What makes a customer loyal to a product or a company? What exactly is customer Loyalty Program? It is a rewards program offered by a company to drive customer engagement and nudge them to buy the product often and enjoy its benefits. One such Loyalty Program that has caught the customer’s attention is – the Starbucks Loyalty Program. 

Did you know that the Starbuck Loyalty Program holds more money on its affiliated cards and app than many banks have in their deposits? Surprised! Here’s another fact: there are approximately $1.2 billion loaded on the Starbucks mobile app and the company’s loyalty cards. Above that, around 41% of US and Canada-based Starbucks transactions were made through the loyalty card, while around 24% of US-based payments were made through the Starbucks mobile app.
Reference Source: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/starbucks-has-more-customer-money-on-cards-than-many-banks-have-in-deposits-2016-06-09  
This should give you an idea on how Loyalty Programs increase the company’s revenue and their presence in the market. 

​The sole purpose of creating an app for a service or product is so that customers can use it. But when the customer has got a plethora of options that provides a similar service or product, then why should they download your app? What does your app offer that the other doesn’t? To ensure that the customer picks your app each time, you can use a tool that will help you build the product or service that the market needs: The Product/Market Fit Canvas.

What’s a Product/Market Fit Canvas?

Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz defined product/market fit as, “Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”
https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee204/ProductMarketFit.html
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In a great market with lots of real potential customers, the product or service has to be able to solve the user’s problems. You need to create a need for your product/service in the market by targeting a market segment that finds your product/service attractive. 

​Digitization has swept across the world and has changed almost every industry – one such primary industry is the Real Estate. Gone are the days where you had to refer to newspapers and circle out the properties that you are interested in or find worthy agents to search your dream home. It’s time to welcome Real Estate 2.0! 

According to a real estate report, 

• 80% of all home buyers are searching online
• 83% of home buyers see pictures of the property online
• 52% of the prospects used an iPhone in their home search
• 49% of the leads come via referrals
• 91% of realtors use social media to list real estate properties
• 33% of first-time buyers research for real estate properties online

Reference Site: https://www.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/reports/2017/2017-real-estate-in-a-digital-age-03-10-2017.pdf
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Advertisements are the oldest form of marketing. They catered mainly to a mass audience who were grouped based on gender, occupation, etc. In today’s times, companies are trying to target each individual based on their unique preferences. Hence, the best way to target individuals is through mobile apps!

Did You Know?
There will be roughly 7 billion mobile users worldwide, by 2020? Annual mobile app downloads in 2022 are projected to reach 258 billion? App store consumer spending is projected to increase by 92% to $157 billion worldwide in 2022?

Yes, it’s all TRUE!
Reference Source: https://www.appannie.com/en/insights/market-data/app-annie-2017-2022-forecast/

Most times developers and companies measure their app’s success based on the downloads of their app; but most forget that the app only gets profitable if the user actually uses it. The “traffic of the users” on the app is what actually measures its success. You could attract the user to download the app but the question is the user actually using the app after a week, a month or a year. This in the app world is called retention of users.
Keeping the users engaged is one of the most difficult stages; especially in this fast-paced world where similar functionality apps are being introduced in the market with new and better features. This is where customer loyalty comes into play. A loyal customer is the one that will choose your app over your competitors even after a week, a month or a year. The key to gaining a loyal customer could be achieved by gentle “pushing” – in the app world known as a Push Notification.

What Are Push Notifications and How Do They Help?

