Categories
Technology

3 Apps Stats That Will Focus Businesses On App Development

/ Insights      / 3 Apps Stats That Will Focus Businesses On App Development

3 Apps Stats That Will Focus Businesses On App Development

The smartphone has made mobile applications a vital retail, content and enterprise platform for entertainment, education and work.

This is transforming the way we interact with the world creating opportunities for businesses to find new ways to reach customers and make processes more efficient.

To highlight the value of mobile apps we unearthed three recent statistics from Adobe

1) Mobile users spend 90% of their time in apps compared to mobile web
This stat from Flurry shows that mobile users prefer apps to the mobile web. This is often because apps are designed specifically for mobile rather than websites, making them easier to navigate.

If users are on apps rather than the web then this may be what your business needs to hold the attention of its audience.

2) 26% of installed apps are only used once
Although mobile users may spend most of their times in apps, that does not mean that they will use your app. App developers are under pressure to make their apps engaging so that they will be used again and again. The key is giving the user a reason to use the app.

Of those who stop using an app, some said they would use it again if offered a discount (30%), whilst others said new or exclusive content could have the same effect (24%)

3) 51% of companies measure user engagement and return on investment
Nearly half or companies do not measure the engagement or ROI from an app, suggesting that there is a lack of a coherent strategy from many companies.

Knowing what you want to achieve and what success looks like a important part of an app development strategy. This statistic shows that many companies are unaware of whether their app is a success or what success would look like.
Before investing in an app businesses are more likely to see a positive impact on their business if they have a strategy in place and a way of measuring its success.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

/ Related Content

Categories
Technology

UK App Development Does Not Have To Be Too Expensive For Small Business

/ Insights      / Case Study – UK App Development Does Not Have To Be Too Expensive For Small Business

Case Study – UK App Development Does Not Have To Be Too Expensive For Small Business

App development can be a daunting task for small business owners, given the perceived complexity, cost and time frames that are associated with app development.

However, with the right app development company that understands the needs of the business and has the right development skills and structures an app can be an affordable and effective enterprise solution.

This can be a challenge as there are so many companies from across the world offering app development using different technologies and at highly variable price points.

The key is finding a developer that understands the needs of the business and can craft a digital solution that works for the business, rather than implementing an out of the box standard solution as that is what they are able to deliver.

Case Study – Vidazone

This month Aspiring Panda have been working with Vidazone an event Wi-Fi provider based in Peterborough to create a demonstration app for a business event in which they are exhibiting.

The challenge of this app was to develop it to strict timelines and in budget, whilst giving the functionality to allow it to be successfully published to the app store.

Our team worked with Vidazone to create a flow for the app, that was designed to demonstrate the power of event apps as part of the events marketing lifecycle.

After a short development cycle we were able to produce the app and it is now live on both the Apple App Store and Google Play. This will mean that 95%+ of the visitors to the exhibition will be able to download it directly during the exhibition.

We look forward to working with Vidazone to implement live versions of the app for event organisers across the UK and beyond in the coming weeks and months.

Quote from Vidazone Owner Chris Smith

“Vidazone have had an excellent experience developing our demonstration app with Aspiring Panda who have hit short deadlines and produced work of a high standard”

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

/ Related Content

Categories
Technology

Fun or Useful Apps Created By Our Team

/ Insights      / Fun or Useful Apps Created By Our Team

Fun or Useful Apps Created By Our Team

At Aspiring Panda, we build enterprise apps that empower business owners to take control of their business and its day to day processes.

We have also in the past as part of our development and passion developed a range of recreational apps to help solve problems or entertain the public. Some of these help just a few people whereas others have been downloaded tens of thousands of times.

Here are just a few that we have created, if you want to see some of our development work in action then here is a small sample of those available on the IOS App Store

Snapscare

This fun app was created to entertain users around Halloween and allow users to scare their friends who are part of the selfie generation.

The app captures the fun that can be saved for posterity.

