Monday, November 30, 2020

The most useful Free Angular Templates available for an App Development Project!

Google’s Angular, the open-source framework for architecting web and mobile apps, has gained a lot of traction amongst the community of software developers. The reason is its easy learning curve, wide-ranging benefits, infinite technical capacity, and huge potential. On account of Angular’s growing popularity over the past couple of years, the internet is flooded with free Angular templates that reduce the developers’ efforts and thereby speed up Angular app development. Needless to say, the Angular developers have the flexibility to choose from multiple free templates. Nevertheless, it is also important to have a thorough knowledge of the templates; to be able to pick the most suitable one as per the project requirement.

This article provides you insights on the top free Angular templates that an Angular app Development Company must essentially use in their projects.

So, let’s get the ball rolling!

The top free Angular Templates that you must-have

A template refers to an HTML snippet that instructs Angular on how to render the components in Angular apps. Given below are the must-have free Angular templates.

Notus Angular

This Tailwind CSS UI Kit and Admin for Angular offers more than one hundred individual components to choose from and combine. Tailwind CSS classes enable you to modify the colors of these components.

Argon Dashboard Angular

This template is built with numerous components each of which has various states for styles, colors, focus, and hover that is easily accessible and can be used effortlessly to create variations in color. SASS files are employed to modify the colors of components.

Black Dashboard Angular

Black Dashboard Angular is a captivating Bootstrap4 Admin dashboard, which utilizes Angular along with multiple components to give amazing looks. This dashboard is an excellent tool that visualizes and manages data for businesses. It creates soothing color combinations, beautiful graphics, attractive typography, and spacious cards.

Purple Angular

Purple Angular eliminates the challenges of building complex and robust web apps. This template offers an attractive and meticulously drafted admin dashboard, loaded with vital components like icons, UI elements, etc. that enable customization and ease out web application development. Dedicated eCommerce pages like Invoice, Orders, and Pricing tables are also featured in this template.

Nebular4.0

Nebular4.0, a UI library for Angular8, based on the specifications of the Eva Design System, focuses on creating alluring designs and is capable of adapting to your brand quite easily. It offers visually attractive themes and a strong theming engine that supports custom CSS properties mode and runtime theme switching.

Blur Admin Angular

This customizable admin panel framework is built with AngularJS, Sass, Bootstrap CSS framework, Maps, and Jquery. One can easily create a highly responsive user-friendly template using Blur.

Chankya

Chankya provides loads of reusable components, animations, four distinct navigations, and three layouts – collapsed sidebar, boxed, and RTL. Its features are endless – graphs, tables, charts, email page, chat module, date picker, etc. These can be easily translated and used for local projects and building innovative apps.

Momo

Momo is an entirely mobile-ready, sturdy template that is easy to use and can be effortlessly customized and modified. This Angular website template leverages cutting-edge technologies and turns out to be an outstanding starter for your upcoming web project.

Pages

This template facilitates creating a simple, yet robust dashboard for an app or a project. It offers five distinct dashboard layouts to choose from, various color skins, a plethora of UI features, form wizards, and pre-defined pages.

Nice

Nice provides easy going tools and design templates that aid in managing and maintaining web spaces. A perfect pick for control panels and admin dashboards, it enables one to create highly innovative designs. It comprises of three dashboards, nine demos, six color skins, fifty angular components, and much more. Nice sorts out the admin section very easily regardless of the application or websites.It offers prompt technical assistance too.

Ngx-admin

Ngx-admin provides a feature-loaded web design with an agile look and is an apt pick if you are searching for an open-source and free Angular9+ admin dashboard. This tool saves you the effort of reinventing the wheel or hiring coders. This kit comes with diverse UI components and formidable customization functions.

Other notable templates

  • Rdash-angular helps you get started using some modules and provides useful directives and controllers for speeding up the developmental process using the dashboard.
  • Paper Kit2 Angular is a Bootstrap4 UI Kit with responsive components and suits all types of screen sizes. Its colors, shadows, and transitions impart a flow similar to that you will get using paper pieces.
  • Monarch is an admin dashboard template comprising of multiple widgets, a clean UI, and unparalleled flexibility.
  • ArchitectUI Angular7, provides five demos along with enticing front end landing page, each delivering a unique approach toward web design and many more.
  • Gradus offers 35 useful pages for entirely sorting out the admin dashboard and is compatible with modern browsers. It uses lazy loading, nested routing, dynamic menu, and AOT compilation.
  • Dexam, an intuitive website template for Angular, offers an in-built toolset that helps you impart a striking look to your website. It provides demos, menus, animations, and a lot more additional features.

