In the recent years, the mobile app industry has seen some breakneck innovations and is undergoing a radical makeover. Advanced technologies such as Beacon technology to attract attention to a specific location, Internet of things (IOT) to collect and exchange data, Big Data, Cloud computing has been in the news.

In today’s life mobile apps playing an important role in simplifying the daily tasks. We have mobile applications for all the things today. It is proven that most of the mobile users spend their time on apps surfing.

Here are some mobile app development trends to look out for innovative mobile apps to survive in the competitive market.

• High-level mobile app security

Basic security measures are the prime focus. No one likes when user personal or financial information becomes available to the hacker. Hence, Apple IOS and Google Android consider security as an important factor. So, developers have to endeavor that their apps run successfully with meeting all security protocols.

• Location-based apps with Beacon technology

Apple’s beacon technology has set a buzz in the app industry. Beacon technology makes apps attract attention to a specific location. If you are an iOS user try this out, this will provide a set of services and suggestions based on your geographic location. It is all about providing the right information to the user’s right.

• Wearable Apps

Now everyone’s attention moved to wearable technology. It takes app industry to the next level. Developers have to start building wearable apps. This technology explored from health care, fitness to fashion, textile and more. Smart wears, Apple watch, Google glass, Samsung gear is the great example of wearable technology.

• Internet of Things (IOT)

Various enterprises have also started to integrate IOT. It will help the development of apps with the advanced feature, new standards, and their own security and privacy concerns. Such as smart cars will be able to connect systems like a traffic signal. The signal’s sensor, in turn, will give traffic directions, current weather conditions, send accident alerts and provide alternate route options to the driver.

• Enterprise apps

Both in the app store and play store, among a total number of apps enterprise apps have gained more traction. Enterprise mobile apps are certainly much costlier than consumer mobile apps. Enterprise level apps are provided with utmost security features, such as username/ password, encryption/decryption and MDM software to protect the confidential data from leakage. Research shows that enterprises that provide solutions are going to gain employee satisfaction and friendly work-face.

• Quality content and marketing plan

Unfortunately, Developers are mainly focusing on the technical thing and ignore content. Developers have to focus on content also.

• User experience

A million of apps are present in the app store and play store. You may find many apps which are similar to your app; you have to face the competition and struggle to stand out. To make your app successful app has to fulfill customer satisfaction. User experience and response is important to understand app performance. The developer can study user behavior using analytic.

Keep yourself updated with latest market trends and technologies

Hotels across the globe consistently tweak their price structure on the basis of persistent circumstances. In revenue management systems, such price changes generally comprise of the following:

• Specific promotions
• Set menus
• Room types and rate type
• Minimum check requirements

Hoteliers have started to use special offers and discount deals to earn customer loyalty points, as a part of the strategy behind their revenue management system for hotels. Thought guests are not charged for special services, the general managers are unaware about how much revenue certain covers can bring in. A smarter workaround would be to demonstrate that customers are actually willing to pay certain prices for services based on demand and timing.

By revenue management system definition, airlines and hotels mostly include a certain value of reservation within the stated price during booking. During the popularity of early (or late) promotions, it is not a surprise to find that consumers include variable pricing practices within hospitality sector. This is acceptable when it comes to certain circumstances wherein discounts are framed.

Generally, it is an uncommon practice to explicitly charge room capacities. For separating the pricing (within a set time period) conceptual and comparative frameworks are widely used as a part of yield management principles. They basically explain the fairness perceptions and are the principles of dual entitlement.

Sometimes, these concepts are reference prices and transactions. The principle of dual entitlement states that guests are made to believe that they are entitled to reasonable rates. In such situations, price increases should be fair in the case of an informed increase, but are termed unfair if there is no rise in cost. Arbitrary imposes of fees can violate guest's belief in case of dual entitlements as well as label reservation fees as an "unfair" quote.

As far as over booking is concerned, it is mandatory to oversell or even touch 100% occupancy for a hotel. This task is impossible without clients walking away. In case such a risk is present, the costs ought to be taken into account. This can evaluate overselling and eventually, revenue gained from extra rooms sold is proportionate to the cost of walking away! This can be also coined as out-booking.

A basic component that must positively apply hotel revenue management system definition, is market segmentation. With it, a hotelier can actually target as well as market a whole lot of consumer groups which encompass various behaviors and also render offers that match basic needs at a budget level.

