Here are some tech trends that will be seen in 2021. There is only one thing for sure about the future, the critical role of technology and business innovation will increase.
Nowadays we hear more and more about the shop local trend. This represents the act of everyday consumers, making the decision to buy items from a local business, to spend the money locally, to eat in local restaurants and to enjoy the original places near them.
According to a new report from Juniper Research the annual retail payments on mobile handsets and tablets are expected to reach $707 billion by 2018, representing 30% of all e-Retail by that time.
Even though a mobile app works much like a mobile website, a mobile app offers businesses the advantage of having their own corner on a client's device. Due to the fact that users need to download and install the app, businesses have more control over their presence on a device than they would with a mobile website.
There are more and more small and medium businesses that realize now how important it is to have a mobile app in order to stay competitive these days.
For most small businesses, a mobile app is a wonderful opportunity to connect with customers and open new marketing channels. However when it comes specifically to hair salons and barbershops, mobile apps offer many considerable features to boost business cost-effectively.
The Alphatech mobile app building platform is pleased to announce the launch of E-commerce and Order Management modules.
Last week, NY Times published an article - 'It’s Possible to Hack a Phone With Sound Waves, Researchers Show' - that since gained a lot of attention and a lot of echoes in other media outlets.
Apple has taken repeatedly a strong stance on privacy protection, especially when it comes to their flagship product, the iPhone. While, undoubtedly, a lot of effort has gone into making it more secure, a lot still hinges on how conscious is the user of the dangers posed by some combinations of enabled settings on the iPhone.
For a number of years now, Adobe conducts a global survey to capture how people view creativity, it’s role in the their lives, it role in the business environment, etc.
Even those that haven’t watched the movie Zootopia, the iconic scene depicted above is probably resonating with some of our own experiences with systems that seem to thrive on delay.
After Alphatech introduced the white label app program, we discovered one of thesegrowth-related inconveniences: more gets actually published but you cannot brag about it, since white label apps (by definition) do not mention the app developer.
Just imagine it for a second: your business (whatever it may be) is working. Along comes an email claiming that there a simple way to boost your business by 71% with minimal costs.
Mobile devices are often presented as a miniaturized desktop or laptop computers. The next step of the evolution. Why? Because a mobile phone or tablet - in addition to everything your desktop of laptop has - is also packed with sensors provide a lot of inputs a clever developer can use to create new services or products.
How do you make people hear you out about something everyone knows is boring and would rather avoid? One answer is to create content that goes viral and is repeatedly shared.
Apps are proliferating at an amazing rate: according to this Statista graph there were around two million apps registered on Google Play in February 2016 and around 1.5 million apps on Apple Store.
Waiting is rarely pleasant. Especially when your livelihood depends on customers finding you during Supercon, i.e. in the midst of an area the size of a football field literally packed with visitors and other exhibitors.
Voice search is a trending topic, often resurrected by the news released by the 'Frightful five': Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. Each of these has designs to create the voice interface of the future: Google Ok, Siri, Cortana, Facebook M or Amazon Echo.
Heatmaps: have you heard of them? It is a safe bet that you saw some even if the term 'heatmap' doesn’t tell you much. Above you can see an example of such a heatmap in Alphatech analytics..
Finding good and authoritative sources on what constitutes trends and keeping an eye on them is on top of our list. One of the sources we keep an eye on is Mary Meeker’s reports on trends.
Ok, so you look at the picture above and don’t get it: what is the connection? The composite picture is inspired by a recent Washington Post article by Katherine Arcement entitled 'The hottest trend in Web design is making intentionally ugly, difficult sites'.
It is not the first time chatbots capture the public’s imagination. During the last couple of weeks 'chatbots' trending again with multiple news outlets and media companies covering the topic.
We do wonder sometimes if we shouldn’t open a haute couture phone case manufacturing line. From what we saw out there (i.e. on the wild wide net) we simply couldn’t get wrong no matter how wacky our ideas are.
One of the things we love about making apps is that sometimes it allows us to contribute (even if slightly) to a good cause. It is the case of Lyone Foundation app we have launched in February.
It helps sometimes to look at what you are doing from a different perspective. Although we enjoyed Nick Yee’s post 'Game Genre Map: The Cognitive Threshold in Strategy Games' in January...
Several days ago, Scott Gerber - one of the founders of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), posted on thenextweb.com a list of nine (short) opinions on what would constitute a proper business 'disruptor' for the next period.
Ericsson ConsumerLab published a report in December 2015: 10 Hot Consumer Trends 2016. From the methodology section one can see that an unusual amount of effort went into this report.
There is a huge covert war going on in the digital world and we are not talking about the on-going brawl among the readily recognizable giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft.
Deloitte’s reports are worth reading and keeping track of. The recent 2015 Global Mobile Consumer Survey is a case in point; covering 6 continents, 31 countries, and nearly 50,000 respondents, it’s data should allow some solid ground on mobile trends.
