The use of mobile applications has exponentially grown in the last few years as smartphones have become a daily staple in our lives. The reason behind this significant increase? Smartphones are fulfilling the need for convenience, flexibility, and security, increasing the overall demand for mobile applications. As a result of this demand, companies are introducing more apps than ever into the market to handle various business functions or serve as a primary vehicle to deliver services. In this blog, we focus on the things companies should be mindful of when launching their app into the market, along with potential challenges they may face. Keep reading below to learn more!
According to an article published by Forbes earlier this year, there are currently 8.93 million mobile apps in the market. As a result, companies have had to rethink how to make their app stand out in an oversaturated market. To do this, understanding what appeals to your specific group of users, along with figuring out a way to keep them engaged and creating a loyal customer user base, is critical.
Another way to stand out in an overcrowded market is by clearly defining your target market – so your app doesn’t try to be everything for everyone. For example, to clearly define your target market, you can use demographics such as age, gender, location, language, education, occupation, marital status, familial status, interests, and devices to gain more information about your audience.
You can also ask the following questions to define which users you want to reach:
What problem is your app solving?
Who is your app helping?
Who would like to use your app?
How would a person use your app?
To ensure that your app is accessible to all users making sure it works on all different screen sizes and devices is critical. To address this, you can include responsive design into your app to make sure that it works across all devices. Building this into your design provides the flexibility you need to adjust your app to different screen sizes and various formats, allowing you to reach more users.
Another thing to consider when trying to stand out in the mobile app market is dealing with different operating systems. Currently, the three main operating systems are iOS, Android, and Windows. To ensure that the different versions of the apps developed for each OS provide the same user experience and functionality no matter which OS app the user is on, each respective set of UI objects and patterns must be identified and addressed by your app.
Once everything is ready to go, it’s officially time to launch your app! With that comes creating a plan to promote your app to reach the right users. To do this, you should look at four different areas:
Organic App Discovery – How to make the app discoverable in app stores
User Acquisition – How to make users install the app once they have found it
Retention – How to keep users engaged in the app so they continue using it
Monetization – Whether to implement purchase-app-once or freemium model or in-app purchase or in-app advertising
By prioritizing these four areas, you can get a different perspective of how your app is perceived by users and get a clearer picture of what things can be done to retain users and grow a loyal customer base.
It’s crucial that you continually evaluate the performance of your app and make improvements as needed. To do this, you can monitor metrics such as installs and downloads, average session lengths, average revenue per user, etc. Using these metrics, you can pinpoint what users do or don’t respond to and address the issues causing this to improve your app to reach and retain more users.
By working with Boston Technology Corporation, you can address the challenges of developing engaging, scalable, flexible, and secure mobile apps and create a plan to ensure that your app stands out to reach your target audience. To see how BTC can guide you through this process and help you achieve your mobile app development goals, click here.
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