With the astronomical boom in the smartphone market, businesses all over the world are looking at capitalizing on mobile apps to interact and connect more with their customers. These apps offer a seamless avenue via which businesses can build their customer base while garnering more revenue.
Despite the
importance of mobile apps to businesses, a majority of such apps end up failing woefully. A visit to major app stores will reveal dozens of poor apps with very few downloads while a select few are enjoying millions of downloads. So, what is the secret to building a successful app? Below are eight qualities that differentiate successful business apps from unsuccessful ones;
1. Unique, appealing and simple design:
The first thing a user observes about an app is its design and the way it operates. An app with very poor design and interface will be such a bore for users and may encourage them to uninstall. There are so many other alternative apps for any service that your app may be offering. Therefore, you need a design that stands out and can appeal to users. Similarly, if your app comes with dozens of unnecessary features such that it makes the process of operating the app complex, chances are that users will find this unappealing and may be forced to uninstall. The simpler the better. Don't force your users to solve complex mathematical equations just to figure out how your app works. Inform your
mobile app development company to keep your user interface as simple, user-friendly, and minimalistic as is possible.
2. Offline capabilities:
Although most features on mobile apps require a wireless connection to work, you can make your mobile app stand out by allowing users to access important features on your app even when there is no internet connection available. Through the incorporation of offline capabilities to your mobile app, your customers are able to connect with your brand from wherever they may be. This gives a positive user experience. Ensure that your mobile app development company add features into your app which can be accessed even in offline mode.
3. Personalization options:
Every individual has personal preferences. In order to fulfill these preferences, you can allow users of your app to tweak certain settings, such as fonts, color, privacy settings, to meet their specific need. This would afford them a personalized experience and would help to maximize the app usability to a very large extent. Do not compel your users to predefined settings, instruct your mobile app development company to allow users to make their design and operative choices, and you will be better for it.
4. Social media integration:
Social media has become a force that is impossible to ignore. One of the fastest, and easiest, ways to build a user base and get the word out about an app is to promote it over social media. Each day millions of people visit the
top social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Allowing your users to be able to share content from your app on these popular social media platforms offers tremendous opportunity for growth. Also, the sign-up or registration process can be made much easier by allowing users to use their social media logins within the app.
5. Choice of a platform:
One of the key questions businesses must answer before they embark on their app development journey is the choice of a platform upon which their app is to be built. The three major platforms include Android, iOS, and Windows. The most appropriate answer to the question of which platform to choose can be found in your target audience, which can equally be found using Google Analytics. Basically, your mobile app development company need to ascertain what platform your target audience are more open to or use more frequently. When you eventually make your choice, ensure that your app works perfectly well on that platform.
6. No advertisements:
The major purpose of your app should be to interact and engage with your users, assisting them to accomplish a specific task, and not to make side money. The act of filling your business app with advertisements as a way of making side income will have a more detrimental effect. These ads will invariably distract users thereby resulting in bad user experience and low user retention over time. Ads have a way of disturbing the flow of interaction and can be a sort of nuisance. This poor usability occasioned by the presence of ads may cause users to uninstall only just after a few uses. Instruct your mobile app development company to steer clear of advertisements within your app.
7. Performance:
The performance of your business app plays a very important role in its success, or otherwise. The world has become busier than ever, no one really has the patience to wait for too long for an app to load. They would instead move on to the next alternative. As a rule of thumb if your app takes longer than 8 seconds to load then it means it has a slim chance of staying long on users devices. You can cut down on your app load time by asking your mobile app developer to keep the code as minimum as possible, while also optimizing from the start.
8. Analytics:
One key feature which every business owner cannot afford not to incorporate into their business app is Analytics. The integration of Analytics to mobile apps allows business owners to track users and their behavior. By tracking users interest and behavior, you can easily understand how your app can be improved so as to guarantee a much better user experience.
