As there are 1.3 million apps available in the market, user engagement has become a key factor in the success of an application. Today, I'll show you how to achieve this engagement on social networks through five steps (Exist, Know, Offer, Identify, Award).  

Huge! Facebook is the largest online social network and according to Facebook stats has more than 1 billion monthly active users. Almost 90% of worldwide active users are using mobile phones to check their news feed, chat with friends and update their Facebook profile. There is no doubt that Facebook has conquered most of the world's internet users and brings to the table a great opportunity for brands, companies and entrepreneurs to launch their products with a low budget or even, for free. The mobile apps promotion are not an exception. In the last two years, Facebook has improved the advertising tools for mobile promotion, becoming more successful than conventional Facebook ads. The variety of advertising formats, the deep segmentation (gender, language, interests, behavior, connections, pages), and the placement of your ads on the News feed helps to increase the number of downloaded apps, the app's engagement and retention of app users. These facts also contribute to achieve a more relevant position through search tools of Google Play and Apple's App Store. But let's understand how it works in detail.

When you design your app, you may choose between a variety of different navigation modes. Some of those navigation modes include icons for each individual section. In this video tutorial, we’re going to show you how to: - Add sample sections to your app to visualize the structure of the menu - Set the icons of your app after you’ve chosen your navigation mode - Upload your own personal icons

With the advent of mass production, mass advertising was invented too. In the 60s, the goal of most marketing strategies was just to get as much views of their ads as possible. Television spots and street posters were the most popular media because with those means of communication marketers could easily and quickly spread their message throughout the whole country. These were the days of glory for marketing agencies like the fictional Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in Madmen; these agencies could make big money with a poster and a catchy line directed to the general “frustrated housewives” category of consumers. The segmentation was mainly demografic: marketers based themselves on age, sex, income and such other general features... No need for me to tell you that their business model would never work today. It has become increasingly complex to segment a market in any sector. Also, the overload of marketing messages that consumers have been bombarded with over the last decades has made them much more insensible to any communication, so to reach them you really have to stand out. This is why it’s important to really know who you are targeting, so that you can give them something thats truly interesting.

Many users will have heard about the access apps can have to their devices, and if you install apps on an Android device, you'll immediately see what the app you're about to install can do. This leaves many users justifiably worried, especially as some of the stated permissions are quite opaque-sounding and very difficult to understand. Also, one and the same permission can be used to do different things in different apps.  Like any other native application, an app built with GoodBarber also requires a number of permissions in order to work properly and offer the best possible user experience. However, the list of permissions required might at first seem somewhat intimidating to you or your users. That's why today we'd like to take the time to explain what permissions a GoodBarber app requires, and the rationale behind every permission.

Ever since the launch of the new iPhone, we've been working to make sure that GoodBarber makes the most of Apple's new screen sizes. The changes we've made ensure the perfect display of all of your graphic elements, both on the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, but also on all other iOS devices.

As you are already familiar with, you can manage your Push Notifications directly within your GoodBarber backend. But what are some of the key options at hand you should especially pay attention to? Read on for some useful tips to improve your communication.

Today, let's discover a very powerful section recently added to GoodBarber. It is called Menu and it has only one purpose: to give you the power to create a multi-level navigation inside your app.

Stefano Mongardi, an expert of Online Marketing who is also passionate about tech and innovation, tells us everything you need to know to implement a successful e-commerce business and stand out from the competition. Nowdays we're all quite practical with online purchases. We simply land on a website, scroll through the products, decide the best one for us and order it. Seems easy huh? So now you think: "Wow! ecommerce is exploding, let's open an online store and start selling our products worldwide! It's a piece of cake!". Well, actually it's not. Today the competition is fierce and if you want to bring an added value you either have to work really hard or spend a LOT of money to let people know about your great new ecommerce business. You may even have the coolest products in the world, but just being online doesn't mean you will right away get tons of visits and conversions without doing anything.  Most of the times when an ecommerce platform is created, people invest most of their time and budget setting up a PPC campaign on Google, Facebook and maybe even Twitter. The result is: you spend a lot of money and get a lot of vistas but most people won't come back to your website again. Why? Because you offer products and not added value. Don’t forget that your competitors offer the same or similar products. Unless you are the only person in the world selling that specific product, you have to give people some added value to convince them to buy from you and not someone else.