Final words

The aforesaid free Angular templates are effective tools to simplify and accelerate your project development. So, these are must-haves for the smooth running of your project.

If you would like to hire an experienced Angular app development company or skilled Angular app developers for your next project, Biz4Solutions, a distinguished app Development Company, is worth a try! Let us know your project requirement at sales.enquiry@biz4solutions.com.

For other technologies refer to below links:

React Native Development Company

Ionic Development Company

 

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Ionic vs Flutter: A useful guide to app creators!

 

The digital revolution has gifted the software industry with a plethora of outstanding app development frameworks. As a consequence, choosing the right framework for app development has become a herculean task for app creators. Ionic and Flutter are two such frameworks that utterly confuse the app creators striving hard to pick a framework for architecting cross-platform applications. Picking one out of these frameworks becomes all the more intriguing since they appear quite similar, but are in reality way different from each other. However, both Flutter and Ionic app development come with novel offerings and cater to specific project requirements. Hence, you need to be well versed in their similarities as well as differences to pick the right one.

This blog compares Ionic and Flutter based on certain parameters, to provide the entrepreneurs with clear visibility about their strengths as well as drawbacks and help them decide the perfect pick for their project.

Before we move on to compare Ionic and Flutter, let me provide you a brief introduction to these frameworks.

 Introducing Ionic

The Ionic framework was coined by Ben Sperry, Adam Bradley, and Max Lynch of the Drifty Co.in the year 2013 and its first stable version was launched in March 2014. Ionic is an open-sourced UI toolkit that uses web technologies like JavaScript, CSS and HTML; to architect top-notch desktop, mobile and progressive web applications. Ionic primarily focuses on the front-end UX and UI interaction and hence plays a vital role in handling the look and feel of an app. Not only is it is capable of easily integrating with other frameworks and libraries like Cordova, Angular, etc. but also can be used independently without the support of a front-end framework.

 Introducing Flutter

Flutter, Google’s brainchild, is a relatively newer framework as compared to Ionic and is still evolving. It was created in May 2017 and is currently managed by Google with the help of an ECMA standard. Flutter is a UI toolkit that employs Dart programming languages to build swift, attractive and natively compiled cross-platform apps. Flutter was introduced as a Software Development Kit (SDK) intended to build modern apps for Android and iOS. In the case of Android Studio, integration is done with inbuilt Java, and Swift and Objective C integration is done in the case of iOS.


Similarities between Flutter and Ionic app development services

Flutter and Ionic may be way different from each other but share certain similarities too. They are as follows: 

  • Both build cross-platform applications that run on desktops, mobiles as well as the web.
  • Both employ a single codebase to create interactive and high-performing apps.
  • Their primary focus lies in creating UI frameworks for native platforms. Both impart an incredible native look and feel.
  • Both frameworks have a well-organized documentation for developers.


Differences between Ionic and Flutter app development services

Now let’s explore the differences between Ionic and Flutter based on the following parameters. 

Skillset: Market value

The skillset required to use Ionic involves learning JavaScript and other general web technologies that are needed for any web app development project regardless of the framework used. But, learning Dart for using Flutter will not prove useful for projects involving other frameworks. Moreover, owing to Flutter’s highly-custom environment, developers need to master certain unique methodologies that are time-consuming and applicable to Flutter app development only. Furthermore, the requirement for Dart developers in the coming years largely depends on whether the newbie Flutter, will succeed as a viable solution in the future.

Hence, acquiring an Ionic skill set proves to be a safer bet for a developer.

 Portability of the code

Let’s have a look at how the codes of Flutter and Ionic behave in various eco-systems, OS and processors. Flutter development leads to the creation of visually appealing Android and iOS apps. It is a great choice for mobile apps but encounters limitations when deployed on the web. Ionic, on the other hand, creates fairly good mobile apps and exceptionally good web apps. Therefore, if you are planning to build PWAs or web apps, picking Ionic is advisable.

 User Interface

Flutter has attractive user interface in comparison to Ionic because Ionic uses HTML and CSS for rendering. Flutter has widgets as part of UI elements whereas Ionic has Web Components.