Sometimes, hotel market segmentation aids in the identification of purpose within a trip. Irrespective of the purpose being business or leisure, the price is not decided on the basis of market segmentation. Sometime, clear distinctions are achieved across business groups and individual businesses.

These days, the way in which bookings are made, it is extremely tough to identify a traveler's purpose. On these lines, one can say that segmentation includes individual bookings which also include short midweek stays as far as business is concerned. It can also help to identify leisure reservations as far as double rooms are concerned, over a particular week-end.

“78% enterprise apps are abandoned after their first use”

According to latest Gartner survey, enterprises are frustrated with developing enterprise mobile apps and are instead refocusing on responsive websites to address their mobile needs.

Even among the existing enterprise apps, more than 80% will most likely to fail because of lack of data, problem insights, end user involvement or failure to innovate and grow their mobile apps to meet customer’s needs. With the odds of success being high, enterprises must take the right steps to build mobile apps for business the right way.

Pitfalls to Avoid while Building Enterprise Mobile Apps

Building and deploying enterprise mobile apps is no easy task and seen more as a high-risk, high-reward situation by most companies. If done well, enterprise mobile apps help business operations run more efficiently throughout the organizations and drive ROI. However, organizations focus on the wrong approach to enterprise apps. More often, the lack of clear understanding of what the app needs to do and who the users are, the processes that the app will support, the technology/ platform for execution and its management are often the major reasons why enterprise mobile applications fail. So, what is the right way to building the enterprise apps? Although the right approach depends on the situation and strategy, here are some general guidelines to build mobile apps for business the right way.

No Clear Scope

Often the demand for enterprise apps and their scope are simply based on a few people’s opinion and skewed knowledge. In-spite of investing a huge amount of time and money to create a business app, enterprise mobile app development teams work in the vacuum and on assumptions without even asking what their customers (internal or external) want or need. This in many cases can lead to project being scrapped or a failed enterprise app.

The Right Way:

Enterprise apps are mission-critical and meant to fulfil a specific highly focused task. Therefore, to be successful, companies need to start by defining the problem to be solved working with the end users and other stakeholders. You must be clear

whether the app will cater to employees, customers, vendors or all of them?

Will the mobile utilize the latest technology or replace existing technology?

More insights and data points generally mean a greater chance of success. Once you’ve prepared a list of business processes and roadmap is established around those processes, it’s time to shift the focus to understanding the end-user.

Lack of End User Involvement

60% of workers use apps for work activities yet more often enterprise apps are developed in isolation without talking to people who will use it. Therefore, it’s not surprising that among the varied reasons for the failure of enterprise apps, the single biggest pitfall is failing to cater to the user. The features and functions of an enterprise app don’t mean much, and it won’t succeed unless users start using it.

The Right Way:

Foremost, companies must avoid the assumption that they know what is needed.

Successful enterprise mobile apps focus on solving one or maybe two problems for the end-user and business. Enterprises should therefore always include feedback from end-users right from the first prototype itself and continuously collect feedback to improvise the app right until the final release launch to be successful.

Employees/ Vendors/ Channel Partner facing apps: Create focus groups for each of them to determine the business issues they face and how enterprise apps can solve them.

Customer-facing apps: A great way is to use surveys and focus-groups of current and prospective customers to understand what services/ products they would want to access through mobile apps, as also the app functionality they would love to have within the app.

A thorough understanding of their pain-points, problems at hand and thus a clear vision of app’s goals. Moreover, active collaboration and participation of users can further drive interactive UX during the development cycle to ensure a sustainable engaging and ongoing experience.

Poor User Experience

A Forrester estimates that 64% employees rarely use enterprise apps owing to poor design and user-experience. This doesn’t come as surprise considering that many app developers, already having to deal with many pressing issues, do not give user experience the importance it deserves.

Further, business users, designers and developers do not see eye-to-eye when it comes to user-experience and UI design often becomes a source of frustration and eventually UI fails to address one or more functional requirements. It is typical for companies to want to build a swiss army knife of features, when all they need is a single purpose enterprise app.

The Right Way:

Keeping things simple is the key! Enterprise apps should be easy with clean interfaces for usability. App developers must aim to build an app that serves a clear purpose and meets your business goals, rather than trying to bombard the app with multiple features. An app has to be user-friendly and intuitive so that anyone can figure out easily and this can only happen when enterprise app developers put themselves in their end-users’ shoes in-order to avoid worst pitfalls of enterprise apps.

