5 Simple Hacks To Prepare Your Car For Winter

The leaves are falling and the nights are drawing in – Winter is coming! This means exciting times such as Halloween, Bonfire Night, and Christmas, but it can also mean unpredictable weather, traffic jams, or dangerous driving conditions.

However, with the quick and simple hacks below, you can easily prepare your car for the challenges ahead and enjoy the Winter season safely.

1. Add An Emergency Kit

Winter driving presents several challenges. Frosty roads make braking slippery, foggy conditions impede visibility, and congested periods on the roads can all make a roadside breakdown more likely.

This is why there has never been a better time to add an emergency kit to your car. This could include essentials such as a spare tyre (if you know how to fit your own), blankets, a torch or high visibility items, and a mobile phone charger and any details of your roadside breakdown cover.

You may also wish to include things that are specific to you or your family, such as medication, snacks, water, or entertainment. You do not need to overload your car, but a few essentials can help to give peace of mind.

Be sure to ensure that your roadside cover is up to date too, and that you know the number to call in an emergency.

2. Check (and replace) Your Tyres

Winter road conditions are especially treacherous, and are a large contributing factor to why there are often more accidents in the Winter months.

One way to help prevent accidents is to ensure that your tyres are in good working order, and to replace them if necessary. This may be a replacement that just ensures the integrity and grip of your tyres, or could be a more specific option.

Winter tyres, for example, are specifically made to withstand harsher Winter temperatures and conditions. This can be especially important for anyone living in more rural or remote areas, or those susceptible to heavy snow.

Visit a reputable garage for advice and consider investing in the safest, most weather-appropriate tyres that you can afford.

3. Be Energy Efficient

A great tip all year round – but perhaps especially in Winter – is to drive in the most energy-efficient way possible. This helps to avoid unnecessary wear and tear on your car, but can also save you money and fuel.

Driving in an energy-efficient way can mean selecting the right gear, anticipating the road ahead so that sudden speed changes are not necessary, reducing wind speed, and more. For many drivers, it can even mean making the switch to an electric or hybrid vehicle! The driving range of electric cars is increasing all the time, making them an ever-more popular option.

Whatever ways you can improve the efficiency of your driving, Winter is a great time to do it so you can save money and stay safe on the roads.

4. Invest In Your Lights (or Keep Them Clean)

Excellent lights are a must for the Winter season. They should be reliable, effective, and of course – clean!

Add a few minutes to your regular driving checks and routine to clean your essential lights before and after driving. This is so that there is no build-up of dirt or debris that could obscure them at a crucial time – especially since the sun sets earlier. Falling leaves and frost can also both be more likely to obscure your vision in Winter.

Consider investing in new or better lights in preparation for the Winter season too. While there are many additional ways to reduce spending on your car, safety features should never be one of them. Always aim for the best you can afford.

5. Add A Wintery Scent

A simple, fun, and affordable way to prepare your car for Winter is to add a seasonal scent! These can be in the form of hanging scented items, a spray, cleaning wipes, and more.

Not only can these items be a great way to make your car feel fresh and hygienic, they will also make it a pleasure to drive. On nights where you may spend more time in traffic than usual, or have family or little ones to entertain, a festive scent can help make the space more pleasant.

Points to Keep in Mind While Repairing the Windshield

A small crack in the glass can cause a big change in the windshield. So small damage can become a big crack if it is not checked at once. It is one of the most important aspects as far as the vehicle is concerned. You might wonder if the small crack can cause any change in the large glass. If this crack remains unchecked, it can lead to big damage to the glass. The damages in glass remain the main concern due to the new variety of glass in fashion. So a damaged windshield can be a source of major risk to the driver and the passengers present in the vehicle. It is a leading source for many accidents these days, and it leads to heavy risks if they remain unchecked.

How to identify whether the windshield crack is risky for your vehicle?

Understand whether you need to pay close attention to the crack on the windshield. You may be required to observe if it hides the driver’s view and views the road. If there is a slight problem viewing the objects clearly, go for the replacement immediately.
Check whether you need replacement or repair in the windshield. You can understand this by noting the size of the crack. If it is noticed to be less than a range of twelve inches, it might not need any form of replacement. Still, if you are confused, you can visit an expert to get more details.
Removing the dirt from the crack remains a cause of major concern since the insertion of the dirt into the crack makes the repair much more complex. Then the replacement will be the only option left for you.
Another layer of protection can be ensured by parking your car in the interiors since heat or rain can further worsen the situation with the cracks a hard way and lead to further problems.
Make sure that the temperature is not too high or not too low since it can lead to the heating up of the small cracks and might not do well for the windshield. So one way to avoid this is to keep the temperature at a moderate range.
One of the important points to keep in mind is that you have to drive most safely to avoid further problems with the crack. Driving with carefulness must ensure that unwanted problems are not created via the cracks during driving.
Should you worry about the cracks in the vehicle?

Over the years, the risks that have been developed due to the cracks in the vehicle have been decreasing at a constant rate. It is mainly due to the efforts and the skills of the professionals in car repairing and maintenance that have been working as the backbone behind the curing of damages. So it has been a huge innovative task at hand that has contributed to reducing accidents and injuries due to minor cracks in the vehicle. So you do not have to worry about the small cracks that appear in the windshield when you have a good team of technicians that can support the damage.

Brainstorming The Ideas for Influencing Your Mobile App Audience

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.