Mobile computing has certainly changed how we ─ communicate, seek information, seek entertainment, build hardware and software. In short, mobile computing has changed the world, and along with that business world as well.
More than 100 million people in US use internet over their mobile device or tablet, and users spend most of the time online reading and writing emails. Other activities people prefer using on mobile apps are social networking, reading news, and play mobile games.
There are over 1.6 million apps on Android’s Google Play and 1.5 million apps on Apple’s App Store, and not all the apps are successful. So, if you have an app idea that you think will succeed, understand these 5 strategies that top app entrepreneurs use to attain success:
#1. Useful App
It doesn’t matter how much you spend on PR, advertising, or online marketing; if your product isn’t good, it won’t sell ─ simple as that. It’s important that the app is useful, provides entertainment, or solves a problem, and along with that it follows modern design philosophy. A good User-Interface (UI) and User-eXperience (UX) is a must for an app to be successful today.
UI plays an important role to ensure the app is successful; let’s say you design an app which helps a user pay bills online, the UI for such app should have maximum three colour schemes, white background, and minimalistic information requirement.
#2. Target both Apple’s App Store and Android’s Google Play
These stores together dominate the mobile app market with more than 90% mobile app downloads happening from both these stores. But you must understand, what you’re trying to accomplish from the mobile app. If generating revenue is your goal, than Apple is where the money is.
More than 30% App Store users use paid apps compared to Android’s 9%. If reaching a wider audience is your goal, then Android’s Google Play comes out as obvious winner ─ it’s relatively cheaper, fewer rules apply for app developers, and it has a very large user base. But in most cases, targeting both stores will give you the best result and later you can target less popular Blackberry and Windows Phone Store.
#3. Marketing Strategy
A good marketing strategy plays a vital role in defining the success of your app, so make sure you budget for marketing to attract that initial batch of customers through which you can understand how users interact with your app.
A good marketing strategy involves a lot of details, from app’s name to its icon, to PR strategy, getting reviews from bloggers, optimizing the app for the keywords ─ much like you optimize a website for search engine, which has become an important part of the development process.
Social sharing or social word of mouth is probably the most effective ways to market your app, so ensure that your mobile app have social sharing icons and in return users get something for sharing it with a friend, like reward points, or discount coupon, or some other benefits if it’s a game.
#4. Analytics
Analytic tools helps you measure what’s important and what’s not, where are your users coming from, when are they leaving, why are they closing your app. It’s easy to keep count of number of downloads but can be difficult to track other metrics, using analytic tools like Google Analytics, KissMetrics, HubSpot, are extremely useful tools for measuring.
#5. Price of the App
Pricing plays an important part in defining success of your app, if you a set an initial price too high, the users might not even take a look at the app. Successful developers create free apps to download that users can use, enjoy, get used to and pay later.
Users can pay to unlock more features, or remove unwanted advertisement ─ the strategy used by Evernote, CandyCrush, and many other successful apps. I urge developers to keep the in-app purchase for the app free, mainly because of the strong competition from the other developers. If your app isn’t free, some other app will be. And there are a lot of other ways you can learn to make money from your app.
Conclusion:
Even the best of developers today learned a lot from hit and trial method, and learned from their experience that doesn’t matter how much effort you put into making your app, the user is the key to making your app a success.
So, develop your app understanding user’s need with good marketing strategy and you can raise your percentage on making a successful app.
This is a guest post contributed by Arya Stark. noeticforce.com thanks Arya for the contribution made for the benefit of its readers.
