Bar-Z Blog
How Southwest Louisiana is Connecting through Mobile
Southwest Louisiana is home to Lake Charles and five parishes including Allen, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, and Jefferson Davis. This broad region provides residents and visitors with many things - a rich culture, fantastic food, exciting festivals and events, unique attractions, a vibrant business community - and now it can add a comprehensive mobile app to the list. The Official...
Discover Northwest Houston Unifies a Dispersed Community
The official app of the Spring, Klein and Cypress Creek Communities is working to unify a large and diverse area of Northwest Houston, Texas. Discover Northwest Houston is a newly launched zCivic app developed in partnership with the Houston Northwest Chamber of Commerce. The Spring-Klein and Cypress Creek Community is located 20 miles from Houston’s central business district, and is...
The Official App of Odessa Texas Reaches Residents, Visitors and the Business Community
The new official app for Odessa, Texas, Our Odessa, is now available as a free download on Apple and Android smartphones and tablets. The Odessa Chamber of Commerce partnered with zCivic, a division of Bar-Z Mobile Development, to create the comprehensive community resource. The app combines features and content from the Odessa Chamber of Commerce, the City of Odessa, the Odessa Convention...
The 4 Pillars of a Successful Mobile App
Bar-Z Mobile Development has built and deployed over 600 mobile apps. We’ve learned a few things along the way about what makes an app successful once it is released and want to give you the highlights. If you or your community are considering going mobile, make sure you have our four pillars of success in place!1) The app has to function. This one seems obvious but we know that going...
The Fayetteville Chamber Connects the Community with its New Mobile Project
Connecting the Fayetteville, Arkansas community through mobile is one of the goals of the newly launched Fayetteville AR Connect app. A collaborative community mobile project, the app is now available for download on iOS and Android devices. The Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce partnered with zCivic, our Bar-Z Mobile Development division focused on creating mobile solutions for civic...
Passport 2 Midland Connects App Users with the Business Community
The new official app for Midland, Texas, Passport 2 Midland, is now available as a free download on Apple and Android smartphones and tablets. The Midland Chamber of Commerce partnered with zCivic, a division of Bar-Z Mobile Development, to create the comprehensive community resource. The app combines features and content from the City of Midland, the city’s destination marketing...
Simplify Your App Marketing with Google AdWords Universal App Campaigns
As we’ve written about in past blog posts, app marketing is an important consideration for generating app downloads and retaining app users. From optimizing App Store keywords to developing an app launch strategy, there are many ways that your marketing team can help to build your app audience. When it comes to paid digital advertising campaigns, Google AdWords offers several options to help...
How Community Portal Apps Can Connect A City
Mobile is the preferred method of communication these days, so it makes perfect sense that mobile apps enable cities to communicate more quickly and effectively with citizens. Whether it be a crime alert, or a voting reminder, mobile solutions can offer seamless, instantaneous communication from the city to citizens. Sharing information, offering mobile access to city services, and increasing...
Why Your Organization Needs a Mobile App
If you are still wondering whether your organization needs to get a mobile app, the answer is yes! Mobile is just too important to ignore and a website alone is just not going to cut it anymore. Consider these numbers: Over 80% of mobile phone users in the U.S. now have a smartphone. (comScore) About ¾ of Americans check their mobile phones at least once per hour. (Gallup)...
Local Newspapers Still Play a Vital Role in Our Communities
This week, October 1-7, 2017, is National Newspaper Week. As the climate for news coverage continues to shift and alternate sources of information proliferate, you may wonder, what role do local newspapers play in our communities today? We are pleased to say that newspapers play a far more complex role in the civic life of communities than many Americans may believe. According to a 2011 Pew...
