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July 21, 2014
Do you have an app strategy? 5 options for reaching and engaging your audience through mobile applications
The growth in popularity of mobile apps
In January 2010 Apple announced that 3 billion apps had been downloaded in the 18 months following the launch of the AppStore. Growth has since increased month-on-month and shows no sign of slowing down.
Source: Statista: Number of Downloads from the Apple App Store
Number of apps available to download from Apple App Store as…
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July 8, 2014
The latest statistics on mobile app usage to inform your mobile marketing strategy
With smartphone users currently accounting for around a quarter of the four billion mobile users around the world it is already a priority to optimise content and experiences for mobile consumption. Mobile apps offer a fast and convenient way for people to access information and as such it is more important than ever to understand how they are used and to keep up with the habits of their users.
In this post we have compiled the latest stats from the best sources on mobile app downloads and usage to give a summary of statistics on consumer mobile app adoption to help members develop their mobile strategies.
How important is app usage compared to mobile browsing?
Apps have surpassed web browsers in terms of time spent on mobile devices.
A recent study conducted by Flurry Analytics showed that apps currently command 86% of the time that the average…
How much does it cost to market a mobile app?
As a starting point for creating a budget for an app you need to be clear on the benefits for business and consumer of investing in the app. Why does your business need a mobile app distinct from a mobile responsive website? These reasons include:
The need to offer a mobile-optimized experience for your users, whether: shoppers, readers, and social network communities. For example, Zappos offers its smartphone users to shop via a mobile app.
A desire to create a stand-alone mobile app business with a free-to-play, ad-based or subscription-based business model. Games, useful apps and news services fall into this category.
The necessity to establish the brand’s presence in a mobile domain. Games and useful tools help users continue to interact with the brand on mobile devices. For example, Lego and McDonalds offers free smartphone games for kids.
Once the benefits are agreed…
Which tests are important to your mobile App's success
The success of your app relies on thorough testing and Customer Experience Analytics to reveal the friction points in the mobile user experience. As Kirk Knoernschild and Sean Kenefick, Gartner Analysts put it:
'Delivering quality mobile applications requires that organizations have access to a wide array of devices and perform many types of tests. To fulfill these needs, organizations must use several testing solutions'.
With so much competition for mobile apps. The apps that are left standing tall throughout it all are the ones who undergo thorough testing. Your mobile app strategy needs to intertwine fluidly with a testing strategy. This is not web testing on a desktop with a few different Operating Systems. These are platforms, different devices and different markets; Among other things of course.
Mobile Testing
In order to create a comprehensive mobile strategy, you must include various elements for testing as well as network infrastructure. You…
A Step-by-Step Guide to App Store Optimization
With so many competing apps available within Apple’s App Store and Google Play, app store optimization (ASO) is now essential for driving traffic to your app, particularly for apps targeting a need which aren't developed by well-known brands. In these cases, demand for apps is high...
63% of people discover apps via search, according to Forrester Research, making it all the more important to focus on ASO. Investing in ASO is one of the best strategies for increasing the organic downloads of your mobile app.
Guide to improving your ASO ranking in searches
Here’s a step by step guide on how to go about achieving exceptional results from ASO to ascend the ranks in user searches, ultimately driving more traffic to your app.
The right keywords
The principles of SEO often also work for ASO. Create your app store metadata using the right…
Using mobile micro-targeted in-store content to improve the shopping experience and boost sales
This is an interesting new mobile technology being trialled within American stores, to help retailers engage with their shoppers in-store, turn browsers into buyers, with opted-in micro-targeted digital real-time content.
Since Swirl was released last month, stores Alex and Ani, Timberland, and Kenneth Cole in New York and Boston are already taking advantage of this.
This Vine clip gives you an idea of how it works.
Demand is evident as Swirl's survey and recent Shopper Infographic has shown that 76% of women surveyed prefer to shop instore for clothes, 53% have 1 - 5 apps on their phone and women are happy to share personal information if there is value for them!.
How does Swirl…
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March 26, 2013
Tips and examples for creating effective Facebook brand apps
Facebook applications can be a great way to increase a company’s fans’ tie to their social presence, while simultaneously delivering valuable user and customer data. For a large number of brands, apps can be essential to their healthy Facebook presence in order to add value to their growing fan base through online sales, personalisation mechanisms, incentives and competitions and more.
For the majority of brands though, producing their own apps is not essential, nor should they be. If you are perhaps thinking of a Facebook app for your brand I am not trying to convince you otherwise. If your current of future Apps work by definition because they have a function and output for the user that supports the brand, aids user discovery and interest and adds value to them as a consumer, then it's going to be a good investment of time.…
Which is the best fit for your business? Mobile app, Mobile site or both?
Everyone’s mad about mobile apps it seems. ComScore MobiLens research from July showed a preference for mobile users to download content via apps (51.1%) rather than through a browser (49.8%). According to Ovum, it’s not just a phase of the tech-hungry West with mobile application adoption expected to increase sharply from 2013 across developing countries. MyCustomer recently interviewed industry experts to help businesses answer this question, this is the summer
Creating a mobile marketing strategy
Building a mobile app isn’t the same thing as building a mobile strategy. In fact, creating an app isn’t necessarily the best way to engage your customers at all. As Gartner’s Johan Jacobs said at the research firm’s Customer Strategies and Technology Summit last year: “Apps aren’t everything!”
Speaking to MyCustomer more recently, Jacobs explained that of the three definitions of…
Many businesses are now looking to use mobile apps to encourage customer interaction and loyalty. Fortunately, this seems to fit with the preferences of mobile users; recent research from Comscore showed the popularity of apps compared with mobile sites: 82% of mobile media time is spent with an app. So how do you get users to start using an app rather than a mobile version of the website?
Popular app discovery methods
A good place to start your plans for app promotion is to look at how apps are commonly discovered by mobile users. For popular apps from well known brands like those for Facebook, Twitter, eBay and Amazon, gaining adoption from an existing user base is relatively straightforward it seems. But what about everyone else, how do you encourage adoption of your app from existing and new customers?
This research on…
Are you taking apps seriously in your marketing?
The big mobile manufacturer and software brands, like Apple, Google and Samsung, are adding more and more functionality to mobile phones. From games, to shopping, travel, social and even health. We also know that the by 2014 we're expecting more surf time to be on a mobile device (iPads included) than via desktops PC's.
comScore have pulled together analysis of mobile usage including a list of the top apps and there are some surprising observations. It is interesting that iPhone and Android users differ more than you might expect. The most important point is that apps are what take up most of the consumer's mobile minutes. 82% of our media time is spent with these mini-applications and it's only growing.
Note Android with the most unique visitors, important to remember when planning…
