Lou Dubois

Deciding Whether Your Business Needs a Mobile App

 

Dig Deeper: 6 Reasons You Need a Mobile Strategy

 

Keys to Designing a Useful App for Consumers

“A movie is like a full-course meal, surfing the web is lunch, and mobile is snacking—constantly, constantly snacking,” Martin writes in The Third Screen. “Mobile content consumption is continuous, with no beginning, middle or end.”

What types of apps tend to perform best? According to a study released in early July by Nielsen, among consumers willing to pay for an app, 93 percent would spend money on a game, 87 percent would buy an entertainment app, and 84 percent would purchase both a productivity app and a maps/navigation/search app. Therefore, the most successful apps tend to fall into these categories, As Adhimi states:

  1. Entertainment (namely gaming)
  2. Content (news, sports scores, etc.)
  3. Utility (something that simplifies a typically difficult task)
  4. Transactional (ability to purchase directly on the app, like Groupon)

The key to creating a successful app certainly differs by business and goals, but at the end of the day, the goal is to appeal to the consumer in at least one of three ways (according to Martin):

  • Make life easier. People are increasingly busier as they work more hours and are constantly connected with technology. Further, many are often overwhelmed by the amount of tasks that they have to accomplish in a single day. An application that eases some of that burden by making a regular task simpler or more efficient typically wins in terms of downloads.

 

  • Make life cheaper. It’s all about discounts and deals. Just as many used to clip coupons, pushing a mobile consumer deals based on geo-location, time of day or interests can be a simple way to provide value and drive purchase.

 

  • Make life fun. With the always-on nature of today’s workplace and the constant connectedness, people appreciate a break from serious and work-related material. Enter gaming.  As an example, Angry Birds was purchased 12 million times on the Apple App Store and has been downloaded over 250 million times if you factor in additional platforms.

Dig Deeper: How to Create a Mobile Strategy


Setting Reasonable Goals for Your Application’s Success

Properly analyzing a mobile app’s success is really based on what sort of analytics you set up ahead of time. While measuring total number of downloads is a common way to measure success of an application, it doesn’t tell the whole story about whether people are actually finding and using your app. Particularly because some users may download your app, use it once and never come back if they have a bad experience. Additional metrics that make sense to measure are number of unique app users over a specific time period and an active user rate (number of users versus download rate).

You also need to measure engagement periods and loyalty, in terms of coming back to your app. The four ways to do that are:

  1. Frequency of Visit: shows how often your app is being by comparing number of visits to number of users over a given time.

     
  2. Duration of Visit: looks at how much time is a user spending on your app, by comparing how many pages are they viewing versus number of visits.

     
  3. Depth of Visit: quite simply the amount of time spent in your app.

     
  4. Bounce Rate: how many users have come to your app just once?

There are plenty of mobile app analytics products out there, so when you decide on your developer to help with the app, talk to them about setting a measurement strategy.

Dig Deeper: How to Make Money on iPhone Apps

 

Measuring the Cost

As with most business functions, the decision to build an app or not comes down to cost. Whatever you do, don’t hire someone and train them in app development. The best approach is to talk with up to three different app developers about what you want and have them build out some cost estimates. The more complex you get, the more it will cost. App developers in the U.S. can charge upwards of $100 per hour, and an article from OS X Daily that the development cost range for “small apps” is $3,000 to $8,000 and that “more complex or recognized brand apps” can cost $50,000 to $150,000. 

To get a real quote, talk to experienced app developers who have success stories in the space.

“Ask yourself why you need an app,” says Adhami. “There’s this app frenzy going on and everyone is excited, but figure out do you need it, and why do you need it? Is an app something you know would benefit your business from a cost or cost-savings perspective? If you ask the right business questions and the answer is yes, we need an app, then by all means go for it.”

Dig Deeper: Build Mobile Apps for Free with Appsbar

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Lou Dubois is a Philadelphia-based Social Media Editor for NBC Universal's local news affiliate (WCAU-TV). He is an experienced writer, editor and marketer who has worked with and written about Fortune 500 companies and small businesses, focusing on social media, emerging technologies, small business success, entrepreneurship, sports business and corporate policy.  Previously he worked for Social Media Today, Sports Illustrated, the Associated Press and SOBeFit Magazine, along with various newspapers. @lou_dubois