Apps That Help Users Work from Home

Offices remain shut by government orders, but businesses must find a way to keep the ball rolling. A massive workforce is thus looking for ways to make work from home easier and more productive. There are several kinds of apps that can be developed in this niche. We will take a look at all the possibilities in this category and I’ll show you examples of apps that are currently succeeding at this. That should give you the ideas and inspiration you need, so come along.

Video conferencing apps

Apps that allow smooth, uninterrupted, high quality video calling of large groups of people.

But there’s already Skype, and flavour-of-the-season Zoom and several other apps that do this. Where’s the space for me you ask? Well.

Tip to Outcompete: There is always room for improvement in this area. You can win this if you can provide

• Better call quality
• Smoother user experience
• Increased privacy and security
• Lower bandwidth consumption, and other advantages.

Productivity Apps

For the millions of employees trying this for the first time (and even for the seasoned ones), working from home comes with an innate challenge – staying focused without a boss overhead.

A lot of people have reported having difficulty maintaining their productivity while working from home.

Once again, it’s mobile apps to the rescue. Productivity apps have existed for long but in the current scenario, they have acquired a much larger user base, leaving the door wide open for innovation. Right now, some of the most successful apps are:

Trello –for organizing and keeping track of projects and tasks

Team Viewer –for at home tech support, allowing the IT people to fix any issue you’re facing on your computer by remotely accessing it.

Slack – for smoother team communication

Asana – for improved collaboration among teams, allowing multiple people to work together on the same project.

Spark – to prevent email spam and keep the inbox organized.

Noisli – an app that produces ambient sounds to help you focus and channelize.

Toggl – to better manage your time

Freedom – to cut out distractions from social media and other apps
And many more, but you get the drift.

Tip to Outcompete: The innovator in you could step up and create an app that does one of the above tasks better than the current apps, or explore a gap in the market.

Healthcare

A myriad of possibilities exist for mobile apps in the health and fitness category. Needless to say, now is a time when everyone is getting paranoid about their health.

Consultation and Telemedicine apps

People are avoiding visiting their doctors even for regular health check-ups for the fear of contracting the virus somewhere in the halls. Everyone wishes they could consult with their doctor online. There is right now a big opportunity for healthcare apps such as –

• Apps that facilitate video calling and online consultation with certified doctors
• Apps to connect on-demand doctors/nurses to needful patients
• Branded healthcare apps bringing trusted hospitals to user devices
• Apps that facilitate maintaining and sharing medical records

Fitness and Wellness

With gyms and fitness classes shut down, more and more people look for ways to stay fit at home.

Fitness apps

Online workouts are all the rage and the scope for innovation in this area is enormous. Finding creative ways to keep users motivated to workout at home, group sessions, peer fitness and so much more makes for an abundant opportunity for mobile apps.

• Personal trainer apps
• Group workout apps
• Complete fitness packages with different workouts for each day of the week
• Apps like Classpass that allow users to change up their workout routine

Nutrition and immunity apps

People realize that short of a highly potent vaccination (which still looks at least a year away), increasing one’s personal health and immunity is the only way to stay safe. A number of mobile app ideas exist here, such as –

• Personal nutritionist
• Healthy recipes
• Actionable knowledge resources on immunity boosting foods
• Diet tracker
• Food scanners that tell what is safe or not (especially now that scepticism over meat and other foods is high)

Tip to Outcompete:Knowing the workout is easy. The psychology of motivation is the tough part. Focus on ways to keep your users hooked and happy.

Ecommerce and Delivery

Lockdown and self-quarantining situations have given an unprecedented boost to the ecommerce industry as people throng to online shopping like never before. Governments have called out to ecommerce companies so that customer needs can be met without having them out on the streets. Companies like Amazon and Instacart have increased hiring to meet the increased demand.

Despite it all, there remain many gaps and hence opportunities in this area. Not even a mammoth like Amazon was prepared to handle demand at this scale.

Moreover, customers have great concerns about health of packaging and delivery staff as well as warehouse hygiene.

Even in areas where ordering non-essential items is now permitted, aware customers worry about doing so. Customers wish to be conscious of their actions and feel apprehensive about burdening the system by ordering non-essential supplies.

Companies that can come up with innovative solutions that address this customer conundrum are sure to win the race. For example, ecommerce companies could create flexible order option at check out where a customer can place an order and wait for delivery until there are enough orders in the area, so that they can all be delivered in just one trip.

Innovators can develop better functionalities that make the delivering process more efficient and less burdensome for the states.

All of the above indicate a myriad of opportunities that exist in ecommerce and delivery, leaving the field wide open for new entrants and better mobile apps.

• Consolidated delivery apps
• Local delivery platforms
• Community platforms that let people of a building or society order together to reduce trips

Tip to Outcompete:Tapping into shopper conscience is the key right now. People are concerned with safety, they are confused and worried. They wish to do the right thing and help the community by making good shopping decisions. Addressing these emotions will put you ahead in the race.