10 Best Free Photo Editing Apps for Android

Camera on smartphones are getting better with each passing model and are approaching the quality of point-and-shoot camera. With high megapixel sensors and optical image stabilization, more and more people are taking photos with their smartphones and leaving their digital cameras behind.Since most people use Android smartphones to take pictures, so we have listed some free but powerful photo editing apps that you can use on-the-go to take your photography to the next level.

1. PicsArt – Photo Studio
   PicsArt is one of the most popular photo editing apps with over 100 million installs on Android market. It is a one-stop app that consists of photo editor, drawing tool, photo grid, college maker and much more.
   This app provides tons of options for photo manipulations and a wide variety of effects, masks, borders, stickers, text tools, clipart graphics, callouts, frames, enhancement tools and more. Users can also make collages, photo grids, and draw on their photos. It is a perfect platform to unleash your creativity via photo editing.
   PicsArt has its own social networking service which allows you to share your images with the largest mobile art-based community. You can create a PicsArt profile and use the in-app purchase system to get rid of ads and download various stickers to be inserted in your pictures.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Snapseed
   Snapseed is a great photo editing app created by respected software developer, Nik Software Inc., which is a popular plugins manufacturer for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.
   With the app, you can easily enhance and transform your photos using its incredibly advanced features like auto correct, selective adjust, and tune image feature.
   The Auto Correct feature enhances colors, exposure and contrast in a single tap. The Selective Adjust feature lets you highlight and focus specific objects or areas and the Tune Image feature tweaks brightness, shadows, white balance, saturation and other effects. Other features of Snapseed include frames, texture and tone adjustment, sharing via email, and more.
   Snapseed used to be a costly app, but since Google acquired Nik Software, Snapseed is now free of charge and has been integrated with Google+.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Pixlr Express
   Pixlr Express is one of the most powerful photo editing app developed by Autodesk Inc and is available for free. This app lets you quickly crop, resize, and fix any picture, remove red-eye, and whiten teeth.
   It has enough tools for power users too, coupled with Photoshop-like effects such as pencil, poster, halftone, water color, sketch, among others.
   Pixlr Express is equipped with a lot of interesting features. You can create photo collage with so many cool effects, such as focal blur, denoise, and more. Its Auto Fix feature is the most interesting as with just one click the app automatically adjusts brightness, color, exposure, contrast, etc.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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4. Photo Editor by Aviary
   Aviary is another powerful smartphone photo editor that allows users to quickly edit their photos using its one-tap auto enhance tools.
   Aviary also features a set of Cosmetic Tools, which gets rid of flaws and blemishes, whitens teeth, and removes red eye. Whether it is dust on your camera’s lens or flash burning out a small portion of the image, Aviary is a good app for image correction.
   To make the app easier to use, users can also customize their screens by dragging and dropping their favorite toolsets.
   
   
   
   
   
5. Pixlr-o-matic
   Pixlr-o-matic is a fun photo editing app that comes with a variety of effects, filters, borders, and overlays. This app is best known for its variety in photo filters. With its three category of photo filters, light filters, and photo frames, Pixlr-o-matic allows you to completely transform your images.
   The only negative things is its effect applying approach. The app won’t let you apply more than one filter from each category which you can workaround by saving the photo and load again. But, it’s still a very good photo editor and doesn’t bother you with any kind of ads.
   
   
   
   
   
6. Befunky Photo Editor
   Befunky is among the best photo editing apps for Android phones. It provides all the appropriate editing tools along with some additional effects, which you won’t find in other Android camera apps.
   BeFunky also provides various photo frames like Polaroid, Filmstrip, Halftone, to give your photo a stylish look.
   The interesting feature of the app is that you can add unlimited number of effects to your photos to make them look however you want.
   Befunky Photo Editor also supports tablets, and is available in free as well as paid version.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   7. Cymera
   Cymera is a multi-purpose app that is designed to be used as both camera and photo editor. It has everything you need in a Smartphone camera and photo editor to help you capture and edit images.
   Cymera offers huge variety of hand-picked filters, shooting modes, face detection, collage effects and more than 800 decoration options.
   Another great features of Cymera is that it allow you to overlay decorations to make photos more fun, or free draw on images
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   8. Picsay
   Picsay is an award winning mobile photo editing app that combines basic editing features and a few extra perks to produce interesting photos. Some of them are Distort, Dizziness, Invert, Pixelate, Rainbow and Spotlight.
   Along with these features, Picsay also allows users to add Word Balloons, Texts, and Stickers. The ability for creating word balloons is something which really sets the app apart from other apps.
   Moreover, you can apply contrast, brightness, exposure, contrast, temperature, and artistic effects as well.
   Picsay is available in both free and paid version on Google play store. In the paid version, you get additional content like more filters and more actual features like pressure-sensitive drawing, removing red-eye, and others.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   9. VSCO Cam
   VSCO Cam is one of the best camera apps on Android. This app offers various photo editing tools which allows users to fully edit and customize their photos. VSCO Cam’s editing tools include crop, rotate, sharpness, brightness, contrast, saturation, highlights, shadows, and much more. VSCO Cam also has many great filters to enhance the beauty of your photos.
   Like the Picsart, VSCO Cam also has its own VSCO community where users can join and share their edited pictures.
   
