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Ultimate Trends of Luxury websites and app development

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

Why do people shop for luxury goods? The main reasons are the “happiness” and “joy” they feel when they buy a new Gucci bag or a little black dress by Chanel. Luxury e-commerce accounts for 17% of all industry revenue and is expected to rise to US$58 billion in 2022.

Modern luxury brands should provide customers with software that meets high expectations. Therefore, having the right web or mobile software is key to luxury brand success. 

In this article, you will learn why your luxury brand needs a mobile or web app and trends in luxury web design. You will also find out about mobile apps from different luxury segments.

Luxury web and mobile app development: reasons to invest 

With a mobile app for your luxury brand, you will receive the following benefits:

Brand awareness. Research suggests that over 80% of all luxury goods sales are influenced by digital channels. Your premium mobile app or website will be an extra touch-point in luxury-shopping journeys. Online software is a great communication channel to inform customers about new collections. Luxury software is a perfect entry point for Millenials, who have large buying power. A recent report showed Millennials made-up 67% of spending on personal luxury products.

Customer loyalty. All luxury brands want to build meaningful and deep relationships with their customers. This means that your solution should include something more than a product catalog presented on other luxury online shopping websites. Consider adding AI or ML features such as image recognition for finding products. In this way, you will provide extra value, prestige, and a unique customer experience.

Sales from digital channels. Web and mobile luxury apps can drive extra sales for all luxury products and service providers. This concerns not only luxury clothing, but also hospitality. Thanks to mobile luxury apps, your business can receive additional income from digital channels. 

Luxury website design trends for 2021

When creating a luxury goods website, you need to consider the following tendencies:

  • Simple color pallet

The basic color palette, such as white, black, and gold, is a business card for all luxury brands. This luxury website design trend is unlikely to change in 2020. To give you an idea of luxury website design, let’s take a look at the Rolex website. The white background and absence of small elements make customers concentrate on products.

Rolex luxury website
  • High-resolution images

Most luxury brands pay extra attention to photos they place in their product catalog. Hence, high-quality images of products is another luxury website trend to consider. For instance, the Louis Vuitton product page includes high-resolution pictures and zooming. In this way, customers can see all the details of the bag before they can buy it.

Louis Vuitton website design image zoomig
  • Personalized shopping experience

When buying luxury products online, customers need help from your brand’s representative. You need to empower your website with live chat or allow customers to schedule a call with an expert. Let’s see how Tiffany uses this luxury store website trend. The website includes a call scheduling section. Here, you can book a call and receive a consultation from Tiffany’s representative.

Tiffany website design call an expert

Best tech trends create a luxury website or app

Below we have gathered top technological solutions to consider for luxury web or mobile apps.

Omnichannel experience

In most cases, luxury shopping starts online. Shoppers prefer discovering products via websites or mobile apps. Then, customers visit offline outlets to see, touch, and try the product. In this case, the luxury omnichannel experience is essential.

Hence, avoid situations where the product discovered on the mobile app is out of stock in your outlets. To achieve this, consider adding a Find in store button to a luxury online shopping site, as Louis Vuitton did. Users enter an address and zip code to see a list of offline stores where the required products are in stock.

Louis Vuitton find in store website feature

AR technologies

By levering Augmented reality in mobile apps, allow your clients to try luxury watches or jewelry. An example of a luxury brand that applies AR in a mobile app is Panerai, a Swiss watch manufacturer. This AR luxury brand app allows you to explore the models of watches in every detail. You need to wear a bracelet, focus your mobile device’s camera on it, and the Panerai watch will appear on your wrist.

Panerai AR mobile application

Chatbots

Modern luxury brands should provide their customers with a personalized shopping experience. The best way to achieve that is by leveraging chatbots. Such luxury brands as Burberry, Tommy Hilfiger, Richemont’s Jaeger-LeCoultre have already adopted a chatbot strategy. Thanks to chatbots, customers discover products, receive personalized recommendations, and even place orders.

Burberry Facebook chatbot

[Burberry Facebook chatbot, Source]

Mobile app for professionals

If you own a luxury beauty product brand, think about a useful mobile app for beauty professionals. One example is the Nioxin Consultation app we developed for Nioxin, a Coty Inc. sub-brand. Coty Inc with 9.4 billion U.S. dollars in net revenue. It is a multinational beauty company that owns approximately 77 brands, including Dolce and Gabbana.

Nixion mobile app for beauty professionals

[Our Nioxin mobile app]

We built a luxury haircare app to help beauty professionals find the most suitable products for their clients. The app has image recognition technology. It analyzes the client’s hair condition and offers the most suitable product. The app also includes statistics to track the hair condition over time. Read about other app features on the link.

Digital solutions for all luxury segments

We analyzed the best mobile apps from different sectors of luxury goods and services and listed the best examples below.

