5 tips for developing mobile travel applications

Cloud-based applications have undergone great changes in the development process over the past decade, gradually starting from the previous long-term requirement specification-Development-quality inspection cycle, A very short release cycle.

Currently, many network platforms have a release cycle of one to four weeks, during which many technicians are busy with continuous integration or even daily updates.

There are many documents on the rapid repetitive development process. My goal today is not to repeat all its advantages and disadvantages, but there are two aspects that I must point out:

It provides customers with the ability to quickly use applications, measure their usage, analyze and make more relevant decisions based on the obtained information.

Perform A/B testing on different versions to measure and decide the best method to use.

The above two points can ensure a key factor, that is, the actual customer feedback is often ignored in the traditional long-term release cycle. Through actual customer feedback, it is easier to make decisions.

About mobile applications

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

It is very important to publish high-quality mobile applications.

Very good, but the question is: how to quickly upgrade a mobile application that needs to be installed on a remote device and may not be used for several months? It takes several weeks for each new application to be approved for release. How can mobile applications handle this?

Existing analysis software vendors have also released solutions for mobile applications, such as Comscore (Nedstat), Omniture (SiteCatalyst), Adobe (appMeasuremement), Webtrends, and many other vendors. They are similar to website solutions: tracking activities, logging in, sending activities back to the cloud service center, and generating reports.

But how can we quickly Replace the first version before generating the report?

The following are the five tips for quickly updating mobile travel apps:

1. Use hand-drawn templates

You can first manually design some functional options for the user's use process and layout on the mobile phone-shaped paper notepad.

The size of these notebooks must be the same as that of common smartphones.

Then you can put a card in front of each user so that they can write the content most expected to see on the mobile app, which design they think is more intuitive, then filter and select the design that will bring the best process.

This is simple and effective, and the cost is not high.

2. quickly update the interaction Template

Some wireframes and simulation tools provide relatively simple drag solutions for interaction within minutes. Most tools provide HTML5 results and even basic applications.

These expected functions are enough for end users on Android and iOS devices.

Tools like Tiggr, Mockflow, or Axure can interact with each other. Even if simpler tools such as Adobe PDF, Visio/Powerpoint/Keynote, Pencils, Balsamiq, or Omnigraffe can all generate static entity models through a mobile user interface mold, static object models can be used to reflect screen traffic.

3. Small-scale test

Find a group of testers to test your mobile application, even if it is not fully completed, the key is to ensure that at least the functionality is complete, so that users can test these tangible applications, rather than being totally disappointed.

Get Feedback from users every day so that they can provide feedback at any time. Do not try to fill out tedious and complex feedback forms, which will only increase your burden.

For example, every day, let them write out the three most favorite and annoying feedback.

4. Select the Android device for testing.

This is not a religious choice, but a wise choice to use Android's easy-to-extend structure.

The Beta application can be published with an obscure name and shared only among testers. Other users cannot find it.

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

Apple's approval period has now been shortened to 2-3 days. solutions such as TestFlight make testing on iOS faster.

However, anyone who has participated in software engineering knows what the two-day review period means, especially for the ever-evolving tourism industry.

5. Release Products in small countries first

Another way to quickly launch an application is to release it in a smaller market.

In case it doesn't work, you just sacrifice a small market, but hope you can launch it smoothly in the big market.