   
   
   
   
   10. Photo Editor Pro
   Photo Editor Pro is another powerful photo editing apps for Android. As its name suggests, Photo Editor Pro enables you to edit and enhance your photos like a pro. It features one-tap auto enhance feature, color splash, filters, frames, and the basic features like crop, rotate, color balance, and red eye removal, are present as well.
   In addition to that, it also has many amazing effects to beautify your photos. These include Avenue, Arizona, Clyde, Dean, Haas, Lucky, Sage, and many others.
   Like many photo editing apps, Photo Editor Pro also allows users to add fun stickers, create their own memes, and draw on photos.
   Once you have edited your photo, it allows you to share the edited pictures on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Do not worry, Photo Editor Pro is available for free in the Play store, just install the app and enjoy!
   
   
   

Trello vs Asana: The Best Project Management App?

Online collaboration tools are on the rise with businesses who want to track their employee’s workflow – especially remotely. You might have already seen our previous article comparing Asana and Trello, but instead of comparing the user experience we will look at the features and usability of each app.

In my personal experience, working with others remotely and trying to track what they’re doing whilst keeping organized (and not going insane) seems impossible, but actually it can be quite easy as soon as you find the right tool. I have briefly used Asana and Trello before, and they both have pros and cons, so picking a favorite is difficult.

So, without further introduction, let’s get straight to the point and find out which of these apps is better for collaborating with your team. And while this post looks at the two apps from a subjective opinion I will tell you more about each app so you can decide what works for your team.

Asana: Teamwork For The Modern Ages

I’ll explain Asana’s background to you first (snooze)…

Asana is one of the most popular task management apps available today. This simple tool was first created by former Facebook execs Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein in 2008 to manage the company’s internal coordination. It was then publicly released in 2011 and has become increasingly more popular.

At a Glance…

Asana is basic and plain in its approach towards task/project management. At the core of it, Asana is a task management platform that can also replace all of today’s modern communication (and replace email, for example). The good thing about Asana is that there is nothing complicated about it — some of the features are listed below.

• Tasks. Tasks are things you need to remember or things that you want to have completed. Asana’s simple UI lets you organize Tasks into three groups: Today, Upcoming and Later.

• Organizations, Teams and Workspaces. These are the core divisions inside Asana. Workspaces are for people who sign-up with their own personal email address (think: students and friends). Organizations, on the other hand, are created for people who sign-up with a uniform company email. Each Organization is then broken down into separate Teams.

• Sections. Used to group single tasks into a project. Getting creative, you can divide tasks up in various ways. Some of the most popular are bug tracking and status reports. But you could easily divide tasks up by project, purpose or theme. The more divided tasks are, the better it is for larger teams looking to get an overview of their tasks.

• Templates. Asana allows you to use existing templates or you can create brand new ones more fitted to your needs. You can create templates such as checklists or questionnaires to avoid that “talking to your colleagues about stuff” step in the process. You want to know what’s the status on Mary’s project? Just send her a questionnaire with exact questions and never hear about her cat ever again.

The features of Asana are geared towards ease of use. When I returned to it for the first time recently, I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the UI — I honestly felt like I knew my way around the app within 5-10 minutes.

The Good And The Bad

Being picky by nature, I would say the minimalistic UI makes it tricky to work with. But on the plus side there are a whole load of pros, too. So, I’ll use a good old-fashioned bullet-list of pros and cons and let you decide for yourself.