See the app – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapscare/id915328975?mt=8

Funjabi Punjabi

This app was developed as a fun way for users to learn and develop their Punjabi language skills. The app is designed to help adults and children to practice speaking and reading Punjabi actively. It can also be used by Punjabi speakers to learn English.

See the app – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/funjabi-punjabi-lite/id972621583?mt=8

Festival Calendar

Designed to bring all the major holiday’s in one place, this app helps you keep on track of festivities around the world.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/festival-calendar-lite/id990902323?mt=8

MyMedimate

MyMedimate is a simple and innovative medical app that helps to organise and manage medicine for yourself or your loved ones, giving you peace of mind.

When anyone falls ill, it can be a stressful time for all concerned. MyMedimate helps to manage and remind you which medication to administer safely and at what time.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mymedimate/id878627239?mt=8

Snapshare

SnapShare allows you to capture and share your memories with your family and friends. Keep in touch with loved ones no matter where they are in the world.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapshare-lite/id409972682?mt=8

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

/ Related Content

Categories
Technology

Does Your Business Need An App?

/ Insights      / Does Your Business Need An App?

Does Your Business Need An App?

At Aspiring Panda we network with businesses locally and one of the first questions we get asked when we tell local business owners what we do is “does my business need an app?”

In our experience the answer is yes, however this is a difficult question to answer on the spot as without knowing more details about the company, it’s customers and it’s processes it is impossible to give accurate guidance on the value of an app.

Businesses can use apps in a number of different ways from a sales tool to an internal process tool that helps improve efficiency.

Understanding Your Business

So before answering this question we turn detective and ask questions about the business to find out what challenges it faces and how interactive software packaged within an app can be applied.

Questions will focus around the demographics and behaviours of customers including how they find the product or service the business provides and whether purchases are one off or repeat.

If customers buy or book regularly it could be that an app could increase loyalty or make it easier for regular customers to book at their convenience.

If you have a project based business or one operating business to business it may be that an app can help automate or manage processes. This could be by improving the tracking of projects, to apps that allow information to be recorded and stored centrally.

Finding the Right Fit For Your Business

Understanding the role that technology can play in your business and how it can increase sales and/or reduce costs and make processes more efficient is vital to deciding whether an app is right for your business.

If you are unsure of how to integrate technology within your business, or whether an app would be right for you, give the Aspiring Panda team a call.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

/ Related Content

Categories
Technology

Get Social Media Training At Our Harrow Office

/ Insights      / Get Social Media Training At Our Harrow Office

Get Social Media Training At Our Harrow Office

In May, Aspiring Panda will be hosting a nationally recognised social media expert to deliver training to local businesses on how to define their social media strategy.

The course will be run by Kristian Downer of DowSocial who we work closely with, on our digital marketing.

What is the course about?

Staying up to date and running a successful social media campaign is becoming increasingly challenging as social platforms change and evolve. Online audiences are bombarded daily with hundreds of messages and online content, making the task of measuring ROI (return on investment) rather challenging.

This social media training course is designed to be informative and interactive. The core focus of the course is on revealing new trends, understanding audience behaviours and social media principles that will enable you to create successful social media campaigns for lead generation and nurturing existing customer relationships.

Who should attend?

This training course is targeted at users of social media who want to achieve a greater understanding of how to implement and integrate social media to develop increased brand exposure, online reach and acquire new business.

Typical attendees are marketers, business owners, community managers, PR professionals, publishers and account managers.

What is the course outcome?

Following this training course, you will be able to:

  • Design a social media strategy plan
  • Choose the right social media platforms to use
  • Confidently use content and communication strategies that work
  • Adapt the language and tones to suit each social media platform
  • Integrate social media and offline marketing methods
  • Understand the methods and tools to generate new leads
  • Track and measure social media campaign success or failure

We look forward to seeing at you at this and future events at our office in Harrow.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

/ Related Content

Categories
Technology

Three Ways Social Media Can Help Your Business

/ Insights      / Three Ways Social Media Can Help Your Business

Three Ways Social Media Can Help Your Business

Social media is an increasingly important part of the marketing of small businesses across the UK. With more than 30m users of Facebook alone, it is getting harder and harder to ignore that your target audience is active on social media.

