What Constitutes A Good App

Understanding what will make people love your app

With millions of apps on Google Play Store and Apple App Store, how many actually get the much-coveted space in the users' mobile? How many Apps do we download and use on a regular basis? How many apps are uninstalled everyday?

While the exact answer to these questions would be very difficult to put in black and white, the obvious point is, there are successful and unsuccessful apps; apps that people use and apps that they don't. There are good apps and the bad ones.

So what constitutes a good app and how do you know one?

Value: A good app will be based on providing value to the customer. Either it will aim at solving a particular problem like call-a-plumber-or-electrician app, or it will aim at providing convenience to the user like news app or will be simply good for its entertainment value. A good app will always define a take-away for the user; the better the value, better the app.

Engagement: There are apps that we install on our mobile phones and absolutely forget about them and then there are apps that become a part of our daily lives. Good apps are the ones that can productively engage users on a regular basis. There should be notifications, alerts, offers, reminders and other ways to engage the user.

Moderation: Although user engagement is important but it strictly needs to be done in moderation. Too many notification and alerts will eventually turn off the user resulting into un-installation of the app. How many messages are appropriate? The answer to this would be different for very app depending on the nature of your app, type of user base and the scope of engagement.

Personalization: A good app learns from the user's usage habits, timings, spending pattern, likes and dislikes, builds upon that and presents user with personalized content. Though more the personalization, better it is, but then it's important to understand there is a very fine line between personalization and intrusion of privacy. And many a times users are put off by intrusive apps. Asking too much of personal information and taking permission for usage of personal information irrelevant to the app will definitely not qualify as a good-app feature. For instance an app for showing driving directions on the map does not need to get access to contact-list on the phone.

These are a few general traits that constitute a good app. the scope and flexibility of these traits will change from one app to the other depending on the user base, the value deliverance and scope of the app.

App Marketing

Reaching out to your target audience

App marketing, like any other marketing, is theoretically a breeze; identify your target market, reach your audience, convince them to download the app and it's done. But in reality, it's a lot beyond.

Each step of app marketing involves a whole gamut of challenges and complexities. For marketers the challenge starts right from identifying the target audience. Anyone who has a smart phone or mobile device is a part of the target market. In this huge segment, macro and then micro segmentation needs to be done. This would depend on a through analysis of the app, the benefits and conveniences it delivers, the problems it promises to solve and the demographic it will appeal to.

Once the segmentation is done, the big challenge is how to reach the target segment. Since it the mobile world we are talking about, reaching out to the target audience is a lot more difficult. Discussed below are some ways that will help reaching out to potential users for app marketers.

WHY

Why should the user download your app? What is the motivation for downloading your app (and not competition's)? Does the motivation change with age/operating system/place?

Most users are known to download apps that solve a specific task. For instance Navigation apps help users find directions to different places, or food ordering apps help people get food from their favorite food outlet or news apps that flashes the headlines and breaking news of the day.

Another motivation is (WOM) word-of-mouth. An app recommended by friend or family has a very high probability of download. Some app marketers caught on to this trend and have started marketing their products as recommendations from friends. Remember the emails you receive that prompt you to try out an app recommended by your friend or accomplice? How many times do we open such emails and actually try out the links? The point is it really has to be word-of-mouth for the receiver to trust it. WOM marketing through email lists and social media is not such a great idea until there's a well-thought-of long-term strategy involved.

WHERE

Markets have changed. The 'one-size-fits-all' marketing strategy is no longer applicable. Retailers need to understand their customer and personalize marketing for each customer keeping their convenience in mind. If Miss Mayers is a working professional and prefers shopping (even if it's online shopping) only on the weekends, sending her weekend offers would draw her to see the offers. If Mrs. Hopkins is a housewife and prefers shopping in the store at leisure on weekdays, then sending her weekday offers and updates will make sense. Similarly if a man's profile data shows he's traveling and while traveling he's surfing the store's site, a sudden push notification with a great offer may most likely result into a sale.

Top Charts: Most users surf for the app on Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Most users just surf the top ranking apps and choose their pick. Apps need to be optimized for app store ranking (this topic is covered in a different blog "App Store Optimization"). User reviews also play an important role in helping form an opinion about an app before using it.

Advertisements: Advertisements can be of various types: offline (non digital), online and in-app. For most online ads, the normal measure of ROI is through rate of click. But an important thing to note here is that there is this segment of people who look at the in-app ads but still go through Play Store or App Store to search and download the app. In such cases the ‘click' ratio of the ad is zero but the impact isn't. Hence an approximate measure of the success ratio of the ads can be the increase in overall sale from the time the ads started appearing. Depending on the need and type of industry/genre/segment you are catering to, you can take a call on whether offline ads and ads in different media will make practical sense.

