It can be tough for your newly released app to achieve success in the saturated app market. Building awareness for your app is a key step for your mobile application. Making people aware that you exist helps drive traffic to your application and increase your app’s acquisition metrics. Here are a few useful tips to create awareness for your mobile app.
Personalized press emails
Personalized press emails are an essential part of a strategy to create awareness for your mobile app regardless of the size of the business. Writing and distributing your mobile app press releases is a key step you do not want to skip.
Include a short summary to convince your target audience your story is worth reading. You want to make clear what your app is all about and what makes it unique at the same time. Your email should also include the name of your app, the price, the link to your Google Play Page, iTunes App Store Page, etc. Also, do not forget to add your contact information. Email marketing is powerful as it appeals to a broad audience.
Reach out to bloggers
Collaborating with influential bloggers can help raise awareness of your app during its crucial launch period. The key to success is to identify bloggers who are going to be interested in your mobile app. If they like your product, they are more likely to give you exposure. When contacting these bloggers, you do not have to be too formal. Tell them everything you know about them — interests, passions, etc. and explain to them why your app might be of interest to their audience. Basically, partnering with bloggers can be great gaining awareness for your app.
You don’t have to think too big
You will be able to target a more valuable audience in small niche publications than you will in major tech blogs. Find a niche that is highly targeted. If your mobile app is in the hospitality industry for instance, contacting publications that focus on hospitality industry will be more relevant than contacting a site that reviews mobile applications from all industries.
Embrace awards
Awards can have a big impact on your app awareness campaign. Attending events associated with awards means you are in a position mingle with your potential audience and other ambitious developers. Receiving an award will also give you a point of uniqueness and help you stand out from the rest, thus boosting your marketing efforts.
Reach out to social media
Social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is one of the key influencers and an essential strategy to market your mobile app. By partnering with popular pages with large followings, it is possible to improve on brand awareness. It also becomes an effective tool for you and your target audience to communicate. Depending on your marketing strategy and target market, social media can be an effective strategy for building awareness for your application.
After tackling responsive web design, now it is the time to bring something new to your customers, a mobile app. A mobile app is ideally suited for small and large businesses alike to keep their customers and prospects informed about offers, promotions, and so much more. It offers a platform to them where they can be in touch with your business.
With that said, building a successful mobile app, that gets many downloads, is mainly based on designing an innovative yet easy-to-use interface. UI/UX design firms specialize in design focused on the type of experience it offers to your customers. And while the success of mobile app depends on a combination of factors, UI design is usually what makes or breaks an application. A great UI design helps you retain potential customers while a hard to use user interface design can make your customers jump to your competitor’s app.
Irrespective of the amount of time and money you spend on developing your app, turning a blind eye to the UI design can reduce the credibility of your app. In fact, a bad user interface design is one of the main causes of bad user experiences. So how should you design your app? Here we outline four UI design tips to keep in mind.
1. Keep it simple
The hallmark of a superb user interface is simplicity. Keeping things simple refers to ease of use, especially for first time users, allowing them to utilize your application without the need for guides or instructions. Multiple tasks can be done with a simple user interface and with few steps. As they navigate through your app, users should not encounter any complications and should feel at ease with the app. By this, we do not mean simply sticking a button or two here and there for the heck of it.
2. Keep the mobile UI graphical
An eye-catching mobile app is always preferred to an application with a text heavy design. Whether you want to keep users engaged or notify them to return to your app on a regular basis, a visually strong UI design will help produce the desired results. Visual elements help instruct users about the way they can interact with the app.
3. Involve real users when evaluating the mobile app
As a designer, it is of utmost importance to use real users for evaluating UI design ideas. Doing so will help you rectify the glitches in early stage of development. It will also minimize chances of confusion in designing features and buttons on the app. Therefore, the need for re-working the entire app is eliminated — saving cost and the time involved.
4. Stick to OS guidelines
It is advisable to stick to certain guidelines or principles that are accepted practices. This will aid you in designing a user interface that appeals to your target audience. Trying out innovations with the touch gestures, interactions and navigation system should be aligned with the current standards. Implement UI design with important features and do away with unwanted ones. And since app stores like Apple’s App Store scrutinize new apps stringently, research the kind of applications that are accepting and then use that to help guild you to a user-friendly interface for the app.
Final Thoughts
These UI design tips, when kept in mind while designing the UI for your mobile app, will help offer great user experiences.
Pic: Kārlis Dambrāns (Flikr) http://bit.ly/29qd9Rl
Mobile technology is growing at lightning speed and mobile apps are a part of that ecosystem. This means the world is moving from desktop to mobile devices and it is apparent that every brand is making its presence felt via mobile apps. Basically, mobile apps are software applications designed to run on smartphones, tablets and wearables and are usually available through platforms known as app stores. Some businesses have in-house app development teams but most companies will contract with a mobile application development company to build their app for them.
Today, with over 1.6 million apps available on Google Play and over 1.5 million on Apple’s App Store, the idea that mobile users have a wide variety of choices is an understatement.
There are millions of apps to choose from, including social media apps, business apps, eCommerce apps, banking apps, gaming apps and business apps. But how many apps do people actually use? According to a new Nielsen report, smartphone owners use an average of 27.1 mobile apps per month.
Statistics about mobile app usage were gathered using Mobile NetView 3.0 data, which comes from mobile users who agreed to have tracking software installed on their devices. Approximately 9,000 panelists aged 18 and older participated in this study.
Despite rapid evolution throughout the marketplace, such as broadened device capabilities, additional device functionality and proliferation of new apps – the amount of time users are spending on those apps remained quite constant since the end of 2012, the study found.
However, since last quarter of 2012, the time spent per user every month has increased from 23 hours to nearly 41 hours.
The data collected by Nielsen was also broken down by gender and age. The study found overall, women spend slightly more time on apps than men do. They spend nearly three more hours each month using apps than their male counterparts do.
Another academic study conducted in South Korea also discovered that women spend more time on their smartphones. The report also stated that women tend to use social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc. more than men.
Younger millennials also spend more time on apps.
Millennials are those born between 1981 and 1997 and are now at the adult age of 19-35 years. These are people who grew up in the computer age and also witnessed the rise of mobile phones. In fact, they are the main audience for mobile marketing. With that said, Nielsen noted that millennials aged 18-24 use less apps per month (about 25.5) than millennials aged 25-35. Older millennials use (about 28.2 applications). Though young millennials use fewer apps on a monthly basis, they invest more time making use of mobile apps compared to older millennials.
All said and done, if the growth trend of app usage is any pointer, the near future looks bright for businesses adapting to the mobile world, especially with smartphone and wearable shipments expected to increase by a huge percentage over the next few years.
Pic: Kārlis Dambrāns (Flikr) http://bit.ly/1Uz9FXd