Obsolete Technology

Apart from poor UX, obsolete technology and lack of robust backend integration with backend resources and public APIs in view expanding technology is often is among the major reasons for enterprise app failures. Many enterprises continue to use legacy systems not compatible with mobile services and thus unable to meet user expectations for more additions and changes with arrival of new technologies. Enterprise apps also likely to fail and only add to a company’s pile of ‘waste of money’ projects if you have an inefficient API strategy or your BYOD and MDM policies not implemented and managed efficiently managed

The Right Way:

Robust and secure back-end integration capabilities, right API strategy ensure sustainability and relevancy of the app. Given the challenges of device fragmentation, you must make efforts to optimize enterprise mobile apps across a variety of platforms. One solution is choosing the platform and technology stack for your business app with an understanding why your enterprise needs mobile apps for which business processes, the users’ needs and wants.

It may also depend on the choice of your core audience. While at one-time BlackBerry was the standard for enterprise apps until Android and Apple’s iOS dominated the scene. Both of which have their own unique software and interface features. Further beyond the OS and types of devices, there is also an industry or market preference for certain devices that tend to be more popular choice. Thus, for instance in the entertainment industry and retail industry, Apple devices like iPad, iPad Pro are preferred while many major retail and industries prefer popular Samsung or Nexus devices for Android OS.

Poor Post-Launch Management and Analytics

An often-overlooked aspect of successful mobile app is enterprise app analytics and management. While app analytics refers to how often the app is used and how the app is performing and being leveraged by people and helps to give valuable insights about the app. This information will help you to understand how your app is performing and what your users are saying so you can consistently improve your app and its overall performance.

The Right Way:

An app isn’t successful unless it drives engagement. App developers must, therefore, build analytics into the app to help the company understand the mobile app user experience. By regularly testing the app to improve performance and using the analytics tool to measure adoption and engagement helps companies identify problem and usability issues. Key metrics to track mobile app analytics include App Users, Crash Reporting, Session Lengths, Performance Analytics, Monetization Metrics. By continuously monitoring, analyzing and managing your business app to adapt to the changing demands of your app users and constantly changing technologies will make a dramatic difference in the popularity, lifecycle and eventually success of your business app.

It's the era of the apps. Every stream of life is flowing in the app wave. There is an app for almost everything we can think of. App stores like Apple are evidently showing the boundless potential that right apps have – both regarding adoption, as well as revenue generation.

While most leading app stores will have policy / guidance terms and pointers to help developers navigate this extraordinary pool of opportunities, most developers miss one very vital building block in an app's journey. No matter how intuitive, UI-easy, need-oriented and agile you conjure your app to be, it will stop just an inch short of reaching its desired segment if you miss iOS localization.

Yes, iOS developers can release apps across any or many of the 150 countries there with a single click but what about making sure that these countries peel off the product well and are not stuck unzipping the language sleeve? What use is a great product if it lies unnoticed inside the carton? Most of the countries you are releasing the app towards may not have native English speakers, and here, your app would be pointless irrespective of how sturdy, fast and visually appealing it is.

If you indeed want the app to be user-friendly across the full spectrum of a store, first things first, you need to internationalise it adequately. That means your app should be designed with a reasonable level of international compatibility so that areas like date / time / number formats; text input; time zone differences; user interface, output processing, etc. are amenable for use in user's native language, no matter what that is. The code should be approached with this angle throughout the development phase and not as an afterthought.

Once the code is shaped well for international tweaking, then you should leverage this ability for effective localization as per a specific user base. That means taking help from translation companies to convert the app's user interface and core parts into a language that applies to a given user or culture.

It is advisable to undertake the app's testing for various settings and situations with the use of translation experts, tools and pseudo-localization. Keep in mind that this process is much more than merely exporting some text and giving the app just a shallow-repackaging for a new language. This process should be well under the hood and deeply handled. It can also be done before the app is fully ready so that additional iOS localization and specific audio-imaging elements can be aligned as the app proceeds.

Expert translation companies can make it possible to do parallel localization work and import that intermittently into the project and then test the app throughout every language and UI scenario.

If a developer or a software maker can spend a little, proactive attention in this direction and employ the right translation resources, the app can not only garner enviable app-store ranks but will also be an instant favorite among its intended audience.