As most of you must be aware, they are the messages that pop up on your smartphone reminding to use the app or sending you offers and updates.  As a whole, push notifications are effective; they encourage both purchases and user retention. However, these messages become even more effective when they’re expertly crafted and personalized.
It’s worth investing time and effort into building push notifications that users really care about. These ensure the most engagement. Remember, if your push messages aren’t valuable, people will simply opt out; or perhaps they won’t opt in to begin with.
As per Localytics, most app users who have enabled push notifications will use an app for at least 9 sessions, with 46% remaining beyond the unofficial retention point of 11 sessions. However, almost half of users who don’t enable push notifications will abandon an app after just 2 sessions. Also, they discovered that the perception of push notifications has improved over time, with 52% of respondents to a 2018 poll stating that pushes were better than they were several years ago.
Reference Source: http://info.localytics.com/blog/21-percent-of-users-abandon-apps-after-one-use
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There are 3 essential types of push notifications to inspire loyalty from your users: 

In today’s time, there is not a single service that can’t be availed via a mobile app. Anything you want is literally, “at the tip of your fingers”. There are over five billion mobile users in the world, with global internet penetration standing at 57%.
Source: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-statistics/
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Did you know: As of the first quarter of 2019, these app users could choose to download between 2.6 million Android, and 2.2 million iOS apps. And they certainly are choosing: App Annie sets the total number of app downloads in 2018 at 194 billion; up from 178 billion in 2017.  

The Apple App Store and the Google Play Store dominate this landscape: as such, they are two of the most importance marketplaces in the world, truly global in scope.
Let’s take a look at 50 mobile app statistics, and what we can look forward to in the year 2020.
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General Mobile App User Statistics:

Blockchain has been disrupting the tech and financial market since the past 5 years. Blockchain was originally created to support the Bitcoin but soon the tech community has started using this technology for other purposes.
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Blockchain is the brainchild of a person or a group of people known by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. In 2017, the global Blockchain technology market is predicted to reach 339.5 million U.S. dollars in size and is forecast to grow to 2.3 billion U.S. dollars by 2021.
Reference Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/647231/worldwide-Blockchain-technology-market-size/   

How many times have you been not able to obtain information or receive help from an app because of network issues or no network? We have become so dependent on our smart devices that when they don’t work, we feel helpless; like time has come to a halt and we are back in the 90s. In order for the user to retain your app, it should also work offline. Apps with GPS navigation, medical facilities/information and banking apps should be programmed in a way that they can also work offline. Some of the advantages of offline working apps include:

• No internet connection
• Quick information download
• Not draining the phone’s battery

Let’s take a look at how to create an app that can be built for offline use.

Deciding on Offline Features
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Let’s begin by listing down the steps that will help the company/organization to decide on offline features for the app:

• Firstly, it is important to have your app plan in place which includes listing down the core purpose of the app, analyzing the workflow of the app and jotting down the features that need to incorporated to build the app.
• The next step would be to prioritize the features (must-haves, good to have, etc.) for the app.
• After deciding the features that are the most essential for the app, the same needs to be communicated to the developer so that they are able to understand the business goals and plan a well-tailored solution.

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix can be used to help you see more intrinsically on what features are important and which are not. 

In this fast-paced tech world, the convenience of the user or customer is held in high regard. Hence, we’ve seen a number of e-commerce companies and apps that are dominating a space in the market. This disruption in the market has changed caused by e-commerce has had a direct impact on the freight industry. The shipments have become smaller but the number of shipments has grown immensely. 

The majority of shipments aren’t enough for a Full Truck Load (FTL) and hence, more retailers are relying on less than truckload or Less Than Load (LTL) shipments to deliver the purchased product by the customer to their location. As per statistics, LTL vehicles only carry 1000 pounds worth of freight through a tedious route.
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Reference Source: https://www.supplychain247.com/article/what_is_ltl_shipping_and_why_is_it_important_to_corporate_america

Companies want to develop apps as soon as there is a market demand. The tech world in the 21st century operates on lightening speed. It’s not the time to dwell over your app for months before you release it. Gone are the days where the developers needed to develop time-consuming codes for different platforms. Cross-platform development of apps does not only make it quicker and easier for the developer to build the app but also cheaper.
But the question remains which app development cross-platform to choose – Flutter or React Native? Let’s compare the lead market players to identify which framework would best choose the company’s app idea.
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Introduction to Flutter