Pros

• Fantastic list of management features
• No credit card required for a free trial
• Color code the most important tasks
• Freely add more than one tag to each item
• Android and iOS app
• A single story/item/task can have links to more than one project and tag
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Add new tasks without having to fill many fields
• Fantastic email integration (exciting!)
• Clear system of following your tasks
• Clever personal tasks view in regards – see all the tasks you are assigned to in one place
• Free for up to 15 people
• Premium plan costs $8.33 per member/per month (in case you want that extra fancy workflow feel)

Cons

• Assign a story/task to only one member of your team
• No integrated personal view – it is always just your tasks within each of your workspaces
• The interface can sometimes feel loaded with graphical detail, making it slow when moving things around
• Sub-tasks can be difficult to work with and it can easily lose its connection when moving items around
• The overwhelming amount of features on display can make for a slow learning process
• The messages through the app are encrypted but unfortunately there is no two-step verification which makes it less safe for your personal data

Final Thoughts

Asana’s benefits would more likely be acknowledged by bigger teams or when working on a more complex project. For example, a website design where you’re going to have more people collaborating on it and pitching their ideas. In situations like these, there is a higher chance to get disorganized and cluttered, but Asana can cope with it (better than Trello).

Asana has a bunch of add-ons and integrations you can use, some of them being:

• Dropbox
• Google Drive
• WordPress
• Usersnap

Through Zapier you can integrate Asana with more than 500 apps. Asana has an open API that you can use if you’re a tech-savvy person.

Trello: Making Collaboration Easy

Like with Asana, I’ll start by introducing you to the app first.

Trello is a task management app that uses the Kanban system to help you organize projects. Kanban is a system developed by Toyota – designed to help keep production levels high and literally means a billboard or a signboard. And as we know Trello is famously known as a sticky-note filled whiteboard.

Each and every sticky note represents different tasks that are within the project, your daily task list or ongoing tasks. When speaking of collaborations, I must admit that so far I have only the best things to say for this app – from 12 different spreadsheets we’ve gone to Process Street templates and 1 Trello board (used to be 5 but that’s a story for another time).

This app exceeded my expectations and works way better than Asana for the tasks we’re trying to accomplish.

At a Glance…

Trello is a basic task management app you can to use to collaborate with your team members. There are limited options regarding assigning tasks – you can tag cards, add people to boards and create alerts. However, that does not make the card visibly attached to one single person and will not, for example, send a duplicate to their individual board to make sure they notice it. But then there’s Slack, you can bug everyone there…

Some of Trello’s key features include:

• Board. A Board is usually a project under development or an ongoing process such as content creation or promotion.

• List. A list is a way to divide a board into different categories. Usually, a list represents a stage of progress. In this case, you can see the stages are work in progress, keyword research, moving to approval (which kind of helps with the assigning as you can just move a task to the relevant list).

• Card. Cards are the most basic part of the app – and the most crucial. It represents a particular part of a project like a bug, new feature or a specific blog post. You can attach files, images, comment, add checklists, assign a due date or people to each card.. And of course you get the satisfaction of moving the card further and further through the project until the glorious day you can remove yourself from it indicating a job well done!

Now to the comprehensive list of pros and cons.

The Good And The Bad

Pros

• No credit card needed for sign-up (and free forever)
• Simple layout with simple instructions
• iPhone and Android app
• Unlimited cards can be made
• Invite as many people as you want to a board
• Real-time collaboration
• Trello backs up your data (good in my case as I used to delete everything I was “done” with)
• Is really amazing even on the free plan (but comes with the most adorable husky stickers on paid – NOT the best feature that paid plan provides though)

Cons

• Exporting option is not available on free plan
• Having around 10 columns and over 100 cards could get quite messy
• If two tasks include two people, can be done at the same time you’re not quite sure where to put the card (there are some cases)
• Not enough husky stickers

Final Thoughts

As you can see I had to force myself with the cons a bit. It might be my biassed opinion, but I find Trello to be extremely useful in my day to day tasks.

It is incredibly effective as a to-do list app with its sticky note feel, it provides the sense of progression and is just as good for personal lists and team projects.

Trello has a premium plan that is priced at $8.33 – the same as Asana.

Like Asana – Trello also has tons of great integrations such as:

• Slack
• GitHub
• Google Drive
• Dropbox

However, in total there are 500+ that you can use through Zapier. You can also use the Trello API to create your own integrations (which is always lots of fun!).

Trello vs Asana: The Verdict

Price: Tie (as it is literally the same)

Product Features: Tie (both have some great features, in my case I prefer Trello but that doesn’t mean Asana is not a great match)

Ease of Use: Trello (ding, ding, ding!!)