Personal luxury goods

This segment includes fashion, cosmetics, fragrances, watches, jewelry, luggage, and handbags. The leader of this niche is LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) with a 47.2 billion U.S. dollar value. It was followed by Chanel ($37 billion ), Hermes ($30.97 billion), Gucci ($25.27 billion), and Rolex ($8.39 billion).

Louis Vuitton, which is a part of the LVMH brand,  includes the following hi-tech solutions to its luxury shopping app:

  • LV product catalog with new collections, sizes, and prices
  • MyLV personal account with wish lists, orders, preferences, and personalized content display
  • LV Finder allows you to find any Louis Vuitton’s product via the search tool with image recognition
  • Horizon Connected Luggage tracks your luggage on the LV App map via an integrated GPS device
  • Tambour Horizon Connected Watch to personalize the interface of your Tambour Horizon watch with a unique design

Don’t forget to check e-commerce mobile app development costs and stages in this article.

LV mobile application screens

[Louis Vuitton mobile app]

Luxury hospitality

The luxury hospitality niche, which will reach $20,442 million by 2022, enjoys the benefits of web or mobile app development. The reason is simple. People are ready to pay extra revenue to get the most comfort while traveling. Thus, to meet the demands of luxury customers, owners of luxury hotels or spa centers should develop a booking app with some extra features. One example of a luxury travel app is Marriott Bonvoy which includes the following functions:

  • Bonvoy account with integrated Apple Wallet, Member Card, and history of account activities
  • Search and booking service to find accommodation
  • Mobile Check-in to register at your hotel 
  • Mobile Key to skip front desk registration
  • Mobile requests to ask for extra services
  • Online chat with the hotel’s representative to solve any issue that arises

You can learn more about travel app development in our previous article.

Marriott Bonvoy mobile app

[Marriott Bonvoy mobile app]

Luxury Vehicles

The market for luxury vehicles will reach 611,300 million US$ in 2024, up from 423,000 million US$ in 2019, a new study has found. Luxury vehicle manufacturers have shifted from selling online to building a strong community via the app. Maserati nailed the development of a luxury mobile app for car owners. Let’s look at the app’s features in more detail.

  • The Grand Tour section tells you the history behind the brand and each car model 
  • A personal account allows you to check your car status and stay tuned to the latest Trident’s news
  • The Maserati Owner section includes online booking car services with 24/7 emergency help, 365 days a year
Maserati mobile application for car owners

[Mazerati mobile app] 

Another prominent luxury vehicle niche is luxury on-demand taxi-hailing services. Such a service is for wealthy people who travel a lot and want to experience luxury driving in supercars. Luxury taxis are a new segment that has become popular in mega-cities such as London. One example of a luxury taxi app is an app we developed for a London-based startup. The company’s car park includes only supercars like Lamborghini, Gelentwagen, and others. Due to a simple Uber-like model, luxury customers can hail a lux-class taxi to drive to a party or an important event without the need to rent a car.

For more information, read our article about taxi app development. 

Private jets and yachts

Apart from cars and hotels, luxury services also include renting yachts and private jets.

Thanks to the on-demand business model, you can rent a jet using the app. One example of a jet booking app is Victor Private Jet Charter which provides users with the following services:

  • Search section includes 7000+ private jets for an end-to-end individual jet charter experience
  • Compare section to choose the right aircraft and operator at the right price.
  • In-app flight booking and cost estimate features help you to find the best aircraft available
  • Compare the actual aircraft and operators side by side to choose the right plane and operator at the right price
  • Ask for a quote in-app and receive flight estimates as the app finds the best aircraft available
  • Book a jet and pay for a flight via a build-in payment gateway
JetVictor mobile app for jet charting

[Victor Private Jet Charter] 

Yacht renting is another popular luxury service that has a high demand. For this reason, the ship booking mobile app will bring even more clients to your business. The best example of a yacht booking app is GetMyBoat. App users can book a boat and pay for it in-app.

Apart from a yacht booking feature, app users can use GetMyBoat for the following services:

  • Pontoon Rentals
  • Jet Ski Rentals
  • Houseboat Rentals
  • Catamaran Charter
  • Party Boat Rental

and other services.

get my boat mobile app screens

[GetMyBoat] 

On-demand yacht apps work as marketplaces. This means that the app consists of three parts. They are user app, yacht or jet owner app, and admin panel. The cost to build a luxury app for taxi booking varies from $80,000 to 150,000 per mobile platform.

In a nutshell, luxury web or mobile apps increase brand awareness, bring extra revenue, and build strong relationships with clients. UI/UX trends from this article will help you to build an outstanding online boutique. As for mobile apps, consider that there are different solutions for different luxury goods and services. If you want to receive a more detailed estimation, use our project cost calculator.