 Performance

Flutter fares well if your application requires exclusive animation whereas Ionic serves better if you intend to architect an app that is more consumer-facing. Ionic employs primitives and the runtimes of the standard browser, hence the bundle size is 2991 bytes whereas Flutter requires a heavy code for building even a basic application.

Flutter users Dart language and since it does require JavaScript Bridge for interactions between the app, performance is far better. For rendering Ionic uses Web technologies, hence the performance is much lower.

Mobile performance is better in Flutter in comparison to Ionic. Web performance is poorer in Flutter than Ionic.

 Free usage of libraries

The Flutter app developers can use Flutter’s libraries and system technologies free of cost. In Ionic, several libraries are free but a paid Pro Development Environment is needed for speeding up the developmental cycle.

 Community support

 As far as community support is concerned, Ionic surpasses Flutter. Flutter being a newbie lacks strong community support while Ionic enjoys the support from a dynamic global community that assists Ionic app developers to solve problems.  However, owing to Google’s continual effort, Flutter also may develop a vibrant community in the years to come. 

 Future-friendliness

 Now let’s discuss these frameworks from the perspective of the flexibility and freedom offered once the app matures. Flutter app development may turn out to be a bit risky. The reason is, if by any chance Google shuns Flutter, a Flutter app Development Company will be left with a code base and skill set that are homeless, though such a situation is least likely. Ionic app development on the other hand is based on open web standards and relies on web components. So, it can be used with any existing JS framework or compatible future framework if the app creators choose to create apps for other platforms or use the code for other projects.

 Final Takeaway

I hope this blog has enlightened you about how the custom-based approach of Flutter differs from the web-based approach of Ionic. Both of these cross-platform app development frameworks are distinctive in their way. Therefore, whether to opt for an Ionic app development company or a Flutter app development company solely depends on your project requirement.

Please do let us know in the comments section below for any further queries. We would be glad to assist you!

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

The must-have features of a successful social media application!


 

Humans are by nature social animals! So, in today’s fast-moving era, social media is the best tool to stay connected with family and friends residing in any corner of the world. So, ever since the social media apps came into being; the number of users kept multiplying. Presently, a single day without using apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc. is unthinkable.

Statistical data gathered from Oberlo states that “an average of three hours in a day is spent on social networking, the most popular platform being Facebook.”

As per the statistical data published by Statistaon the social media usage trends from 2017 to 2020,“Social media had2.86 billion global users in 2017, which shot up to3.6 billion in 2020 and is predicted to rise to approximately 4.41 billion by the year 2025.

These staggering figures show how social media apps are gradually becoming the most sought-after applications. Consequently, social media app development has sky-rocketed. However, the aspiring app creators need to keep in mind that all apps do not succeed in tasting success, because they do not have the engaging and enticing features that modern-day apps need. So, to enlighten you about the important aspects of features, I have penned down some of them that are essential to creating a successful social media app.

Key Features that a Successful Social Media App must contain

Selecting the right platform

It is advisable to select a platform that perfectly suits the features of your social media app,whichproves to be the app’s greatest interactive medium and provides multiple-device support.

Easy Navigation

The users prefer features that support seamless navigation. Hence, a hassle-free sign-up and login procedure, the app’s ability to easily connect with other users, etc. contribute to its adoption rate.

Effective customization of user profiles

Modern users prefer creating unique and visually attractive profiles. Hence your app must enable them to customize their profile by adding filters and using novel features like special effects, exceptional fonts, etc.

Effortless integration with other Social Media platforms

A popular social media app must have the capability to integrate effortlessly with other popular social media platforms. Features like outbound sharing, the ability to invite friends for using personal communication channels, and deferred deep linking are desirable and will help the app to become popular in a short time and in turn will increase the users organically.

Ease of network-building

The basic purpose of a social media app is to facilitate social networking. So, a user should be able to build a strong social network by easily finding new connections and being able to add and follow other users without much ado.

Live video streaming options

Live video streaming is the ability to host live videos like Facebook live, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram, etc. It allows the users to provide live updates, exchange ideas, or celebrate a special occasion. This feature has been the most disruptive invention that had created a stir amongst social media users. What can be a better way to create joyous moments and share them with family and friends living in far-off lands?

 

Notifications, News Feed and Content sharing

A successful app must contain the following features.

  • The capacity to compress multiple user-activities to one single view.
  • Ability to make the contents of other users easily discoverable using specific searches.
  • Possess a news feed that facilitates interaction between users by constantly generating and displaying relevant and engaging content in the form of articles, stories, photos, videos, or audios.
  • Continual updates showing the users’ interaction like status changes, reviews, comments, feedback, etc. via real-time push notifications.