You’ve most certainly heard of the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise funds for the ALS that went viral this summer. You might have even participated! This brilliant initiative turned out to be a huge success and brought more than 100 million dollars to the ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) association. The concept of taking up a challenge and then nominating your friends has been quite trendy on the socials since a while, but the Ice Bucket Challenge went to whole new level, involving thousands and thousands of people around the globe and becoming the hottest social network topic of the summer of 2014. Everything started when Pete Frates, a former baseball player who was diagnosed with ALS two years ago, challenged a friend to donate $100 to the ALS association or film himself dumping ice cold water over his head. The idea was so simple and fun that it caught on like a wildfire. As this action spread, it changed somewhat because even though people were more than willing to donate, they didn’t want to miss out on the experience of pouring a bucket of ice on themselves, so they began to do both. Totally understandable!... ;)

Why are brands creating apps? Because a mobile app brings together all the essential components of your brand: useful information, advertising, social networks, products, special offers, loyalty solutions... If well structured, it is the perfect container for your content marketing strategy. With an app, clients can find all the information they need to buy a product, all in one place. Simple and direct. And now, with our E-commerce section, you can easily connect existing Amazon, Shopify and Etsy boutiques.

Luckily it's Friday again :) We are adding more and more new features to GoodBarber and we like to present them to you on Friday so you can start get off to a good start in the weekend. I've noticed very happily, that most of you don't wait for Monday to try out these new sections and features :) When I introduced the Contact Us section, I had anticipated that we were working on a new design for the About section, where you can put information about yourself, your team or company. Maybe some of you have noticed that this section already exists since about a week in your backends. So lets not wait any longer to explore it in detail!

There are a few ways to directly earn money with apps: by creating and selling apps for clients, by monetizing through advertising, and by directly selling the app in the stores. In this article, we'll be covering two main questions for publishers who want to sell their app in the stores: 1/ What type of apps are users willing to pay for? 2/ What you need to do if you choose to charge a price for your app.

"Even the most intellectual mind has something to learn"- George Santayana Hello Goodbarbers, Big things are happening in GoodBarber these days. Our fingers are flying on our keyboards to write new codes and develop new features! Right after launching GoodBarber 3 , our completely new and restyled platform, we took some time to listen to all your requests and we created a road map to plan the development of all the new features you asked for,  so we could implement them as soon as possible. Last week we introduced you to our new Contact Us section. Today we're proud to present the new integrated pop-up that you can activate to encourage your users to rate the app. Just as George Santayana said, we all have something to learn!

For those of you who have migrated from GoodBarber 2 to the new version, GoodBarber 3, you may have noticed that the Custom section wit the 4 templates (Contact Us, About, URL and HTML) does not exist anymore. In it's place we created the HTML section that allows you to choose between and HTML and URL template. But what about the About and Contact Us template? Many of you have been asking where to find these sections, don't worry, we haven't forgot them, we just decided to rebuild them completely to make even easier to use, now the configuration of the settings is very similar to that of the CMS sections :) Today we present the new Contact us section, it has just been published and it's ready for you to use it in your apps!

The press industry is based on communication. It's the content that gives articles or books their value, the paper is just the traditional means we use to spread this content. The invention of the telegraph swept the distance barriers between people away, making communication much easier. This has brought nations closer and offered a great opportunity for publishers to spread their news to a much wider audience. Nowadays it's all about digital communication, new original media and news flashs. This is the reality of today! But let's take a step back to when the first major news publications were created.