For business owners that are resisting moving their business onto social media it is likely that they are missing out on opportunities and risking getting passed over in favour of companies that are more proactive with their digital marketing.

If you are on the fence, here are three ways social media can help your business succeed:

Generate Referral Business From Existing Customers

Existing customers are often the most effective way of getting new business as they refer their friends and colleagues to your product or service. Social media is an incredibly powerful way of harnessing this and broadcasting the goodwill your existing customer base has for what you do.

Target & Advertise To Potential Customers

Social media is powerful for businesses, in part due to the data that the platforms create and store about their users. Harnessed effectively, this can be used to advertise your business to exactly the people you want to target.

This means that you spend less money on traditional less well directed advertising platforms such as print or radio advertising.

Customer Service

Whether you are on social media or not, your customers are talking about you both the good and the bad. If you are on social media then you have an opportunity to see what they are saying about you, reinforce the positive and fix the negative.

After all, there is no more powerful an advocate than someone who has a negative experience that is given excellent customer service.

If you are unsure how to get a strategy that works for your business contact the Aspiring Panda team.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

/ Related Content

Categories
Technology

How The Internet Of Things Is Changing How We Do Business

/ Insights      / How The Internet Of Things Is Changing How We Do Business

How The Internet Of Things Is Changing How We Do Business

One of the technology trends of the next decade will be the adoption of the Internet of Things (IOT) across the business landscape.

What Is The Internet of Things?

The internet of things is the name for the ability for everyday objects, devices and vehicles to collect data and transmit it via the internet. This allows for devices to be controlled and managed externally.

A Universal Example

Utilities are one area that the general public will see the IOT impact upon their lives in the next few years. Currently smart meters for electricity usage are being rolled out, which will allow companies to monitor and bill customer energy usage without having to enter the customer premises to carry out regular meter readings.

This is also being adapted to allow homeowners to control their heating remotely, this allows them to save money on their energy by having more control and ensuring that their house is warm when they go home by turning it on when they need it, rather than to a pre scheduled timeframe.

How Will This Affect Businesses?

The ability to use the principles of the IOT means that businesses can automate and manage processes that may have been previously difficult to track and monitor.

This can assist in the decision making process and allow businesses to have a tighter control of business processes and employee productivity.

At Aspiring Panda we have recently been working with and advising companies how to use the IOT in conjunction with IOS and Android apps to assist in previously difficult or dangerous monitoring tasks.

Helping companies understand the potential benefits of the IOT has underlined to us how this will be one of the most important tech developments of the next few weeks.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

/ Related Content

Categories
Technology

How Dry Cleaners Can Compete Using Technology

/ Insights      / How Dry Cleaners Can Compete Using Technology

How Dry Cleaners Can Compete Using Technology

The UK dry cleaning, and the cleaning services industry more widely, is worth more than £1bn per year, employing over 30,000 people within nearly 4,000 businesses.

An industry report shows that the last five years have been challenging, due to the economic downturn, lower household budgets, and lower demand. Although the number of establishments has declined an online opportunity has emerged.

Demand is starting to recover, however the opportunity lies in adapting to changing consumer habits to craft a customer service that is both cost effective and convenient to the client.

Using Technology To Compete

The internet may not have had a huge impact on the industry in the early stages of the dotcom boom. The last five years have seen a revolution in how consumers research and buy products.

By harnessing this as yet underused resource, dry cleaners can offer click and collect or delivery services to their customers at the press of a button. These kinds of services add convenience to the customer who can order, pay, and even get their clothes collected and returned without leaving their home.

By combining this with text/email marketing with app based push notifications, dry cleaners can maintain regular contact with their customer base, increase referrals, retention and the annual value of each customer.

