Statistics have shown that mobile usage has overtaken the desktop usage. The smartphone adoption is rapidly growing across the globe and so does the need for applications. The present times have become equally exciting and challenging for the businesses who want to go online and for the app developers who want to create a long lasting app for these businesses. The actual challenge is in satisfying these mobile app users or customers whose expectations have increased manifold. Well, let’s see what are the challenges related to these users.
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This point is crucial in any given market conditions and when talking specifically about the mobile app market, innovation and creativity are the only ways to survive the rapidly changing situations here. The developers have to really concentrate on the details of the app to make a positive first impression on the users. Developers need to think beyond the user-friendly design and interactive features to create long connections with the users. Look at your competitor’s app to see what interesting or unique they are providing. Work better on the same lines, pay attention to the smallest of the issue or reviews and win loyal users for life long.
It is the most prominent challenge cited often by developers where they say that user engagement falls sharply over the period of time. Only 24% of consumers continue using an app even three months after its download. Users quickly switch to another new app in the market making it a lesson for developers to focus on user engagement and usage patterns more than on downloads. Some of the techniques to improve user engagement and retention are integrating social buttons like FOLLOW or LIKE on social networks as follow is the most common feature used by users. Where direct social integration does not make sense, push notifications really work. They really catch users’ eyes on the mobile screen. Another retention technique is the gamification technique which basically rewards the users for achievements or for inviting other users. For example, you get 250 MB of free storage space, each time you invite a user to dropbox. So, in all developers need to be creative in building value for users in order to retain them.
This becomes another challenging situation for developers where catching on to the right users really becomes a task in itself. The app store, for example, provides no information to the developers about existing or potential customers. It has little incentive to share customer data with the app developers and therefore the developer’s marketing potential is hampered. In the age where customer information is a key source of competitive advantage, the inaccessibility of customer information by developers will remain a thorny issue. But then with all the wisdom of app developers, it is quite impossible to keep waiting for app stores to fix the problem. It is only to the developers who keep trying to reach out for different solutions via cross-promotion, blogs, forums or any other way to discover their right targets soon.
Last but not least, 30% of developers have reported that the post-launch challenge is to get the users to review the app. Most of the users go for Remind me later option when the preview window pops up while using an app. But at the same time, developers have also told that there have been success stories also of getting the app reviews after a lot of nagging. Thus, it can be said that getting reviews from users is more luck than science.
