Two nationally renowned experts in economic forecasting recently spoke in Atlanta at an annual meeting of the CCIM Institute, a group of recognized experts in commercial and investment real estate from across the nation. The event was attended by members of the group from over thirty states.Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University, spoke on the local and national economies. Dhawan, who often appears on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, NBC, CBS and the Bloomberg Report, sees the southeastern states doing much better than the rest of the country. Unfortunately, he says, the economies of California, Arizona, and Nevada are already in a recession and make up 20 percent of the national economy. However, Dhawan sees the current problems as mostly a “crisis of confidence of the American public.”His predictions for job growth for the state of Georgia indicate only around 28,000 new jobs in 2008, but a healthy uptick in 2009 with an additional 70,100 new jobs. The following year should see over 98,000 additional jobs. While much of his predictions are flat for 2008, he predicts a bounce back in the real estate markets in 2009.The second speaker was Stephen Phyrr, senior managing director of Kennedy Wilson and Executive Director of The American Real Estate Society of Austin, Texas. Phyrr has spent much of his career studying the effects of the cyclical economy on the real estate market.While there are certainly some negative signs, Phyrr sees a positive overall forecast for the economy and real estate in general. His conclusions are summed up in six points:1. Overall, the positives outweigh the negatives going forward. The lack of confidence of the American public reflects the media’s emphasis on the “bad news” and creates a biased picture of the real estate environment.2. The financial markets have overreacted to the real credit crunch of 2007, making financing difficult for investors throughout 2008.3. Real estate will fare relatively well over the next three to five years compared to other asset classes.4. Investors will go back to the fundamentals of improving property values by improving property management, and not by using financing as a vehicle to make sense of an investment.5. There will be plenty of financing for real estate, and lenders will look for diversified types of real estate to finance.6. Multi-family property investments will be a beneficiary of the housing finance and homebuilding crisis of 2007.Additionally, Phyrr discussed the importance of understanding real estate cycles. Real estate undergoes up and down cycles. Boom cycles have averaged 10 to 11 years and bust cycles have averaged five to six years over the past 30 years. Our last real estate boom topped out in 2001 and real estate values have been on a decline since then. So, based on the cycle timing and some other positive attributes, we are near or at the bottom of the down cycle and look forward to an upward trend in real estate values.o

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.