Apps are popular with the younger generations, making dry cleaning more accessible than the traditional high street shop front, potentially creating an entirely new market for your services.

Creating A Laundry App

Creating a dry cleaning app can be done in many ways, from working with larger providers, to an independent presence. At Aspiring Panda we see the value in helping a business maintain its brand, particularly if it is a longstanding business that has reputation and merit. However, this does not mean that a dry cleaner needs to invest in a bespoke app.

At Aspiring Panda we have a product that we can customise to your business and integrate it seamlessly into an existing website. If a business does not have a site, then we can even create this for you.

If you would like to know more about how your dry cleaning business can compete using a mobile app, just give us a call.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

/ Related Content

Categories
Technology

How Apps Can Transform Traditional Local Service Providers

/ Insights      / How Apps Can Transform Traditional Local Service Providers

How Apps Can Transform Traditional Local Service Providers

In the last couple of years we have seen apps become an important part of the business landscape beyond gimmicks and marketing extensions.

We have seen true market disruption take place in industries that have existed for decades fuelled by apps and the way they act as a portal to interact, communicate and serve customers.

Whilst not every business can develop an app and simply become “the next Uber” overnight there are opportunities for small businesses to integrate mobile app technologies into their product offering.

These apps can be used to enhance service industry businesses such as taxi firms, takeaways and laundrettes. Here are a few ways a mobile app could transform a local company providing a service.

Offer New Products and Services

The development of a mobile app can allow a service provider to expand into new territories or even launch entirely new products. A good example of this could be a laundrette that uses a mobile app to launch a collection and delivery service to customers.

All of this could be managed within the app creating opportunities for the small business and convenience for the customer.

Gain Competitive Advantage & Enhance The Customer Experience

This kind of convenience allows small businesses to differentiate themselves from their competition.

By providing a high quality and convenient service offering via a mobile app the business can keep its customers happy and ahead of the competition.

Build Customer Loyalty & Maximise Revenue Earned Per Customer

 By offering a more convenient service an app can increase customer loyalty, an app on their phone can help keep you on their mind. Combined with push notifications that flash up from your app on their mobile device small businesses can increase the amount of orders received per customer by providing timely reminders and special offers about the service being offered.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

/ Related Content

Categories
Development Technology web

A Guide to Mobile Responsive websites

/ Insights      / A Guide to Mobile Responsive websites

A Guide to Mobile Responsive websites

In the last five years the way in which we search the internet has changed. Internet traffic has moved from the desktop to the mobile device. This is powerful for consumers and retailers and contributed to a huge change in the way Google ranks websites.

This year Google changed the way it treats websites that are not designed to display correctly using smart phones and tablet devices. From the 23rd of April 2015 Google changed the algorithm that ranks search engines depending on whether a website is “mobile friendly”

This change is due to the change in internet searches, with more than 50% of web searches now made on mobile devices rather than on a desktop PC. This change means businesses need to ensure their website is mobile responsive or risk a decrease in visits to their sites.

Many Businesses Are Still Not Up To Date

However through our networking and the projects we have been working on it is clear that there are still a large number of businesses that have not updated their site to be mobile responsive.

Even six months after the changes were introduced we still meet businesses that have websites that are currently unresponsive.

How To Check If Your Website Is Out Of Date

To see if your website is mobile responsive or not you can visit the Google website and take the mobile friendly test.

If Google says that your website is not mobile friendly, then it is not too late to update your site, however we recommend that you make the changes as soon as possible to ensure that you do not miss out on mobile search tracking.

If you are unsure what these changes mean for your business or would like to speak to a digital marketing expert then give the Aspiring Panda team a call.

anu_panesar

Anoop Panesar

Business Development Manager

Digital marketing and tech specialist Anoop is a well-known figure in the Harrow and North London community. Currently the Operations Director for Aspiring Panda, the company uses cloud and development expertise to solve some of the toughest business challenges – which has recently included consulting with East African nations to provide sustainable farming.

/ Related Content