Franchise vs. Start-up: Which One Works for You? - TRooTech

Bored of your 9-5 job? Thinking of starting out on your own? While that is a good idea, starting your own business requires a lot of thought about how to transform a startup into business? On the other hand, there is the lucrative option of funding in a franchise. Yet another lucrative and brilliant option, but then the investment is too high.

While you are shifting from one end to another like a pendulum trying to figure out what you actually want to do, here’s a list of pros and cons being listed out for both. In both cases you are going to start out on your own, the technique and the investment in terms of time and money differs for each case. Let’s get started with franchise and then move on to startups.

Franchise: The Pros and Cons

Franchise means a set business that follows a set of processes and guidelines. It is easy to start a franchise, as you don’t need to regulate its operations in any fashion.

Despite this, there are advantages and disadvantages of having a franchise. We have listed them out for your benefit

The Pros

With a franchise, you have an established business modeling and planning, which means your chances of succeeding are high. When compared with a standalone business, a franchise definitely stands better chances, because you will work with what already exists, and you don’t have to build anything from the scratch. The visibility and the market share are already there for you to work on.

As compared to a standalone company, the support system is better in a franchise. You will see that the parent company will always extend support to the franchise, specifically for the turnkey operations. There are set equipment, supplies etc. for the franchise and the parent company will be looking into these aspects. The franchise will just need to carry out ground level operations, and worry about conversions.

The collective buying power works in favor of a franchise. This helps maximize the margins, and make the turnover profitable.

With the national presence established by the parent company, the franchisors simply need to invest in the grand marketing promotions. They are not expected to work on the creative or even ideate for the marketing campaign. The parent company will work on these aspects, thus freeing the franchisors to concentrate on the core handling of the franchise.

The Cons

The parent company holds complete authority over the franchise, which can become quite an issue if you are a franchisor. You cannot work your way through the things. In some cases, they will micromanage the whole operations, which can irk the entrepreneur spirit in you. In some cases, the lack of financial and training support from the parent company can lead to unforeseen and added costs. There are franchises where the franchisor is supposed to work through all the costs, and this can be quite expensive.

Have you read the termination clause properly? In many cases, the clause for termination is quite lengthy and complicated. So, if your franchise does not work, you are in for some troubled times.

Pros and Cons of a Startup

The Pros

As an entrepreneur, you might have many creative and innovative ideas for enterprise development. A startup is the ideal way to bring forth these ideas, and paint the canvas with many colors.

If you have been working in a single field for long, then startup is the time to brush your many skills. Startups help unleash the potential within by allowing you to handle many roles and tasks simultaneously.

The pressure of 9-5 job goes away with your startup. You are free to work at your defined hours, and you can always challenge yourself to push forward. A brilliant idea and the ability to multitask is all that is needed to get started with your own startup.

The Cons

When you are the one handling all the areas of a startup, it can become quite tiring and strenuous. This is especially true if you are a one-founder startup. The startups don’t have a proven formula or a support system, which means the chances of failure are high, and the investment can be quite risky.

You will need to stay motivated as an individual if you want your startup to work. There is no training and as mentioned no support to rely on. This means you are pretty much on your own in many ways.

What to Choose?

You are aware of the pros and cons associated with both the franchises and the startups. Now, depending on your investment needs, and the kind of independent work you are planning to go ahead with, you should choose either one. Make sure you have nailed the cons to your head before you get started with either. 

The Thumb Zone: Designing For Mobile Users - TRooTech

“The Thumb Zone” coined by Steven Hoober is very important factor in design & development for mobile user interfaces. You simply cannot ignore the thumb playing across the mobile screens, which is why it should be taken seriously. You don’t want your user to feel inconvenience when using the thumb to interact with your application or website. Poor consideration in design for the thumb is revealed through these inconveniences.

When you conduct the user interface testing on wire frames with the thumb, you might see a sequence for placement, which you would have technically ignored. Isn’t thumb the way to interact with devices? The way the thumb interacts with the top space may differ from the way it interacts with the bottom space of your mobile device.  You will need to consider a few design elements when designing the interface keeping the thumb in mind.

According to Hoober, 49% of the people use a single hand to hold their smartphones, and they rely heavily on the thumb to bear the weight. Clark mentioned that close to 75% of the interactions with the smartphone occurred via the thumb, which proved its importance in accessing a smartphone. There are certain zones that are easy to reach for the thumb, and then there are the in-between areas and finally the ones that are hard to reach. You will need to design for the flow of the thumb zone in this case to make user friendly and interactive designs.