After all, user experience was and still remains the ultimate test for any app and software's actual stability and adoption. It is an acid test, and when apps fail to take cognizance of the language aspect in the UI picture, they will, sooner or later, fail this gate eventually. Think about it: why should a great app slip to catch the user's eye just because it is in a different language – language used to be a big barrier earlier, but not anymore. What's the use of being in the app economy and the 21st century, if we let language be a speed-bump even now?

The Smart phones, the eCommerce, the M-commerce and the growing consumer demand for comfort, is now even bigger than every passing day! When the long involved story of walk-ins has converted into log-ins can’t be factored out.

If introspected, there are two ways to deal with this binge indulgence: nestle down and dream of the olden days or just move forward by adopting the golden changes.

At this core, if you are scouting for a rich customer base to get a competitive advantage in your marketplace then Mobile payment Solutions come to rescue.

See what prospective possibilities come with mobile payments:

• Enhanced Customer Experience

Mobile payment ensures a splendid user experience while checking out and making the final payment. Customers like quick service, especially when it comes to checking out. Payments with mobile devices, Credit cards, and Debit Cards have made even easier and quicker to pay. This time-saving effort can directly increase profits by allowing you to handle multiple customers at a single frame of time.

• Easily Track Customer Trends and Inventory

Mobile Payments works wonder for small to medium businesses. Juggling hours for tracking inventory and customer behavior is no more a pain point and can be easily automated. By tracking the products and services you are selling for the customers not only you can capture the information, but can learn about your customers, their shopping behavior and use that information to improve your services and focus on what’s important.

• Bigger Sales, Improved ROI

Businesses that tend to accept credit and debit cards can outstandingly improve cash flow, and increase sales as buyers using mobile payments and cards are more likely to buy impulsively, spend more, and join loyalty programs.

• Cash Flow Management

The seamless and hassle-free payment checkout is, the effective cash flow management will be. Thus, allowing the companies/brands to manage all transactions from a single terminal.

• Secured and Private

When you choose mobile payments, you needn’t worry about your customers’ data security. All transactions are secured with an additional security layer whether you send money, shop or split the bill. Also, there’s no extra cost when you check out or send money using your balance or bank account in most of the payment gateways.

Besides these, Mobile loyalty cards are also a good alternative for companies who devoid from the expense of creating a custom app. Creating a virtual card is significantly cheaper, and phone owners are less likely to delete it after a few uses.

Ultimately, offering the extended comfort in payment options-the one your customer wants and your business demands-is extremely critical.

And it comes as no surprise that mobile technology has now become an important part in triggering the growth and success. The sooner you adopt it, the better pace you will keep x years from now.

The total number of apps available in the Apple App Store is rapidly increasing while giving momentum to the mobile industry. Every now and then, millions of users search apps in the App Store for almost everything and anything which, can make their lives better.

Though, every professional has their own business principles and ideas, however, Apple has given importance to certain patterns which, can greatly influence the user experience. While addressing these implications, here are some of the evolving trends of iPhone app development trends which, would shape the course of 2017.

Swift coding

Swift has become the popular name in this genre because of its inclusive range of coding technologies and frameworks. It operates on an advanced compiler infrastructure which, helps in using the Xcode tools to write stable codes. By now, Objective-C has become more popular over Swift Programming. However, as Swift became open source in the year 2015, the number of users increased rapidly to a great extent. This, in turn, exceeded the total number of Objective-C users as well.

iMessage Apps

By the fall of 2016, iMessage apps started gaining momentum. The latest iOS 10 update has set the ideal base for developers to develop and deploy high-end custom app extensions. With its launch, Apple intends to get back to the some of its users that it lost because of the other popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. These apps are about to create more opportunities for startups especially while developing AI-powered products and chat-bots.

Apps supporting Augmented Reality and GPS

The small and medium-sized enterprises are rapidly implementing location-based app services. It is highly beneficial in offering customers with information on products and services, price comparison, reviews and various other activities related to mCommerce. As the newest driving force, GPS has become widely popular with Pokemon Go’s success in 2016 and in the domain of retail and automation as well. Thus, expectantly, users will deploy combination of GPS and AR in the near future and in 2017 as well.

Security

iPhone has always been the favourite choice when it comes to privacy and security concerns. Mobile data security has rapidly grown to an unprecedented level thereby, becoming a crucial area of concern for IT giants. Apple has already moved forward with the App Transport Security (ATS). This year, it’s going to bring stronger and more creative data encryption technologies thereby, facilitating enhanced security.

