Travel apps are on the boom, no divergent ways to the fact. Development companies and the clients are making a handsome revenue from it. But, bringing similar apps in the market to make money for yourself is not how you can proceed further. You will have to offer something extra, something unique, to stand a chance among the big and established players of the Google play store and apple app store.

Here are some of the top features offered by different travel apps. If you are considering travel app development, a combo of all of these won’t be a bad idea.

1. Geolocation

The basic thing any traveler checks after reaching the destination is nearby places to stay or cafes to eat or places to visit. Don’t give them any teeny weeny chance to drop your app and use some other one to get all these information they desired. For that location, geolocation feature is what you must have. The user can run any location-based search and fetch the results very quickly.

2. Weather Forecast

There are a whole bunch of people planning their entire trip without taking weather changes into consideration. A bad climate can alter the trip, like a flight delay or even worse flight getting canceled. So, include weather forecast feature into your travel app which can send weather predictions, any nearby calamity or any such events to the user.

3. Cab Booking

Right after landing, the first thing any user will be looking for is a cab. So, don’t give the user any reason to slip from your app. Give them the taxi booking feature and get them to their location.

4. Price Comparison

Your app would not be the only one they would be using, there will be 2 to 3 more to get the best out of all. So, give them that detail as well. Show them the price comparison of different flights, hotels and other things offered by different apps right on your app.

5. Offline Access

The bad network is a common problem and it can follow you anywhere. This can be a disaster for the users but not if you let them use your app even in offline mode.

6. Language Translator

Language can be a lot of trouble if not handled well. Communication in a different country can create issues but not if you avail a language translator feature in your travel app.

Something Out Of The Box

While traveling, hotel booking can cost a fortune. Those looking for low budget travel ideas, here’s one, “HolidaySwap”. This idea of a travel app is really out of the box. The app owner James Asquith holds the record for being the youngest person to visit every country of the world. The concept of this app is to provide stay at just $1 per night. He brought back the trend of barter. The users of the app can exchange their homes at distant locations. If you are staying in Australia and want a home in the US, find any US person looking to stay in Australia, and swap homes with each other. Isn’t the idea fascinating? So, something like this can help you create your own space in the app market.

Another such concept is Preparture. While visiting an entirely new nation, you might know the routes which is quite blatant. Now Preparture not only shows the routes to the locations you feed but creates a whole route itself. Say for example you are want to grab a bite at XYZ restaurant, you want to withdraw money from the ATM, you want to visit the local mall of the area. You feed all these destinations in the app and it will plan the route based on which location is near and what task you should complete first, where you should head next, and where should your journey end. It is your one-stop travel planner app.

So, I guess now you know if really want to top the app store charts, you will need something never thought before or never done before.

Author Bio

I am Pratik Kanada, founder & CEO of 360 Degree Technosoft, an iPhone and Android app development company which makes app ideas into reality by providing unique design and development services across the globe. To keep up with the trend, I have also laid steps into React native and ionic app development. I generally write blogs on mobile technology, app development, and app marketing.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratik-kanada-31793020/edit/photo-opt-out/

Video content has become one of the most, if not the most, influential mediums on the internet. Long gone are the days where you would visit a website and find only text posts. Nowadays, everyone wants to get in on the craze of video content. The best part is that search engines have taken a liking to videos just as much as users have. With this in mind, you need to take some steps to ensure that your video will be at the top of searches everywhere.

1. Bring quality instead of quantity

The quality of a good video is what keeps viewers coming back. On YouTube, for example, the most viewed videos are those with the most effort put into them. You need to start with the basics. For starters, come up with a good premise for the video, the main theme can’t be any topic that comes to mind, it has to have a purpose. Good video quality shouldn’t be disregarded. In the age of 4K video streaming, you want to be ahead of the curb. Don’t forget about audio, either. The audio in your video should be crisp and easy to comprehend.