To get a quote from your web and mobile app development team, fill in the contact form and tell us about your project.

What our clients say 

How to Make Your Mobile App Stand Out

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

Mobile applications are a hot commodity these days. The technology is in a perpetual improvement loop and it seems like nothing is static anymore. New functions, new gear, new design, new combinations of ideas — all “neat, neat, neat.”

However, the more things change — the more they stay the same. The gimmick may vary, but the essence is always the same old same old.

No matter how hard some companies try to differentiate themselves and their products — there are general conventions every application is bound to follow.

The trick is that while all of these conventions are obvious — it is still necessary to point them out. 

Because some people tend to have the ambition to reinvent the wheel for some reason (which is extremely counter-productive and non-cost-effective practice.)

These conventions are not rooted in hard science concepts or marketing pitches — they are based on common sense regarding the use of tools of any kind. You can’t go against human nature.

Here are the top nine tips to take into consideration while making mobile applications.

Make your app actually useful for your users

It is not a big deal to make an application. However, it is a big deal to make an application that will be useful in any comprehensive way and ultimately profitable for the developer. Some folks keep ignoring the latter part while pretending that banging head against the wall someday will come to fruition.

Check out our article: “How to Create an App like TikTok“

To make your app USEful, think of your USErs.

In order to create an actually successful application, you need to keep a target audience in mind. Think about their needs and preferences. That is the starting point. With that thing locked down, you have half the job done.

Create use cases to explore what the target audience needs and wants from an application. Count on a wide variety of factors that affect their behavior. Look at the competitors — find a way to differentiate yourself and engage the audience with what you have to offer.

Secure lightning-fast learnability (aka teach your users how to use your app)

This one is hard to pull off. When we are developing an app, we see and talk through ideas so many times that it all seems simple and obvious. Yet, it’s not always the case. 

Imagine yourself a user. You have just downloaded an app. It is the thing you need. You start it up and you have no idea what is going on. While you understand the concept and you are really into it — you can’t really get a grasp on it. What are you going to do next? Delete that app and look for another one, i.e. bad news.

The first and foremost thing you need to think about when developing an application is how fast it could be mastered by the user. That is the key to the loyalty of the users. If it is easy to follow — it will be used a lot. If the learning curve is blown out of proportion — too long or too complicated, chances are the application will not be used a lot by its target audience and soon enough they will move on to something handier.

Onboarding Tutorial

(Source)

There two solutions for this issue. One is providing the user with handy cues – so-called onboarding experience. The other is through audience insights — you need to know how much your user can take in one bite beforehand. It may be discovered through dry-run MVP or in close-quarter test runs or simply by looking at the competition.

Supreme usability saves (aka your app might be useful, but how easy is it to use?)

Another issue connected with learnability is the overall usability of an application. There is no point in making an app that is near-impossible to use without excessive frowning. The design scheme for your application must be goal-driven.

This can be achieved through building extensive user stories with various personas and scenarios so that you will have the complete picture of the user experience in mind while refining particular elements.

You also need to understand the context of use — how and why an application is used by the user and what should be prioritized for better performance.

(Source)

Finally, you need to secure a reasonable response time for every function and proper feedback. Every action should be signified as such. For example, if the sequence is done it is noted through sound, image, or text. If there is some information that can be lost upon quitting the program — there must be a notification with a warning. The list may go on, but you get the idea 🙂

The main thing to keep in mind: know the purpose of your app and don’t try to squeeze all features you can think of inside the app. There is a reason why dishwashers cannot be freezers at the same time.

Adaptability above all (or think various screen sizes and devices)

The next thing you need to think about is the flexibility of design. There is no set “end all be all” standard for mobile phones. There are hundreds of various specifications on the market. All of them have a different set of features, display screens, and resolutions, some have a button while others don’t.

Because of that — you need to make the interface of your application adaptable to variations. Sometimes it means keeping the feature set to a bare minimum, other times it allows to add some more. Sometimes you can delegate functions to external buttons, in other cases you need to make it a part of the interface. Font size must be readable all the time with the function of manual adjustment.

Aside from that, the entire interface scheme should be adapting both to portrait and landscape configurations of the screen.

Also, — it is reasonable to include a variation of an app for left-handed people. While it may seem superfluous in a big scheme of things — at least it is a nice inclusive gesture.

Minimize action sequences (aka how many times people should click to reach the goal?)

There is something inherently wicked about an application that requires sophisticated dance routines for your fingers in order to perform basic actions. While it may be fun for those who like such things — the majority of users will be simply annoyed and will probably move on to another similar application.

The fewer actions it takes to do something — the better. That is the law. It is fair to say that it is Judge Dredd kind of law — beyond discussion.

Always look for a simpler way to do something. That is the key to making an application attractive to the target audience.