Final word

Though, Android wins all the volume battles, however, Apple continues to win in all the margin battles, thereby securing the top place in terms of revenue. Revenues from these apps are pretty high and with better margins and thus, it will continue to incentivize action and innovation in the mobile industry.

People have been dependent on their cell phones for different purposes, and they get all the required solutions of their problems through the applications of mobile phones. It is also primarily used for paying bills, accumulating different information about various factors which are dispersed on the internet, get in touch with friends anywhere around the world, solving every glitch, playing new and modern games, others.

Presently, the market is booming with the new invention of Smartphones which is capable of offering every facility that is equivalent to a desktop or laptop. It is to be noted that it requires the assistance of a special software program to give the proper efficacy and ensure the appropriate use of its hardware. Everyone is accustomed to the factor that there are two kinds of operating systems available which work as an operating system for these modern, innovative mobile phone, i.e., the Android and iOS.

We all are informed about the fact that iOS is the exclusive OS which runs only on Apple’s supporting mobile platform. It has transformed the world with its new, innovative, inbuilt, and user-friendly operations and loads of useful apps. Presently, it has been found that they are renowned for providing every app which satisfies each and every necessity of people. Approximately more than 800 million devices are functioning on iOS, and in the near future, as estimated, it will cover up nearly 1 billion devices which will be working on iOS.

There has been a huge decrease in the sales of computer, and it is all due to the proficiency offered by the hand-held devices. The research says that millions of apps are downloaded and in them lies the presence of games as well, that is liked and preferred by youths and kids. They are also well aware of the same. It is a proof which shows peoples dependency on Apple’s operating system and the efficiency provided by its apps which are being frequently used.

It is the leading cause which assures you that anyone can go ahead and shape an iOS app and can earn millions of dollars. If you have required knowledge of programming and have a brief understanding of it, then you can focus on learning programming of Apple iOS. In this way, you will not only be capable of developing an app but also will be able to handle Apple app development.

However, if you focus on the Android application then it should be the priority as the present market of smartphone users throughout the world are filled with Android dealers. There is no significant difference in these two operating systems. However, both of them have made human life quite easier, and every work which requires the assistance of a machine to get accomplished can be done with such defined systems.

Let’s look at 10 hottest artificial intelligence applications that succeed in leveraging tons of data in today’s changing environment.

SIRI

SIRI is one of the most famous artificial intelligence applications. It’s a personal assistant software for Apple devices, including iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Apple Watch and AppleTV, which works as an intelligent knowledge guide to recommend, answer questions and delegate requests to other connected web services. The software is controlled by voice and thus it returns individualized answers learning from a user’s language. According to Apple’s Senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi, Siri gets 1 billion requests a week. As of 2016 Siri is available in 20 languages.

GOOGLE NOW

Another intelligent personal assistant is Google Now developed by Google, which goes as a part of the Google app available for Android and iOS. To enable Google Now you need to launch the Google app and then allow Google to pull all the synced information from all Google services you use and your location history for making you recommendations and alerts. By turning off all the needed privacy and tracking settings in this probably the most practical artificial intelligence applications a user is able to see different Google Now Cards: Activity summary (steps you’ve made to stay fit), Boarding pass (sent to Gmail account, displayed later at the airport), Events (events scheduled on your Google Calendar), Flights (the status of your flight in real-time), Location reminders, Parking location (helps finding your parked car), Translation (look up translations of words), TV (a list of shows broadcast in real-time) and many other. All the commands in Google Now you can control by voice, however, they are limited. Currently Google Now is available in English and is a major competitor of Siri.

CORTANA

Cortana is the Microsoft’s intelligent personal assistant initially designed for Windows Phone, but now available on Android, Windows 10, xBox One, and on Apple’s iOS. Cortana software reacts to a user’s voice and accomplishes limited commands, answers questions using the information from the browser installed (Bing by default), works as a secretary by scheduling events, locating necessary files and opening the apps needed. The Cortana artificial intelligence application can process voice commands in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, Portuguese and Japanese.

ALEXA

Alexa is the voice service created by Amazon for Amazon Echo intelligent speaker, which was widely introduced in 2015. Alexa uses natural language processing algorithms to adapt to natural voice of the user. Moreover, as it is built in the cloud, Alexa is constantly learning by recognizing patterns from interactions with the user. The more a user interacts with Alexa the more it evolves and gets smarter, delivering higher quality answers to a user’s questions. The Alexa artificial intelligence application has a free SDK that can be used by developers in creation of new voice-based AI software and devices.

