Developing Hybrid Mobile Application for Your Business

It is evident that the mobile world has been growing rapidly these past few years. With the boom of internet, the usage of the handheld devices, such as smart phones, iPhones and tablets, is also growing day by day.

Due to the increasing demand and sales of smartphones and tablets, modern businesses cannot ignore the benefits of mobile apps for their customers. It is a difficult task to create an app with the perfect mix of features and platform support at reasonable cost.

In general, these are the three technologies that are used for mobile application development: native, web and hybrid mobile app development. A hybrid application leverages both native and mobile web technologies. The development process of hybrid apps includes the qualities of both the web and native application development processes.

The hybrid app development is basically built with the native programming languages such as Java, Objective C, and web technology such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. It is developed based on the concept WORA or Write-Once-Run-Anywhere, which is nothing but it supports all mobile devices of different operating systems.

Using this hybrid app development approach, developers write important portions of their app in cross-platform web technologies, whereas, they maintain direct access to native APIs when needed.

The native portion of the hybrid app uses the operating system APIs to build an embedded HTML rendering engine, which acts as a bridge between the device APIs and the browser. This makes the hybrid app to take the advantages of all the features that the latest devices have to provide.

A hybrid application mostly uses native features of any device such as geo-location, calendar, notification, contacts, camera, and offline storage. It also supports various features that are supported by touch screen display devices.  For graphics, a hybrid app can use HTML, Canvas and SVC. Also, a number of hybrid apps support offline work such as an online game has an offline game practice features.

The hybrid mobile app development is accessed effortlessly through the internet without using any web browser, as it uses web view control to display HTML and JavaScript files on a screen. The web view control covers WebView on Android, UIWebView on iOS, and so on.

Advantages of hybrid mobile app development:

• Uses of open source technologies such as PhoneGap, Sencha and SproutCore
• Flexible for both multi-platform and cross-platform development
• High-performance and cost-effective
• Easy to download and install features
• Highly interactive and impressive user interface
• Great access to device features
• Re-usable code base for various mobile platforms

Why a hybrid app is important for your business?

From a business viewpoint, developing a hybrid mobile app is the best idea, because this app development doesn’t require you to develop a full app for every mobile platform.

A hybrid app is cross-platform by design, and also it resolves some of the problems that some experience with web applications. From iOS to Windows Phone to Android to Blackberry OS, hybrid apps provide across-the-board functionality.

Some of the benefits of hybrid mobile apps are as follows:

• Standardized branding: Developing a hybrid app helps you to have an app that is basically standard on all mobile devices. This gives a great user experience for your customers who use your app on their mobile devices. However, if you want to update your app, then a single update will fix the app on all platforms. So, if your customers change from one mobile platform to another, the user interface of the app will remains the same.
• Better Integration: Similar to native mobile apps, hybrid mobile apps use the own code of mobile device to keep it in sync with other mobile applications. Hence, it works well with GPS, messaging, cameras and other device information to offer best service to your customers.
• Better Speed: Hybrid apps are not faster than native apps; however, they are comparatively faster than mobile web apps as they support various best features. Unlike mobile web apps, the hybrid apps will not require network communication which can be the main reason for slowdown.
• Accessibility: To ensure that your customers can able to easily access your products or services whenever they require, you need to have your app available for download in various mobile stores. Hybrid apps ensure that your app will be accessible across almost all app download platforms such as Android Google Play store, Apple App store, Windows Phone App store, and so on.
• Offline use: Similar to native apps, hybrid mobile apps use the device’s API, and hence they store some data offline. So, your customers can able to use your hybrid apps even though they have the problem with network connectivity.

So, it is important for every business to enrich or improve their mobile applications by adding the native device capabilities. To do this, it is time for you to race ahead and develop a hybrid app for your business.

Why do you essentially need a mobile app for your business?

In today’s mobile world, mobile apps have become an integral part of almost every business, irrespective of their industry and size. Nowadays, mobile apps are no longer just games or entertainment programs. You have so many mobile apps available in the market certainly used for eCommerce, finance and management.

Mobile apps help any business to improve efficiency and productivity. While most companies have their own website, it is undeniably more profitable for them to also develop a mobile app.

These are some of the reasons why you essentially need a mobile app for your business:

• Capture mobile commerce: One of the main reason your business requires a mobile app is to capture mobile commerce. Because, the number of customers using their mobile devices to make purchases has been drastically increasing over the last few years. A mobile app can frame the purchasing experience in a way that is reliable and consistent with the brand. Also, it allows for various kinds of sales such as micro payments from anywhere in the world.

• Customer engagement: In order to increase customer engagement and drive conversions, you need to have a mobile app for your business. You can work with a professional mobile app development company to create a program that becomes a valuable resource for your customers. 

• Better customer service: It is a fact that a good customer service will help a business to increase retention and keep customers away from the competition. A mobile app, specially developed for your business, helps you to provide a fast and easy way for your customers to contact you about customer service issues from any of their convenient locations. 

• Local business: Generally, a business with a storefront must have a mobile app to increase visibility and sales. A mobile app can use geolocation or other similar technologies to search customers who are a certain distance from your store. It also provides information about your products, coupons and discounts that you provide to your customers. Hence, by using the mobile app that interacts directly to people residing nearby, local businesses can overcome the competition in their area.

• Extend the reach of the business: Today, consumers are looking for products and services through mobile devices while they are on the move. So, to remain competitive and to extend the reach of your business, you need to have a mobile app to connect with these people.

• Manage scheduling activities: In the app store, some planners and other organizing applications are readily available for mobile devices. Those applications help you to manage your schedules and other business activities, and hence make you to avoid conflicts in your business.

• Promote business: Mobile apps greatly help to promote any business efficiently and inexpensively. As almost all businesses start to build applications and endeavor to custom their marketing strategies to fit mobile devices, you can easily expect an increase in mobile advertising through mobile app development.

• Financial management: Having the ability to monitor and manage your business’ finances anywhere around the world is very efficient indeed and is very handy. Today, mobile applications are available in the app store help you perform well-organized financial management. Using mobile apps, you can easily monitor the financial standings of your company and react accordingly in order to quickly solve any problems. 

As mobile industry is booming and continuing to grow, it is advisable for any business to develop mobile apps to promote their products and services. Mobile is undeniably the way all communication is headed nowadays and so, adopting this technology is ensured to produce the perfect results for your business.