5 Building Blocks of a Successful Mobile App
1. Solving the Problem
Monitor how potential users are coping with their pain points, reach the conclusion that these methods are ineffective and propose your own solution.
If you believe you’ve invented something brilliant that no one’s thought of before, please recheck that your offer really is fresh and valuable.
Your solution should be:
- Better / cheaper / faster and more profitable;
- Untouchable by competitors - letting you maintain your leadership for more than a couple of days.
- Significant enough to entice customers from their habitual places.
2. Simplicity
It's quite simple to come up with a new functionality, but hard to tell whether your idea is useful or not.
In fact, users value simplicity, availability, speed and entertainment. If we can’t see the immediate benefits of a service, we immediately switch our attention to competitors or look for other ways to solve the problem.
Removing everything useless is a key step towards the success of your mobile app. Deferred functionality is likely to come in handy in the future as the service grows, already having a margin of reputational strength; at the beginning, there should be only one button.
3. Onboarding
The process of communicating the meaning and value of your product to the user should be, again, simple, understandable and interesting. This is easy to test prior to the app’s launch: show it to your friends and, without explaining anything, observe how easily they can interact with your app.
Don’t discuss or criticise their interaction, just take notes for corrections: with thousands of users you won’t have the opportunity to communicate in person, and they will behave in such a way when there is no mobile app developer to back them up.
4. Fast tempo
The service should be live: quickly respond to user feedback and publish updates at least every 2-3 weeks.
We all see a lot of apps in the Stores which, despite negative feedback regarding their functionality, see no updates for months. This shows how the work on the product is tuned and immediately creates a certain emotional attitude, which is very difficult to change.
5. Talk to Users
Even if only 5 people use your service, communicate with them.
- Keep a blog and invite users to follow it;
- Thank active participants with discounts / additional functionality;
- Authorise users to take part in the discussion of following versions.
They’ll feel as though they’re participants of the mobile app development and you’ll have a valuable source of information about customers' perception of the result of your work and the potential social leaders helping you in advertising.
Publish interesting behind-the-scenes stories:
- which functions were discussed,
- why they were refused,
- photos of the office,
- drafts,
- marker boards and so on.
The emotional attitude of customers is a very important aspect - you can work on this almost without any additional effort, simply showing how you work and communicating with users.
Remember: Don’t argue with your users. If you have to prove the profitability of your service in a dispute with a client, the prospects for developing such a business are not rosy at all.
Concluding Note
So the five listed points are:
- Solve the problem in a simple and elegant way;
- Clearly explain the benefits of the product;
- Maintain a good pace;
- Communicate with users.
This is not a complete list of what needs to be done. But without these basic principles, the product, most likely, will not work.
Read more about other important mobile app development issues:
- How to create your first business app
- Is it easy to transform an Android app into an iOS one
- Whether to develop a mobile app or a mobile website? Are there any other options?
- How to keep users in your app
Keep in touch - we regularly discuss our inner workings and are always ready to address your thoughts and answer any questions.
Director of Operations and Business Development
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