Raghuram Trikutam, Head of Mobile @ FreeCharge spoke about 'How To Build An App Like FreeCharge' at InMobi's inDecode event. Learn more at indecode.inmobi.com

1. How did we build our
app at FreeCharge?
Raghuram
Twitter : @ghurram
Mail at raghuram@freecharge.com

2. What are we discussing
today?
• Points to note while building apps for our mobile
networks
• How do notifications help?
• Once you reach the play store, get discovered !

3. Build for network speeds
• Your apps are being used across various network
speeds. Build for them
• Network calls are damn expensive. Tune network calls
based on need.
• Minify your payloads. USE JSON compression
techniques available
• Image optimisation is a must. TinyPNG, anyone?
• Gate features which can’t work on bad networks

4. Go easy on the device
• If you are using location services, go for the
lastKnown location unless you need accuracy
• Wake locks should be used as per need
• Check logcat. Best profiler for your application are
your logs
• Put a service only if you need one.

5. Be prudent
• While 3rd party sdks might be necessary, be
prudent in using them
• See to it that the size of the app is under control.
Load assets on fly if need be
• Figure out where asyncTask is needed. I’m sure
there will be quite a few places for that

6. Notifications
• How do we use them?
• How powerful is it as a feature?

7. Build in-house?
• Depends on the use cases
• We found it extremely necessary for the flexibility
we wanted to build into the system

8. Plain vanilla
• You can build a plain vanilla
experience as this

9. Consumer behavior
• Or build it in a smart manner to
create this.

10. Let’s go one step further
• a/b test to know if people like
this

11. Go one step further
• Use GCM cleverly to build an
in-app messaging experience

12. Notifications are powerful
• Know how to use them well
• You can choose to use an external tool for this.
Alternatively, you can build it in-house.

13. What we did to get discovered
• ASO improvements. Trust me, it works !
• Have money? Use networks to drive installs. It
matters a lot for your ranking
• Identify install sources. Associate value to them.
• App deep linking. Leave in some nice keywords in
an unobtrusive manner