5 Common Reasons Apps Fail & How to Avoid Them
The mobile app industry is expanding at a rapid rate, many business owners are now utilizing the incredible benefits of having their own mobile app for their customers to engage them through and put them ahead of the competition.
So naturally business owners are left asking what makes a truly successful mobile app? Many of the answers lie in what commonly causes apps to fail and reflecting on the mistakes that many people make when bringing their apps to market.
While Mobile app competition is high, it is no different to any other aspect of business or marketing, and failure is not just a matter of being lost in the noise. We find in most cases there are significant contributing factors.
In this post, we share 5 of the most common reasons an app fails to gain traction, in the hope you can adjust your strategy and goals to most effectively use your mobile app to effectively smash your business goals.
Failure to Solve a Problem
To ensure your mobile app is your most powerful business tool, its important to reflect on how it will help you and your customers. If your sole purpose and aim when creating your mobile app is to make more money, you have already made your first mistake.
Your motive should be to solve a problem for your customer. Ask yourself what your customers’ biggest needs are? For example, You run a busy café, mornings are hectic as people pile in before work for there caffeine fix, leading to a large wait queue. You may decide to incorporate online ordering in your mobile app, allowing the customer to order prior to showing up allowing them to pick up their orders ready-made to go.
You may also implement your outdated loyalty programs into your mobile app, tossing out the old-fashioned stamp cards. These are just 2 of the many problems you may aim to solve, the point is your aim should be to make like easier for you and your customer through your mobile app ensuring it is an asset for you both.
Utilizing both IOS and Android Platforms.
Here at Calibre Digital, we design, build, and publish apps for Android and IOS combined, but we see many people strategize building around only one platform.
The fact of the matter is, if you are not constrained for any reason, to very specific targeting of either an android or IOS user specifically, you will only inhibit your business app but limiting your app to once platform over the other.
Your customers will obviously not cater their technological devices to your business or app, its up to you to be accessible to your customers whatever their choice of platform is. Nothing is more frustrating when a user of an app wishes to carry it over to another device and find that its not available.
Ensuring A Quality App Build and Backend Support
The surge in popularity of mobile apps has brought with it an abundance of mobile app developers. A major issue new clients regularly come to us with, is the fact they have attempted to build an app and sent the work offshore, or gone for the budget option only to find that the end product is a mobile app with poor functionality and zero ongoing technical support.
Nothing will cause customers to desert your app quicker than one that does not function correctly, or crashes altogether, so ensure you select a quality app developer for your project.
Do your research, find out if they offer ongoing monthly support plans for future changes you may make or ongoing maintenance. Additionally, as your business grows, scalability is another facet that should be taken into account when we talk about a strong backend. Having a scalable backend service will adjust the app according to the traffic it receives.
Mobile App Complexity
We see many people set out to create a gorgeous, multipurpose app for their business, and a lot of the time they end up creating a product that is over complicated and too complex for the user. The old saying less is more is quite appropriate when thinking of the usability.
Building your first business app is exciting, and a lot of the time business owners end up incorporating too many features into the app leading to a confusing interface. When incorporating features into your app make sure to utilize only the ones that will best solve problems for your clients and make their engagement with you a breeze.
This inevitably comes back to knowing your audience, so when first kickstarting your app limits your features to 3-4 and be open to feedback from your customers. This will allow you to improve your app over time and add the features that your clients are asking for and remove ones that are a liability.
Poor Marketing
This is a crucial point that could determine whether your app proves to be a hit or miss with your customers. Whether you are marketing digitally or instore, it is a great strategy to start before the app is ready for launch, a little hype goes along way.
Give your users a reason to get excited about your app, promote the factors we talked about earlier that will solve their problems or make doing business with you all that easier. Incentives are also immensely powerful for example, you may offer clients 10 percent of their purchase when they download your app.
Some Popular methods of marketing mobile app are:
- Promote on social
- Create a website or landing page
- Mobile advertising
- Instore promotion and marketing
- Dedicated mobile app marketing companies
Conclusion
Having listed above some of the most common mistakes that are made when first launching a mobile app, it’s easy to understand why a lot of apps fail. Besides striving to create a incredible business tool for your company, its essential you focus on the customers’ needs and compile a strong strategy behind it.
If you are yet to get the ball rolling on your very own business app our professional app developers are here to answer any questions you may have and can provide you with an obligation free quote. Contact us today.
