multiple screens.

Conclusion

We can not help but emphasize how critical your user onboarding process is. If you’re able to onboard users painlessly, take it as a big win. With the app space getting crowded and apps competing for user attention, your onboarding process can help you get a competitive edge.

So, think up an efficient process to onboard new users. A/B test your onboarding models to find the best fit for your users and apps. Don’t hesitate to steal your competitors’ onboarding model if it’s good. You need a proven onboarding strategy to get your app up and running in no time.

Do you have any questions about any of the above strategies? Drop them in the comments and we’ll answer soon. Watch this space for more revelations about app development and onboarding.

To know more about iView Labs, kindly log on to our website www.iviewlabs.com and to get in touch with us with your queries and needs just write us an email on info@iviewlabs.com and sales@iviewlabs.com.

Download the latest portfolio to see our work.