Handling Navigation Issues

Remember a time in mobile world, when you had to deal with dropdown lists for mobile navigation? While the interface was not slick as that of the modern times, it could help you get through the navigation part. While there are various navigation patterns in present times, you are probably still wondering which one is the best fit for your thumb. To understand the natural movement of your thumb, answer questions on whether you app has long list of links or mix menus to deal with? What type of menu suits your website best? If you have long list links then you need a full screen overlay menu, so that there is enough space to organize the different things required from navigation perspective. You will need to align clickable elements so that they are placed near the thumb zone. If there are no long list links, then you may want a sticky menu that keeps moving with your scroll. In case you have a huge website, then you will need to mix menus, and then prioritize the links based on their weightage in your app. The sticky menus are quite user-friendly, and oft visited, while the full screen menus are not high-priority menus. You will need to gather user data, and combine it with best designing practices to leverage your thumb zone and create user friendly designs.

Make the Cards Friendly

The card pattern design is very important in your app design. You may want to get it reviewed in line with your thumb zone to measure the user friendliness. The card patterns are quite popular as they are quick, easy and predictable. They can offer good content with minimal lines, which makes reading easy, and comprehending better. These cards allow you to perform certain actions such as send, save, done and close. Weather apps have actionable links within the card. You will need your thumb to work on the card to either save or share it.

While the weather based apps may use the thumb zone, there are apps that don’t use a thumb zone. You may want to check the card pattern, and then figure out if you need to design it for the thumb zone or not. There are some issues in here that you may want to address. A close button to the top corner of the card may be common, but it does not suit the thumb patter. You may want an alternative solution for this.

Gestures & Movement

Gestures are important when you are testing user interface for your app development. Tap, double-tap, swipe, pinch and press are common gestures, and some of them use the thumb. When designing the gestures for your app, you will need to design them for the thumb zone, so that these gestures can be performed naturally. You will need to study the swipe and other gestures and figure out how exactly does the movement occur? There is an assumption on how the thumb moves, and the reality is slightly different. Make sure your swipe gestures are away from the hard to reach areas. You will need to provide enough tapping space on your mobile app.

With the thumb movement given some thought, you are ready to launch the app. You will definitely get more users on board if you have given some thought to the thumb approach on the app. 

17 Handy iOS Apps for Planning Your Perfect Christmas - TRooTech

Christmas is indeed the time of the year when you are all ready to go merry. You are making plans for the long holidays, and trying to get your last minute shopping done for the grand festive season. Planning the holidays can become a bit cumbersome if you don’t have the right assistant to check all the details for you. Have you bought presents? Are you ready with the Christmas tree? The shopping part, if you are working till last minute, can become an issue.

Well, especially for the Christmas season, there are apps that you can install in your phones and ease yourselves out. These apps will help you plan the perfect Christmas. Here we will take you through 17 iOS apps that you should have for Christmas season.

1.   Amazon

When it comes to Christmas shopping, the first app that comes to your mind is probably Amazon. With the delightful varieties and the interactive interface, you can create wish lists and shop in just a click. Apt app for all your Christmas goodies!

2.   eBay

When you are hunting for something unconventional to be gifted this season, you may want to give eBay a chance. With its differentiated marketplace, you might just stumble upon someone who is selling just the video game or phone you wanted to gift this season. The auctions are the best ways to purchase interesting gifts.

3.   Etsy

Do you want to gift someone something that’s personalized and customized? You may want to try Etsy instead of creating something on your own. The massive creative community on board will definitely help you gift something innovative and nice.

4.   No More Socks

Planning gifts for holidays has never been this fun! With this app, you can plan for all the holidays where giving a gift is a necessary. You can even open your wish list and plan the budget for these gifts.

5.   Toast

Instead of giving the gifts a lot of thought, find out what your friends may like to get as a gift. Integrate a wish list with this app, and give your friends and relatives what they have always wanted. You can even plan your budget accordingly.

6.   BigOven

Food is an important part of any festive occasion. When it comes to grocery shopping, you need an app that can tell you which groceries you will need for the festive season. Planning the food is another thing altogether. This app gives you a shot at grocery planning, and has stored a lot of recipes that you can cook during Christmas.

