The use of utility, productivity, and business apps has exploded over the past few years. In fact, business apps were used 30% more in 2016 than they were in 2015. This increased use means apps are being developed and improved all the time, offering a world of functionality to your homescreen. Whether you’re working with a team or running a one-person operation, any busy entrepreneur can benefit from tools that help organize and streamline work, while saving time, money, and energy. Let’s look at some of the most popular apps that can simplify your life today. Project Management and Team Communication Apps for project management and team communication can keep track of progress and deadlines for entire companies or departments, individual projects and tasks. They allow scheduling, task delegation, and much more. Supervisors can easily see which workers are busy and which have time to be assigned additional tasks. Everyone involved in a project can access the information they need, see the calendar, provide updates, share files, and chat with other team members (in groups or one-on-one) in real time. The following apps are some of the most popular in this category, and each can be accessed on a smartphone, tablet or desktop: Slack Trello Flow These apps have some similarities in function, but you may find that one of them has specific features that best suit your team’s needs. Contractors working with multiple clients may find themselves using any or all of these due to their popularity and different client preferences. Information and Task Organization Entrepreneurs constantly juggle professional and personal obligations. You don’t want to let anything slip through the cracks, so keep track of everything with tools that save time and effort. Workflow The Workflow app combines the functions of a wide variety of apps into a single dashboard for streamlined use. That way, you can do everything inside a single app rather than spending time switching between them and hunting for information to get through your day. For example, you can see calendar reminders and tasks, make a PDF, save photos and create GIFs, respond to texts and emails, use social media, order lunch, and more. It essentially allows you to create your own personalized productivity app. Workflow works with smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches. MobileDay If you frequently participate in conference calls, MobileDay may be able to save you a lot of hassle. It gathers conference call times, phone numbers and access codes from your calendar and email so you can connect to the call easily, from virtually anywhere, with the touch of a button. When MobileDay indicates that it’s time, just hit the call button and it will find the most recent update of the call-in number and access code. This eliminates any scrambling to find a last-minute number change. The app dials for you and connects you to the call so you can concentrate on your business. Wunderlist There are many to-do list apps on the market, but Wunderlist is one of the most popular. This free app allows to you track personal and professional tasks, set reminders, and more. The Pro version allows you to share your list items with others for a fee, and includes file-sharing. The Business version expands its functionality to create a task/project management system shared by a whole team, which operates in a similar way to the apps mentioned above. Wave It shouldn’t require a lot of extra effort and expense just to get paid for the work you do. Wave is a service that streamlines the processes of invoicing, accounting, and receipt scanning with free software. Keep track of accounts payable and receivable, and stay ready for tax season. You can add Wave’s credit card processing and payroll functions for a pay-as-you-go fee. Food and Supply Delivery When you need food or other supplies, but don’t have time to leave work to get them, the ability to order out for delivery with an app can be a real lifesaver. Postmates works with a network of local couriers in a given area to deliver food, office supplies, sundries, personal items, and more. The service is available in more than 100 cities around the U.S. Since business apps are increasingly popular, new and improved apps are released frequently. Take the time to check out your options. You may find that you’re missing out on a great app that could solve some of your daily business challenges.

