Do you know why 99.9% of mobile apps fail?
According to Gartner 2018 report, only 0.01% of consumer mobile apps succeed. Apart from serious problems with monetization, businesses that invest heavily in developing and marketing apps often realize they add next to nothing to the bottom line.
Mobile apps easily come to mind as a tool for businesses to engage target audience, because they provide great personalized user experience. But, apps are expensive to develop, deploy and market.
To successfully run mobile app that drives business objectives, these are serious mistakes to avoid based the most common reasons why apps fail:
- Inaccurate Budgeting.
Cost of developing an app to marketable version is hard to accurately estimate during planning.
Lots of unforeseen challenges come up during app development which may erode funds for proper marketing, if you have set a particular budget to develop and market the app.
- Bad Tech.
If you contract developer with obsolete structure or resources for your app, it may be out of fashion even before you launch it.
Because technology evolves so fast, an app that was a brilliant idea 6 months ago can be the most terrible thing to market to target audience.
- Poor Testing.
For the sake of cutting cost and meeting deadlines, apps are barely taken through rigorous quality assessment test. Testing is a fundamental part of app development process but it is often watered down.
A lot user experience issues that make apps fail could have detected early only if thorough testing was done.
- Complex Features.
The least you can do to have a great is to make it difficult to use or repeats exact functions of your website.
Huge investment in marketing an app can significantly influence downloads but user friendliness determines usage and experience. If your app needs a lot of explanation for users to get along, it is most likely going to fail.
- Problem Solving.
No business invests in developing an app without a well-defined target audience, but how many apps solve really important problems for users? Many apps fail not because they were bad idea, but rather because they solve flimsy problems that users can easily do without.
- No R.O.I.
To keep running and maintaining app is not cheap, especially if critical business objectives are tied to it.
Whether it is problem with monetizing usage of the app or requiring a lot more funds than planned to drive results, businesses often abandon their apps due to lack of returns on investment.
- Stiff Competition.
Apps are created in thousands on daily basis, your app that is doing great may soon be battling with breath-taking competition.
As business that successfully runs an app, you should continue to iterate and evolve to stay ahead of competition. Using customer feedback to keep improving the app will ensure you keep users engaged.
- App Description.
App description is more than writing nice things about your darling app. It should be treated like Search Engine Optimization for a website.
App description determines how people discover it when they search app store, as well as first impression by first timers. You can also do mobile indexing for your app so its content can be displayed in mobile search results.
- Rating Optimization.
Review and rating by users are must-have for apps that will succeed. Before downloading an app, most users check out the ratings and reviews to see people’s feedback. Bad rating and reviews can discourage people from downloading your app.
It also helps to attend to genuine concerns raised in reviews as this tells new users that you are proactive and value customer feedback.
- Vague Branding.
Most of the apps that fail do not have things that distinguish them from others. To help your app grow downloads and engagement, do proper branding and give your app a life of its own.
Everyone who comes in contact with your app should easily know its unique proposition and why it stands out among the rest.
Comment here