7.   Cooking

What if you don’t know cooking but have a hoard of recipes in your phone? Cooking will tell guide you through the whole process of making the dish, and getting it ready in time. Right from cooking techniques to the substitutions in the recipes, this app works well for people who can’t cook.

8.   Epicurious Recipes

If you are a beginner cook, this is your guide and friend, and for the ones who have aced the art, this is your treasure trove. It takes you through the whole process of cooking, and has some delectable recipes on board

9.   Look & Cook

With only 44 recipes, it is your unconventional recipe app. The app comes with a visual overview for the recipes, making cooking easier for you

10.               How to Cook Everything

If you want to learn cooking, this is your best bet at it. It will take you through a range of recipes that can be perfected with ease. Pocket this app to achieve your cooking goals.

11.               Yelp

If you are planning to go out and have dinner, then use this app to know the favorite places in town where you can grab some interesting dishes. Yelp will help you find the ideal restaurants serving a range of delicacies.

12.               Tigris and Euphrates

Build your empire and gain points for the different leaders. It is an interactive board game that lays out the struggles in the ancient Egypt among the powerful leaders. It is a strategy game, and is pretty fun. This festive mood you can play this game and engage in a heartwarming time with your family

13.               Ticket to Ride

This family game is about building the first pioneering train line across America. The easy to understand rules and effective concept make it a fun game. You may not want to miss this game this festive season.

14.               Carcassonne

This is a tile lying game with basic rules. A strategy game with easy rules and interesting methods, you are definitely going to be addicted to it.

15.               Catan HD

This multiplayer strategy game works on the concept of trading resources, which has not found too many takers till now. These traded resources would be used to build roads, towns etc. The idea is to create real human interaction.

16.               Forbidden Island

This is a family game where you will not be working against each other, but actually with each other towards a common goal. It is fun and interactive, giving out the essence of being a family

17.               Ultimate Yule Log

This is the app that guarantees the open fireplace ambience that gives the ultimate Christmas atmosphere. It will add glow and warmth to your festive celebration.

If you want to plan for iOS app development for your business, get quote from TRooTech Business Solution.

How to Build a Location Based App for Android and iPhone – TRooTech

In the world, 2 billion smartphone users linked and since this is probable to keep growing, the mobile apps do so much and dominate our lives completely.

Since the advent of Google maps, the location-based apps have come a long way, and have accomplished a lot. From just serving you with the proper directions to actually integrating various aspects of the service with GEO location, the apps have evolved to exceed customer expectations with best-in-class user experience. The location-based apps now aim to solve potential issues and close gaps that might exist in the target markets. Remember the app Ushahidi that aimed to rescue survivors of the earthquake that hit Haiti? It helped children stuck under the debris send SMS and ask for help.

There have been many such examples where location-based apps have managed to offer unique solutions to problems that have been persisting for a while.

Currently, the apps have moved from suggesting the direction from point A to point B to actually offering help locating newer places and exploring a city. Want to know which new restaurant has opened up in the city? Want to know the ATM that is closest to where you are located? There’s a location-based app that serves all these purposes.

So, how does a location-based app collect this information and serve it immediately to the person seeking it? Here, we will take you through the whole process on how a location-based app works, and the functionality and technology it uses to deliver the services as expected.

Features Location-based App Should Have

What is so special about around-me that people want a look-alike? It is a location-based discovery app that offers instant information on things that are present in your surroundings. From the points of interest in your vicinity to restaurants, cafes and hospitals, the app includes all the necessary details similar travel guide apps.  It comes with important information to the place such as opening hours, website, contact details and other details important for the viewer.

The integration of maps to these apps makes finding direction to the place easy and instantaneous. These are some of the features that you simply cannot miss out in a location-based app that you are planning to create. Some of the additional features that need to be present in these apps include local places that you should explore and the general walking routes to these places. Suggest some of the best eateries in town as well as the nightlife that the city caters to.

There are apps that incorporate location tracking as a functionality. App development like Uber, Pokemon Go etc. are some of the examples. Social and location combined apps are also rowing popular in today’s time. Want to watch content from different parts of the world, and view live streams, and then geo social app is what you should be planning next.

The main thing is that using a lot of features, you can create real interesting and unique app solutions incorporating the location-based functionality.

APIs and Augmented Reality for Location-based Apps

GPS based apps have become quite common, as it helps locate the end user. This location acquisition enhances user experience with Wi-Fi and mobile network inclusion. While GPS is good for outdoors, you need something that can work indoors and around the tall buildings. With iBeacon technology, you can enable Bluetooth-based data sharing as well as location tracking.