KINECT

Kinect is an AI-based motion controller and a motion sensing technology by Microsoft that is used in Xbox One and Xbox 360 game consoles. Kinect analyzes natural user interface and reacts to voice commands and gestures. Microsoft offers a free SDK for developers to build Kinect-enabled applications. This has already resulted in wider application of Kinect technology for non-gaming purposes including healthcare, retail industry, military and robotics.

BRAINA

Braina is a free artificial intelligence application that works as a personal productivity software and a virtual office assistant on Windows computers. The software reacts to a user’s voice commands and performs different tasks on their computer accordingly. Due to the built-in speech recognition technology a user can interact with their computer remotely over Wi-Fi via the Braina app for Android. Braina is currently available in English, free and paid versions.

VIV

VIV is more than just an artificial intelligence application, but an artificial intelligence platform from the creators of Siri. Unlike Siri, VIV has an open platform that allows developers to build external plug-ins to work with it. The makers of VIV aim to make the first consumer-oriented, omnipresent assistant. The work on it started in 2012. The demo version of the ‘intelligent interface for everything’ was presented by VIV CEO Dag Kittlaus at TechCrunch Disrupt NY in May 2016.

P.A.N

P.A.N is a free artificial intelligence software that virtually analyzes any kind of textual data, such as poetry, fiction, history, newspaper etc. The application first parses the text, recognizes the structure of its sentences, the mood and tone of the given text. Generally P.A.N allows to put any text under a microscope and eventually provide different variations of its understanding based on a comprehensive analysis executed.

WIPRO HOLMES

Wipro HOLMES is a cognitive artificial intelligence platform used for development of predictive systems, visual computing applications, digital virtual agents, cognitive process automation, knowledge visualization, drones and robotics. Wipro HOLMES learns from new information and can make recommendations, as well as predict failures. The platform was designed and introduced in 2016 by the Indian company Wipro for optimizing business processes in corporations.

WOLFRAM ALPHA

Wolfram Alpha is a free intelligent answer engine, which uses artificial intelligence to provide answers to a user’s questions from curated set of data like statistics, source cross-checking, expert reviews etc. Wolfram Alpha differs from semantic search engines like Google in the way that it gives specific answers from a structured set of information rather than matches the question to the best answer from indexing multiple answers to that question. Wolfram Alpha is being used for answering some requests by Bing, DuckDuckGo and even Apple’s Siri. Wolfram Alpha app is available for iOS and Android, Kindle Fire, Nook.

CONCLUSION

Artificial intelligence is without a doubt a very powerful tool for creation of experiences never imagined before. We do hope that artificial intelligence applications entering our lives will stay serving the humanity in the most beneficial way.

How can you make consumers aware of your products without repelling them?

Making people aware of your product is critical to the sale of your services / products and to the overall productivity of your businesses. Most companies are not as widely known as Apple or Ford. Without an effective method of informing, your products and company could likely go unnoticed. However, in general, blatant advertisements have the opposite effect of their intended purpose perhaps repelling more audiences than they attract. In today's over-advertised world of products and services, helping the public become aware of your business requires making your product information interesting and perhaps even subtle.

Let's look at three modern marketing techniques businesses have been successfully utilizing.

PRODUCT PLACEMENT is a form of advertising used effectively by many well-known companies. Product placement is the placement of brand names typically within media types such as movies, video games, and television with the hopes the brand name will be seen and associated with the good feelings within the source. For example, many luxury brand vehicle are placed in James Bond movies in hopes the vehicle will be viewed as stylish / cool, increasing the viewer's desire to make a purchase. Usually this type of advertising is expensive, but a large number of people will be exposed to the product / service. Some have further criticized this method of advertising claiming it's only effective for well-known brands that people already recognize. But if a business carefully selects the media which their target audience will be viewing and inserts their product into the media, the chances of positive effects may be increased.

CONTENT MARKETING is a type of advertising that has gained momentum in the last few years. Content marketing is basically "hiding" the product and company information in publications that will likely attract the interests of consumers. Content marketing is often free and can easily be shared on social networking sites.

