Mobile and web applications can be extremely beneficial in increasing business growth by opening new markets, expanding customer reach, growing the brand's visibility, improving the customer experience, and contributing to numerous growth strategies. They also allow for efficiency, which can lead to efficiency, leverage network effects, and which in turn, increase competitiveness and productivity. Digital technology is able to significantly lower various costs like search costs, replication costs distribution costs, monitoring costs, and costs for verification.
Let's discuss two of these apps developed by large corporations that have taken over their respective business with their disruptive technology and transformed their customer base and business reach to millions via their web and mobile applications.
Airbnb
Airbnb is an application that provides online holiday rental services that connects travellers looking for accommodation to those looking to rent their homes or properties. Airbnb is accessible to people who own homes and travel to over 191 countries, and more than 65,000 cities across the globe and has hundreds of listings to choose from. Because of its massive growth, the company has received funding from about 15 big corporations, and has received a raise of $4.4 billion.
The Airbnb app for mobile and web features services like a list of experiences and reviews for various restaurants, accommodation costs for tourists, and many more things in recent years. First and foremost, for developing an app similar to Airbnb, it must be able to seamlessly transition from starting until the end of it. The app must be simple to use and provide a more user-friendly experience, which will result in excellent app reviews.
The Airbnb process:
The owner or property's owner lists their home's details, including conditions, rules, prices, facilities and any other information that catches the eye of the tourists and travellers who are seeking accommodations.
Anyone looking for a rental property to rent can apply the search filter based on the price range, location as well as other factors.
Following that is the request to book, in which travelers are required to raise a request for a reservation to the accommodation they prefer.
The owner of the property will either accept or deny the request based on the property's availability.
If the property owner agrees to the booking application, the payment will be debited from the traveler's account. The remainder amount needs to be paid out after the trip by the traveler.
In the end, following the trip, both the homeowner of the Airbnb home and the guest can review their experiences respectively to provide future references to other travelers and homeowners.
Once you know why the Airbnb application works we can learn more about the programming languages and frameworks used to develop the Airbnb app.
To develop an Airbnb clone app You will need to be aware of the entire tech stacks such as:
Backend Frameworks like Node.js, Django or Ruby
Frontend Frameworks such as Vue.js, Angular.js, and React.js
Serverside technologies like Azure, AWS, Google Cloud and DigitalOcean
Management technologies for databases like MongoDB, MySQL, MSSQL, PostgreSQL, and Azure DocumentDB
Network Caching Services like Nginx and Redis
In order to create an app that is similar like Airbnb, here is the list of options you can include for the best user experience:
Sign-up/Login First, users are required to register for the website or app by providing basic personal information such as name, ID number and email address. If already registered the user must log to their account by filling in their using and password.
Search Filter Filters allow users to set their requirements such as the type of property size, dimensions, price range, available dates and others so that they can locate the property they want without difficulty.
Manage Account This feature lets users to manage, update, or alter their profile as well as information on the app like their password change etc.
Wish List Wish List feature lets you save or mark any desired property by the user to be used in the future or even if the property is unavailable.
Chat Notifications Similar to a notification basically notifies the user, chat notifications inform users of messages they receive via their chat app.
Chatbot A user would like to communicate with the property owner prior to making a reservation, the chatbot feature helps.
Maps Maps is a way of locating your property's location on map so that the user can see the area overall and its surrounding places.
Booking This feature can help reflect the history of booking and book the hotel that you prefer.
Payments The feature allows the guest to pay the stay to the property owner once they have completed the transaction. The feature also lets users check their the history of their transaction and to select their preferred currency and payment method.
Help: The 'help' feature of an app allows to counter any difficulties that users may face and provides solutions via specifically curated FAQs or connecting them to customer support representatives and websites.
Review This feature allows users to share their experiences and ideas for homeowners and tourists.
Sharing: If a user wants to share the property details with someone else, they can easily do that using the share feature. This allows them to share it via other social media apps or on the app itself. The app also has the possibility of inviting friends to the application.
Airbnb has more than 7 million listings and users in nearly 200 nations. It has become so convenient to property owners and travelers that it now has over 150 million people using it. The more users who use the app mean more customers and more income for your company.
Slack
Slack is one of the fastest-growing startups across the globe. It's a corporate and workplace communication tool. Within eight months of it was launched, Slack reached a valuation of $1B. In the beginning, it was designed to provide a solution that would help game creators, Slack gained 8000 companies sign-up within 24 hours of launching the now well-known remote-working tool.
How did Slack create such a powerful remote-working tool?
It's basically a basic messaging app. It's packed with interesting features like public chat rooms organized by topics, direct messaging and private groups. Administrators can decide the accessibility of each user which allows companies to manage the access of information to various roles and hierarchy. Additionally, they can create public channels , such as #random which allow teams to have informal discussions or other non-work related topics and foster relationships in the workplace.
The features of the Slack application include:
A contact book
In-app search bar for contacts or groups, media files, and particular messages
Online/offline/typing status and visibility settings
Reading receipt and message exchange
Group messaging with delivered and read receipts
Voice and video calls and group calls
Emojis in-app that can be customized
Media file transfer (pictures, videos, documents, contact cards, external links, etc.)
Customizable themes for user and wallpapers
Independent slack channels for different departments
Third-party integrations , such as Google Drive and Office 365
Creating separating threads for seamless communication
Workflow Builder that automatizes routine tasks and communications
Event management tools such as spreadsheets, run sheets Gantt charts, event-specific calendars
Slack is accessible as a web app, desktop app and mobile application. It's available on any mobile device or browser and also as a standalone desktop app.
Web
Slack's core is a blend of JavaScript/ES6 and React.js for it's Web platform. When Slack made the Windows application, they could not use the previous codebase. So, to allow it to be accessible across all the different types of devices as well as the internet, Slack decided to implement cross-platform development tools such as Electron.
Desktop
Slack's desktop application is also designed with Electron to provide a frameless, faster look of the app along with other improvements to the background to enhance the user experience. The Electron framework has enabled desktop applications to run across platforms by using programming languages like JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
The desktop application was created using the MacGap v1 framework. It relied on WebView to host web content inside the framework of native apps. But it wasn't easy to make it more modern with the new features available only to Apple's WKWebView, and moving to this view required an entire app rewrite.
Although the Slack desktop uses a hybrid system however, the code and assets loading were distant for the most part. The Slack developers integrated Chromium along with Node.js to create a rendering engine as well as a module system. The new desktop application is now built on the ES6 with async/await React application that gradually changes to TypeScript.
Mobile
Slack is developed using a combination different programming languages like Java as well as Kotlin for Android.
For iOS, it's written in an amalgamation of Objective-C along with Swift.
To create a successful application an approach that is strategic in the process of development is important. Along with full engineering of the product employing technology to help with development of the product, features enhancement and other development areas. An MVP or Minimum Viable Product MVP helps in developing an intuitive software and product design that is easily tested before fully making the product available for launch. A lot of enterprises create MVP first and launch using a small set of users to evaluate the features and functions. They collect feedback from their customers and use the feedback to improve the final product. MVP can also be a great option to start a campaign to raise funds to develop the application. It also helps validate the whole app idea. First published here
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