Let’s clarify something from the very beginning: this blog is not about pretzels, it’s about being smart about your customers. From the image above you can see how the app - Pretzel Perks - made by Auntie Anne’s is all about rewarding loyalty.
Prior to Websummit we were busy; during the Websummit we were very busy; after the websummit... we are still busy. Different types of being busy, granted, but not less busy for that.
Time is, of course, money; everyone is familiar with this meme. The latest incarnation of which is the new frontline of fast opening pages opened by Facebook in May 2015 with its announcement of Instant Articles.
If you have some sort of connection with the tech world - and unless you are living under a rock - you probably have heard about the upcoming Websummit 2015.
Do you have your wallet with you? It might sound stupid to ask, but let’s ask anyway: why do you carry it? You may answer by listing its contents: money, credit cards, loyalty cards, club cards, a family photo or two, business cards, etc., making it quite uncomfortable to carry all that in dispersed through your pockets.
Did you know that treasure hunts are an extremely effective way of engaging your customers? Far from being a last minute craze concocted by mobile app developers, there are serious business opportunities related to scavenger or treasure hunts.
No doubt, you are wondering: What on earth is this blog post title supposed to mean?! Briefly, it is a way of saying that customer interface seems to be that thing which separates two fundamentally different realities.
Opened in January 2015, CycleWard is Fort Lauderdale’s premier new indoor cycling studio that puts an innovative spin on cycling and reinvents exercise with a high-energy atmosphere and jam-packed schedule of classes that shape and inspire the mind, body and soul.
Have you ever heard of the 'Cassandra Effect'? According to ancient Greek lore, Cassandra was prophetess that was able to foresee the future, but powerless to change it.
Hairventure is a salon located in Weston, Florida. One of those typical small businesses you find in all over the place that enjoys a degree of local success but would always like to do better.
A lot of SMBs hear about mobile first and even speak about it. Few actually grasp the idea fully. Not because it is a complicated idea; far from it. But because it is rarely boiled down to its essence: mobile first is a shift in perception.
Suppose you face the following situation: you are a small business that has at the moment 50 customers. A marketing agency has a strategy that can gain each month you 100 new customers but they tell you that you will lose 50 of your customers within the same month.
You are a business owner: you come up with a business idea. And then you made it work. It does prove you have good instincts - at least for the niche you are operating in - and it does mean you understood your customers.
News feeds are replete with mobile-related stories. For instance, you may have heard of recent news MobileFirst for iOS churning apps designed to improve productivity in the healthcare, airline and insurance industries, as well as on the factory floor.
In all fairness this is perhaps not news for you; you may have suspected it all along if are a moderately active user of smartphones. The more apps you have on your phone the faster the battery seems to demand your attention.
Strong language, isn’t it? What would make you, the reader, classify and app into this "exclusive" category? For us, anything that is not bringing value to a customer is expensive by default. The Alphatech way is about utility and price transparency.
Mobile-friendly is no longer an option but a necessity. Google’s announcement that they intend to expand their use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal is the logical outcome of the increase we’ve witnessed in the mobile search segment.
The retail industry is undergoing a paradigm shift: more and more customers rely on the online to shop. According to a recent post by Bill Siwicki from InternetRetailer.com, fully 47% of online retail traffic and 33% of online retail orders stemmed from smartphones and tablets in last quarter of 2014.
The enclosed infographic clearly identifies the importance of having a loyalty program in the current business culture, reviews things that make a loyalty program efficient and valuable, acknowledges the main challenges to building a good loyalty program and show how our Mobile App offers undeniable competitive advantages in this context.
Somewhat unnoticed, Tyler White posted a blog last year tentatively making the connection between mobile apps and customer loyalty.
One of the major discussions at the moment in regard to mobile apps gravitates around push notifications. Push notifications can be incredibly useful. In fact, the old ideas about ad placement in a mobile environment would probably die out because there is simply too little page space available for ads.
Let’s continue the analysis of the other app development software platforms. In case you’ve missed our first part of it, you can find it here.
Don’t you get dizzy sometimes when you are trying to keep up with things around you? Most of them seem to change with light speed, while we are doing our best to keep our balance!
Are you still dreaming about having your own app? STOP dreaming and START doing it! AlphaTech is a DIY platform for mobile application development that will help you launch your own app in as fast as 30 minutes! No coding skills are needed!
Is it worth the investment to have a mobile app for your restaurant? That’s the question you need to ask yourself if you are a restaurant owner.
Mobile users (those using mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones) are surely taking over the consumer setting. Statistics show that more than 50% of mobile users check their smartphone right after waking up.
AlphaAccess is an integrated Visitor/Resident Access Management Solution. We discuss with Guy Kennett about what gave him the idea to create it, what is it good for and what are AlphaPortal plans with this versatile product.