Asana and Trello are pretty close in the match-up, but in the end, Trello has won me over. I work on a few projects at the same time and feel like Trello just does it for me – I make each project into a board, make it a different color, add different people and roll on my way.

What about you? Which seems like a better app to your team’s needs, and why?

How to track who visited my facebook profile ?

Everyone likes to know who has visited their Facebook profile.Whether the person maybe a boy or a girl, they tend to have a desire to find out who has visited their Facebook profile as they are filled with these common questions- “Whether my crush checks my profile?” , “Which girl/Boy always views my profile?” and so on… But i have seen many people trying to use 3rd party software which produce appropriate results are just spams.  You can’t determine who exactly is looking at your profile on a regular basis, you can determine who you interact with the most and who Facebook thinks your closest friends are. If you find someone in the list that you don’t interact with them often, they may be expressing interest in your status updates (with likes, comments, or views). Follow these simple steps and you are done.

1. Go to your timeline and open view page source.

2. Right click on your timeline and select view page source. This should take you to the new page.

3. There Press CTRL+F and you will open a box in the right corner. There search for the word “Initialchatfriendslist”.
4. Next to it you will see a lot of ids, they are nothing  but the profile ids. The numbers which immediately follow are the identification numbers of the profiles. You will see a set of numbers, each set in quotations and followed by “-0″, “-2″, or “-3″. Copy the string without the – and the final number. Paste this after the “facebook.com/” when looking at the main Facebook page. This will bring up the profile so you know who it belongs to.

eg: if 111111-2 is the string copy 111111 and open a new tab and type ” facebook.com/paste” then press enter.Thats it you are done.

Why 2017 Will Be the Year You Finally Take Business Analytics Seriously

As 2017 approaches, today’s businesses have the unprecedented ability to enhance productivity and profitability through smarter, data-driven decision-making processes. This is made possible by modern business intelligence (BI) solutions, which empower organizations to more effectively collect, compile and analyze data, so as to more quickly arrive at better-informed decisions.

Modern cloud-based computing platforms enable comprehensive reporting, analytical processing, data mining, process mining, business performance management, and other key activities that were previously far more difficult to accomplish. In addition, cloud computing solutions enable businesses to shift resources toward a more service-oriented approach, which makes it easier and cheaper to manage BI efforts, without the need to spend excessively on hardware and expertise.

Thus, BI has become more than just a buzzword or trend. Rather, it’s now a necessity for businesses of all types and sizes. Some 97% of marketers say that over time, they’re increasingly able to use data effectively, according to a recent Ascend2 study.

The rising volume, velocity and variety of data has likewise given rise to a more dynamic business environment for those who can harness the benefits.

How Analytics Change the Game

As organizations adopt BI solutions, however, drastic changes in the workplace and workflow are often necessary. In order to become data-driven organizations, companies need to implement changes to their cultures, policies, processes and division of labor.

When your company becomes a data-driven business, you’ll find it easier to make sound decisions, more quickly, based on all of the information gathered and analyzed.

Beyond making smart management decisions, here are some additional fundamental benefits

associated with adopting BI:

Boosted productivity

Better access to key information

More accurate goal setting

Better ROI on marketing investments

Business-Led Analytics Operations

Because queries used to involve hours of preparing data sets and formulating code, business intelligence was once strictly the realm of the IT department. Deriving meaningful, actionable insights from the information at hand used to involve several rounds of exploratory processes whereby senior executives would collaborate with data warehouse managers and analysts.

As enterprises increasingly utilize modern BI solutions, they will also become more readily available in sharing data with customers, partners and internal users. In other words, with our data democratized, today’s workforce is significantly empowered. A recent survey by BI software provider Sisense found that today’s businesspeople prefer to keep close tabs on their KPIs, with some 45% of respondents checking performance on a daily basis and 17% doing so hourly.

Indeed, the newer generation of BI tools have made analytics simpler, faster and more accessible. Here are some examples of innovative features that make these solutions significantly more accessible and useful for businesses today.

Automated data pre-processing. As BI solutions become smarter, they’re able to determine the relationships between various fields and figures in your data sets, no matter where the data is stored and in what format. By preparing data for analysis as soon as it’s synced, analytics software is able to perform complex functions, execute queries and find relevant correlations and insights extremely quickly, whenever you need it to. Google’s Analytics 360 Suite, for example, uses the company’s formidable machine learning capabilities to help marketers identify lucrative audience segments.