Everyone who develops an app for consumer use has to face the question of price. Should your app be free to use? If not, what should you charge for it? These are difficult questions to answer, especially if you’ve spent countless sleepless hours thinking through every last feature of your app to make it the best it can be. Pricing your app is a bit more complex than classifying it as “free” or “paid.” There are four different payment models you could consider, based on a number of factors. Before you decide on an app price, take a look at all four models, the benefits of each, and then decide how you can choose the right model for your app. Meet the App Pricing Models Free The majority of apps in the Apple and Google Play store fall into this category. It’s interesting to note the contrast between the two stores. In the Apple Store, 61% of apps are free, compared to 92% of apps available for Android. This is due to Android’s open source software and the fact that it attracts more DIY, small-scale app developers. In this pricing model, your app will be free of charge to download and use. If you are looking to generate revenue from your app, your revenue stream would come through advertising and directing users towards a larger platform where people can opt into other charges. Free app developers understand their best shot to make money is not with an upfront download charge. Don’t underestimate the revenue that in-app advertising can bring — more than 80% of Facebook’s ad revenue now comes from mobile advertising. Free apps have the major advantage of being searched first in app stores. Freemium Freemium apps are free to download, but place in-app restrictions on what a person can do or access with the free version. This model acts as a teaser, giving people access to the basic functions of an app in order to hook them into paying for additional features. This includes encouraging users to buy new filters for their photos, extra lives or tools for their games, exclusive recipe content for cooking apps, or items for their virtual farm. Anything that requires the spending of real money to advance functionality in your app space. Remember, in order to get your users interested in the premium version of your app or the paid features, your free version must offer some engaging value at the basic level. This pricing model is ideal if you want to reap the organic traffic brought in by free apps, but think you have enough features worth monetizing. For some categories of apps, such as games, you may need to plan for regular updates and additions to your available in-app purchases in order to keep users engaged long term. Paid: One-Time Purchase In this model, users pay a one-time fee to download your app. Setting a price for your app will depend on a number of factors, including the demographics and interests of your target market, and competitor price points. Interestingly enough, $0.99 is not the most popular price. In the Apple Store, 12% of apps are listed at $2.99, and 8% at $4.99. These outrank the 6% of apps charged at the minimum $0.99 rate. One challenge of the one-time payment model is that users cannot try out your app before spending money on it — you’re essentially asking users to buy a product without testing it. This can slow downloads, unless your app falls under a niche market, doesn’t have much competition, or comes with heavyweight reviews. These kinds of paid apps are best for popular businesses that already have a large base of loyal customers. Paid: Recurring Subscription As opposed to charging users once to download your app, you may consider charging a recurring monthly or annual subscription. This works well for apps that produce fresh content on a regular basis (such as news apps) or those offering ongoing services (such as personal finance apps and streaming apps). One advantage of this model is that you may be able to charge users more in the long run than they’d be willing to pay in a one-time fee, generating a steady stream of revenue for your business. The subscription model also allows you to offer a free trial, which can lower the barrier to entry for new customers. This model does require you to make additional decisions, such as whether you want to bill monthly or annually, (the answers depend heavily on your target market and how the app is used). You’ll need to plan for the subscription model early during development of your app, as the app will need to recognize the time interval set for your subscription, and be able to accommodate changes in user subscription status, expired subscriptions and more. Paidmium This pricing model is a blend of the paid and freemium models. These apps require an initial download cost — plus additional opportunities for in-app purchases. The paidmium model keeps developers on their toes, but should only be used if a company is certain it can continue providing valuable content to users on a consistent basis. Choosing Your Pricing Model There are three major questions you should consider when choosing a pricing model for your app: Who is my audience? Survey results show that those in the baby boomer generation will be less likely to pay for an app than younger consumers, who have fewer reservations about spending money on app downloads. What are my competitors doing? If you are the only paid app among a sea of freemium apps with similar offerings, your product will drown. Look at the most popular pricing model for your competition and price your app accordingly. iOS or Android? The Apple Store has more paid apps than the Google Play Store. You may consider different pricing schemes, depending on whether you’re selling in one or both stores. Pricing for Internet of Things (IoT) Devices If your app is for an IoT device, scrap the regular pricing model schemes. Because these apps offer highly-personalized, on-demand services for IoT devices, they naturally demand an initial payment from the user for the actual device. Many IoT gadgets come with a selection of apps already installed by the company that produced the device. Consider whether your app would be better sold to consumers, to be downloaded onto their various IoT devices, or to the makers of the IoT devices themselves. IoT apps offer a range of services in one app (think of a home security app that can identify potential fires, intruders, and lock your front door if it has slipped your mind). While the app itself may be included for free, its provided services are not. As a result, IoT app companies are creating tiered payment models for customers, ranging from the most basic of services to higher paid tiers that offer more flexibility. This allows customers the freedom to choose their level of investment. IoT apps can also be pay-as-you-go. For example, imagine having an air conditioning unit that’s connected to the IoT, and charges you only for your rate of usage. We already see insurance payment models in which users pay for car insurance per mile driven; the rise of IoT vehicles will make it possible to not only pay-per-mile to rent a car, but also pay-per-usage for any IoT app services you may use while driving that car. The pay-what-you-use approach gives users flexibility in how much they spend for the services your app offers. Don’t Wait Until Release to Set a Price It’s best to consider the pricing model and price point for your app before you go into the development stage. This way, your development team can design and produce features that fit what’s needed for your revenue model — whether that’s elements to accommodate advertising, encourage in-app purchases, or direct users to a wider network. During development and design, you can always rework the pricing model as you add or remove features from the app. By the time you’re ready for release, you’ll not only have a well-built app but also a well-suited pricing model to go along with it, so as your app delights users it also provides you with appropriate revenue. If you need help assessing a price point for your app, Barefoot Solutions offers a full-service team to guide you in the process, from strategy and marketing to design and development — let us help you bring your app to life.

