Size of an app affects the download decision- Is that true?

Consider, you have decided to launch your business app and everything looks perfect. A Developed application is feature-rich and also you are confident that all the functions and actions will work properly. But are you sure whether the size of your app is appropriate for your audience or not? Is it true that the app size really matters? 

The truth is that the size of an application can keep your users from using your application and hence can affect their download decision.

What you can expect?

About a decade ago, only large businesses and corporations used mobile apps for their business. But in the past few years, this trend has changed dramatically. These days, even small companies are entering this big market and serving their customers with better services and products with apps. Basically, they can acquire greater profit for investments and are depending more on mobile applications for the success of their business. The conclusion is, we need a mobile application.

You can also know- Common mistakes to avoid before and after mobile app launch.

Factors that translate into successful business apps-

The two most basic elements that are considered when planning a mobile application are identifying the issue that the application is resolving and choosing the one of a kind features of your application. What most businesses don’t care about is the size of the application. Truth be told, it is one of the last things to be talked about or is mostly highlighted when the application is in its last stages of design.

Other than providing tangible advantages to customers, it is significant for a business to consider whether their application is downloadable by an ordinary user or not?

In any case, if the target audience fails to download the application, the goals of enhancing productivity, earning new revenues, and improving the overall experience will wipe out. Hence for startups, it is necessary to identify target users. Also, you can figure out the type of device they use. Some questions that you should focus on are:

• What category does your target audience fall into?
• What kind of an electronic device can they afford?

As far as mobile devices and platforms are concerned, they should be chosen by considering the hardware performance, battery life, available storage space, and required peripherals. Different factors include software performance, device support, and coverage.

App size and why does it matter so much?

Large organizations have consistently been working to reduce the Software Development Kit (SDK) bloat in their applications. It’s a whole project in itself, which can take up to months to complete. While businesses are investing time in decreasing the bloat, a major concern that surfaces is that for what reason does it make a difference to such an extent. If you dive further into this thought, you will discover that there are three huge reasons due to which the size of an application affects download decision:

• It is ideal to keep the application size below 100 MB to follow the cellular download limit. This implies it is necessary to figure out ways this can be done without taking a hit on the downloads.
• Large applications often mean their SDK vendors will have bugs that will continually keep crashing the application – which at last translates into lesser downloads and consequently bad reviews.
• More often than not, their SDK vendors are not ready for upgrades towards better iOS versions, which can block their opportunity for big announcements and key releases.

How often have you found yourselves stopping a download midway because you think it is excessively bulky or it is taking more time? The specific could happen with your target audience also. Now, we should evaluate the quantitative impact these reasons could have on the installs and how it can be dealt with.

App size does matter – The research-

Numerous factors can increase an application size, and these things can be as basic as a lot of fonts, an introductory video, or a beautiful picture used as a background image for your loading screen. However, any factor that bloats the application without truly adding value to the purpose of application can adversely affect downloads.

Read more at- 

https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/size-of-an-app-affects-the-download-decision-is-that-true/

How to reduce Android App size during development?

The rising desires of users motivates developers to incorporate more things in application. Similarly it results into an increased application size. The large size applications frequently transform into storage hoggers in our smartphones causing them to operate slow or hang in the middle of a significant work. As per Google, if the size of an application is more than 150MB, in chances of installation decrease by 30%. The install conversion rate can drop by 1% if size increases by 6 MB. 

Many technology specialists out there work on creating small applications or tools which can reduce the size of an application. Android App Bundle is a publishing tool through which users don’t have to re-download things that are already there in other applications over play Store. This platform is said to decrease the size of an application by 35%. Let us explore other ways to reduce android app size during app development lifecycle.

Also know- 9 Effective Tips To Reduce Mobile App Development Cost.

How to reduce android app size?

How to reduce android app size?

1. Image optimization- 

You can conveniently reduce image size without reducing the resolution. For example, .jpg and .png pictures can be changed over to .webp web picture format to downsize applications without compromising the quality. The .webp format offers lossy compression like .jpg and transparency like .png. There are many tools available for such conversion. Tools like guetzli and packjpg suit .jpg file compression best while pngcrush and zopflipng befit .png files. Designers can implement vector graphics to make simple resolution-independent images that don’t crib for space. These are available in Android as VectorDrawable objects and allow a 100-byte file to generate images sharp and screen-sized.

android {
     defaultConfig {
         vectorDrawables.useSupportLibrary true
     }
 }

It is already known that a few images can do without static resources. The framework is enough to draw such images dynamically at runtime. Utilizing Vector Drawables objects is a brilliant idea when small size applications are to be developed. They can survive on minimal space within the APK file and create pictures compliant with the rules of material design. However, there could be a tussle with regards to CPU and RAM usage as complex objects will in general slow them down.

Also, using the Draw 9-patch tool can saves space. This is a WYSIWYG image editor and probably the coolest approaches to cut image size. The tool lets you make bitmap images that can auto-resize to fit the different screen sizes of various mobile devices. Select parts within the image can be scaled vertically or horizontally depending on the indicators drawn in it.

Another way is to use the aapt tool to crunch .png images, the resources of these are available in res/drawable/. The compression is lossless. For example, a true-color .png image  which needn’t bother with more than 256 colors can be changed over to a color palette enabled 8-bit one. The latter retains the quality yet sheds the size.

Developers must remember that the aapt tool would not compress .png files in the asset/folder. Additionally, it won’t have the option to optimize any image that uses more than 256 colors. Additionally, it may puff up .png files which have just been shrunk. This disadvantage can be avoided by using the cruncherEnabled flag in Gradle as such:

aaptOptions {
    cruncherEnabled = false
}

Read more at-

http://b.link/size12-src_blogger