Have you decided to launch a customised mobile application for your business? If yes, this is a great step that will take your business to the next level!  As the number of smartphone users is growing exponentially, mobile applications have completely evolved consumer’s lifestyle. Smartphone users utterly rely on mobile apps for shopping and for various other activities like cab booking, playing games, connecting with people etc.  So, if you have a unique idea in your mind that could be turned into an impressive application, you must not delay any more. There are numerous mobile app development companies in the market that can develop your application and turn your idea into a reality!

But the question arises, among these numerous companies, how will you choose the ideal mobile app development company?

To get started, here’s a comprehensive guide to help you hire the right company for your project. Following the points mentioned below, will help you to plan the steps involved in mobile app development and choose the right company. 

Do your HOMEWORK beforehand

Be clear about your idea and what exactly you need from the application before approaching any agency. Having a sound understanding will not only help you in the app development process but also in filtering the mobile app development companies. For example: If you want to develop a grocery delivery app then choosing the company that has prior experience in developing delivery apps will be an advantage. 

Also, you need to identify – 

• What features you need in the app?
• How will you earn from the application?
• How will you market the app after development?
• How much are you willing to spend?

Know the basics and furthermore, the mobile application development team will guide you. 

Searching the right development company

After you have a basic idea about your application and how things should look like, next is to search for the right mobile application development company that will design and develop your product. Choosing a mobile app development company in India will be more cost-effective than the ones in western countries. Shortlist few companies as per your product, location, cost etc and contact them. Check out their portfolios and get to know their previously developed applications.

Moreover, you also need to check whether they provide customisation for each application they develop, as you would never want to look like any other app already in the play store. 

Check the background of the mobile app development company

Whether you choose a mobile app development company in India, or anywhere else, knowing the background of the company is a must. So, how will you scrutinize it? Check the portfolios to know if they have worked on your business niche. Study the client reviews and the website thoroughly. You will also get a fair understanding of the company from the way it represents itself in its social media pages. These steps will help you know the company better. 

The necessary questions to ask the app development company

• What are the types of application they develop? There are many types of applications such as iOS app development, Android app development, Web app development etc.  Get to know which one is the best for you.
• Whether they follow the agile methodology in project management? Staying in constant touch with the development team at every stage of app development is both crucial and beneficial for both the parties. 
• Is the app development company well aware of the latest trends and technologies? Get to know the knowledge and experience of the developing team as they will be the ones putting the pieces together of your dream project!
• Will the company maintain the confidentiality of your idea? This is a vital point. Discuss clearly and get the agreements in place, to avoid losing your idea. 
• Will they help in the promotion of your application? Just developing an app will not work, you also need to promote it vigorously to let the public know that your product exists. So, check with the development company if they provide promotional services too. 

Most importantly, ask whether the app development company is Google Certified or not? Because that will certify whether the company is really good or not. Google certifies only a handful of agencies in the world. GoodWorkLabs for example is a Google Certified Mobile App Development Agency. They are trained on all the latest technologies directly by Google, that’s a big advantage.

Also, check whether they work closely with Apple. Apple helps developers through official training and helping companies make better apps for iOS users. For example, GoodWorkLabs is an Apple partner agency.

Make the final call

After reading the above guide, now you know the initial steps to get the right mobile application development company for your business. Your idea is powerful, only if you get the right hands to work on it. At Goodworklabs, we have dedicated and skilled developers who will understand your idea and create a brilliant mobile application. You can check out our portfolio here. Stay tuned at this space to guide you further in the development journey!  

Xamarin is the undisputed leader in cross-platform development

With a boom in the use of smartphones among customers, application development has been growing at a rapid pace. Different devices, carriers, and software have created their own identity in the everyday lives of people around the globe. Almost anything gets done with the help of a smartphone.

In terms of global market share, Android tops the list. The next in line is Apple’s iOS and Windows, respectively. As a mobile app developer, it gets confusing at times to choose the best platform for an application, other than its native platform.

