According to Statista, the average number of Google Play app releases in 2019-2021 was more than 100,000 per month. For iOS, the number of new releases on the App Store was 30,000 per month. Out of these new releases, only 0.5% of apps were successful! It was clear that even ideas that seemed brilliant at the start could not survive in the long run.
Here are a few reasons why mobile apps fail to draw more downloads:
⦁ Not revisiting existing mobile product strategies.
⦁ Relying on old technology/technologies.
⦁ Not taking enough user feedback for prototypes before executing the development process.
⦁ Overlooking the importance of different user-personas.
⦁ Not mapping the customer journey.
While it is tempting to skip the above, such insights form the foundation of successful app delivery. To create an app that can withstand market competition, one must consider a few things that we will now talk about:
1) Prepare a product vision
A product vision is an integral document that describes the project in context. It includes:
⦁ What existing problem is it solving for users
⦁ How your product solves the problem
⦁ What kind of users is it going to serve
⦁ What can be the marketable features/in-app features
⦁ Distinctive features of your app when compared to competitors
Preparing this high-level document keeps you on track with the set of deliverables that you want to launch in the market.
2) Do your user-research
Before developing an application, you must know your target audience. You must plan whether to serve a specific group or varied users. Once you do that, build knowledge about user-persona and assess if your app can assist their requirements. The success of your app entirely depends on the number of user downloads, therefore decide your target audience, learn about them and align your objectives with their demands. A few questions to ask with your user research are:
⦁ Are you targeting customers within an age group/with preferences/based on location? The deeper and specific the study, the better.
⦁ Do they like to game/remain fit/ want to date?
⦁ How much time do they have on their hands to use your app?
⦁ What is their geographical location?
⦁ What problem are you solving for your target audience?
3) Mapping customer journey
Mapping the customer journey is vital to how your users will interact with the app. The different questions you must ask while mapping your customer journey are as follow:
⦁ Is the navigation easy?
⦁ How will users interact with the app?
⦁ How many screens will be there in the app?
⦁ Which screen appears on tapping which component?
Such questions will reveal if the app needs improvement in the workflow, and what to simplify to pave way for customers to reach their goals.
4) Choose your platform
Once you know your audience, gauge the platform on which you will find a majority of them. For example, if you want to launch your app for the United States, you may want to create an app for the iOS platform as most users use iPhones there. Whereas, when you target the Indian audience, you will find a mix of Android and Apple users. Also, iOS is a preferred platform for app selling, whereas Android (with 87% of the global market) helps reach the mass market; however, the number of users may vary depending on factors like location, age, etc.
To target audience over Android, iOS, and Windows, you can leverage cross-platform app development. Mobile app developers can write code once and reuse it for app development on different platforms. This will cut down time and cost investment to write code for the same app on different platforms.
5) Prototype your app
Prototyping your app is the best way to gauge to how your app will perform. It is much more challenging to grab users’ attention than to develop an application. Hence, you must test your prototype and take user feedback. It will reveal several aspects such as:
⦁ The potential of your app.
⦁ Do users find your app interesting/entertaining/usable?
⦁ Are there any missing features that users expect?
⦁ Which features need improvement?
Many assume prototyping is an additional expense; instead, it can help you increase the success probability of your app. Also, you can start to look for investors with an app emulation.
Final Thoughts
A mobile app has different aspects to consider, which is why one must go step-by-step to build it. Throwing everything together to create an app would dramatically decrease its potential. The above-mentioned considerations are a set of standard processes that app developers can follow before app development. These steps may vary depending on each individual project, but can surely help in creating an app with purpose.
No Comments