Chat Feature for small businesses

If customer has any question, they have to call to the business, but today customer feel more comfortable to connect without calling, like chatting in real-time and get required details. Be it some question, feedback or for that matter anything business can help them with.

With App created using 123 Apps Studio, business can include “Chat” feature and start connecting with their customer directly at their fingertips. Customer will have better way to connect with business and chat with them in realtime. It’s like Facebook messenger but designed for small business. In short replacement for customer phone calls.

Here are some benefits of Chat feature for small business and their customers:

• Connect with customer through today’s most preferred channel – Real time messaging
• Chat keeps track of previous conversations and helps to remind if anything required
• Replace phone calls with chat and avoids spending time on phone during busy schedule

Customer Connects with Business

Business Get the list of users contacting them

Business respond to the messages in real-time

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Hybrid vs Native Mobile Apps

Before developing mobiles apps one question always comes up is whether to go with Native app or hybrid app? There are pros and cons for both and depending on the requirement, you need to decide which way to go. Here is what’s Native and hybrid apps in nutshell.

Hybrid App: Developer build app using HTML5 and wrap it with native SDK and can be deployed across multiple platforms.

Native apps: This is platform (e.g. iOS, Android, Windows, etc) specific, so there would be separate app for each platform and that needs to be developed separately for each platform. Requires expertise in that platform to build an app.

Here are the few things to consider while deciding which way to go:

1. Features: What features you want in the app. With native app, you have complete access to phone features like camera, contact list, SMS etc. With hybrid you can get some of the features from phone but not all. Hybrid app can be good for content driven app verses feature specific. If you want to access phone features / sensors, you need native apps. E.g. You can’t use Touch ID in hybrid app
2. User Experience: It’s mobile first world when it comes to online users, that means when user visit the app, it should be user friendly and easy to use. It should look neat and slick. At anytime native app would look much awesome compared to best hybrid app. With Hybrid app, user interface improvement has it’s own limit. For best user experience native app are best
3. Cost & Time: This is where hybrid app comes into picture. As you need to develop app only once for hybrid, automatically cost and time required are much lower compared to platform specific expertise and time required to build an app. As there would be only one codebase for hybrid app, future modification will also cost less.
4. Performance:  As OS for mobiles are developed specifically for native apps and it supports it’s libraries much better, native app will beat the performance and better throughput anytime.

In overall, If you want to build best in class app, native is your best bet. If you want to have less cost and moderate performance, you can go with hybrid app.

123 Apps Studio is platform where restaurants and grocery stores / Mom & Pop shops can create their app and launch it on their own with just drag and drop. Schedule a demo today to see if this is for you.

Power of Mobile

Mobile has already changed the way we interact, transact or more over live life in recent years. Already we are using many apps in day-to-day life to do interactions, banking transactions, communication, transportation and many more. This is still starting and witnessing upward trend. Few features which are making difference and continue to change the way we do things today.

1. Users Physical Location: This is something that provides the developer to know where exactly the user is at given point and customize the service accordingly. Be it getting Uber / Lyft cab where you are or when you are outside Starbucks getting an alert for app service. Apple’s iOS 9 provide exact service at that given place at given time. I listen to audio books on Audible while driving to office. When I’m inside car and even before I start, my iPhone automatically provide option on-screen to start the Audible app and it’s ready for my use with just one click. Similarly there are hundreds of services currently using location features. With Hurricane Erika approaching florida, Weather apps are sending alerts with exact required details. There would be hundreds of important apps which will be built around this feature
2. Push Notification: This gives tremendous powers to push important notifications to the users. It’s customizable to the extent of individual level. Say if this is used in marketing context, brands can send unique offers to each given user depending on that users details. Mostly this feature is used for important updates only as if there are unnecessary notifications, users usually turn the notifications off for given app. so there is caution tale attached for marketers. My Fitness app, Runkeeper send me push notification if I don’t run consecutively for 3 days. It’s personalized notification, just like a reminder, event-driven. Most of the apps use this features along with location feature as together it becomes deadly combo.
3. Automated, behind the curtain task: This is something like automating your life or removing boring or sometime important activities. Its like particular app or your mobile in-built feature itself perform something even without you opening the app or using mobile. For example, When you reach office, your mobile automatically sends the notification to your dear ones, or may be in emergency you are able to send details to predefined someone on click of button. It can be used for any other chores. IFTTT App does a lot of these activities with predefined conditions.

In overall with combination of multiple features mobile apps are solving day-to-day life problem and even helping to improve the lives.