In the aftermath of brilliant discoveries and inventions, the long and often difficult process leading up to them is often forgotten. We imagine them as the fruit of sudden, brilliant realizations, much like the figurative lightbulb that appears above the cartoon character's head. Of course, the truth is usually far messier, and innovation is above all the result of iterative, incremental improvement. It is as much an editorial process as it is a creative one.  What makes the iPad such an interesting product, maybe even more so than it's capabilities as a device, is it's history. The iPad is an almost perfect illustration of technological possibility finally catching up with a vision, the importance of tinkering, constantly adapting and improving an idea, and above all of perseverance.

Today I want to show you all another great update that came with GoodBarber 3! Are you organizing the event of the year? An important art exhibit, a concert or an opening ceremony for your business? If so then keep reading because this is the right article for you! An event of any kind gives you the great opportunity to have direct and personal contact with your audience. To ensure that your event will be a success you have to plan it very accurately down to the last detail, from the promotional aspects all the way to the logistical ones.

If you remember the early 90’s, you should remember when Sony decided to revolutionize the way we listen to music and launched the famous yellow sports WALKMAN :) These were the times when you could record a mixtape to give to your girlfriend and when having the freedom of listening to music while walking on the street was a huge thing! From then on, we evolved first to CDs and then to downloads, and the latter grew very quickly thanks to the democratization of the internet. By now, according to a report of the IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), the number of paying subscribers to music subscription services - which includes services such as Spotify and Deezer - increased from 8 to 28 million. As the chief content officer of Spotify, Ken Parks, said: “Unlike the distribution of a physical product we can reach every person on the planet, at least every person with a smartphone.” (IFPI Digital Music Report 2014 ) In light of this, we decided to talk about how you can create a good music app. We will address the subject considering two different types of apps: radio apps and band/musicians apps. Let’s start!

We recently spoke about how to avoid rejection of your app by Apple, and emphasized the importance of proper testing. We believe you shouldn't just be able to test a proxy version that closely resembles your app, but that any GoodBarber user should have the possibility to see exactly what their app will look and feel like, so they can submit it to the stores with peace of mind. 

It's now extremely easy to build an app! Since there are now many app builders, online tutorials and lessons to learn how to program, more and more people decide to launch themselves into the adventure of app building, in hopes that their project will become popular and repay them with monetary profits. While Google has very few requirements you must meet to publish on the Google Play Store, because it reviews your app after it has been published, Apple has a very strict, zero tolerance policy. The goal of this policy is to protect the end users by not allowing bad quality apps that can be full of bugs or that are not user friendly into the store. But is this goal achieved efficiently? My job brings me to work with a great variety of apps, with different content, design and user experience. I have sent many apps to Apple to be reviewed and I honestly have to say that I still do not understand the logic behind their decisions. After all... Whoever has never downloaded a completely useless or horrible app the App Store raise your hand! What I do see is that many app are rejected because the name of an external platform comes up in a video or article etc... Or they say the content targets an audience that is too small.

"Smartphones have become indispensable in our daily life. Their penetration has grown up to 41% of the population and who possesses a smartphone relies on it more and more for an increasingly numerous amount of tasks. 63% of this population accesses the internet from their phones daily and most won't leave their houses without them." (Source: Our Mobile Planet Smartphone Research )

Oh no... you just submitted your app to the stores, and now you remember that you forgot to use the new CMS sound section after all! And going through all that trouble of submitting the app again? You can breathe easy, since you don't need to! Only a handful of modifications require you to re-build your app and submit the update to the stores - and even something big like adding a content section isn't one of them!

At GoodBarber we’ve been creating apps since 2009. And with all of our experience from thousands of clients, we realized that a great number of people chose our service because they were able to create, as well as manage, their own content using a simple interface, in order to bring their beautiful app to life!  With this in mind we decided that we should expand and improve our built-in CMS for GoodBarber 3.