** Some common forms of content marketing include (1) Educational videos. Such publications might give customers advice about personal finance, business strategies, health advice, retirement ideas, etc. In these videos, the company will place truly useful information, but also insert small "plugs" for their service / product and businesses. (2) Another popular method of content marketing is online informational articles. A company might print articles related to the interests of their target market and insert links and the company name into the publication. (3) A final method that is commonly seen in content marketing is blog posts. Through these blogs, companies hope to begin conversations with among customers and attract attention to their website.

** Another effective branch of content marketing is infographs. Infographs show a graph, chart, or another display that shows some interesting information. They are quick to read and are likely to gain the attention of an audience.

** Although not directly a type of content marketing, many companies show their products / services and educate people about their company through humorous or interesting online video. Posting such content on popular online video channels such as YouTube can be free. If the information in the video is carefully designed, the video has greater chances of being shared on social networks. Thus, this type of free advertising can be effective if the content of the publication is appealing to your audience. Gary Vaynerchuk is considered a master of content marketing using videos. By making and publishing various videos on YouTube, he expanded his small family winery to a 45 million dollar company in a matter of years.

SOCIAL MEDIA has millions of users everyday making it an excellent avenue for reaching consumers. It's very common now for companies to create their own social media accounts and post articles, videos, product information, and company updates. Facebook, Google+, yahoo, LinkedIn, and Twitter all allow you to create accounts and post information. If consumers are interested in the information on your company account, there are great chances of it being shared. Thus if your account and publications are interesting and appeal to the needs and interests of social network users, your company's information can be shared by others for free.

According to statistics, the average adult sees an average of 2,500 ads per day. People literally see so many advertisements their mind doesn't react when they see it. If the advertisement is constructed in a way that the viewer must, or is forced, to read / view it, the usual response from viewers is annoyance. As a business, you want don't want people to view your company's advertisement with disgust and frustration … This is the common response to older methods of marketing. The advertising methods listed above are current and designed to be less intruding and offensive to viewers. They are designed to separate your company's product or service information from the other 2,500 ads people see everyday.

Hammertap software and Terapeak software are two software programs that are used to help eBay sellers research the most popular selling product, what that product sells for and how competitive sellers are making out in the market. Both of these software programs provide eBay users with tons of statistical information regarding the products sold on eBay and are both quite simple to use. The most difficult aspect of these two software programs is how to decipher the stats and turn them into the best profit available for the seller. In this article I present make money selling on eBay – Hammertap versus Terapeak.

To start down the path to make money selling on eBay, let’s first examine Hammertap software. Hammertap software provides users with video tutorials of their product on their website regarding the use of the software. The tutorials will guide the user through each step of the research process and teach the user how to decipher the research and how to put those stats into effect. The video tutorials usually run around one hour at a time but are well worth watching and listening too. You might even want to take some notes.

Other features of Hammertap are its price. Hammertap is currently selling for $19.95 per month, down from roughly $25 per month. Also, Hammertap recently released its web-based software. The first version of Hammertap software was only available as a disc to be installed on a PC. That meant it could not be used on a Mac, Linux or other non-Windows platform. The web-based version means that subscribers to the software can log into the company’s website and use the program via their internet browser on any computer. Hammertap also provides its users with an eBay fee calculator tool and a bad bidder blocking tool.

Now, let’s analyze Terapeak software. Terapeak software was originally released as a web-based program before Hammertap released their web-based version. Terapeak sells for roughly $25 per month but a yearly subscription can be purchased for $197.95. The $25 per month is for their Terapeak Advantage plan. Their Terapeak Insight plan is available for $15 per month. Terapeak’s design is much easier on the eyes compared to Hammertap’s. For those who plan to make money selling on eBay this is a solid advantage.

Hammertap’s software displays colors of brown and green while the Terapeak version of the software displays colors of red, blue, white, yellow, pink and much more. Their layout design is much nicer and easier to navigate. A lot of what is offered with Hammertap is also offered with Terapeak. That is, stats on the supply and demand of products, how to list products and price them, stats on what other competitors are doing and what it is buyers want, when they want it and how they want it.

For those who wish to make money selling on eBay both Hammertap software and Terapeak software are almost identical in their features and stats they offer to the consumer. One of the main differences now that Hammertap has released a web-based version of their product is that Terapeak is more expensive than Hammertap. However, for the veteran or beginning seller on eBay, you cannot go wrong with either one of these products when it comes to selling your products on eBay.

To Your eBay Success!