So you spent countless hours in internal meetings, fought detractors for budget allocation, and worked tirelessly with a new crop of "everyone-knows-them" vendors on design and development. The fruits of your labor have culminated with your shiny new app. Congratulations, you are now at the starting line!
As the app garnered more attention for the mobile phone than virtually anything since the phone call itself, companies of all sizes have been seduced by its potential. Brands, content publishers, and developers filled the Apple catalog with great enthusiasm. But often overlooked on the speedy path to the consumer's pocket were necessary overall strategies and marketing plans.
For many years now, mobile, as an overall platform, has offered opportunities for companies to interact with their audiences' handsets. Whether it is text messaging, interactive voice response (IVR), or custom-built expensive applications, brands have experimented with essentially what Apple opened to the world with the introduction of its third-party app platform. Due to the iPhone's -- as well as the iPod Touch's and iPad's -- tremendous popularity and the ease of use of the App Store, Apple's catalog of available programs swelled to beyond the 200,000 mark. In that success lies several basic challenges that all companies now face with their new apps. How and why would a consumer find and use a new app in that enormous sea of opportunities? That is the tactical question. The business question is, of course, how can the app generate increased consumer engagement with your brand and return on investment?
Gentlemen, start your revisions
The common path into the app world is the introduction of an iPhone version, which is logical. Apple offers access to a large and active audience with an expectation of using apps, and has a built-in distribution channel through the iTunes App Store. However, in a well-thought-through app plan, this is just the first step. If a company is committed to engaging mobile users following its app's premiere, it needs to address revisions immediately, as well as versions for other smartphone platforms.
Unfortunately, most apps are developed in the vacuum of internal conversations and developer offerings. This means that once an app is sent into the wild, users may have quite different reactions to marketers' sterling concepts and will find usage faults that QA testing teams have missed. In developing apps, this user group should be a brand's most prized asset. And the App Store is not just a pretty distribution outlet. It is an instant-feedback board, enabling users to applaud and critique any app, and shows that even the best apps have room for improvement. Quickly incorporating the different user voices, ideas, and collective group-think into version 1.1 is essential. It lets brands actively show their attention to their customer base, and provide real value to them -- as opposed to settling for internally perceived value. Revisions need to be a constantly ongoing process -- and budgeted for in an initial plan -- where the first one or two improvement sets need to be deployed quickly.
Conversely though, many companies become gun-shy about updating their app, with fear that they might disturb the users. In fact, the update is a highly valuable marketing tool that can actually increase the app's overall usage. An update notice appears on the consumer's iPhone (as well as on the PC version of iTunes), and can be a simple reminder to consumers that they even have a particular app. Due to the number of free apps available, consumers often collect multiple pages of them. Further, the newest operating system enables users to create folders, which group apps and move brand logos off the first level of the phone-top. The app update may be intended to provide a better experience, but it can generate greater overall value from the existing install base.
Expand the field
While the iPhone is a heavily used smartphone platform, it is not the only one, and companies need to address the larger market segment in order to garner a larger audience. Currently in the U.S., Google Android and BlackBerry are the next most common avenues, due to growth potential and existing handsets sold, respectively. However, each smartphone development environment is different, meaning that separate efforts are required to even provide the same feature set.
A primary benefit of the Apple world is that due to its exclusivity in the U.S. with AT&T, an iPhone is an iPhone is an iPhone. The other two operating systems add two significant variables into the development equation by using a multi-carrier, multi-handset strategy. This lets manufacturers expand to a wider potential audience, but the sacrifice of homogeneity can cause many kinds of new challenges and, often, app breakdowns altogether.
For example, some of the bells and whistles that work perfectly on one carrier's Android handsets, such as location-based services, fail to function on another's. The good news is these are the types of app fixes that can be done with revisions. In fact, the Android environment most resembles that of the iPhone. It was built from the ground up to work with third-party applications, and Google and partners actively promote the Android Market for consumers to shop for apps.
In the BlackBerry world, the deployed devices vary greatly in terms of operating systems and screen sizes, in addition to being used across every major wireless network. Needless to say, development is difficult and apps have a reputation for working inconsistently, or not at all, across handsets.
The BlackBerry's roots lie in mobile email first and foremost, and the other features like mobile web, apps, and even calling were add-ons. To further cement the issue, its consumers do not think of these as app devices. This truth is quite apparent when you consider the mere 7,000 apps in its official catalog. That said, BlackBerry still has the largest existing install base of smartphones in the U.S. market, as it had a good running lead, and is additionally attractive due to its high concentration of business users.
Smart mobile strategies understand the possibilities and limitations of different mobile avenues and technologies, and always put the consumer first. With more smartphone platforms either here or coming -- a new release of Windows Mobile, Palm (now an HP property), and the Nokia-heavy environment outside the U.S. -- distraction will continue to abound. And this says nothing of servicing the "dumbphone" audience. Marketers need to plan their attack, resources, and budgets appropriately to continue to grow their engaged audience efficiently.
Next page >>