The aforesaid features will undoubtedly allow the users to express their thoughts, display their achievements, and hence boost the growth of their network.

In-app calling and chatting options

Despite engaging themselves in public conversations with their social circle, users prefer private conversations with a selected few. Therefore, your app must enable users to create private groups and communicate with each group via in-app calling and chatting.

Appealing User Interface

A complex interface design may complicate things for users and drive them away. Therefore, it is advisable to keep your UI intuitiveas well as attractive, use tranquil and attractivecolors, and have well-positioned interface options to satisfy the basic purpose of a social medial app.

The privacy and security quotient

A social media app involves a shared environment among numerous individuals. Therefore, the data faces a constant threat to vulnerabilities like loss or misuse. So, effective safety measures to protect the privacy of the user’s personal information and other sensitive data are necessary to gain their trust.Also, the introduction of regular app updates to eliminate the loopholes and fix bugs would prove helpful.

Uniqueness

It’s a good idea to leverage emerging technologies for includingfuturistic and novel features and add a tinge of uniqueness to make your social media app stand out from the existing appsavailable in the market.

Wrap-up:

The social media app developers must incorporate the aforesaid features to create an impeccable and innovative appthat will win the hearts of users.This is indeed a strategic move to boost your business growth and gain a competitive edge over peers.

Planning to hire a mobile app development company to build phenomenal social apps? Try Biz4Solutions, a distinguishedapp development company,and reliable technology partner. We excel in providing top-notch services to our global clients. Mail us your project requirement at sales.enquiry@biz4solutions.com

How to develop a Cross-platform Fitness Application in React Native – Part II?

 



Fitness apps are trending these days as not only the fitness freaks but also health-conscious individuals are leveraging the advantages of these applications. As a consequence, app development companies are competing with one another to architect innovative Fitness apps loaded with elite features. To gain insights about the must-have features of Fitness refer to the article here.

For those planning to architect an impeccable Fitness application, knowledge of certain factors about the development are essential. The most crucial task before jump-starting the development process is picking the right technology and choosing the appropriate platform. The best approach is building a cross-platform fitness application using React Native as this combination yields the desired outcome.

My article provides you thorough guidance on how to execute the process of cross-platform Fitness app development using React Native.

Crucial steps of Fitness app development using React Native

In Part-I,I had provided a step by step guidance on the following aspects of the developmental cycle:

  • Creating a React Native app and setting up the navigation.
  • Process of setting up React Native elements.
  • Creating the login and registration screen
  • Setting up Firebase in React Native and installing the same.

This article guides you on the developmental process after configuring and setting up of Firebase in React Native. Here we go!

Using Formik and Yup for the authentication of Firebase email

  • Add input validation employing Yup and Formik. Both of these are popular packages used by React Native and React for managing forms.
  • For installing Formik and Yup, you need the command “yarn add formic yup”.
  • The next step is to import the file you want to use: import {Formik} from ‘formik’/ import * as yup from ‘yup’.
  • Using Formik on the registration form:First of all, define the initial value of a form. Then add a function to handle the event of form submission, by injecting Formic props to obtain the form data and intercepting the event on a form.
  • Setting up input validation using Yup:The steps are creating a new yup instance and defining a validation rule; disabling the button before the input validation gets enabled. Then a validation message will be displayed below the email input.
  • Adding them to the registration and password screens: Pass the email to the input password screen, implement the validation in the Input password screen, start defining the input validation using Yup, copy the Formic code from the email input screen, update the initial form and add a function to be used for handling registration. Now add the Formik props to the input.
  • Registering to Firebase:Activate the firebase sign-in method. Now email login can be used with firebase.

Authentication of Firebase email and password

After successful registration now it’s time to implement the email and password login. First, create a login form using Formik, and then handle the validation using Yup. After that the form needs to be submitted to the Firebase authentication service; store the user data to the state and finally redirect it to the home screen.

Configuring Facebook login for iOS and Android

Facebook login for iOS

  • Installing react-native-fbsdk package: yarn add react-native-fbsdk
  • Installing cacao pod package as per the official document: cd ios ; pod install
  • Now configure the project in Xcode and then again come back to the part of react-native-fbsdk package.
  • Add a function for handling the authentication data and then activate Facebook login.
  • Activate Facebook authentication on Firebase first and then on App ID and App secret.