Smart caching. Another feature that mitigates processing bottlenecks, smart caching intelligently caches data into the data processing stack-again, now focused on in-memory and in-chip processing-to reduce I/O calls, which in turn enhances performance.

Drag-and-drop interface. With BI now becoming a business-led activity, users need the ability to easily manipulate information, which includes importing and merging of data sets from any number of sources, source types and formats (both structured and unstructured).

Beautiful visualizations. For business-oriented end-users, visualization provides a way to communicate analysis of large data sets into something more meaning than say rows and columns of numbers. Easily digestible charts and interactive dashboards can provide fast and accurate answers to decision points.

Embeddable anywhere. In addition to being to being more visually oriented, modern BI solutions enable users to embed the results into other platforms through APIs, dashboards and widgets. This means business users can go beyond the confines of their BI tools and access points.

Takeaways and Conclusions

There is no question that BI is already playing an instrumental role for enterprises today. It will enhance the decision-making process and improve the workflow across a business’ disparate departments.

Investing in a future-proof BI stack makes sense in ensuring your business is ready for an increasingly data-driven world where the right knowledge and information can mean success or failure for your organization.

Best Websites for Downloading Google Slides Templates

There was a time when uploading a PowerPoint file to Google Drive resulted in a messed up slide deck. It wasn’t until Google overhauled its web apps and introduced Google Slides that making presentations from the cloud became more robust, at least for users looking for a free web app.

When it comes to choosing between Microsoft’s web based edition of PowerPoint (PowerPoint Online) or the competitor, Google Slides, what separates the two is the availability of templates. Not only does PowerPoint Online have an ample number of good templates at Office.com but you can also choose from a plethora of sources for downloading templates by third-party developers. Recently, the development for Google Slides Templates has also picked up and apart from the default templates offered by Google, you can now download some amazing themes from third-party developers. We have created a list of some of the best websites for downloading Google Slides Templates to help you make the most out of your Google Slides presentations.

Free Google Slides Templates

Yes, Free Google Slides Templates is pretty much the title of a website which offers exactly what its name implies, i.e. free templates for Google Slides. The good thing about this website is that not only does it offer some very vibrant slide designs but each product page gives you a preview of all slides in the form of an embedded slide show. This can save you a lot of time to preview slides from a template to see if it’s the kind of template you are looking for.

There is a button at the bottom of each product page which directly opens a ‘View Only’ copy of the slide deck, which you can copy to reuse the template for your presentation. The presentation templates on this website aren’t all that generic and give several sample layouts for each template, which makes them quite handy for making comprehensive presentations with the aid of multiple readymade sample layouts.

Graphic River

Even if you’re not someone who pays for templates, the chances are you have been to Graphic River or one of its sister sites at some point in time, when searching for templates. Graphic River is one of the most famous websites for downloading all kinds of templates and web based content, ranging from presentation templates to logo templates, website templates, add-ons and the like.

Graphic River also has a Google Slides templates gallery with various premium themes that can make your content stand out from the crowd. There are a plethora of developers offering templates and you can go through the previews to find the best template that suits your requirements.

SlideModel

Originally a PowerPoint Templates’ provider, SlideModel is a website which gives some amazing templates which are fortunately Google Slides compatible. There is even an option for various templates to open them in Google Slides directly, taking out the hassle of uploading templates manually.

The best thing about SlideModel is that its templates come with editable slide objects, which ensures that you can fully customize a template by separating or editing individual slide elements. For example, if you were to download a template with the United States map, you would be able to drag out each state to edit it separately. You can resize, recolor and readjust each object according to need. Bringing such high quality templates to Google Slides certainly makes SlideModel a worthy mention, considering the developer has been working specifically to also cater for Google Slides users.

PPT Template

PPT Template is another website where you are given the utility to not only download slide decks as PowerPoint files but also to import and convert them easily to Google Slides. Moreover, unlike Graphic River or SlideModel, the templates are free to use. PPT Template has a nice collection of high-quality slide decks which are perfect for high definition screens. This is despite the fact that the templates are available for free. While the layouts at PPT Template are quite generic, with a need for heavy customization; the slide backgrounds are quite attractive. If you are someone who likes using generic templates with impressive slide backgrounds to fashion a slide deck from scratch, you might find PPT Template quite a good resource to fetch templates.

