It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of a mobile presence for businesses today. According to internet usage studies, mobile now accounts for more than 65 percent of all digital time, and 89 percent of the time people spend on their smartphones are spent on apps, rather than browsing the mobile web. That means that if your company wants to succeed, it’s smart to create a company app. A company app can give current customers the ability to access your company, its products and its services while on-the-go, and it can also help mobile users discover your business via platforms like the app store. If your company is creating a branded app, it’s important to know about some of the most common mistakes. These frequent errors can result in an app that is disliked or nonfunctional — and one that does not help grow your business.
1. Simply Recreating Your Website Experience
A mobile app is meant to be used on-the-go, and your website is intended to be accessed when people are at their desktop computer. Thus, don’t simply turn your company website into an app. Pick the most important features and functions your site offers and include those. Consider what people will (or can) actually do on-the-go when deciding what to include in your branded app.
2. Forgetting Your Brand
Branding is important. It’s crucial to leaving an impression on an audience, and it’s what makes you recognizable and dependable. When creating your app, don’t leave your brand out of it. This means you should use the same fonts, colors, icons, wording and more.
3. Forgetting to Market
When you create an app, you can’t just expect your customers to find it. You should plan to promote your app by putting information about it on your website and letting your current customers know via email, text, printed letter, etc. You can also take advantage of the new Apple app store features, which allow you to buy
search ads for your app that will be placed at the top of app store search results. This can help get more eyes on your app.
4. Not Testing
One of the most important parts of creating a branded app is making sure you get everything right before it goes out to the public. This means that you want to do extensive beta testing with people before it goes out to a wider audience.
Testing early versions of the app allow you to see where the app has bugs or is failing, and it gives you a source for feedback about what people like and what they don’t. Testing ensures your app is great before you put it out in the world, since there’s a good chance people won’t give a bad app a second chance.
5. Forgetting to Ask for Reviews
It’s important once you’ve put your app out into the world that you get your customers to review your app. Good app reviews create positive word-of-mouth marketing for your creation, and it can help encourage people who don’t know your brand to buy or download. You can use an app review plugin to send users a notification every once in awhile to leave a review. That way, people will know that your app is one they can trust and one they’ll want to use.
App by olle svensson is licensed under Attribution License
