Image credit: Unsplash

The mobile market is growing rapidly. According to Statista, nowadays there are about 3.8 million apps in the Google Play Store, more than 2 million in Apple Store while additional 1,000,000 apps are spread across Windows Store and Amazon Appstore. Tons of businesses are developing their own applications for employees and customers. Even local small businesses are launching their apps, so it is hard to stand the temptation of building own one. Today we will talk about what to know before jumping on the mobile app bandwagon.

Ensure that you really need an app

However, before investing in the development you should understand that 23 percent of mobile apps are used only once and abandoned forever (according to Localytics). 80 percent of users no longer launch apps three months after the installation.

This applies to your employees as well. You can’t just build a business app and tell your team members to use. They will start but soon the usage will slowly fade to zero. Employees are consumers in this sense. They are used to use convenient apps with a good interface comparable to what they can get in App Store and Google Play.

So you should ask yourself, do we really need an app? Will we be able to motivate people to use it even several months later? How do we explain employees they need to learn the new app? If you do not know how to fix these and why anyone will use your app, just do not waste resources on building it.

Set the right goal

After you’ve decided that you really need an app, the second thing to consider is to define an exact goal. Do you want to engage employees and make them more productive or you are trying to save/make money? Do not try to build an app just because everyone is doing this, without the clear goal you won’t be able to get people using your app (see stats above).

Once the goal is determined, you will get more understanding your target audience and its preferences. The employee solving a business-related task or the customer trying to get a service or find a sales office — these are different situations requiring different user experience and dealing with own restrictions. Without an exact goal, you won’t get an understanding about users and situations they might face dealing with your app.

Allocate resources

Building a mobile app is a serious business task that requires a certain amount of resources. You should run the numbers to evaluate available options. Usually, there are several: hiring dev agency, find freelance engineers or using apps builders that can be used by the company’s employees.

Clearly, building native mobile apps using a dev shop will be the most expensive way, while dealing with freelance involve multiple risks. On the other hand, using an app builder allows you to increase the speed of the development, reduce errors and multiple risks including security.

For example, building an app for business process automation purposes from scratch is very hard and costly. However with 1C:Enterprise mobile platform businesses can get the software ready for uploading to app stores very fast.

1C:Enterprise Mobile Platform

Be prepared to test and analyze right away

After you’ve got your minimal viable product it is time to test it with the users and analyze what is going on. Having strictly defined success metrics is crucial here. You should understand what result will be considered good or bad.

For example, if you were building an app for your employees to use, its implementations should lead to increased productivity and savings. In the case when you were attacking the problem of engaging existing customers, increased transaction volume, the number of returning visitors could be good metrics. If you wanted to reach new people with your app, then it clearly should bring new users you could upsell later.

All these factors should be tracked and analyzed from the day one. This is the only way to get a clear and full picture of where you were yesterday, where you are today, and where want to be tomorrow.

Final thoughts

Building a mobile app can be a hard and pricey process with multiple pitfalls. Asking yourself multiple questions is crucial for success here. If you understand why you need an app, who will it use, how big is your budget, how you can save money on the development, what your app’s success should look like, chances of getting to it will significantly increase.