Before you spend the money to build out your app idea, you’ve got to consider how you will achieve user engagement. After all, without users, what’s the point?
My relationship with my smartphone is personal – it’s not so much about using the device as an actual phone, but it is still the device I use to stay connected to the people I love. It also helps me stay organized. It’s where I store photos of my daughter or vacations videos from trips with my husband. It’s where I share intimate thoughts with friends and family through text, or email or social media. It’s where I create grocery lists, find coupons, check my bank balance and the weather and play an occasional Words with Friends’ round.
I don’t pay for apps. Sorry for all of you entrepreneurs who are going to get rich with your latest app idea… I’m not going to pay you for it unless I can’t live without it. And I’m not as convinced as you are that your app is going to be the next thing that I hang onto for the rest of my life. If you do convince me to download your app, I have really high expectations that it’s going to work a certain way and offer me meaningful features.
Give your app a purpose!
Leo Rosten wrote: “I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.”
An app wants to have a purpose too! (OK, not really…) But as a user, don’t you want apps to be useful? To have a responsibility? To have made a difference? As we’ve talked about before, an app needs to solve a problem or drive deeper engagement with your customer. Solve my problems! Create a tool I will use every day! Build an app so important, I will give it prime real estate next to my text and email apps. Please don’t just regurgitate your website info in app form. I can find that for myself assuming you have a responsive mobile site.
What kind of apps have the highest user engagement?
According to Comscore’s U.S. Mobile App Report (August 2014), the top 25 apps in the App Store based on active usage are:
Interesting that there are no games in the top 25.
From an enterprise perspective, apps are used constantly for information sharing, generating leads, building brand awareness, etc… According to Skyhigh Network’s cloud usage data analysis of more than 13 million employees at 350 companies, the top apps used in the enterprise are:
To ensure you have high user engagement, ask yourself: “Does my app…”
- Provide easy access to information like product info or store info?
- Give users the ability to communicate in real time?
- Keep someone on schedule?
- Allow users to share content?
- Save money/compare prices/find deals?
- Track spending/automate bill paying?
- Create efficiencies for frequently repeated everyday tasks?
- Take the hassle out of prioritizing tasks?
- And most important – does it work?
On Thursday, we will post “5 Things to Consider with User Experience.” Be sure to come back for these tips. In the meantime, if you have a business challenge you think mobile may be able to solve, we are happy to talk through your thoughts and maybe offer up some ideas you haven’t considered. Not only do we write beautiful code that ensures your app will work correctly every time, we have vast amounts of experiences counseling clients on the best approaches to take when mapping out their app strategies. Just email us – we’ll talk you through your pain points!
