Franchise financing is an integral part of the Canadian entrepreneur’s challenge of obtaining and building a success Canadian franchise. As most Canadian business owners quickly discover, franchisors do not provide direct or indirect financing in the Canadian marketplace. This leaves the business owner essentially on his or her own to generate the capital they need from chartered banks, finance firms, and other institutions.It goes without saying that the budding entrepreneur needs to first make a significant investment in general franchise knowledge – i.e. the pros and cons, as well as of course focusing on financing the franchise.Franchises in Canada are product and service related. When you purchase the franchise you should have strong level of confidence that the concept is proven and successful, as you will be trying to replicate that success based on the products, services and brand awareness of the franchisor.Franchisees are encouraged to do a proper level of due diligence based on that availability of information with respect to the business success of the franchisor. If you are considered a franchise that is owned and run by a large well know public company – think McDonalds! You of course have the ability to carefully review the financial statements and management commentary that is available to anyone by virtue of the companies listing on the public stock exchanges.The good news about franchise financing and the risk that the business entrepreneur takes is that there is a significant amount of disclosure required by law to you as a franchisee. In Canada, as well as the United States you should have the ability to get a copy of the franchisors financial statements. If you don’t feel qualified to read and interpret a financial statement you should use the services of a trusted franchise financing advisor, or even your accountant or lawyer would be good choices.Many franchisors in Canada will of course gladly give your franchisee references, and you should clearly talk to other franchisees about financial performance with respect to what you hope to achieve based on your personal investment and borrowed funds. When we say ‘ financial performance ‘ we of course mean general business basics such as sales, profits, working capital challenges, leverage ( how much debt do you need to take on ), etc.In financing a franchise you clearly want to understand how much debt you are going to take on – this is also directly commensurate with what you need to put into the business as your own investment. Most business owners today fully realize that a franchise can never be 100% OPM. OPM= Other Peoples Money!Our experience in Canadian franchise financing is that the financing of your newly acquired business has is a combination of your own investment, as well as borrowed funds. Franchise financing success in Canada is most commonly achieved by your utilization of the CSBF program, which is one of Canada’s best programs for small and medium sized business. This program provides up to 90% financing of leaseholds and fixed assets. When our firm structures a franchise financing we supplement the CSBF program with a combination, as required, of lease financing, and in some cases a cash term loan if in fact that is required.In summary, by carefully selecting your franchisor, understanding your overall financial risk, and carefully putting together a financing package that fits your needs, you will have a very strong chance of being successful in your franchise venture.

Once the app is downloaded, you have little time to take a sigh of relief, and then again start focusing on making things easier for the them till their goal is achieved.

According to the AppsFlyer, an app marketing company, the global uninstall rate for apps after 30 days is 28%. Entertainment apps are most frequently deleted, whereas apps based on Finance is least frequently deleted. No matter which app category you belong to, your strategy should be to remain in the mobile phones of users for a long time, and not just sit around but to fulfill your purpose as well.

If we analyze the encounters of users with an app step by step, it can help us unveil the critical factors that influence mobile app audiences, so that we can work upon those and achieve our purpose. Here are the details:

Step1. Finding Your App in Appstore

For this, we have to first find out what exactly users type to search an app. Based on a research, it has been found that 47% app users on iOS confirmed that they found the app through the App Store’s search engine and 53% app users on Android confirmed the same.

What have been their search queries? Interestingly, as the per the data provided by the TUNE research, 86% of the top 100 keywords were brands.With little scope for non-branded categories, most of the keywords were either of games of utility apps. Common keywords in the non branded category are: games, free games, VPN, calculator, music, photo editor, and weather.

Leaving brands aside, if we analyze the user-type of a Non-branded category, we will get two types of users:

1. Users are informed, and they know what they are search

2. Users are exploring possibilities, have no precise information in mind.

If you are a mobile app development company, targeting non-branded users, then your efforts must be directed to creating apps that compel these two types of users. To do so, we have to analyze once they are on an app store, what keywords they use to search. Regina Leuwer, with expertise in marketing & communications, bring some light to the subject. She reached out Sebastian Knopp, creator of app store search intelligence tool appkeywords, who shared with her the data of unique trending search phrases. And according to that data, in 2017, there were around 2,455 unique search phrases trending in the US.

Now, if we study these data to get information, we will find that name of the app is critical to attract the attention of the users.

If your app belongs to non-branded category, then make sure your app name is similar to the common search queries but also unique in comparison with your competitors. So that when your app name is flashed, they click it on to it, finding it purposeful and compelling both.

Step 2. Installation

Remember your users are on mobile devices has limited resources, from battery to storage and RAM to Internet. Everything is limited. So better create an application that is easy to download or say get downloaded with 5 minutes. One critical advice here:

1. Keep the application file size small.

If you are a developer, use APK Analyser to find out which part of the application is consuming maximum space. You can also reduce classes.dex file and res folder that contains images, raw files, and XML.

Step 3. Onboarding

After the user has successfully downloaded your mobile application, don’t leave anything on assumptions. Guide them properly. This you can do through an onboarding process, where users can learn the key functionality and where to begin with the mobile app. Below are the 3 things you need to keep in your mind when creating an onboarding process for your users.

Short and Crisp: The entire guidance of features and functions should be completed within few seconds, with easy options loud and clear option to skip.

Precise Information: Don’t introduce them to the app. They already know what they have downloaded. The objective to inform about the key functions and features.

Allow Users to Skip: Let the tech-savvy users skip the intro. Your app is to meet their requirement and not to have a friendly session.

Step 4. Purpose and UI
Here, the stage is set for your app and it is the golden chance for you to impress your users. What is needed here is the collaboration between purpose and UI of the app. It totally depends on the problem-solving capability and ease of use of the mobile app. Interface design plays the critical role, allowing the users to access features of the apps easily and quickly to perform the task for what they have downloaded the app. When it comes to interface design, make sure that the design is interactive and task-oriented. Here are some factors that you must take care off while creating mobile app interface:

1. Usability: The Mobile phone is an epitome of convenience and if your users find it difficult to use your app, then there is no way there are going to make the space for it in their mobile phones. From screen size to the color of the app, there are many factors that are equally critical and need attention.

2. Intuitive: To create an intuitive User Interface, you have to read the mind of the users, and develop a model based on that. The next should be precise, clear and ‘obvious’ in an interface.

3. Availability: Key features should be hidden in the drop down menu or even if so, it should be obvious for the user to look into the drop-down. An intricate work of design and research is required to make essential features available for the customers and they don’t need to navigate here and there.

If you need more help with the user-interface and innovative ideas for a mobile app, write to me [email protected] and I promise to get back to you with interesting mobile app designs.