Driving more views and clicks to your site will require some quality content in your video. There’s no reason to go overboard and spend months on a single video. Quality over quantity is the name of the game, but don’t exclude quantity from the equation. If you have a particularly brilliant idea that can lead to a complex and long video, try splitting it into several parts. Viewers aren’t patient when it comes to waiting for videos so your content has to come out at least semi-regularly. This way it will constantly be searched and it will bring in traffic.

2. Don’t neglect social media

People are constantly talking about the influence of social media on the newer generations. The truth is that social media has an effect on everyone, not just the younger crowd. Hosting videos on social media platforms are possibly the best way to spread them across the internet. Sites like Twitter and Facebook are itching for those videos with attractive content. Facebook has started optimizing its model to better fit videos because they are preferable to photos. They are easy to share and the users do the job for you.

In order to maximize the number of clicks and shares you get from a video, it has to appeal to a broad audience on these social networks. Viral videos are what you should strive for. Social media sites are like marketing machines, if you put something good in, it’ll basically share itself. Major brands have begun investing in live videos as well. There’s something about their spontaneity that attracts users and they might not feel like it’s as much of a timewaster as a fixed video.

3. Integration is key

When it comes to making quality content, blogs have always ruled supreme. Text posts aren’t a thing of the past just yet, they’re still going strong. With video marketing on the rise, it might be a good idea to create complementary content that connects to blog posts. There’s no reason you can’t integrate a specific video that has a similar topic on your blog. This will be key in helping your content better get across to viewers. Some subtext is given by the blog post and then the video provides the heart of the content. Readers love getting a different dimension and perspective while reading a blog post.

Bridging different topics with blogs and videos is great for spreading content as well. You can adjust your blog post to match the topic of your video so it becomes much easier to share. This way, not only do you optimize the user experience, but you also get an easier medium to share your videos in. For example, say you want to share a video game review article. Making a review video to match would not only attract more users, but it would also give attention to your video channel. Either way, you can’t lose by making both.

4. Pick the right thumbnail

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but this doesn’t really hold up on the internet. Most people will give your video a casual glance before deciding to click it, which is why it’s important that the glance shows them exactly what they want to see. There is a near-infinite number of videos online and people simply do not have the time to check each and every single one of them. The thumbnail is going to make or break the popularity of your video.

To create an engaging thumbnail, you need to think about a couple of things. First of all, it has to stand out. Make sure it doesn’t get lost in the sea of other video thumbnails. After that, you have to decide which frame of the video represents the content of the video best. It should be an impactful moment that shows the gist of the content, without being too chaotic. Alternatively, you could just add an image that isn’t actually from the video but still represents the point accurately.

5. Focus on titles

As with anything that you share on the internet, the title is an extremely important detail. It’s the main way to find your content. This might be even more important for video content since there’s no matching text that could be used to identify what the video topic is about. In order to get people to the page, your video is in, you’re going to need a proper keyword in the title. There’s nothing more important for Search Engine Optimisation than picking the right keyword. Think of what your video represents and try to find the right word or words that would describe it best.

Search engines like Google need something to start with in order to show your video as a search result. It would be ideal if your video also had an accompanying description below it. This way you can add some more details that signal what it’s about. Don’t overdo the keywords, search engines might penalize you for it.

6. The right host

Search engines really like pages that have a fast load speed. Nobody likes waiting for something to load on their website. Unfortunately, integrating things like videos on your page could potentially slow down your blog page or wherever you host your video. There is also quite a difference between hosting your video on a site like YouTube or its alternatives.

Picking the right host could mean the difference between a quick page load and a page load that search engines recognize as slow. Make sure you test out your website on page load speed test applications before going live.

Conclusion

Platforms like YouTube have made creating video content easy and affordable. No business should go without at least one interesting video on their website. It’s a huge boost to visitors and you’ll find that search engines like Google will adore you for it. Just make sure you create unique content that caters to the masses and you won’t have to worry about your website not receiving traffic.