William Buckley can tell you first hand that the seeds to entrepreneurship are often found during more difficult times. Almost 20 years ago, Buckley lost his job with one of Maine’s largest savings banks due to a merger. After several interim jobs, he discovered Coffee News, a small publication given out in coffee houses and other eateries. The advertising opportunities intrigued him enough to buy his own Coffee News local territory.To say he took to this business opportunity would be a bit of an understatement. Buckley and Coffee News went together like, well, coffee and the morning paper.It took only a year for the Canadian based company to see something special in Buckley, and offered him the rights to franchise all of the U.S. Eventually, Buckley would go on to purchase the company and gain control of the world wide publishing and distribution rights. Coffee News now has 1075 franchisees in over 22 countries.Coffee News is a weekly restaurant publication delivered free of charge to restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, hospitals, nursing homes, doctors offices, walk in medical clinics, employer break rooms or anywhere people sit, and wait or eat. Coffee News only has good news and no bad news and is filled with fun interesting stories, jokes and trivia. Small and medium sized advertisers purchase space in the publication in exclusive ad spaces. Only one business per industry category and restaurants are not allowed to advertise unless in tourist areas.Like most home based businesses, franchisees can choose to run their territory on a full or part time basis, but he states that they “prefer full time publishers. Some stay at home Moms can publish one or two franchises if the children are in school. On the other hand we have some publishers who own 22 franchises and employ several people.”With over 1000 territories being run, including home offices in Mexico, Venezuela, Spain, Canada, and New Zealand, franchisees come in all shapes and sizes. “We look for people who like people, have good sales and networking skills and are self starters,” says Buckley. “If they have a desire to work for themselves and be independent and make in excess of 100k per year, we would like to talk to them. We have had some excellent military retirees, and other early retirees who have done extremely well. They must enjoy going out on the streets to meet the business owners in their stores.”Business is thriving, up nearly 25% this year alone. “Coffee News is a very affordable advertising medium for small to medium sized businesses that do not have large advertising budgets. People love to read Coffee News. It is universally attractive so advertisers get great results.”All this points to a great work from home business opportunity.According to the Coffee News website, surveys show that the Coffee News publication is read five to seven times. “It has been proven that people absorb more advertising messages before or during eating, as there is a need for mental input – food for thought – during this time period. Coffee News is designed to take full advantage of this fact.”In 2008 Coffee News purchased a large printing company in Houlton, Maine. This facility is responsible for printing over 11 million copies of Coffee News a year. Not outsourcing the printing is one of the many ways the franchisor keeps costs down, making it one of the more affordable franchises to buy into. To buy into this home based business, a franchisee needs only $8000 for their first territory. Additional territories are then discounted to $5500. Financing is also available after the purchase of the first franchise. The average publisher owns 3 franchises.To help franchisees reach their potential, free 2 1/2 day training sessions are offered led by corporate staff and veteran publishers. Some topics that may be covered are sales, ad design, billing, collections, distribution, marketing, and startup. This program is optional to take, however, 95% of existing Coffee News publishers have attended. Additional support includes mentor programs, personal calls, free Quickbooks software with a built in Merchants services program for charge cards, conferences, newsletters, regional meetings, and online chat groups.Advertising experience is not a necessity to be a successful Coffee News franchisee. The operations manual not only teaches how to design ads, but also how ads work, giving the franchisee a better understanding of the business as a whole. The tools provided will allow franchisees to help small businesses even in trying times, making this a home based business opportunity that can thrive during recessions.”Why be limited to a paycheck when you can make as much as you want” offers Buckley.There are thousands of franchises available, and Buckley is proud to point out that only 2% of them have over 1000 franchisees, a true sign that his quick growth was no fluke. Will this type of success continue? Its safe to say that as long as coffee and the morning paper continue to form a powerful partnership, we can expect to see Coffee News take advantage and thrive.

Once the app is downloaded, you have little time to take a sigh of relief, and then again start focusing on making things easier for the them till their goal is achieved.