Facebook login for Android

The steps are:

  • Linking the fbsdk package to Android and then setting the Facebook app’s ID to string.xml using the code ./android/app/src/main/res/values/
  • Adding Android configurations to the required gradlefiles in ‘./android/’ directory and ‘./android/app/’ directory.
  • Adding the metadata code to the xml file in‘./android/app/src/main’directory to finish configuring the native Android files in the React Native project.
  • Adding the Facebook login feature to the Facebook app that was created earlier and navigating to its dashboard.
  • Executing the final step of auto-login using Firebase console.

Implementing Google login

Implementing Google login for iOS and Android is pretty easy. For this, you have to install a React Native Google login package, run cacao pod, use Xcode for configuring the URL type, activate Google login on Firebase and lastly add a sample code to the application.

The final step

Now, the app can be tested on devices without having to buy a developer account. At the final stages of the developmental cycle, you may move the project codebase to expo if you wish to write a custom native code to impart uniqueness to the application.

Advantages of using React Native development services for Building Fitness apps

React Native’s easy learning curve and ease of execution, facilitates native app development for react native developers starting from the very first stage of the developmental cycle to releasing it in the app store without the need for touching Android Studio or XCode. Moreover, the usage of a type checker enables the developers to write codebases that are highly maintainable and lowers development expenses. Furthermore, service products such as Firebase account for a budget-friendly development along with a good mobile infrastructure.

Concluding words

I hope the step by step guidance on how to build a React Native Fitness application was helpful. For any further queries or assistance regarding your React Native app development project please write to us at sales.enquiry@biz4solutions.com. We are a highly experienced React Native App Development Company and a reliable technology partner catering to the needs of clients from diverse domains.

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

The Prime Benefits of Mobile applications in Education!

The advent of smartphone operated mobile applications turned out to be a super-convenient option for the users and proved immensely profitable for enterprises across diverse domains. The educational sector is no exception. Digital educational methodologies have revolutionized the teaching-learning approach altogether. Consequently, eLearning apps and other digital learning tools started gaining popularity during the last decade and its rate of adoption has been on the rise since then. Several educational institutions have employed ERP (Enterprise Resource planning) apps in the education field to streamline their workflow. Students too, these days rely more on digital resources and online courses owing to their convenience quotient. The educators also prefer the digital world to reach out to more learners and enhance the quality of education imparted. The year 2020 has witnessed how e-learning came as a huge sigh of relief for the entire teaching-learning community when Governments all over the world announced the closure of educational institutions owing to the Covid19 outbreak.

eLearning app development has gifted smart solutions that will help learners to expand their horizons of knowledge at affordable prices. So, smartphone apps, which were considered as distractive elements for students, have indeed become a blessing in disguise!

In this write-up, I have penned down the prime benefits of using smartphone apps in the educational sector. Read along to explore their potential!

How does the use of Mobile apps benefit the Educational Sector?

Flexibility in learning

ELearning solutions have successfully made education free from the confines of the classroom and made it accessible to all regardless of their location, age, or time constraints. Hence, learners residing in remote areas, grown-ups, and busy professionals can also quench their thirst for knowledge and obtain degrees via online courses.

Novel learning methodologies

Digital learning has introduced some innovative learning methodologies that are far more engaging and interesting than the traditional ones. The introduction of puzzles, fun games, challenging tasks, etc. tease the learner’s imagination and stimulate their thought processing leading to productive outcomes.

A video-oriented tutorial is another effective learning methodology. Video lessons arouse the learner’s interest in the topic. Moreover, visualizing and listening helps them to retain the information for much longer periods as compared to reading or attending lectures. Visuals are specifically helpful for those students who have low concentration levels or are reluctant to open a book.

Key to a treasure house of resources

Online study material like eBooks, informative videos, etc. provides the necessary information and explanation that a student is looking for instantly. This helps students solve their queries and complete their assignments without having to depend on any private tutor or external resources like reference books.

The endless online resources are also beneficial for those enthusiastic learners who cannot afford the luxury of attending full-fledged courses in educational institutions.

Skill enhancement and tracking of progress

ELearning solutions work wonders in skill enhancement of the students via interactive online sessions and continuous evaluation. Moreover, the learners and their guardians can track the academic progress and hence has better control over their child’s learning.