Macfadden’s Templates

Macfadden is a website by Mike Macfadden, who is a high school teacher who teaches Digital Graphic Design. Turns out Mike really got frustrated with the lackluster Google Slides Templates and decided to make something useful himself. While Macfadden offers only single slide templates, one has to admit that the designs are really quite impressive and professionally made. Furthermore, the templates are available for free so it can’t hurt to put in some effort when you already have a free template with a premium looking design.

When you choose a template from the preview image, you are given the option to instantly create a copy in Google Slides, providing you with a standalone version of the template. Needless to say, you can duplicate the standalone slides to create your own presentation decks.



It is likely that in our quest for finding the best Google Slides templates’ providers we might have missed out on a diamond in the rough. Feel free to share your list of the best Google Slides providers by leaving a comment below.

The #1 Thing That Drives M-Commerce Sales Is…

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is on the brink of exploding. According to ComScore, time spent on mobile has exceeded desktop by miles away. However, money spent on mobile is excruciatingly low.

Many attributes discourage users spending money via mobile.

1. Poor UX. This makes product details difficult to read and payment information frustrating to enter due to the fact many sites are not quite mobile-optimized.
2. Speed is also a problem. Mobile users often shop on the go, which provides convenience, but it also puts them at unease with weak Wi-Fi and LTE connections.
3. Security. Consumers want security when entering their payment information on a phone compared to a desktop or laptop.
4. Price also play a role. The more expensive the transaction, for example, purchasing a car or flight, the likelier the user avoids mobile and buys it from desktop instead.

The Good News About M-Commerce

The market of m-commerce is still growing, nonetheless. Business Insider forecasts m-commerce will reach $284 billion, or 45% of the total U.S e-commerce market, by 2020. Compared to June 2015, mobile retail boosted 10 points this year. M-commerce accounts for 54% of total digital time relative to other mobile categories. So what drives m-commerce? Drum roll, please…

The #1 thing that drives m-commerce is…

Mobile Engagement!!!

Ok. So now what? How do you drive mobile engagement? See these top 3 tips below.

1. Send Friendly Reminders on Items Saved

I can’t tell you how many m-commerce/retail apps I’ve downloaded which have failed to notify me about pending items in my cart or mobile wallet. This is a standard! An m-commerce retailer needs to trigger engagements in general, but especially about my shopping cart. Whether the engagement triggered is a push message, an in-app message, a video reminder, just notify me about my basket! Otherwise, my attention will go to another brand. This also extends to the wish list. Take it a step further and notify me that those brown boots are on sale. Or that if I buy them now, I’ll get free shipping, discount, loyalty points, etc. Simply keep in touch with users. If users want less, they can always opt out of engagements, if you make it easy for them to modify their communication settings.

2. Build Up Your Mobile Community with Relevant Offers

What I can’t stand the most is getting an irrelevant offer. Despite the retailer having a lot of my customer data, they fail to target me with my basic profile information at hand. Once time, I downloaded a major clothing retail app. After registering my details including gender, location, language, and so forth, I explored the app. I saved a few shirts in my shopping basket. I closed the app. About a day later, they sent me a push message about an upcoming MEN’S clothing sale. I disregarded the message and swiped it away. What a waste, for both me and the retailer. Thus, offer your mobile community relevant offers based on their profile registration information. In my case, segment me from the male target audience.

3. Monitor User Behavior & Offer Smart Item Profiling

Take a step further and monitor user behavior and preferences. Like the Amazon model, show the user similar items OR items that other buyers have bought. Or generate a suggested list of items I might like, just like Spotify’s weekly playlists. Work with your data science team to roll out an algorithm that indexes smart profiling based on customer search or customer preferences. Don’t have a data science team? Consider in-app beacons which show marketers what users search, save, click and view. Let’s say I saved/liked a few shirts in my mobile wallet. Why not target me when that shirt goes on sale? Or if the inventory for that shirt is low. Or send me a curated shopping list of shirts that are similar. The skies the limit with your m-commerce engagement creativity.

The bottom line is, mobile engagement unlocks m-commerce success, given the right technological tools and mobile strategy backing it up.

4 Ways to Supercharge Your Retail App for the Holiday Shopping Season

It’s not just about Black Friday anymore. This holiday shopping season, 71% of consumers (and 79% of millennials) plan to purchase gifts online, and much of that shopping will happen through mobile apps. In fact, over the past 12 months, US mobile users have been spending 60% more time in retail apps in general, and that’ll only ramp up as we get closer to Christmas.