Learning a new language, the API’s, and other related stuff is not only tedious but can keep you stuck on your platform. Xamarin can help you there. You can build cross-platform mobile applications to facilitate similar functions like platform native apps.

Know Xamarin

Xamarin is the name of a software company founded in the year 2011. Acquired in 2016 by Microsoft, Xamarin provides tools to developers to help them create cross-platform mobile applications. All these applications have their natural features intact while sharing a standard code set at the same time.

Xamarin tools are readily available, and they get downloaded with Visual Studio. You can directly develop apps for Android, iOS, and Windows apps from the Visual Studio itself.

A significant part of the standard code gets written in C#, eliminating the need to learn any other language like Objective-C, Swift, or Java as well. Using Xamarin instead of the usual learning procedure will prove helpful to you in learning app development on multiple platforms.

How Does Xamarin Work?

On a very elementary level, Xamarin converts the total iOS or Android SDK to C# to facilitate coding in a more familiar language for the developers. With one style to code for both platforms, you do not need to remember too much of syntax as well.

This makes it easy to access any Android or iOS API through Xamarin tools.

Benefits of Xamarin

There are several reasons Xamarin is used by a lot of companies, with brands like Trello, Slack, and GitHub a few of the ones.

We bring you some of these profound benefits Xamarin has over other technologies-

– Single Tech Stack for Coding on All Platforms

Xamarin takes the help of C# integrated with a.Net framework for creating apps for a mobile platform. Through this, you get to reuse about 96 percent of source code leading to a speedy engineering cycle. Xamarin also does not need to switch among the development environments.

All of the Xamarin apps can be entirely built in Visual Studio, a replacement for the Xamarin Studio. The tools to facilitate cross-platform development come without any added cost.

– Performance Almost as Good as Native

With the traditional hybrid solutions based on web technologies, a cross-platform app can never get the classification as native. With Xamarin, however, a cross-platform app can still get classified as a native app. The performance metrics can be easily compared with those of Java for Android and even Objective- C, or Swift to create a native app for iOS.

The performance of Xamarin is also improved continuously to meet the standards of native application development. Visual Studio provides a total option to build, test, and track the performance of an app.

– Native User Experience

With Xamarin, you can create a superb experience with the help of platform-specific UI elements. A lot of simple apps for iOS, Android, and Windows get designed with the help of Xamarin.

The use of Xamarin with the Forms tool brings about a significant increase in the pace of application development. With such a speedy process of development, it becomes a fantastic option for business-oriented projects.

However, you might always have the chance to see a slightly depleted performance, due to the presence of an extra abstraction layer. For a customized user interface and increased performance, you can use Xamarin for iOS and Android separately to get the best out of it.

– Total Hardware Support

Xamarin provides your solution with native-level app functions. The tool eliminates every hardware compatibility issue through plugins and particular API’s. This allows Xamarin to work with conventional device functionality across all platforms.

With access to platform specific API’s, Xamarin provides the function of linking native libraries. It gives a better degree of customization and a native-level functionality with just a little added cost.

– Open Sourced with Strong Corporate Support

When Microsoft acquired Xamarin in the year 2016, the licensing policies underwent quite a lot of significant changes. Xamarin SDK, with runtime, command line tools, and libraries have all become open sourced and available as per MIT license through Visual Studio.

The cost of license tends to be a significant barrier, and by eliminating this, Microsoft opened up the doors to further development of this platform.

– Ease in maintenance

Because of its cross-platform ability, Xamarin makes maintenance and providing updates easier. Developers can deploy the changes or updates to the source file itself. These updates then automatically get applied to both the iOS and Android applications.

It is important to note that this only works for the applications running on Xamarin. In short, with Xamarin, you save a lot of time and money spent on keeping your apps up to date.

Conclusion

Ones above are just a few benefits of Xamarin for mobile app development, there’s a lot more which makes Xamarin the undisputed leader in cross-platform development. The feature-rich layout and subsequent benefits make Xamarin an almost perfect option for cross-platform development.