Once the basic questions about who, why where and all are answered, the next big challenge becomes getting users to download the app and then keeping them engaged with the app. Getting users to download is heavily dependent on the way your app is presented on the app store and user reviews. And when the app is downloaded, a lot of planning needs to be put into devising a communication strategy that keeps the customer constructively and profitably engaged with the app.

Balanced Communication

Balanced Communication

In this age of communication and with the ease of multimedia, it is tempting for markets to get in touch with their customers on every occasion an opportunity to do so arises. But what most marketers fail to realize is that with so many companies wooing for customer attention, and with everyone communicating and communicating at every available chance, it is like a big noisy jungle out there.

Over-communication Kills

If social media, smart phones and tens of communication channels have brought in new opportunities for marketers to get in touch with the customer, these new opportunities also pose a serious threat of negative publicity. One customer gets ticked off, she is likely to influence tens others that are further likely to influence more and the viral publicity has affected your brand even before you know it. Thanks to social media! Therefore it is very important for companies to understand and respect the fine line between informing the customer and loading her with over information, personalizing marketing and intruding privacy and most important aptly using technology to woo customers' attention and abusing the privilege.

One-To-One Marketing

Markets have changed. The 'one-size-fits-all' marketing strategy is no longer applicable. Retailers need to understand their customer and personalize marketing for each customer keeping their convenience in mind. If Miss Mayers is a working professional and prefers shopping (even if it's online shopping) only on the weekends, sending her weekend offers would draw her to see the offers. If Mrs. Hopkins is a housewife and prefers shopping in the store at leisure on weekdays, then sending her weekday offers and updates will make sense. Similarly if a man's profile data shows he's traveling and while traveling he's surfing the store's site, a sudden push notification with a great offer may most likely result into a sale.

To achieve this, retailers need to create customer profiles and build upon the profile with each interaction. As the profile gets richer with more and more data, better-personalized experiences and richer interactions can be designed for each customer. This will not only improve ROI and value of marketing spend but will also give a much coveted loyal customer base.

Mobile Commerce Jargon Every Company Must Know

Mobile Commerce Jargon Every Company Must Know

Mobile commerce is not just a new platform but is actually a survival resort for most companies in the digital age especially retail. Before you take your big leap, here is some basic mobile-commerce jargon that you need to know to become an insider in the industry.

Experience-Driven Commerce

Experience-driven commerce is a wide term covering the whole spectrum of a customer’s journey along the sale cycle and beyond. In simple terms, it means optimizing resources, channel integrity, connectivity and communication across channels to provide a seamlessly integrated, intuitive and hassle free shopping experience to the customer.

While experience-driven commerce seems like a concept businesses have been already working on, the implementation of the technology and intertwining it with business strategy is the challenge. To take a use case for instance, Nina, a snowboarding enthusiast updates her FaceBook page with pictures of her latest snowboarding trip. A friend sends across a video of snowboarding champion doing some real tough snowboarding. While Nina checks out the video she checks out the gear used by the champion, checks out their price, variations and finally orders the pair of shoes that she’s always wanted. Nina is able to do all this without leaving her Facebook Page even for adding things to the cart or making the payment, thanks to experience-driven commerce. There can many manifestations of the concept and the best part is that there is no restriction to how innovative a marketer can get.

Serve Your Customers

There are three words that can determine a business' success – service, service and service. With technology helping crease out operational issues, business houses can utilize the extra time and resources into servicing their existing customers and building up a loyalty base. With social media being such an integral platform, every well-serviced customer automatically becomes a brand ambassador and vice versa.

Application Programming Interface (API)
Application Programming Interface or API is seamless integration of all customer touch-points.

With the advent of smart phones and mobile devices, there are multiple platforms or touch-points wherein the customer comes in contact with the brand. For instance a working professional Zach surfs the Internet for a backpack from his work desktop computer. Later while traveling home from work, Zach checks out retail app for backpacks. He stops over for some food wherein the app sends a special backpack deal along with the location of the store closest to his current location. Across platforms and customer touch-points there is a seamless integration and communication, which facilitates flow of information making each channel both complimentary and complementary to each other.

Mobile mind shift

Mobile mind-shift pretty much is the fact that mobiles have changed the way customers shop – MY PLACE, MY TIME, MY PRICE, MY TERMS shopping. This essentially means that companies not only need to gear up to mobile commerce but to the mobile-first approach. It requires technological changes along with business strategy re-design.

Omnichannel

To begin with omnichannel is not the same as multi channel. Omni channel refers to the brand being omnipresent; on multiple channels but with seamless integration and backend connectivity of all the channels or customer touch-points. Unlike the common misconception, mobile commerce, e-commerce and in-store are not individual profit centers but are all integrated and one-brand experience.

