When Apple recently previewed iOS 14, which will release sometime this fall, we immediately started to think about the potential opportunities for the FanReach platform. Several features really have us excited, and below, our team has provided some ideas on how we may be able to take advantage of them.
APP CLIPS AND THE FUTURE OF FRICTIONLESS / TOUCH-LESS COMMERCE
Apple has introduced “instant apps” which can be triggered, based on NFC or a QR code scan, to launch contextually aware interfaces. Fans could make payments, open features, provide information and more without an app download.
Imagine a fan scanning a QR code next to a food stand, or their phone communicating with an NFC trigger placed in a food or parking vending system, and immediately, an instant payment system launches. This user experience is what Apple is calling App Clips, and it does not require a download, it’s lightweight, and it would load instantly in a venue with solid cellular or WiFi.
App Clips will create a tremendous amount of opportunities for removing friction in many instances of venue-based interactions. For instance, this experience could be used to present quick pay interfaces for grab-and-go style stands. It also serves well as a marketing tool to present a simple, sponsor-ready interface, leading to the various conversion opportunities (app download, for instance).
App Clips are embedded into an application, thus extending the interface. This will allow for us to gain the data behind the non anonymous transaction, lift your phone, press buy, done.
FanReach has already begun discussions with both Apple and our integration partner stack, exploring various opportunities. We’re excited to unlock an array of use cases for this powerful feature and look forward to piloting them with our teams.
THE WIDGET EXPERIENCE
Engaging users with a glance.
At WWDC20, Apple announced a new framework called WidgetKit. WidgetKit allows you to bring your app’s most useful information directly to the home screen via a glanceable widget, like shown here in the Fitness app:
Users can also configure widgets, like shown here for the Notes app:
For a sports application, we’re envisioning a schedule/score widget that allows the user to see when the next upcoming game details, check GIP score, or game results, right on the home screen. The widget could deep link to the game detail for a summary and video game highlights.
You are not limited to just one widget; you can create different experiences for your users. So, for instance, there could be a standings widget, a news widget, and a favorite player widget that allows the users receive all of a selected player’s latest stats.
As we learn more about WidgetKit’s capabilities, we’ll continue to gather feedback from our customers and determine what is the best fit for the platform and our product roadmap.
PICTURE-IN-PICTURE (PIP)
The Picture in Picture video mode that has been available on iPad OS for years has now made its way to iPhone in iOS 14.
With iOS14, users will now be able to enter PIP mode on iPhone, leaving the video player page — or the app altogether — and continue watching the video. Users will be able to move the PIP window to any corner of the screen simply by dragging it or minimize the PIP video window by moving it offscreen, while continuing to listen to the audio!
This has obvious content consumption implications, giving users much more flexibility in how they ingest media, and likely positively increasing KPIs.
We’re excited about how this could potentially be implemented in to the FanReach platform.
