5 Tips for developing mobile travel applications

Cloud based applications have changed a lot over the past 10 years in the development process, gradually from the previous long requirements specification-development-quality inspection cycle, to the present very short release cycle.

Many web platforms now have a 1-4-week release cycle, during which many technicians are busy with continuous consolidation and even daily updates.

There are a lot of documentation on the fast iterative development process, and my goal today is not to repeat all of its pros and cons, but there are two things I must say:

Provide customers with the ability to quickly deliver applications, measure their usage, analyze and make more relevant decisions through the information they receive.

A/B testing of different versions, measuring and deciding on the best way to use them.

These two points ensure that the actual customer usage feedback is often overlooked in the traditional long-term release cycle. It's easier to make decisions with actual customers using feedback.

About Mobile applications

User expectations for mobile applications are higher than the site. Although there are a lot of good mobile apps, any unstable, fast, and intuitive content after the first download, 90% of applications may no longer be used by users.

It is important to publish high-quality mobile applications.

Good, but the question is: how do you make a fast replacement for a mobile application that needs to be installed on a remote device and may not be used for months? It takes weeks for each new application to be approved for release, how does the mobile application handle this?

Existing analysis software vendors have also introduced solutions for mobile applications, such as ComScore (Nedstat), Omniture (Sitecatalyst), Adobe (appmeasuremement), WebTrends and many other suppliers. They are similar to Web site solutions: Tracking activities, logging on, sending activities back to the cloud service center, and then generating reports.

But how do we quickly replace the first version before generating a report?

Here are five tips for quickly updating mobile travel applications:

1, the use of hand-painted template

You can manually design some feature options for the user using the process and layout in the mobile phone-shaped paper notepad.

The size of these notebooks is the same size as a common smartphone.

Then you can put a card in front of each user and ask them to write what they expect to see on the mobile app, which design they think is more intuitive and then filter and select the design that will bring the best flow.

This is simple and effective, and not expensive.

2. Update the interactive template quickly

Some wireframe and simulation tools provide a relatively simple drag solution that can interact within minutes. Most tools provide HTML5 results, even the underlying application.

These expected features are good enough to be fully available to end users of Android and iOS devices.

Tools like Tiggr, Mockflow, or axure can bring interaction. Even simpler tools such as Adobe PDF, Visio/powerpoint/keynote, pencils, Balsamiq, or Omnigraffe can generate static entity models through the Mobile User interface stencil, which can be used to reflect screen traffic.

3. Small scope test

Find a batch of testers to test your mobile application, even if it's not complete, the key is to ensure that the functionality is at least complete so that users can test these physical applications without being completely disappointed.

Get feedback from users every day so they can provide feedback at any time. Don't try to get them to fill out tedious, complex feedback forms that will only increase your burden.

For example, let them write their favorite and annoying three-point feedback each day.

4, first choose the Android device to do the test

This is not a religious choice, but a wise choice to take advantage of Android's easily extensible structure.

Beta applications can be published with an obscure name, shared only among testers, and not found by other users.

Applications can be updated at any time: fix bugs or change functionality without waiting for a long release approval period. By quickly updating on Android devices, creating applications on other mobile operating systems can take a similar approach.

Apple's approval period is now shortened to 2-3 days, and TestFlight and other solutions allow you to test iOS faster.

But anyone involved in software engineering knows what the two-day review period means, especially for the ever-evolving tourism industry.

5, first release products in small countries

Another way to get an application to roll out quickly is to publish it in a smaller market first.

If it doesn't work out, you're sacrificing a small market, but hopefully you'll be able to roll it out in the big market.