With the rush coming, is your company’s retail app ready to be your customer’s first (and possibly last) stop in their shopping journey? It better be! And to help you out, here are 4 ways to get your retail app supercharged for the holiday shopping season.

1. Get featured by an app store.

According to a report by AppAnnie, getting featured by either Google or Apple’s app store can increase downloads by up to 500%. Check out what they recently saw with Walgreens:

When Walgreens’ app added Android Pay as a feature, Google decided to feature it on Google Play which led to a spike in downloads. It’s definitely a little “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” but if you want the edge this shopping season, whatever you can do to get featured will directly translate to more traffic and more sales through your app. Embracing a Google or Apple-specific app feature like Walgreens did is a smart ploy. Other things you can do to increase your odds of being featured:

• Keep your app reliable and up-to-date.
• Garner more ratings by asking your current user base.
• Write a good app description with great screen shots and comprehensive information.
• Create buzz outside of the app store (even paid buzz).

2. Provide great virtual customer service.

One big reason why retail apps fail is because the bad ones don’t offer a personalized experience. The offers aren’t targeted, they don’t take advantage of location targeting, and the point we want to touch on here: they don’t engage with customers when they need help. Remember, retail app engagement is down in 2016 to just 2.72 minutes during a session. Frustrated users won’t hesitate to close out your app if they don’t get what they need.

So before the holiday rush, make sure you are providing great customer service in your app. Here’s how:

• Barring anything else, make your User Interface (UI) dead simple to navigate.
• Make your app load as fast as possible. (or make it seem like it is)
• Provide an easy to use FAQ section just for mobile transactions.
• If possible, provide instant chat support or even provide a support number.

The better service you can provide, the longer your customers will use your app. Remember, having extra customer service reps on standby to chat may be cost-effective if it leads to happier customers who spend more money.

3. Enhance the in-store experience.

If you have an actual physical brick and mortar store, it’s important your app pulls double duty: a) be a great online shopping portal, but also b) act as your customer’s personal virtual assistant in the real world.

 

As we’ve pointed out in previous posts, your retail app is a great source for behavioral analytics. Knowing what the user has looked at online, or even put into his/her virtual shopping cart (without clicking “buy”), can help you target deals and promotions to push to their app as soon as they’re nearby your storefront. After all, you should already have a robust loyalty program in place. But also consider these ideas:

• A zoomable layout of your store for easy physical navigation.
• Impulse purchase ideas, categorical gift ideas (ie, spouse, children, movie-lover), or “expiring soon” deals.
• In stock/out of stock notifications.
• Mobile payment options.
• Additional loyalty points for “checking in”.

Give your customers a reason to walk around with your app launched on their smartphones. It’ll lead to big sales and happy customers.

4. Get social with user generated content & reviews.

Bazaarvoice research showed that mobile shoppers who view user-generated content have a 133% higher conversion rate. People love to see what others experience before purchasing, so (as long as you have great reviews) make it easy for your users to see customer reviews and pictures. Then after an online purchase, make it easy for your customers to share their purchase online. Take a cue from Amazon:

Better yet, if purchased on sale, include how much money they saved in the shared social post. It’ll incentivize their social network to check out similar deals. By providing every avenue for content to be shared by loyal users, your retail app can work to make your business go viral during the holiday shopping season.

9 Blogs That’ll Make You Better At Lead Generation

Whether a business has products, services or both, the only way they can make a profit is by making sales. To do this, many companies use lead generation. New businesses, or those who are looking to improve their sales and learn more about the best ways of generating leads, may turn to lead generation blogs for tips, ideas and advice from experts and those with experience in this field.

What is Lead Generation

Lead generation is a way that businesses and individuals attempt to get potential customers interested in the services or products that they are trying to sell. Potential customers can then be turned into real sales. Traditional methods of generating leads are advertising, customer referrals, events and telemarketing. Modern strategies revolve more around utilizing technology and include organic search engine results, the Internet, social media and using specialist online lead generation services.

What are Lead Generation Blogs Discussing?

Anyone interested in finding out more about lead generation will find that there are plenty of lead generation blogs out there with lots of advice, tips and information on the subject. Each has their own specialist areas, so you can find information on just about anything to do with lead generation.

However, some subjects are more topical than others at the moment. Hot topics on these blogs at the moment include using social media, building lists, content marketing, increasing online traffic, paying for leads, using lead generation services and search engine optimization.