According to the AppsFlyer, an app marketing company, the global uninstall rate for apps after 30 days is 28%. Entertainment apps are most frequently deleted, whereas apps based on Finance is least frequently deleted. No matter which app category you belong to, your strategy should be to remain in the mobile phones of users for a long time, and not just sit around but to fulfill your purpose as well.

If we analyze the encounters of users with an app step by step, it can help us unveil the critical factors that influence mobile app audiences, so that we can work upon those and achieve our purpose. Here are the details:

Step1. Finding Your App in Appstore

For this, we have to first find out what exactly users type to search an app. Based on a research, it has been found that 47% app users on iOS confirmed that they found the app through the App Store’s search engine and 53% app users on Android confirmed the same.

What have been their search queries? Interestingly, as the per the data provided by the TUNE research, 86% of the top 100 keywords were brands.With little scope for non-branded categories, most of the keywords were either of games of utility apps. Common keywords in the non branded category are: games, free games, VPN, calculator, music, photo editor, and weather.

Leaving brands aside, if we analyze the user-type of a Non-branded category, we will get two types of users:

1. Users are informed, and they know what they are search

2. Users are exploring possibilities, have no precise information in mind.

If you are a mobile app development company, targeting non-branded users, then your efforts must be directed to creating apps that compel these two types of users. To do so, we have to analyze once they are on an app store, what keywords they use to search. Regina Leuwer, with expertise in marketing & communications, bring some light to the subject. She reached out Sebastian Knopp, creator of app store search intelligence tool appkeywords, who shared with her the data of unique trending search phrases. And according to that data, in 2017, there were around 2,455 unique search phrases trending in the US.

Now, if we study these data to get information, we will find that name of the app is critical to attract the attention of the users.

If your app belongs to non-branded category, then make sure your app name is similar to the common search queries but also unique in comparison with your competitors. So that when your app name is flashed, they click it on to it, finding it purposeful and compelling both.

Step 2. Installation

Remember your users are on mobile devices has limited resources, from battery to storage and RAM to Internet. Everything is limited. So better create an application that is easy to download or say get downloaded with 5 minutes. One critical advice here:

1. Keep the application file size small.

If you are a developer, use APK Analyser to find out which part of the application is consuming maximum space. You can also reduce classes.dex file and res folder that contains images, raw files, and XML.

Step 3. Onboarding

After the user has successfully downloaded your mobile application, don’t leave anything on assumptions. Guide them properly. This you can do through an onboarding process, where users can learn the key functionality and where to begin with the mobile app. Below are the 3 things you need to keep in your mind when creating an onboarding process for your users.

Short and Crisp: The entire guidance of features and functions should be completed within few seconds, with easy options loud and clear option to skip.

Precise Information: Don’t introduce them to the app. They already know what they have downloaded. The objective to inform about the key functions and features.

Allow Users to Skip: Let the tech-savvy users skip the intro. Your app is to meet their requirement and not to have a friendly session.

Step 4. Purpose and UI
Here, the stage is set for your app and it is the golden chance for you to impress your users. What is needed here is the collaboration between purpose and UI of the app. It totally depends on the problem-solving capability and ease of use of the mobile app. Interface design plays the critical role, allowing the users to access features of the apps easily and quickly to perform the task for what they have downloaded the app. When it comes to interface design, make sure that the design is interactive and task-oriented. Here are some factors that you must take care off while creating mobile app interface:

1. Usability: The Mobile phone is an epitome of convenience and if your users find it difficult to use your app, then there is no way there are going to make the space for it in their mobile phones. From screen size to the color of the app, there are many factors that are equally critical and need attention.

2. Intuitive: To create an intuitive User Interface, you have to read the mind of the users, and develop a model based on that. The next should be precise, clear and ‘obvious’ in an interface.

3. Availability: Key features should be hidden in the drop down menu or even if so, it should be obvious for the user to look into the drop-down. An intricate work of design and research is required to make essential features available for the customers and they don’t need to navigate here and there.

If you need more help with the user-interface and innovative ideas for a mobile app, write to me [email protected] and I promise to get back to you with interesting mobile app designs.