Personalization

This is perhaps the most commonly used buzzword in the industry. Personalization includes collecting customer information from every customer touch-point and building a customer profile that includes information like likes, dislikes, preferences, social profile and all. With this information in hand a company needs to personalize the offer to the customer according to her tastes, her shopping preferences, at a time she is willing to shop from wherever she prefers to shop.

Optimizing Your App Search

How To Optimize Your App Search?

How To Optimize Your App Search

So you've chalked out your comprehensive mobile strategy, defined the app value preposition and also created your app. So much of detailing and yet it is just the beginning. The real task starts with the marketing of the app.

One obvious way is to directly tell the consumers about your app through advertising, online advertising, social media publicity, word of mouth etc. Another important way would be to rise the listings in Apple's App Store and Anroid's Google Play. This would require systematic optimization of App Store and Google Play similar to search engine optimization (SEO) for web.

What to do and how?

Keywords: Carefully choose your keywords. Think of logical keywords that can be associated with your app. Also take help from Google Ad-words Keywords Planner. Spying on competition's keywords can also give you a fair idea of the exact keywords you want for your app.

App Description: The description of your app should be carefully scripted to add all the strategically important keywords and still be convincing enough for a potential user.

Encourage Reviews: Reviews, especially good reviews, can play a major role in app search optimization. If there are bad reviews, address them in the same forum. This will create goodwill amongst users and potential users.

App Usage: The more your users use the app, the better the ranking that you'll get in app stores. Send coupons, notifications and incentives to encourage app usage, which will improve your ranking on the app store.

On a macro level these points will help you in your App Search Optimization (ASO) both on App Store and Google Play. At the micro level there can be some fine differences on specific points but overall for both the platforms any feature that helps the user is considered great ASO.

App: To Fee Or Not To Fee

Which is better for business in the long run: free app or paid app?

While businesses have come to terms with the fact that apps are fundamental to business success, the next big question remains – What kind of an app?

App strategy has to be woven around consumer interests – what will give value to the end user? Or, why would the consumer use this app? App strategy would be a fine balance in value derived, both to the consumer and the company. And while putting the value component on paper the dilemma most businesses face is whether to make the app free or chargeable.

There is no absolute answer to the question above. Although a paid app can seem like a huge monetizing opportunity, but what if consumers do not find value and abandon the app. On the other hand what if there are many downloads, wouldn’t that be like an opportunity lost? The only way to an answer to this is by doing an in-depth analysis of the marketplace, user base and company requirements and then arrive at a logical solution that balances all three.

Understanding Trends

The app landscape has drastically changed. To begin with, most apps were paid apps. There were just a handful of apps that came free. In most case there used to be a limited version of the app that was free, the full-feature version was often charged for. But this has changed over the years. The market is now flooded with free apps. There are different revenue models these apps follow. Some apps encourage in-app purchases, some cash on ads and some on both.

Free Apps

Free apps are the most popular style of app marketing. With growing market clutter consumers would rather have it free than pay for it. With free apps though, companies present the consumer with numerous opportunities to make in-app purchases or flood the consumer with advertisements throughout the app usage time. Companies need to be sensitive while making aggressive sales calls with both the methods mentioned. Although free apps can be a great boon to retailers as more the app usage, more the revenue.

Paid Apps

It is indeed amazing how premium or paid apps make a significant chunk in the app market despite of the market being flooded with free apps. Here are a few points to consider before you decide to make your app paid.

• The app is marketed by a premium vendor.
• Consumers get value that outweighs the burden of price.
• The app falls short of supply as compared to the demand in the market.

The Takeaway

The key to a successful strategy is one that provides value to the consumer. So if a paid app can justify the value preposition, it makes sense to have a paid app. Similarly if a free app can successfully monetize though ads or in-app purchases without putting the user, having a free app would be preferable.

Deeplinks

Understanding & Implementing Deeplinks.

The Issue

There’s an app installed on your mobile phone. While checking your email you notice that there’s an email from the service provider of that app. You click on the link in the email and the browser opens a login page. If the app already exists on your mobile phone, shouldn’t the link connect you to the app instead of taking you through the login process again?

The Reason

Although everything Internet might seem pretty much the same but mobile web and mobile apps are worlds apart. The HTML/HTTP URL does not work on the apps. Because apps are dedicated independent programs, the web links cannot communicate from inside of the program.

The solution

Deep Linking is a technology that links the two worlds, mobile app and mobile web, allowing standard web links (HTTP) to open specific sections in the app. Deep Linking allows enriched app experiences. Deep Linking links all digital marketing with the app, app to app, ad to app, SMS to app, QR to app, Email to app, web to app and social media to app.

Deep Linking opens doors to a whole world of digital marketing opportunities. This also opens a whole new world of personalized customer service. It becomes easier to tap surfing pattern and consumer behavior across platforms.