Additionally, Xamarin has a community of more than 700,000 developers. This number is only increasing as collaboration and enhancement of software becomes more comfortable than ever with Xamarin as the app development tool.

At GoodWorkLabs we’ve highly skilled developers who’ve delivered critical solutions based applications, for enterprises from different domains.

Please write to us today at [email protected] to discuss your requirements.

The Famous Node.js Apps

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime that runs on top of Google’s open-source JavaScript engine called V8. Pairing JavaScript’s naturally event-driven, asynchronous coding style with non-blocking I/O libraries makes Node.js fast, lightweight, and efficient.

It’s built to handle asynchronous I/O from the ground up and is a good match to a lot of common web- and network-development problems.  In addition to fast JavaScript execution, the real magic behind Node.js is called the Event Loop. To scale to large volumes of clients, all I/O intensive operations in Node.js are performed asynchronously.

In addition to it’s innate capabilities, Node.js has a thriving open source community which has produced many excellent modules to add additional capabilities to Node.js applications. One of the most famous is  Socket.io, a module to manage persistent connections between client and server, enabling the server to push real-time updates to clients. Socket.io abstracts the technology used to maintain these connections away from the developer, automatically using the best technology available for a particular client.

It is the pivotal tool for many big giants, and has helped them build a huge business.

Let us have at a few web apps that used Node.js

Paypal

PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American company operating a worldwide online payments system that supports online money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. PayPal is one of the world’s largest Internet payment companies.

Linkedin

LinkedIn is a business- and employment-oriented social networking service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Founded on December 28, 2002, and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking, including employers posting jobs and job seekers posting their resumes. As of 2015, most of the company’s revenue came from selling access to information about its members to recruiters and sales professionals.

Yahoo

Yahoo! is a web services provider, wholly owned by Verizon Communications through Oath Inc. and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Yahoo was one of the pioneers of the early Internet era in the 1990s.

Mozilla

Mozilla is a free software community created in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, with only minor exceptions.

Netflix

Netflix is an American entertainment company founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph on August 29, 1997, in Scotts Valley, California. It specializes in  providing video streaming online and DVD by mail. In 2013, Netflix expanded into film and television, as well as online distribution.

Uber

Uber Technologies Inc. is an American company headquartered in San Francisco, operating in 633 cities worldwide. It develops, markets and operates the Uber car transportation and food delivery mobile apps. Uber drivers use their own cars, although drivers can rent a car to drive with Uber.

Groupon

Groupon is an American worldwide online marketplace connecting subscribers with local merchants by offering activities, travel, goods and services in more than 28 countries. By the end of March 2015, Groupon served more than 500 cities worldwide, nearly 48.1 million active customers and featured more than 425,000 active deals globally.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company. As of May 2017, GoDaddy has served approximately 17 million customers and had over 6000 employees worldwide. The company is known for its advertising.

Ebay

Ebay is a multinational e-commerce corporation, facilitating online consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales. It is headquartered in California. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995, and became a notable success story of the dot-com bubble.

Walmart

Walmart is the world’s largest company by revenue, approximately $480 billion according to the Fortune Global 500 list in 2016, as well as the largest private employer in the world with 2.3 million employees. It is a family-owned business, as the company is controlled by the Walton family.

Medium

Medium is an online platform developed by Twitter co-founder Evan William, and was launched in August 2012. It is owned by  Medium Corporation. The platform is an example of social, having a hybrid collection of amateur and professional people and publications.

Node.js allows you to build effective apps, in a turnaround time that is quick and real!

Your app could be the next big one!

Get in touch with us for a kickass Node.js App!

Understanding Offshore Development

You’re comfortably relaxing on your couch and enjoying a football match. The television suddenly switches off and the switch box explodes with sparks flying around. You have no clue what has happened and you look up on the internet searching for an electrician. The local electrician is charging $100, whereas a veteran electrician from the neighboring community is ready to visit your place and rectify your electrical setup for just $30.

Whom will you call?

Keep these options in your mind as we dwell into the concept of offshore development.

