Beauty is in the eye of the beholder app user
Great design is an interesting thing. Most people can identify great design, want to use beautifully designed products, and once conscious of it, people strive to inject even just a drop of beauty in the things they create. Yet, there are probably a larger number of people who choose to ignore this important facet.
It is no secret that design plays a huge role in mobile today than it has ever played in the past, probably even more so than web and desktop applications (In fact, a 2012 Compuware survey found that 85% of users preferred mobile apps over mobile websites). It is also no secret that design has always been in the DNA of Apple from day one with many companies nowadays catching on to the financial benefits of developing beautiful products that customers love. This affinity for great design doesn’t stop at the parking lots of Cupertino or Mountain View however, as the trickle down effect and influence of the Apple and Google motherships often resonate to the many developers who support their app ecosystems and the millions of consumers who flock to their app storefronts.
So why do some companies go the ugly route with mobile software? It is a belief that great design is expensive. It is a mentality that only the “big boys” can accomplish such nice things. It is the attitude that design doesn’t matter that much. It is the lack of understanding that these very beliefs are totally incorrect.
Mobile is a unique beast. We use our mobile devices dozens (or hundreds 
) of times a day for only a few minutes at a time. And during those spurts we want to be entertained, informed, and in control without being annoyed by clunky user-interfaces and bad experiences. As mobile app makers we need to address these expectations consumers desire while quieting the negative side of our brains that want to fall into our ugly ways. Trust me, if you don’t… the next guy will and you’ll be kicking yourself when you hear people saying “It’s like <INSERT_YOUR_APP_HERE>, but awesome.”
Great design and user experience doesn’t have to cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. It includes a matter of understanding the goal of your user in your app and figuring out the best and most efficient way a user can reach that goal with the least amount of unnecessary taps, gestures, or initial setup. It’s also about going with simpler and more timeless designs that are sometimes easier to pull off (think Apple’s product pages). And if you can spare a little change you can pick up some nice templates along the way. There are many household names with deep pockets that all but dominate the Apple App Store and Google Play Store today, so turning a blind eye certainly won’t help your chances.
What’s under the hood is not hidden
I have been on both sides of the mobile app poor performance table. One side as a developer who has worked on teams where a few stakeholders did not understand the importance of a stable and performant mobile app vs just getting it out the door. And on the other side as a frustrated user trapped in a bad dream of a mobile customer experience. What’s the lesson from both experiences? Everybody suffers.
There are certainly true benefits of getting your product out the door as soon as possible and iterating thereafter, but what’s more important in mobile in my opinion is the first impression. In a world where a future bug fix release date is unknown to a user after making the effort to download your app, but a 1-star review is just a tap away, it’s imperative to ensure that the product you are shipping can offer a smooth and stable experience. This may mean either pushing back your release date (GASP!), or holding off on that killer feature that seems to be buggy right now.
Access to a top notch QA team or individual isn’t easy to come by even for teams within large organizations, but luckily there are tools available to help you eliminate the obvious issues in your app such as Instruments and the suite of tools available for Android. Not to mention that co-workers, friends, and family probably all use mobile apps and would be a good source for real world usage reviews of your app.
Despite how trendy it may be and acceptable it is for early adopters to tolerate your new release or beta app, real customers could care less. They want to use your app to solve a problem or accomplish a task they had in mind, not find shortcuts around crashes or become your non-profit QA department. The same Compuware survey also determined that 79% of mobile users would retry a mobile app only once or twice after it failed to work the first time. I guess you could look on the bright side, 21% of your users are die-hard fans!
A good habit that has worked for me is to treat the mobile app I am developing as if it is a piece of hardware that I’m going to sell at a traditional retail store. This thought process helps me realize that even though I may not have to deal with recalls or factory retooling if problems arise, bad user experiences with your mobile app can leave irreversible negative expectations for your product from both customers and industry reviewers which could take just as much effort to reverse as it would to fix a tangible product.
Most of us are just as picky when it comes to a product or service that we hold near to our hearts and just as easily unforgiving when that product or service grants us with a terrible first time experience (how often does someone say they’ll never buy car X because of that electrical problem they encountered 30 years ago). Moral of this story? Put on your hard hat and test thoroughly, and then put on your consumer hat and pick it apart.
