What is Firebase
It was originated as real-time database service in 2011 and still it's the crucial characteristic of it.
But with it, Firebase offers the huge amount of features. Like built in Analytics, App Indexing, Hosting, Authentication, brand new Dynamic Links, Notification handling, Crash Reporting, and AdMob.
Most of these are totally free. There also paid plan featuring testing and Google Cloud Platform integration.
These features are new and were presented at Google I/O 2016, for me it was one of the most exciting parts of the keynote. I didn't put it in My Top 8 Announcements From Google I/O 2016, though. Because I think it worth to write a separate post about.
What I like the most about it is that it gathers almost all backend that you need for your mobile or web app in one place and manages everything for you. You don't need to connect your app with Google Analytics, AdMob, a real-time database, etc. separately, now you can have all these in one place.
And new features like Dynamic Links and Remote Config are awesome. They bring user experience to the new level without any hard work from the developer.
Dynamic Links
Deep Links were here to solve the problem, they were great in theory, but in fact, they didn't work as we wanted.
Dynamic Links also don't solve this problem completely (Instant Apps do) but they ease the pain from it and do it way better than classic Deep Links.
Basically, Deep Link is the URL that knows about your users' context and depending on that context it can provide various behavior.
It can get your user to your website/app store page or directly to your app depending on whether your application is installed on the users' phone. It will behave differently on Android, iOS, and desktop.
The most remarkable part is that it can survive app store installation process and you can use the context of your user to bring him the best service when he opens your app for the first time or bring him to particular content within your app (for example some recipe in cooking app) that was encoded in the link.
Dynamic Liks are the base for Firebase Invites.
Invites
These really can help you to grow your app. People are most likely will use your app if they receive an invite from a friend.
It's not a new concept. Invites were invented long time ago, but developers were on their own in implementing them.
In the beginning, there were referral codes and I can't imagine that someone will be doing this copy-paste-email-copy-paste mess for %5 discount.
After that, developers started using referral links to achieve the similar effect, but still, the mess.
Some apps have UI for invites that are very convenient, a user just need to make 2-3 taps to invite a friend and the invited friend should do 2-3 taps to start using the app with the help of Deep Links.
But do you have time to implement that? Your main care is your app, not bells and whistles. But invites are important bells and whistles, invites can make the difference between success and failure of your app.
Fortunately, Firebase team did all the dirty work for you and brought Firebase Invites to you, so you can focus on your app functionality instead of making your own invites.
As I said, they are using Dynamic Links so you can be sure that UX will be fine.
And when you have an audience you need to re-engage with it. Remote Config will help you to do so.
Remote Config
We live in information century and today this information transfers really fast, we need some tools that will help us to react to this and bring better user experience across all devices.
One way to handle it is updating your app, but to do so you need to pass through all these development cycles like redesigning, redeveloping, testing etc. it's too slow, you can lose your users while trying to bring the new update.
To avoid this FireBase presented Remote Config. Essentially, it's key-value table that is stored in the cloud. But despite its' simplicity, it's all you need to react incredibly fast to feedback from your users.
We are not prefect, we can do typos in our apps' text, and this is hraming user expreience, but now we don't need to repuload our app in app store just because of typos or something like that, just chnage the value of string with typo in your Firebase Console and you're done. (typos are annoying, aren't they?)
People from Firebase shared a great use-case for mobile games.
Consider you have a group of people that are too good in your game. They are getting 3 stars at any level. It's not what games are about, right? They want the challenge (remember flappy bird?), something that will make them try harder.
Ok, so you can bring them the challenge, make this levels harder, but they are the only group, what will be with other users?
It's not a problem now! There is a feature called Audience Segmentation that allows you to apply different configurations for different groups of users. You just make level settings to make it harder for those users that making great success in your game and you're done, again.
Also, you can use it to test a new feature on a small group of your users before showing it to everyone.
But wait, where you will get this all information, about what your users need the most.
Here's where Analytics come in.
Analytics
Analytics is not a new feature. Firebase Analytics just gather all analytic tools in one place (and that's as I said one of the greatest things about Firebase).
What I like the most in Analytics is Audiences.
You can group your users by how they behave in your app. Are they making purchases? Are they from Japan? Are they too good in your game? Knowing all this you can provide different service to different users. Make your app flexible.
And you can make your own custom events that will describe the group of users.
For example, if you have an online store app like eBay, you can make Audience of users that have a car (using Awareness API, that I will discuss in later posts) using the custom event to send them notifications about sales on items related to vehicles and increase your revenue from it.
Summary
Firebase is a generalization of developing experience since the moment the Intenet was invented. It has a plethora of tools for developers that'll provide great UX.
I didn't try it out yet, but can't wait to get my hands on it and be sure I'll share the experience of using it in this blog.
There are many other features if Firebase to develop your app, grow it, and earn from it. These are just most important in my opinion and if you want me to describe them too just let me know in the comment section below.
You can find the docs and other information here.
This is all for today, see you next week!
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