Mobile App Development: You Want a Mobile App, Now What? Part Two
In our first post, we discussed some of the first few decisions to make once you have come up with a mobile app idea. Here is the next set of decisions that will help you plan your mobile app and plan for success. This set of decision points requires a bit more analysis, so make sure to take your time and flesh these out. As always, our team of mobile app developers and promotion teams are more than happy to answer questions you have about your ideas.
Point of differentiation, how do I compete?
Here is the bad news. If you have an idea for a mobile app, chances are there is probably something like it on the market. Here is the good news. Differentiation can make that fact seem less scary. Because there is an application similar to your idea means that you have to make yours different. Decide what your differentiating factor will be, the characteristic that will set you apart from your competition. Making your app different will not only set it apart, but it will be better thought out, will capture the needs of the consumer more effectively and could potentially make it more successful than the original.
Go about researching this by listening to the market, users and people talking about existing products. Take a look at your competitors with a critical eye and see how they are priced, what consumers are saying in the reviews. This will give you great information about what your app needs to do differently.
Which Platform(s) to develop on?
As each of the individual mobile development platforms increase in popularity, deciding which platform or platforms to develop your mobile app becomes somewhat tricky. It is a growing trend to develop applications across all the major platforms, and for some applications that is a good fit. Each of the platforms tend to carry appeal to a certain user, here are some of the things to keep in mind when choosing the platform that will best fit your customer.
iPhone™ – The go-to smartphone for a wide variety of users
Android™ – Known to be for the tech-savvy user
BlackBerry™ – Is still one of the primary business phones
Windows Phone™ – Still the new kid on the block, but is super slick and positioning itself as a technical phone.
Price Point: To Free or Not to Free?
This decision can make or break many applications. It sometimes helps to put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. How many times have you chosen the application based on price-point? One is free and one is .99¢, will you pay a dollar to find out the extra value of that app? Or will you choose the simplicity of the free one and hope for the best? Now we understand that is a somewhat blanket way of explaining price-point of apps. There are a ton of other case-by-case factors that go into this decision, but we’ll ask you to keep three things in mind:
1. Free apps can be powerful for promotional or ‘lite-version’ purposes
2. If you choose to charge, ALWAYS keep the price point as low as possible
3. Consider in-app advertising as a viable mechanism for revenue
Promotion: The Ongoing Frontier
Like many products, simply putting them out to market these days is just not enough. The great thing is there are so many ways to promote your product and reach customers. This is the case for mobile apps, where simply putting the app on the App Store or Android Market is just not enough. This is actually something that our mobile app marketing team helps our customers with. Here are a few of the key ways that our team helps promote new and upcoming mobile apps:
Targeted PR Outreach – Writing blogs, press releases and information about products and building key relationships with media and subject-specific bloggers
Social Media – Leveraging these as channels to relationship build, spread the message and value of the product, as well as utilizing viral marketing
App Review Sites – Submitting apps to review sites and communicating value and differentiation of product in order to gain awareness, and customer feedback about the product
Content Creation – Creating several different optimized descriptions for the app stores and for submission to media outlets.
Mobile app promotion is a great extension of our services, we get to not only develop a mobile app for our clients, but we also are invested in the success of the app in the market. Follow up with us if you would like to know more about our mobile app promotion marketing services.