Improved Communication between educators and learners

The digital approach has helped to conquer an age-old limitation prevalent in the educational sector -effective communication between the educators and the learners. The reasons are as follows:

  • Students get easy online access to study material and assignments that were missed due to absence.
  • Online communication channels ensure better interaction between parents/students and the educators/school authorities.
  • Crucial information displayed through official websites, institution apps, digital calendar, etc. keep the parent informed about the upcoming campus events, important announcements or schedule changes without having to visit the campus or make phone calls to the reception.

Portability

One of the greatest benefits of leveraging digital education is that mobile apps can accommodate numerous books and provide access to the World Wide Web. So wherever you travel, all you need is an internet connection to access whichever book you want to read on your smart devices.

Automation of tasks

An educational institute can employ a mobile app like ERP for education to automate tasks such as recording students’ attendance, maintaining students’ information, fee collection, providing assignment instructions, preparing progress reports, etc. Automation of these time-consuming activities reduces the educators’ workload and enables them to devote more time to students. Please refer to the article “Educational ERP solution” to gain more insights onto the functioning of these ERP apps.

An environment-friendly option

The eLearning approach eliminates the need for unnecessary paperwork. Therefore, if institutions digitalize their workspace and a major chunk of teachers and students switch to digital study material instead of real books, the demand for paper will reduce drastically. This means that a lesser number of trees would be cut to meet the growing requirements of the paper manufacturing industries. So, isn’t eLearning an environment friendly-option?

Wrap-up:

Adopting the eLearning approach not only provides a competitive edge to the educational organization but also benefits the learners. The good news is that eLearning app developers are devising smarter mobile apps that will provide more facilities to the stakeholders of the educational sector. So, if you have still not digitalized your educational facility, it’s high time you should consult a Mobile App Development Company to build you a school/college management app.

Planning to hire eLearning app development services for your educational institution? Contact Biz4Solutions, a highly experienced eLearning app development company that develops impeccable eLearning apps. Let us know your project requirement at sales.enquiry@biz4solutions.com

For more details please visit:

Key considerations for architecting an impeccable mobile eLearning app

Mobile App Development Companies

React Native App Development Company

Angular App Development Company

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Developing a mobile application for your e-Commerce store is a smart business strategy indeed!


 Smartphones are becoming smarter with time! Consequently, there has been a spike in smartphone usage for online e-Commerce activities. Thanks to its convenience quotient, this device is being preferred over other gadgets like laptops or tablets to execute online purchases and transactions. Moreover, it has been observed that online shoppers prefer mobile apps over browsers.

As per statistical reports generated by the renowned online portal Statista, the percentage of mobile e-Commerce sales was 52.4 % in 2016 and has sky-rocketed to 70.4 % in 2020. The mobile retail sales figures are predicted to rise faster in the years to come.

Therefore, it has become an absolute necessity for retailers to hire an e-Commerce mobile app development company for their next project. A mobile app is the need of the hour, to capitalize on the market demand and gain a competitive edge over peers! This article will enlighten you about the need for Mobile Application Development in the realm of e-commerce. So let’s get started.

Types of e-Commerce Mobile applications

The prevalent business models for e-Commerce mobile applications are B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer).

B2B models are adopted by business organizations that are offering products or services to other enterprises. Apps such as HootSuite, Linkedln Pulse, etc. are used for interacting with clients or business partners.

B2C, the most popular model, is employed by the online stores for interaction and transaction with the buyers of their products. H&M, eBay, Amazon, and Paytm are examples of the most successful online stores that have leveraged mobile apps to generate revenue.

Top advantages of eCommerce Mobile App Development

e-Commerce mobile apps usher in a plethora of benefits to the app creators. Let’s explore the top benefits.

Enhanced shopping experience

  1. Mobile applications prove to be a super-convenient option for online shoppers and improve their shopping experience on account of the following reasons:
  2.  Purchases can be made from any location.
  3. Unlike browsers, there’s no need for providing the URL, the user has to just open the app and look for products to shop.
  4. An app facilitates faster loading of pages in comparison to browsers and responsive websites.
  5. The payment feature powered by Apple and Android is an added advantage for users.
  6. The apps utilize the inbuilt smartphone elements such as camera, microphone, GPS, AR, etc. to make online shopping more convenient, secure, and faster.
  7. Innovative e-Commerce apps with AI technology provide a 3D visibility of how a product will look at the customer’s home!
  8. Offline access to the saved products and some of the core functionalities aides the customers to finalize on purchase decisions.
  9. The customers can track orders and also view the history of previous orders that are saved in the app.
  10. Reaching out to customers is far easier by way of push or in-app notifications.
  11. Social media integration for the users enables the easy sign-in process.

