And because mobile apps are so quick and easy to access and start using, there is an expectation that all apps should be simple and intuitive, easy to access, deliver the information a person wants in no more than 3 taps of the screen and add value in their everyday lives.
If it doesn’t deliver on these simple principals, there is very little chance of success.
This week’s blog will provide some basic building blocks on how to deliver a successful mobile app to your business.
First, it’s important to define the difference between a consumer app and a business app.
With a consumer app, the experience is “all about me”
With a business app, the experience is “all about my work”
There are over 450,000 apps in the Apple App Store alone, yet only a handful of these have proven to be successful and continue to grow despite aggressive competition.
When building a business app for your company, here are some fundamentally basic requirements to ensure your success.
1. Define your target market: Which channel is your app being built for, employees, customers or partners. If it is more than one channel, then choose which one you believe will deliver the greatest return on your investment, resolve the biggest problem in your business or align best with your company’s business strategy. By concentrating on the initial app, you have a greater chance of success as well as support for your next mobile app projects.
2. Define your purpose: Understand who the ultimate user of your app will be and ensure that it will meet your company’s needs. It is essential to clearly define your objectives for what you want to deliver and create realistic expected outcomes and timelines for these to be achieved within.
3. Build a business case: This should include, who your target market is, the value proposition of the app, the competitive landscape, how the app will differentiate your business, business objectives, risk assessment, ROI etc. If the target market is for your customers then you may want to also include, market size, market window (why build the app now, what are the compelling reasons), go to market strategy etc.
4. Get key stake holders buy in: The simple fact is that building an app will cost your company money. This includes the tangible costs of scoping developing, delivering and supporting the app as well as the hidden costs of allocating internal resources to the project. Key stake holder’s approval is pivotal to obtaining a budget and resources to commence the first physical steps to delivering a mobile app.
5. Map out your app: The functionality of the app should support your existing workflow processes. This means that you need to spend the time mapping out the workflow of the app, how you want it to behave, what you want it to deliver, what problems it will solve or what processes will it streamline. It is also essential to engage a cross section of the end users during this process as they are the ones that will be using it. They have a much better understanding of what will work and won’t be practical. For example you may think that providing 10 screens from your CRM for your mobile warriors to access will deliver what they want, while they tell you that of those 10 screens, only 3 are essential, whilst 4 others that you didn’t even think of, would deliver additional efficiencies in their mobile business transactions. How many databases does the app have to access to deliver the content that you want? Do you want to only view information or do you also want to input data live into your business systems. By knowing EXCACTLY what you want to deliver, you will assist whoever is developing the app with building an intuitive, easy to use app. You may be surprised how much this preparation work saves you in development costs because your instructions are so clearly defined.
6. Invest in design and graphics: Once you have a clear map of the workflow, spend a little time wire framing the screen shots of how you want the app to look and behave. There are a number of free mobile and tablet wire framing tools that you can use. The benefits of this are that it will again reduce the amount of work and costs of you outsource your development. It will speed up the conversation with the developers as they will have a better visual understanding of want you want to develop. The developers will also be able to tell you quickly if what you want to achieve can be delivered via a mobile app or potential work around options. Investing in a great graphic designer to create the icons and images for the app will make it look professional and sexy. This in turn will keep your users coming back for more.
7. Choose your developer: Regardless of whether you are developing the app in-house or externally, ensure that the developer has experience in building mobile apps. Ask for examples of the apps they have already built, talk to their customers to determine how they are to work with, did they deliver on time and to budget, do they have local support, are they just as efficient with their follow up support (changes, upgrades, modifications) as they were with the initial build. There are 4 ways to deliver a mobile app, many of which I have talked about in previous blogs, therefore I will only provide a quick summary:
a. Off the Shelf Apps: These are pre-built apps that allow you to access information from your back end and deliver mobile functionality to your end users. They may come from the apps store or a vertical market solution provider. While these are usually much cheaper than developing an app yourself, they are normally not very customisable. This means that your business processes must change to align with the workflow they have built into their app. Remember while companies in vertical markets may sell the same types of products, their business processes and objective can be worlds apart.
b. Web App: These apps that will work on any mobile smartphone or tablet. These can be great for consumer markets where you can’t control the type of handset that they use and you want to reach a larger target market quicker. It is important to note that as a web app, they do not integrate very well with device functionality such as camera or GPS. So if integrating into the smartphone/tablet is an essential part of your app, then a native app is better for you. They normally require an always on connection to the internet, so if you don’t have mobile coverage, you may not be able to use the entire app.
c. Native Apps: These are the most common and popular way to deliver a mobile app. They are built specifically for a type of operating system and work very well because of this. If you require your app to work on different operating systems such as Apple, Google, Blackberry etc; then this can be a slow and costly way to deliver apps as they must be built from scratch for every different operating system. Challenges can also occur between different versions of the same operating system. (For example an app build for Android 2.4 OS may not work as well on an Android device that is running 2.1 of the operating software)
d. Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP): MEAPs allow you to configure a native app once, that work across multiple smartphone and tablet platforms. They are great if you want to deliver multiple apps to multiple markets, connect into multiple data sources simultaneously, speed up the delivery time of building and deploying mobile apps and making constant updates or changes to those apps without having to resubmit them to a app store every time.
8. Conduct a pilot before launch: To ensure that your app meets your objectives, test the app via a pilot with a defined user group. This will allow you to confirm that the app delivers what you want and expect it to. If not, it allows you to refine and iron out any bugs to ensure that the user experience will be successful.
These 8 simple points are a guide only and there are always exceptions to the rules. They will, however, provide a solid foundation in delivering mobile apps that are easy and intuitive to use and that deliver to your business objectives, thus increasing your chances of ensuring every success of your mobile app.
In closing, markets change, which results in changes to business processes, business strategies and marketing strategies. This means that for your app to remain successful, it must also change to meet end users demands. It is for this reason that you must ensure on-going budgets to support you mobile apps, listen to end user feedback and partner with with right resources to assist in delivering those changes.
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