Post about "Finance"

The Credit Crunchy Finances

The Labor Department release on consumer prices showed a 1% drop last month in the past month. The change was largest since 1947 and comes along with troublesome news, such as lowest home builder sentiment, markets trading at new lows, and a pending automaker bailout. With the financial crisis damaging the US economic foundation, you may wonder what’s in store for you. There are a few key strategies to employ while running your finances in a crisis mode. Which ones you use and to what degree they are used depends on your situation.1. Prepare a substantial emergency fund. An emergency fund is a pool of liquid assets that you allocate for emergency needs, such as loss of a job or sudden medical expenses. Normally, it should consist of three to six months’ salary. However, in today’s severe conditions, you should pack away the maximum – six months’ worth – and more if you can. Remember to keep your emergency fund easily available such as in a banking account, not in investments, because if you need to access money and your investments are down, you will be forced to take a loss. If you don’t have enough cash, consider buying a job-loss insurance policy for one year to protect yourself from the danger of increased layoffs around the country.2. Adjust risk. Adjust your portfolio risk to the ongoing reality of the economic times. Stocks and bonds, as well as mutual funds and ETFs are now more volatile than normal. If you did not adjust your portfolio previously, you might be exceeding your preferred risk level by owning too many equities compared to what you normally hold in a more stable market. In order to maintain your level of risk, you should counter the risk exposure by allocating less to stocks, and moving more into bonds. In present times, it’s best to reduce stock exposure 2-3 times lower than your normal level. For example, if your typical portfolio is 80% equity against 20% bonds, consider moving to 40% stocks and 60% bonds.3. Employ wise leverage. If your emergency fund is in place, and you’ve been thinking about using credit for a particular purpose, do it now. With the inflation rate nearing 5%, it’s now the best time leverage your good credit. By the time you pay off your debt, the credit will likely be worth less than it is now, and high inflation will effectively minimize your interest cost. But remember, using credit is advisable only if used for strategic purposes, such as making necessary renovations to your home or purchasing a more fuel efficient car. Credit shouldn’t be used as a source of funding extravagant purchases or as a way to build savings.4. Take advantage of tax breaks. Sell your worst performers before the year-end to offset any taxable gains. If you have been fortunate to hold gainers along with some losers, look at selling the losers. If your capital losses exceed your capital gains – a very likely outcome this year – up to $3,000 can be deducted against your taxable income per year (up to $1,500 each for a married person filing separately). Because this annual allowance runs out in a little more than a month you’ll want to act quickly to take advantage, and you will have funds to reinvest as the outlook becomes better. Wondering what stocks to sell first? The stocks that have fallen over 80% since the time you purchased them. It is typical for stocks that have fallen that much to not return to previous highs, so you don’t need to hold them.5. Ensure a better retirement. It is also the best time of the year to convert your traditional IRA into a Roth IRA – and pay lower taxes. Because the value of stocks and mutual funds has dropped so much, your tax burden at conversion will be much lighter. You can then take advantage of tax-deferred growth in your new Roth IRA, and tax-free distribution when retirement comes.

Brainstorming The Ideas for Influencing Your Mobile App Audience

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.