In the busy holiday shopping season just around the corner, mobile apps for smartphones and tablets provide a good way to boost sales.

To help retailers prepare for the end of year rush, American Express Open Forum points out 10 common mistakes that can hurt holiday sales, and provides one piece of advice that recognizes the value of mobile business apps.

Avoid not being “findable” on the web or by mobile applications.

It only makes sense for retailers to go out of their way to be discovered at a time when consumers are doing some serious shopping. For that reason, American Express reminds them to make their brands searchable and memorable and “get involved in the conversations about shopping and gift giving that are happening over social media.”

New study data suggests that shoppers will be using mobile devices in unprecedented numbers this holiday season to conduct research before purchasing products, compare prices and buy gifts.

IDC Retail Insights, for example, predicts that 48 million U.S. consumers will use smartphones in stores, or “showroom” (use those devices to compare prices and features as shop for their holiday needs). That staggering figure represents a 134% increase since last year, when 20.5 million holiday shoppers showroomed.

In the report “Business Strategy: At Hand Versus In Hand — Will Consumers Have the Upper Hand in the 2012 Holiday Showroom Showdown?”, IDC Retail Insights forecasts that showrooming behaviors will influence $0.7 to $1.7 billion in holiday retail purchases this year.

The report also points out that across technologies about 70% of shoppers who plan to showroom this season indicated that they will be “more likely” to purchase from retailers that offer full-featured mobile websites and mobile apps for smartphones, among other amenities.

The 2012 edition of the Mojiva Holiday Mobility Advertising Guide, citing results of a survey of U.S. and U.K. consumers, also suggests a strong role for smartphones and tablets in the upcoming holiday season. In both countries, consumers indicated plans to use their mobile devices to collect information on products, compare prices, look for sale information and coupons, and make purchases.

In fact, nearly 80 percent of U.S. respondents stated they would feel comfortable spending more than $20 on a single item using their smartphone or tablet, while 42 percent of U.K. respondents imagining they could spend £25 pounds on one item using their smartphone or tablet. The Mojiva Holiday Mobility Advertising Guide also provides research data on the different types of products consumers would be comfortable buying using a mobile device.

There’s still time to create a retail mobile app for smartphones and tablets using ViziApps no-coding, drag and drop approach. Sign up for a free account here and get started building a mobile business app for your customers.

Geoff Bock just posted interesting insights on Mobile First Strategy at TechTarget.

Here’s an summary

• Websites that perform well across multiple devices are the hallmark of a strong mobile-first strategy, but custom-built mobile apps can improve productivity by expediting specific activities.
• If your Web Content Management System supports Responsive Web Design and dynamic templates, you can create the content once and adapt the presentations to the form factors and navigation links of different device types.
• But there is more to Mobile First than consistent content presentation. Beyond keeping tabs on the latest weather reports or sharing immediate thoughts on Twitter, consider how mobile apps can engage users and simplify work-related tasks. With smart devices in our pockets and handbags, content in the palms of our hands can expedite user engagement.
• A mobile-first strategy can spawn a new generation of apps designed to support the micro-moments, when getting access to just the right information at the right time assists decision making. These are task-oriented apps that connect to multiple information sources and diverse content collections running in the cloud, and that provides the tools to mobilize moments of engagement.

In short, content presentation is only the initial step in the mobile journey. A mobile-first strategy can evolve to support task-oriented mobile apps that transform business processes, remove communication barriers and increase productivity.

ViziApps is the first mobile app creation without coding service to introduce a revolutionary new capability for mobile apps: Offline Data Access & Remote Sync.

Mobile users worldwide have become dependent on their smartphones and apps to provide them with capabilities and data wherever and whenever they want. And now companies using ViziApps are enabling more and more corporate data to be available from our mobile devices.

But the reality is that mobile data connections are often unreliable, very low bandwidth, too expensive to use, or completely unavailable in needed work sites. Yet these issues can hit at exactly the time and place we need to get our jobs done. A mobile device without a data connection suddenly becomes frustrating and useless.

Offline Data Access & Remote Sync

ViziApp’s approach to Offline Data Access & Remote Sync, like the rest of our no-coding platform for mobile app creation, couldn’t be simpler for the user and even for the app creator. In fact it’s practically transparent.

Data Access While Offline

For a user, the synchronization between a remote database and their mobile device happens automatically as a background process. There is no action the user needs to take. When a user makes a data query, their app will use a local copy of the synchronized data which not only gives them access to their data while offline, but also allows the app to perform much faster than normal online operation.

Data Updates While Offline

Mobile users without a network connection can now continue working and updating their data sets, such as filing reports and even submitting photos. The next time that the user runs their app with a network connection, the new data will be automatically synchronized back to the remote database in both directions.

Simple To Enable

For the app creator, in ViziApps Studio just go to the App Properties selection for “Setup Offline Operations”, then select “Use offline operation.” That’s it – the rest is automatically handled for you. There is no difficult middleware to install or configure or worry about for scalability.

Offline Data Access & Remote Sync is now available for Intuit QuickBase and Android devices. ViziApps will soon be releasing Offline Data Access & Remote Sync for iPhone and iPad users, and then expanding to other remote data sources.

ViziApps has pioneered fast creation of custom mobile apps without the need for coding. However, you may need a faster more controlled way to distribute your apps than available through the public app stores.

Now you can also publish your custom mobile apps directly into the hands of your iPhone, iPad, and Android users, literally in minutes, with ViziApps Instant Publisher.

The Need for Instant Publishing

There are a number of situations where you may not want your custom mobile app to be distributed through a public app store:

• Your app is only to be used by company insiders and channel/supply partners
• Your app contains ideas, concepts, or intellectual property you don’t want competitors to see
• You want to avoid the complexity, delays, and cost of publishing through public app markets
• You need fast distribution to a limited set of users
• Your user population is small
• You are conducting a Beta or Pilot test

How It Works

ViziApps Instant Publisher™ creates a special App Installation Web Page, unique for your app, that guides your users through a simple and fast installation process.

ViziApps also creates a unique App Invitation Card which contains a bit.ly short URL and QR code that will bring your users directly to the App Installation Web Page.

App Invitation Card

Your users open your installed app directly from your custom branded App Icon on their device home screen, and the same published app can run on both Apple and Android devices. ViziApps Instant Publisher is available to use with the latest version of ViziApps from the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Try installing the demo app shown in the Invitation Card above to see how Instant Publisher works.

The Boston Business Journal named ViziApps as one of the Top 20 Largest Mobile Startups in Massachusetts. ViziApps joined the ranks of Mobiquity, uTest, Fiksu, Apperian, and Kinvey in this recognition of our growth by New England’s premier business journal.

The Mass Technology Leadership Council selected ViziApps to demo our Rapid Mobile App Platform at TechJam 2015. See us there Thursday May 11th in Boston: https://masstlc.proximate.com/btj2015#?p=np