Mobility has become crucial in our daily life and the way we interact with products or services to solve our work or personal problems determines our behaviors, our mood and dictates the way our life goes.
When building a mobile app, it’s essential to focus your efforts on solving a real and relevant problem for your users while creating your own personal relationship with them.
While there are almost 9 million (8.93 million in April 2024) mobile apps available for download in the official Google, Apple, and Huawei stores worldwide, 85% of the world’s population is using Android, iOS, or Huawei smartphones. At the same time, 90% of all these mobile apps have an average user rating of under 4*.
In our century of speed, technologies, products, services, and industry, standards change in the blink of an eye and adaptability to market’s demands and users’ expectations is key after launching any kind of software solution, especially on mobility-oriented devices such as smartphones, tablets, wearables, or cars.
We see the “overnight” rise and success of apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, but what most of us don’t see is the amount of initial strategic efforts put in creating the product. We forget the way each product changed, pivoted, and adapted to their users’ feedback.
To maximize your chances of success, before investing any time, energy, and money in your idea, you need to have a clear set of answers to these questions:
I know how complex and frightening that might sound. I remember how in our early days, in 2010, 3 years after Steve Jobs launched the first iPhone, we were a bunch of tech-savvy geeks, enthusiastic about the rise of smartphones and all the opportunities that would come along.
When we met our first client, little did we know that having a great coding and design team would not guarantee the success of our clients’ products.
Over the years, we discussed with hundreds of entrepreneurs, product people and c-level executives in over 150 start-up and enterprise companies. We invested thousands of hours in discovery workshops, strategic alignment sessions and debates while helping them develop and launch their mobile apps. With 250+ apps developed in the last 14 years, we have seen both the ones that went directly towards success and the ones that failed. Discussing with the team in our quarterly assessment meetings lit a spark. While navigating through the particularities of each project and their reasons for success or failure, we discovered that all the ones that failed, apart from having a variety of reasons behind their downfall, they all lacked the one nominator identified in the ones that succeeded: clear and concise expected results and a plan to reach them.
During our 14 years of experience in mobile development, while contributing to the launch and success of major apps for clients like Engie Romania, Antena Group, Pluria, Greenpeace Romania, Romanian National Bank, RadioZU, Enayati Medical City, we have created and refined the mReady Launchpad Framework, which contains the most relevant strategic questions and decisions you need to clarify before launching your mobile product on the market.
Do you really need a mobile app?
Developing, launching, and maintaining a quality mobile app is expensive and it always needs adjacent costs like marketing, user acquisition, conversion, retention.
If there are alternative ways to solve the problem, evaluate them before springing towards developing a mobile app. If what you’re interested in is a showcasing app for your business, a mobile-friendly website is much more efficient in terms of costs and results than developing a mobile app. Since mobile devices have gained so much traction, many businesses and entrepreneurs want to have their own branded app available on the Appstore without offering any benefits to their users.
Downloading, registering, and using a mobile app implies a commitment from your users. Downloading a mobile app implies taking up invaluable space on one’s device, space which could be used by other apps, games, photos, or videos. According to metrics, 68% of the apps on their PlayStore have been downloaded by less than 1.000 users.
Registering as a user in your app implies sharing with you their personal data and information, which people tend to be reluctant to give away without knowing what’s in it for them.
If you pass these 2 roadblocks, you still have no guarantee that your app will be used to its potential. On average, almost 70% of users do not open an app the second time.
When to build a mobile app?
Creating a mobile app involves investing consistent time, energy and financial resources in its launch, maintenance, improvement, and growth. Before starting, you need to have clear expectations on the revenues (or savings) it will generate and how. There are 2 main categories all mobile apps go into, and, depending on which category your app fits in, you will need to tune your strategic approach, vision, and decisions.
What are the similarities and differences between apps like WhatsApp, Tinder, Netflix, Facebook, Zoom, Slack, Instagram or AirBnB? What is the business model behind each business and what drives their success? All these successful apps go into the same 2 categories as the rest: They are either the Product or the Companion to a business’ product or service. Tinder, Netflix, Zoom and Slack are products while WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and AirBnB are companion apps.
Users pay through subscriptions or purchase credits within the app to use the Product, while the Companion is free of charge, generating revenue through different funnels. What is the actual good sold for each of them? Tinder sells chats, Netflix sells entertainment, Zoom and Slack sell collaboration. Users are their direct clients and their main cash cow. In the meantime, Facebook and Instagram sell ads (viewed by users), WhatsApp sells accounts for business and AirBnB sells supply and demand matching.
Before further investing valuable time, effort, and money in the development of your mobile apps, you need to clarify what category your app fits in and define your plan for success.
Based on the mReady Launchpad Framework which we refined over the last 14 years, you can easily identify answers to these questions and create a plan that will minimize risk and point out the path towards success. Through the mReady Launchpad Framework you will discover more about what are the answers you need to have and what are the processes you need to undergo before developing your mobile app.
For further reading, discover more about 5 common pitfalls when launching a mobile app.
We witnessed multiple failure destined projects, both hitting dead-ends or pivoting on an ascending path. The most common pitfalls we discovered are the following: 1. Falling in love with your idea…
Read more