From the past decade or so, an unexpected trend has arisen in the technology sector. Multi-national companies, start-ups, and even local businesses have started adopting the business models of offshore development services. Offshore development was something that only large global companies engaged in many years ago due to the geographical and language challenges that existed. Today, these are not a factor as communication and transparency challenges have been both negated due to the technology that has come into everyday life.

First, let us discuss what exactly is offshore development as well as why it has become such as a popular option for companies worldwide.

Offshore development means the process of outsourcing your development needs such as web, mobile or even custom software to countries such as India, Philippines, China and so on. The reason why people look at offshore web or software development is mainly because of the cost-savings and the time that can be saved. Also, it minimizes internal overhead costs. The offshore model has been around for a long while but with the world becoming more global and technology making it easier than ever before to communicate to anyone no matter where they are located, the demands for offshore development have increased substantially.

The Offshore Development model is used for multiple things: offshore software and offshore web development or services such as customer service, data-entry, cold-calling along with BPO or KPO processes. The main reason is that a person in India or any other developing country will cost significantly less when compared to the US, UK or Australia. The bottom line is that if you are able to find a good offshore development partner, you can really save yourself time, money, HR hassles and other operational expenses. The key is to find a good offshore partner who has the experience, expertise and technical skills to accomplish what you need. Ranging from a simple website or even a fully operating customer service center, your offshore partner must be well equipped to handle your requirements.

Professional offshore development can be beneficial in the following ways:

Reasonable services :

Not all the countries boast of a talented pool of web developers and designers in abundance which makes it difficult to get work done at a nominal amount. The reason being that they charge substantially as they develop products knowing that they are in monopoly. It turns out to be quite expensive build a website or mobile app. Offshore development can disrupt the monopoly and be more cost effective.

Quality:

One of the best things about the offshore software companies is that they have a vast pool of talent and can render top notch development services. This ensures that the quality of the projects is superior and also matches the international standards.They also ensure that they utilize the best tools and technologies to create highly competitive products.

Communication:

Technology has ensured that there is no delay in any communication between the client and the developers. Offshore developers tend to be more approachable and communication friendly. This ensures that the process does not go haywire during any stage.

No deadline delays:

Following deadlines is a big aspect when it comes to product development. The entire marketing and operations of a company depends on the product being delivered according to the stipulated time. Offshore development can cut down these hassles as they have the flexibility of employing more resources at a lower cost.

24×7 availability:

Round the clock availability sometimes becomes a norm for a global company and offshore centers offer workflow accordingly which might not be possible in the parent country due to cost and labor-force constraints.

Conducive Environment:

Outsourced processes, usually are very strenuous in nature. The workforce needs to be seated in an environment that can boost productivity and reduce stress levels. It is one of the main factors why Offshore Development is a good option since infrastructure is available cheaply as compared to the parent country.

Security:

Security of confidential data and client properties is a buzzing concern when dealing with offshore companies. Most of the offshore development companies offer high end security protocols and systems to ensure the client’s data is never compromised.

And now, back to the electrician conundrum. If a veteran electrician with years of experience is ready to travel to your house at a cheaper rate, any sensible man would choose him over the $100 electrician. The same logic may also be applied to the concept of offshore development.

So, sit back and relax as your offshore partner takes charge of your processes and product development and frees you of the basic organizational hassles.

Offshore development may seem a far fetch off for most of the most organisations, but if the current global trend is to be observed, it is one of the most trusted and cost effective options for an organisation that is looking to cut down on costs and build quality products.

Challenges for a UX Designer

According to LinkedIN, there are 900,000 UX designers in the world. How strong willed are you to be one of the best in the long run?

“ Determination is the wake up call to the human will”

A designer is a commercial artist confined by factors such as economical efficiency, technological constraints and most importantly a client’s requirements.  A UX designer is more skilled in the techniques and the process on a whole new level which we will not dwell into. And as seen with artists and designers, even UX designers can lose their way in between or simply succumb to mental fatigue unless the work flow is organised and their creative persona is kept alive.

