It’s pretty much every millennial’s dream these days, right? Come up with a great idea for an app then sell the company to a tech giant for millions. In reality, this kind of scenario is about as likely to happen as winning the lottery. However, this does not mean that the mobile app market is not a fertile ground for innovation and financial gain.
Every week, thousands of more concepts hit the app stores, all fighting for a slice of the pie and the chance to be the next big thing. With so much competition, it’s crucial to ensure that your app hits all the right notes. Here are some of the key elements that you will need to succeed:
1. Great User Experience
As any app developer will tell you, nail the UX, and you are halfway there. The road to mobile success is littered with the carcasses of fabulous ideas that failed miserably because they didn’t pay enough attention to creating a smooth, intuitive and easy-to-follow experience for their target market. If you’re serious about wanting to turn your app into a revenue generating resource, you should, without doubt, invest in good UX design.
2. All Aboard
You will hear plenty of talk about numbers of downloads in the app world. However, downloads tell only half the story. Over 80% of apps are deleted within the first couple of months of being downloaded, and a huge proportion of these hit the scrap heap within the first few days. One of the most powerful and effective ways to grab your new users’ attention is to create an attractive and compelling onboarding experience.
Onboarding is not just about walking your new user through the app features. It is just as much about establishing a meaningful connection with them and communicating your core message in ways that resonate with them emotionally. Pull this off, and you will drastically increase your retention rates.
3. Focus, Young Padawan
Many app creators get carried away trying to cram way too much functionality into their technology. It might be tempting to attempt to include every cool feature that you can imagine into your app, however, in the post-modern digital age less is most certainly more. You are far better off focusing on doing one or two things exceptionally well, rather than trying to be everything to everybody. The latter strategy usually ends up with a clunky, difficult to use product that looks like it has been designed by Homer Simpson.
4. Crashing In
This might seem like a no brainer, but you would be shocked to know how many apps make it to the market with substandard development. Nothing will have users clamoring for the delete button faster than an app that crashes or is otherwise unstable. Development is where the bulk of the cost of building an app lies. Using this budget wisely can make the world of difference to your chances for success.
5. Need for Speed
Forget goldfish; human beings have devolved into having the lowest attention span of pretty much any species on the planet. You have an outrageously limited time to hook your user in, so if those precious seconds are spent waiting for the app to load or transition, you drastically increase your risk of heading for mobile oblivion. The best apps always have rapid response times and so should yours if you want to be like them.
We could keep diving deeper, however, starting with this list will see you well and truly on your way towards making you mobile dreams a reality.