As a custom app development shop, our answer to client questions is almost always yes. Can you build social login? Yes. Can we add @mentions? Yes. Private Messages? Yes. Camera effects? Yes. Yes. Yes. Software development in 2018 is more powerful than ever, and so is the temptation to add all sorts of bells and whistles to your app. But should you? No. Because what you don’t build is just as important as what you do. The concept of oppositional forces is pretty common in other design disciplines, but much less so in UI/UX design. For example note the deliberate use of negative space in these popular logos, including FedEx’s famous arrow. Music is another example, where the silence is every bit as important as the sound itself. In the world of UX design “negative space” takes the form of functional constraints, or all the things you can’t do.  Perhaps the best illustration of this is Twitter, which famously decided to limit messages to just 140 characters. Over time this seemingly arbitrary constraint became the critical seed for a massively popular communication platform. Because make no mistake, we all WANT to write longer messages. But Twitter’s UX forced us to play by their rules, and in doing so created something unique. Facebook offers another great example of leveraging UX constraints. We all know the story- Facebook began as a small shrub living in the shadow of the social networking juggernaut MySpace, which Rupert Murdoch bought for $580 Million in 2005. But Myspace is now essentially worthless while Facebook is valued at $500 Billion. What’s fascinating from a UX standpoint is that Facebook didn’t beat MySpace by doing more, they won by doing less. Specifically, there were two critical UX decisions generally accepted as the reasons why they won the social network war: • Facebook did NOT allow everyone to sign up. At the start they limited accounts to college students only, which gave it a critical sheen of exclusivity and maturity just as MySpace was being overrun with younger kids and spammy content. • Facebook did NOT allow the ability to customize profile pages, allowing for a consistent and clean UI that stood in stark contrast to MySpace’s abrasive user-generated layouts. Instagram offers a more contemporary example; at first I found it frustrating that when re-opening the app, it ditches what you were previously looking at and auto-refreshes to more recent content. For example if you scroll down 20 pictures, when re-opening the app it will jump back to the top of those 20. But over time I came to realize that NOT saving my location and refreshing the content was causing me to compulsively check the app by feeding my “seeker” brain with new content every time. Another fascinating Instagram constraint is the inability to create web links. Hyperlinks are a fundamental currency of the internet, and yet when commenting on Instagram, their UX team has made a very deliberate decision to prevent users from including linked URLs in comments. The only hyperlinks you can create are #hashtags and @mentions. And consider the consequence of that decision: it prevents users from leaving the app and forces the social engagement to remain very basic, both of which work towards supporting Instagram’s primary identity as a lightweight picture based experience. And that’s an important point, because the key to leveraging constraints in UX design is to do so in a manner that strengthens the focus on your app's core identity.  Constraints that work against your core value proposition will be damaging, but constraints that pull users back into your sweet spot are invaluable to your success. A great example of this two-sided UX coin is Snapchat, which became the hottest new app in town by introducing a wonderfully simple constraint: disappearing messages. In a world of oppressively persistent social media, where mistakes we made 10 years ago float into our job interviews, Snapchat offered an oasis of consequence free pictures and video. It was brilliant, and the platform took off like a rocket. But over time temptation crept in, and Snapchat couldn’t resist adding new features that directly contradict the temporary messages which defined their identity. Take for example the “Memories” section which saves your old Snaps so you can repost them again. On the surface this may seem like a neat new tool, but if we dig a little deeper, what is the Memories section doing to their core value proposition of not saving messages? It obliterates it. I could elaborate further (public stories!) but the bottom line is that over time Snapchat added new functionality that undermined the key ephemerality constraint that defined their platform. If you go find a millennial and ask them why they like Snapchat, most likely they will mention Snapchat's awesome face filters, because the mental model of disappearing messages has been almost entirely eroded. Certainly they won't know why the logo is a ghost. And not coincidentally, Snapchat is currently in crisis- numbers have leaked showing adoption has started to flatline. The easy explanation is to blame Instagram for brazenly ripping off Snapchat’s stories, but that view overlooks the many ways in which Snapchat removed its own key constraints and evolved itself into basically the same service as Instagram. Instagram could never have competed with Snapchat if the playing field was privacy and disappearing content. There are many more examples of this, including Twitter's recent decision to double their character limit to 280, but I'll take my own advice now and wrap this up. The key takeaway for UX designers and product developers is to ask yourself: What are my key constraints? And do I offer any functionality that could be removed to improve focus on my product's core value?