If it’s not fresh, throw it out
Your refrigerator can be thought of as an oversized, energy hungry, dumbed down smartphone that lives in your kitchen. On its surface, there isn’t much that is interesting about your fridge. But when you open the door, you’re pleasantly greeted with your favorite snack, last night’s awesome dinner, and a cool bottle of orange juice. However, in the back of the fridge next to the swiss chard, you notice this glass container filled with some leftover pasta from your favorite cafe from a couple weeks ago. You remember the first day you brought it home and how tasty it was, but now it’s rather old and useless to you. So into the compost (political note: nothing should go in the trash! ) it goes and instead that tasty new snack looks like the meal of choice today.
Unfortunately for you, your app probably doesn’t have the same effect on a individual’s sensory system as their favorite cupcake, which means once they’ve decided to delete your hackneyed app, there is probably little chance of them coming back. Luckily there is something you can do about it to draw your users back to your app over and over again as if you were wafting that sweet smell of a freshly baked apple pie toward the busy sidewalk every morning. And that thing you can do, is delivering fresh content to your mobile app.
There is a reason why App Store classics like Doodle Jump, Pocket God, Angry Birds and Clash of Clans stayed at the top of the charts for so long. Sure, one can argue that once you get to the top it becomes easier to stay at the top, but the underlying reason why users continuously played those games and kept it relevant was the fact that these titles routinely added fresh content. From simple things such as holiday themes to all new levels, these shiny new bolts gave players a reason to open those apps again and again.
Providing new content for your existing app to your existing users is cheaper and less time consuming than developing, designing, and marketing a new app to a new customer base. Coupled with push notifications, content management/delivery tools such as Joppar make it possible and easier to inform users of new content and deliver this new content to them without having to submit new versions of your application. The type of content delivered can range from a brand new user interface to brag about, to a new language you’re supporting, to a more intuitive tutorial video for new and existing users. The more you’re able to keep your users engaged within your application, the more likely they’ll pull the trigger on that in-app purchase and the easier it could become to drive them to your new mobile app when the time comes.
Thank your picky mobile users
There is the known fact that healthy competition benefits everyone, but I also think that mobile users and their ever rising expectations benefits everyone as well. The higher the bar rises, the better the apps become. This also holds true for the expectations developers and businesses set for their users. The more we are willing to WOW our users and provide an experience that is beyond their expectations, the more likely they will be willing to rate our app highly, tell their friends about it, and perhaps spend a couple of coins within the app.
I believe the mobile app ecosystem is far from mature, but I do believe we are also way passed the days where simply having a mediocre mobile presence was accepted by consumers. Apple, Google, and the like want to feature the applications that show the world how much better their platform is versus the next guy’s platform.
To do that they are looking for the apps that present a polished and unique design, apps that successfully display what the platform and its hardware is capable of doing, and apps that give users the best performance and stability while using them among other factors. They also want to feature apps that help increase monetization within those ecosystems as well which is where the usage of customer-focused tactics to attract users back to your app such as content management comes into play.
And for you developers slaving away in your cubicle within a larger organization, you’re in luck! Fortunately, the whole vetting period of mobile should be well passed us now, and organizations are realizing that mobile is indeed a very important avenue for their business. In fact, many studies show that mobile shopping dramatically increased during the 2013 holiday shopping season vs the previous year. What does this mean to you?
Well, it means that mobile development isn’t a solo effort anymore. It also means that organizations will be more willing to invest the time, money, and creativity behind mobile apps to ensure that the apps are catering specifically to what mobile users are demanding. Which should ultimately provide developers and app development teams the tools that are necessary to successfully design, develop, market, debug, and mange their mobile applications.
That being said, this also means that competition is guaranteed to heat up as more and more consumers turn to their mobile devices as the first screen and more organizations begin to focus on user engagement tactics that attempt to keep eyes on their apps and off of yours. This all means that staying ahead of usage trends and market shifts will become more intertwined into the mobile app software development process from the initial ideation stage through the maintenance days when the app inches toward becoming legacy software.
Long story short, your mobile app users are indeed picky, will only become pickier, and you ought to embrace it with a smile on your face and metrics at your finger tips.