What APIs should you be planning for your location-based app? If you are planning to integrate navigation to the app instead of simple direction, then you should go for an iBeacon- enabled app instead of the GPS enabled one. GPS is better when you are working with apps that involve offering directions and routing options. This is the hardware aspect of the app. Let’s have a quick look at how the APIs should be chosen for the app solution.

The Apple Map Kit API should be integrated for iOS apps while the Android API for Google Maps works best for the Android based app solutions. Google Maps has enhanced its indoor navigation feature, which is yet to be done by Apple Maps API. The Google Places API, Foursquare API and other travel apps APIs can be integrated based on what you aim to achieve from your app solution.

Taking it further is the inclusion of Augmented Reality in location-based apps is the next big thing. This was introduced by Pokemon Go, which pulled in AR in the best possible way. There are quite a lot of AR tools and platforms that can be initiated into the apps for an incredible solution.

Choose the tools that have perfected security and tracking for the app solution.

So, here we end the discussion on how to build a location-based app like around-me. Take cues from here, and build on your idea to create the unique solution.

6 Secrets to Programming a Successful App - TRooTech

As a business the one task that truly reflects your personality online is how you view yourself and what image have you drawn for your business? When you are developing an app for your business, you need to be aware of all the ingredients you want in the app that will stir to make the perfectly devised app.

What you need to work on when developing your enterprise solution of mobile app designing and development agency in Australia is creating your personality, defining your tone, selecting the type of app you want to roll out, the user you want your app to be used by, and finally the end result you wish to achieve through your app. It is said that your app is the way to reach out to your customers, and increase your profitability. For this purpose, you may need to invest slightly more in terms of understanding customer insights, planning the app type using these insights, and finally rolling out the app.

There are some secret ingredients that help you define the app type, and help you build your app as you want to. You should be thorough on how these ingredients can be used, and how you want your app to look after they are incorporated.

Let’s have a look at the six things that will make your app better and interesting.

Simple is the Key

As simple as your idea is, ensure your execution is also simple and easy to adopt. When you try to add on too many features just to make your app look extremely interesting and awe-inspiring is when you start getting things completely wrong. You need to ensure you don’t deepen your simple idea into a complex execution while working on mobile app development. The plan should be in place which calls for being simple and clear about how you want to develop the app.

Why simple is the way to go? If you include complexities in the app, it could frustrate your users as they would not be able to use it as they want to. They efficiency with which they would be able to use an app would not be possible with a complex app. Of course there are too many possibilities and opportunities for the app, but include only those that relate to your users.

Work on App Aesthetics

The look and feel of your app is as important as the functionality. If you are planning app development, and do not cater to the aesthetic needs of your target audience, then you are definitely missing out on the user experience you have promised. When you have good design, you might be able to attract your target audience to have a look at your app, and use it. Combining good looks with good design will help you build the effective app solution.

Cross-Platform Development

Your target may or may not be present on the platform that you are planning to launch your app on. When you are thinking from your target’s perspective, you need to think of the platform that they are most likely to be present on. If you have a diverse target then chances are they are present on all the possible platforms. This is why you should think of developing your app for more than one platform. Always go for cross-platform development which will help you reach more people, and achieve your goals. 

Get your Footprints Global

If you concentrate on a single market when planning to build mobile app, you may not get the reach you desire. For example, most often people close their options and concentrate on a single market. That should not be the case. Go global with your app so that you have a better reach and the chances of improving your visibility are higher. Always plan for global sales!

Woo your Users

If you are an Apple iPhone, you might not need to woo your users. You are already established, and users would await your launch. But, in case you are not the iPhone, then you definitely need to woo your users to use your app, and make it seem helpful to them.

Before you start your campaigns that reach out to your users, and make them believe in your app, try to figure out who you want to reach and what you want to achieve through them. Is it conversion or just an increase in the user base? This answer will help you devise strategies to attract people to your app.

Go for Quality Development

If you don’t have the right team on-board, you won’t be able to achieve the quality you desire for your app. That is one of the most important ingredients of a successful app- a quality development team that can translate your desires into reality. If that team is available, and works for you, app success is obvious for your business.

Translate your insights and idea into app reality with these six interesting and incredible ingredients that are bound to work for you.