Builds customer loyalty

It has been noticed that a majority of customers resort to their favorite mobile app for shopping. But, how to make your app the customer’s preferred choice? Given below are certain strategies thatwork wonders to gain the loyalty and trust of buyers.

  •          Collect customer feedback through reviews or online chats, and work on them to offer prioritized features.
  •          Offer personalized product experience to customers based on their suggestions during previous purchases.
  •          Use push notifications to inform customers about special offers or discounts and let them know when the products they had wished for would come back to stock.
  •          Arrange loyalty programs for regular customers by providing early access to new collections, gifts for huge purchases, bonus on later purchases, etc.

Once you succeed in acquiring customer loyalty, your business will grow in leaps and bounds.

Identify shopping trends

Mobile analytics enables businesses to identify the buyer’s preferences and on-going shopping patterns, customers’ responses to particular features and content, etc. utilizing technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning).The inventory is then updated to suit specific requirements based on customer priorities and changing trends. This is indeed a smart marketing strategy to stay up-to-date with the ever-changing patterns of the retail sector.

Brand recognition 

Mobile e-Commerce apps allow the customers to share their brand experiences, wish lists, product recommendations, etc. with friends and acquaintances on various social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This promotes the brand and attracts new customers.

Smart Investment

Mobile apps are user-friendly and far more flexible than other business models. They guarantee huge profits for the retail business as well. So, an app possessing the desired functionality and right concept increases the customer count and fetches more orders.

Final Verdict

An e-Commerce store without a mobile application is like a flightless bird! e-Commerce Mobile applications are powerful tools that advertise your brand, helps to gain and retain customers, and hence contribute to the growth and prosperity of your e-Commerce business. It’s high time that the e-Commerce business owners must not ignore the importance of eCommerce App Development and architecting mobile applications for their online store.

Are you looking for an eCommerce App Development services to build a mobile app for your business? Well then, Biz4Solutions,a renowned eCommerce app development company, is worth a try! We have excelled in providing premium services to our global clients, for more than 9 years.

Thursday, November 5, 2020

Ionic app development: Creating a Location-sharing app with Ionic!

Most of the modern-day applications have the facility of Google maps and location-sharing. Whether a taxi-booking app or a social media app or a food-ordering app, all have this vital feature embedded in the apps. Since this feature has become essential, several businesses have developed advanced location-sharing apps or at least embedded this feature in diverse apps.

So, in this blog, we are going to look at the basic procedure to build a location-sharing app or integrate this vital feature in them. Here we will use Ionic, the popular cross-platform framework, for this purpose. The reason to consider Ionic app development is that this technology is easy to adopt, enables the development of captivating UI/UX, and feature-rich performance-based apps. It is built on AngularJS which offers various functionalities for development and a robust environment that makes the code more manageable. Also, Ionic utilizes Cordova plugins and allows widget development. Owing to such myriad benefits, a plethora of businesses hire Ionic application development company for architecting enterprise applications.

So let’s get started, but before that, let us have a quick look at the criteria that the Ionic developers would be assuming before starting with the development.

  1.       .  We will be using Firebase for saving the data.
  2.        .We will create a custom directive for integrating Google Maps into our application.
  3.       .  We will be creating a mobile app for the Android platform.

Steps to Architect a Location-sharing app with Ionic

Installations of relevant softwares

  •          The first step is to install Node.js which automatically installs npm i.e. node package manager. Now you can install Ionic with the use of npm.
  •          Also, install the required dependencies for the Android platform. After installing them, you need to create a blank Ionic project.
  •          Now navigate to the project directory iMapApp. After this, you can add the desired platform, developit, and emulate. Now, a blank app will probably be running in the Android emulator. But, this process of running the app in the emulator every time will be time-intensive. So, it is advisable to use Ionic CLI for running the application in the browser. Once again, it is essential to install the required dependencies with the use of npm.
  •          After installing the dependencies, you need to run “ionic serve” in the terminal for the app to run in the browser.

