Start With Your Customers for Powerful Mobile Application Development

The mobile application market’s growth has been tremendous over the past several years and it is only expected to keep right on growing.

While this is good news for businesses that have embraced mobile, other businesses run the risk of slipping even further behind the curve. The fact of the matter is that not all apps are equal.

Developing a mobile strategy is essential to succeeding in the modern application landscape | Photo: Jorge Quinteros (Flikr)

Some businesses have worked out a winning formula, while others are trying to figure out the right strategy, others are simply tossing darts into the dark and others haven’t acted at all. Regardless of where your business sits on that spectrum, it is clear that developing a mobile strategy is essential to succeeding in the modern application landscape.

Consumer’s expectations are changing as they are more fully integrating mobile applications into their lifestyle and businesses need to be able to understand consumer behavior to fulfill their expectations. It is important to develop a strategy before you start your mobile application development, a key ingredient to this is understanding your customers.

Consumers have become proficient with applications and expect apps that not only fulfill a need but that allow them to do so rapidly. Great user experiences are essential, otherwise users become frustrated and delete applications.

To avoid being one of the apps that is used once and deleted you must first start but understanding your customer’s expectations. Beyond that you must also understand the mobile medium and blend together a user experience that addresses the consumer’s needs with a tool that leverages that power of mobile.

Businesses that are not working towards this run the risk of being left behind as apps are becoming increasingly more important to business and are flirting with taking over first screen status. According to Gartner, “by 2017, mobile apps will be downloaded more than 268 billion times, generating revenue of more than $77 billion and making apps one of the most popular computing tools for users across the globe.”

Many businesses site down and develop and agenda of what they want their mobile application to do without ever stopping to consider the customer. If your mobile application does not address the needs of your consumers, it won’t spark their interest and will most likely be deleted quickly.

Key to this is engagement. For years we heard this word with social media and its just as important or maybe more so with mobile applications. Part of this is providing relevant information. Mobile is wonderful in its ability to allow you to personalize messaging and to make it as relevant as possible. Working with a user experience designer can help you provide an intuitive interface that helps increase adoption and loyalty. UI | UX design is more important than ever and crucial to mobile application success.

Try to keep an eye on the future too. If you release an app that was dated before it even made it to the app store you are not doing your business any favors. Consumers are tech savvy and up on the latest trends.

Photo: http://bit.ly/1TqLahK