“Making every page or screen self-evident is like having good lighting in a store: it just makes everything seem better.” (Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think)

Side note: minimizing action sequences doesn’t mean you should put all possible banners and buttons on your home screen. It means simplifying the general user journey, but it’s never good to take it to the extreme 🙂

Allow feedback (listen to your users)

Feedback is the most effective way of polishing an application. It deals with real people and thus offers real results.

Usually, it goes both ways — you tell the users what is going on with an application and in return, you get some friendly suggestions on what is good and what can be improved.

For some reason, many developers are scared of suggestions from actual users. Nevertheless, it is a viable option that must be used for your benefit. Even bad feedback can be used to make your app better.

Introduce new features (gradually)

The gradual expansion of an application is a reasonable way of marketing your application. You start with an initial set of features that is completely fine and satisfies the majority of the target audience. But you can offer more time.

Not only that strengthens the engagement with the application – but it also is a sign of the good use of users’ feedback.

Monitor battery use (aka keep those phones alive)

One of the most challenging issues that exist in mobile application development is optimizing the use of battery resources. It is one of the things that plagues the majority of mobile applications – over time they simply drain the battery like hungry vampires from Transylvania. That is one of the reasons why users are moving away from some applications in favor of more reasonable alternatives.

How to deal with it? Through trial and error. In order to reduce battery consumption – you need to go through every functional element of an application and set performance restraints on them according to priorities. It hurts overall performance so there must be a balance.  

(By the way, we’ve developed an app for Android phones that takes care of exactly this problem – saving the user’s battery. Check out the Emberlow case study.)

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Make your app safe (be nice in handling user data)

Security is a sensitive issue at the moment. The majority of applications require users to share some sensitive data in order to operate properly. So it seems reasonable to keep that sensitive data out of reach of some treacherous individuals.

In order to do that you need to secure consistent monitoring and updates. Usually, the back-end team can work it out. It may be a routine update performed on a schedule or it may be a reaction to the current security emergencies.

Another issue comes with the disclosure of the purpose for collecting the information. Keeping users in the know why are asking their data is important in building trust.

Check out the top security issues for Android and iOS phones according to WhiteHat.

 

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The APP Solutions’ Boilerplate for Android Development

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

Architecture is a critical element of any software application. In many ways, it defines the way an application works and moves further. Every architecture, in one way or another, is bound to make sense in a particular project.

Good architecture is alike a tight ball with no spare parts hanging out: everything is in the right place and interconnected, ticking like a clock and fitting like a glove.

However, software architecture is not something where one can reinvent the wheel. And there is no need for that. It is more a combination of the blocks than anything else.

What is boilerplate?

Every project starts with a foundation. This foundation counts in numerous factors, write in a number of scenarios and includes effective solutions for various tasks. Every element is refined over time until it is deemed foolproof. Over time, project after project — companies collect enough various solutions to form a particular set of templates to be used as a foundation.

These templates are known as boilerplates.

Why they exist? In many cases, it is inappropriate to start everything from scratch. Because of that developers compose templates for various elements of the application. These templates are the results of many tries and fail as well as multiple projects – basically, cream of the crop.

Since the majority of the projects are functioning more or less in the same way – it is far more reasonable to construct their foundational elements from a boilerplate than to write the same code again.

Boilerplates are useful from multiple standpoints:

  • Boilerplates are like a starter project.
  • With a boilerplate, developers can save time on forming a clean architecture and fully concentrate on the development, refinement, and testing of specific features.
  • Boilerplate is a tried and tested solution that had already proven its worth.
  • The streamlined and unified structure of the boilerplate makes it instantly accessible for the new members of the team.

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Android App Boilerplate Code

Boilerplate isn’t just a code per se, it’s a set of instruments (including code). This is a ready-to-use Android template that The APP Solutions company app developers use as a foundation for new Android projects (based on Java, not Kotlin Android). It is an amalgamation of many years of experiments and lots of different projects into a refined, rock-solid foundation.

Get the Android App Starter Boilerplate here.

This boilerplate has every single utility you need to start your own application. It is a vessel. All you need to do is to fill it with your idea and roll on. Every element is designed in a way so that it could function from the get-go and can be changed without breaking anything.

You might ask “If it is that good, why are sharing?”. Well, the answer is plain and simple, we are sharing because we think it might help in one way or another.

That is what The APP Solutions is standing for — we are ready to share our knowledge as it can serve as a catalyst for something unexpected.

This repository was developed by The App Solutions Android team: Severyn, Dmytro, and Viktor.

Do you want to know more about Android or IOS development? Check out our article.

Some of the solutions were inspired by boilerplate examples of Ribot Android Boilerplate, Google Android Blueprints, android10 Clean Architecture, and others. Certain elements were modified.

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