UI Creation

  •          You can begin with the addition of a new template for showing the map. Now create a new folder known as www/templates in the project directory. Also, create a file named map.html inside templates.
  •          Google Maps will be rendered inside the HTML map where a div known as #map will be present. Also, there will be an input text box below the map for the users to fill the description and also a button for the details to be saved.
  •          Now we will be using the “ionNavView” directive to create different templates based on various states. Add this directive to index.html page. The next step is the removal of the current contents of the body tag and addition of the “ionNavBar” directive above the “ionNavView” for building a top bar.
  •          The title for the “ionNavBar” will be set from the rendered “ionView”.
  •          For the proper organization of the app interfaces into multiple states, the Angular UI router module is utilized by Ionic. Now open www/js/app.js as we will define a state for the map.html template by writing the required code.
  •          After implementing this code a new state for the URL “/map” is defined. This state will be rendering the template map.html and will be controlled by “MapCtrl” controller. To set the map as the default state, command “$urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/map')” is used.
  •          Now create a file- “controller.js” inside “www/js/” and also add its reference in the file called- “www/index.html”
  •          Then define the angular module first for defining controller code inside “controller.js”
  •          After this, define the controller “MapCtrl” and then enter the “starter.controllers” module into the starter app. After saving this, you can view the map.html template.
  •          Then you should add the Google Map in map.html which can be done by the creation of a custom directive known as “map”. Let us now define the directive in controller.js and add the directive attribute to div #map in map.html.

Adding default parameters like longitude, latitude, zoom in the Maps

  •          First, pass the longitude, latitude, and zoom parameters to the google map directive. With the use of parameter “attrs” you can access these attributes inside the link function of the directive.
  •          For evaluation of AngularJS expressions, “scope.$eval” is used.
  •          The next step is to include the Google Maps API reference in index.html. Using the default values, Google Map’s latitude and longitude can be defined. Also, define map options for Google Map.
  •          With appropriate code, add style to “www/css/style.css” for styling the “#map” div.
  •          Lastly, save all the modifications to view Google Maps on the map page.

Adding a marker to the Google Maps

  •          We need to modify the directive with the right code. Marker’s default position is set as longitude and latitude that is passed as an attribute. Also, the draggable option is set as true.
  •          After implementing the code and saving the changes, a draggable marker will be visible in Google Maps.

Tracking the position of Marker

  •          For this purpose, we will be attaching a “dragend” event to the Google Maps marker. Also, for attaching the drag end event listener inside the directive, add the right code.
  •          After saving these changes, just try to drag the marker. Now inspect the browser console which must include the current longitude and latitude.

Saving all the details

  •          In “MapCtrl”, define a $scope variable called “user” which will consist of information like longitude, latitude, and the data that the user enters.
  •          In “MapCtrl” controller, create a function known as “saveDetails” which will use “scope.user” variable for fetching the required information.
  •          Update the variables- “$scope.user.longitude” and “$scope.user.latitude” in the “dragend” event listener’s callback function when the users will move the marker on the map.
  •          For updating the model bindings, call the “scope.$apply” function. After this, you need to attach the following:

o   a ngModel directive to the description input text box

o   a ngClick directive to the save button

  •          Now save the data to Firebase. For this, you will first need to register with Firebase if you don’t have an account. After logging in, you will get a unique firebase URL.
  •          After signing to the Firebase account, in the dashboard, you will find a plus link next to this URL. Click on that plus link and enter the below-mentioned inputs to get a sub URL- /MapDetails.

o   value as 0

o   name as “MapDetails”

  •          To use firebase in the app, Include the script references in index.html. Insert firebase in controller.js and MapCtrl controller. Create a firebase object inside this controller. Create an instance of the firebase object. Use the firebase push API inside the save Details function, for saving the data to firebase. Once saved, refresh the application.
  •          Now just drag the marker to a certain location on the Maps, enter some description and save this. All this data should be present when you check the firebase dashboard.
  •          After the data is saved, using the Ionic popup, create an alert for notifying the users. In the MapCtrl controller, inject the $ionicPopup. Again, in the MapCtrl controller, add a function known as “showAlert”.
  •          This function calls the “$ionicPopup” service for showing a pop-up having a template and a title.
  •          After this, you should call “showAlert” in the success callback of the push API call.
  •          Finally, save all the changes and the details once again. After saving these details in Firebase,you will get a pop-up showing a success message. This completed the process.

Conclusion:

We just saw the step-by-step method to integrate Google maps in the Ionic Apps. We hope this will be useful to the Ionic developers and also to an Ionic app development company aiming to design impeccable apps with location-sharing functionality.

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