So, what exactly are the obstacles a UX designer faces?

To answer the above question, let us just assume you are 6 years old and in elementary school. The task at hand in the art class is to draw the conventional scenery with a sunrise and a small house.

You have an hour to complete the task and your creative and young mind sketches out generously on the canvas. Agreed, it will not be the best work of art but for a 6 year old child, it is commendable.

Now, let us add factors one by one to transform the 6 year child into a UX designer.

1. The client, the teacher in this case, wants an enhanced amalgamation of colors that are soothing to the eye.

2. Instead of crayons, you will use the latest tech available to make it more interactive: the fish in the rivers should pop out when touched, the canvas should have interchangeable themes according to the time of the day and everything should look lifelike.

3. Instead of an hour, you have a week, in which you have to start from the scratch. Create a storyboard, research how different users react to the design, predict how users are going to interact with the picture on different levels to name a few.

4. And now, most importantly, you are not supposed to cross a fixed budget, redraft the design until the client likes it and stick to a deadline.

5. You’re in your 20’s now, you have had experiences as a human being and your creative side sometimes has a slightly different point of view.

And thus begins the constant battle between your creativity and someone’s exact requirements. Being a 6 year old was fun, being a UX designer is much more fun stacked up on a heap of obstacles and opportunities. So, how to go through the ardent process while enjoying it and keeping your creative ego on a standby?

Remember:

You are special. You are sketching the future of technology. It is a part of you that people will see when they access the digital world. You have already predicted what they will feel, how they will react and that is nothing but pure magic! Not an illusion, not a cheap trick, but a result of your skills and ingenuity. So, as far as you keep this in mind and adjust to a few requests, you are already strong willed to be one of the best in UX designing.

Still, here are a few tips to keep yourself clutter free and determined:

1. Ask yourself why is the client/business spending money on UX design? If it is so important can I afford to lag behind and deliver an under-performing product?

2. It is good to have infinite concepts for a project but stick to a concept, believe in it and keep refining it. The more choices you have, the more fatigue you will experience even before starting especially when you have a deadline.

3. When we are unsure of what to do, we usually look towards a social behavior to guide us. Avoid that. It is your design, a proof of your brilliance.

4. People not only perceive object shapes better, they respond better to action oriented stimuli. Allow this thought process in your creativity.

5. Be clear of what exactly you want from your design, see your design on an emotional level for the future user.

6. Every process has its hardships, but visualize the end result that will boost your confidence.

7. Anything beautiful and alleviating takes time and effort to be created. It is your mind, your space and your canvas. Realize it proves your worth as a person and as a professional.

8. Divert your mind from social and family matters and engage in healthy conversations with your co-workers.

Being a UX designer, perhaps no one will ever know who designed the masterpiece android/iOS mobile app that they have gotten addicted to. You are designing for everyone and no one at the same time. Either your passion for designing and challenges provide the spark for you or it is the growth opportunities. There will be times when you will be agitated, every creative soul goes through that. In fact it is imperative. All that pressure, all those suggestions and yet every time if you come up with a design that startles everyone, you will be the silent guardian that ensures the success of products.

A creative knight in the shining armor of technology.

SGS Posts is a spiritual mobile app designed & developed by GoodWorkLabs for Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji (SGS Raga Sagara) that focuses on the reformation of society, helping the needy while establishing peace and happiness among mankind. This spiritual mobile app features a timeline where you will receive spiritual and helpful life messages, which is complimented with a feature that allows you to choose language specific messages. It also incorporates some personalised messages just for you by the Swamiji to get you up and running for a beautiful day ahead.

Download the SGS Posts Android App and iPhone App here.

Our experienced Mobile App UX / UI Design team worked with the SGS counterparts to evolve a simple yet refreshing design that can bring the spiritual and serene look and feel. Further our top Android app development team and iPhone app development team worked seamlessly with the UX team to create a world-class application that is now being used and appreciated by users globally.

To design and development an awesome mobile app, contact us now.