1. Lead Views

Lead generations and sales closure are the main topics of this blog. There are nine contributing authors, all of whom have backgrounds in marketing, sales or online business. There are eight categories of posts on here each with their own section, so it is easy to just read about the topics you are interested in finding out more about rather than having to trawl through a long list of blog posts. The subject categories include, among others, B2B Lead Generation Blog, B2B Marketing Insider and Sales Pulse Blog.

2. Leads Explorer Blog

Lead Explorer Blog has an extensive catalog of articles aimed at professionals to help them succeed in business. Leads Explorer is actually a professional web service that businesses can use to generate more traffic and keep track of all the relevant data and statistics you need to monitor how well your lead generation campaign is working, as well as other in-depth information.

3. Traffic Generation Cafe

This is a great blog for online businesses or any business that has a website as it is all about generating traffic. Traffic Generation Cafe is a blog written by Ana Hoffman, an expert in this field. Alongside the in depth blog posts, there is also general marketing news that Ana has researched form across the Internet.

Her aim is to use her own experience to help small businesses with a small marketing budget to increase traffic to their site. She offers all readers a free book about strategies. Overall, it is a good blog to learn about trending marketing topics as well as traffic generation.

4. B2B Lead Blog

B2B Lead blog covers many different marketing and sales topics. As the name of the blog suggests, this lead generation blog predominantly focuses on B2B. In terms of leads, categories include lead generation, lead management, lead scoring, lead qualification and lead nurturing. There are 15 resident contributors, each of them has their own specializations and vast experience in marketing, sales, promotion and lead generation.

The aim of the blog is to give professionals relevant and topical information to help them succeed in an evolving marketplace. Although this lead generation blog is best for those interested in finding out about B2B issues, there is a wealth of information available on all aspects of marketing so it makes good general reading matter.

5. Point Clear

In terms of variety of subjects, this blog probably offers the most diverse and extensive range of posts when compared to other blogs about lead generation. Practically every sub-topic you can think of that relates to marketing, lead generation and general business strategies is covered on this blog.

They also promote a number of other lead generation blogs that they think will be informative and beneficial to their readers. The blog is part of the main Point Clear website. It is their in-house specialists who create the content for their blog, although they do have guest blogs that offer readers informative articles written from a different perspective.

6. iMediaConnection Blog

Most of the blog posts on here are about marketing, social media, advertising, generating leads and web analytics. However, there are also posts on other business subjects, such as research, desktop apps, emerging platforms and best practices. A variety of bloggers contribute to this blog, each bringing their own professional experiences and knowledge to the fore. The layout of this blog means it is easy to find the most relevant blog posts in relation to what you want to learn or which topics are of the most interest to you. Also, the blogs are written in a style that makes them easy to understand, even for novices.

7. B2B Lead Gen Blog

This blog tells you everything you need to know about generating leads, with a particular focus on B2B. The posts cover both the basics of lead generation as well as trending topics relating to this subject. The posts are written by business development professionals who have extensive knowledge and experience in marketing and lead generation.

The lead generation blog is part of a website that offers lead generation services and there are a number of other resources that blog readers can use. These include a media library and a sales proposals and quotes calculator that helps you to determine how many leads you will need to hit your sales and profit targets.

8. Insightpool Blog

This is a blog on a professional social engagement activation service. The posts discuss various aspects of marketing and using social media as a way of generating leads for your business. Although the blog is aimed at promoting the services they provide, there is a lot of useful information for people who have limited knowledge of marketing and social media. While you are on this blog you may also want to check out the other resources available on the sight. These include webinars, audio and video resources and case studies.

9. ReTargeter Blog

ReTargeter is an advertising platform service that helps you to market your business across the Internet by targeting advertisements and optimizing your marketing spend. Their website also has a blog with content written by the company’s leading specialists. The main topics covered in the posts are generating leads, advertising, marketing strategies, re-targeting, recruiting, social media, testing, retail and business optimization. This is a great blog for finding information and tips that will help you to improve all aspects of marketing your business.

Summary

Overall, reading any of these blogs is a fantastic way to find out how you can generate leads, improve sales, increase profits and advance their business to the next level. Anyone who is serious about succeeding in their business should make the most of the rich information and advice there is to be found in blogs, as the articles are written by people with direct experience of generating leads. Furthermore, you can pick up a diverse range of tips and advice to improve all other aspects of your business alongside learning about lead generation.