We start the mobile direction in the company: what to prepare for and how to live

One of the most notable trends of the Runet is the rapid growth of the mobile audience. As of the end of 2013, every fourth hit of the network is made from a mobile browser. The monthly mobile audience of the Runet is already over 130 million people, and 20-25 million users go online from smartphones and tablets every day.

In this regard, many e-commerce-companies and divisions are thinking about whether you need to fight for a mobile audience. The answer “yes” gives rise to a whole wave of questions. What problems to solve before creating your first application? What risks to consider? How will the appearance of the application affect the company's business and development department? What to prepare for and how to live on?
')


With the advent of mobile devices in the IT business, it became necessary to find new approaches to design and development. What is the reason for this?

Differences in audience needs. First, the audience of the mobile version of the service and the web version can vary greatly. Secondly, the mobile audience does not need all the functions of the main version. For example, we investigated what the users of the “large” Money Mail.Ru and payment application use. As it turned out, mobile phones often pay for cellular communication, for the Internet, social networks, make purchases in several stores - that's all. A number of functions of the main version on the phone is not claimed.

Portability. Another feature is that the phone is with us much more time than a computer. Hence, new features that can be implemented in mobile applications.

Change screen orientation. When developing a mobile application or a mobile version of the site, it is necessary to take into account that during the session the orientation of the screen can be both horizontal and vertical.

Touchscreen. The ways of interaction have changed - they use fingers instead of a mouse to control touchscreen devices. And someone uses one finger, and someone - a few.

Frequent interruptions. It must be remembered that the session on the mobile device can be terminated at any time. Communication in the elevator disappears, the guys on the street come up and ask for a "mobile phone to call", a battery is seated, a person stumbles into a smartphone and bumps into a pole or stumbles over a flowerbed. These are external interruptions, and there are also internal interruptions - a sudden call or SMS.

The need to reinvent the wheel. In some cases, when developing mobile applications, you have to invent completely new approaches to familiar things. A good example is a solution for convenient and quick password entry in a mobile application. Due to the nature of the work, I sometimes have to wake up at night and go online to see what is happening on the production servers. So, I will type the password on the computer keyboard in a second with my eyes closed even at three o'clock in the morning, and on the mobile phone it sometimes takes several minutes to enter the password in the mail or in the payment system.

Making a choice between a web version and a mobile application

We all strive to make more money. How? Through the expansion of the audience, which is possible in two ways. First, it is attracting a new audience. Secondly, this is an increase in the involvement of the existing audience, which seems to me a much more important and promising business. It is necessary to ensure that your users increase the average bill, open the application more often or visit the site and spend more time there. In order to retain and engage in the process of the old audience, companies and create new services, including for mobile devices.

There are two ways to reach the user's smartphone: this is a mobile version of the site and a mobile application. Consider the pros and cons of both options.

Mobile version. One of the difficulties of using the mobile version of the site is that the user needs to somehow remember the URL of your site. In a web browser, this is simple, but not every user of mobile Opera or Firefox will guess how this can be done.
Secondly, the developer must understand from which particular mobile device the user comes to the site, and take into account the subtleties of his work.

Thirdly, the download speed of the mobile version is significantly lower than that of the application. In addition, there may be a problem with navigation in the interface. It is not always clear to the user of the mobile version whether the button has worked, if he can follow this link, etc.
Of the advantages can be noted the relative simplicity of development. In order to make a mobile version of the site, you do not need to attract new specialists. As a rule, this can be done by your own team using familiar tools, the same IDE used to develop the main site.

A significant plus is that in this case, developers do not depend on the requirements of third-party organizations: Google Play, Apple App Store and others like them. No need to fill out a bunch of forms when the next release is released and wait for the moderators to check the product. No need to frantically read into the license agreement, fearing that you would not accidentally be thrown out of the app store.

Application. The drawbacks of mobile applications can be divided into two groups: external and internal.

One of the external disadvantages is the youth of the industry, whose history goes back no more than 5-7 years. As a result, there is not enough information, stable frameworks around which developed communities have appeared, where you can chat and ask a question. Once I tried to find information on the Internet and all I could find was a dialogue between two Chinese programmers who discuss the problem in their Chinese forum. Only in English words in their phrases could understand what was there, in fact, speech, and put the puzzle, trying to find a solution.

There are also difficulties in finding specialists, which is again related to the youth of the industry.

Internal negative - is the dependence on other employees of the company who are not members of the team. As practice shows, the mobile division does not always have all the resources: designers, designers, marketers and others.

Nevertheless, there are pluses, and they are very weighty. First, by creating a mobile application, we find ourselves in a client’s pocket, that is, in a mobile device, and sooner or later he will start using the application.

Secondly, the mobile application can give a new impetus to the development of business in general, bring new ideas. After all, mobile devices have many features: high-quality camera, voice recognition, geolocation, push-notifications. You can also recall the simplified way of exchanging information, NFC, and much more that can be used to develop your product.
Thirdly, the company's efficiency will grow - a new direction, which involves constant communication between departments and the redistribution of resources, will force us to find and adjust ways of exchanging information, to introduce standards for internal interactions.
Fourth, the level of professionalism of programmers, designers and managers will increase. Since there is little information in the field of mobile development, all members of the team have to educate themselves and gain new knowledge.

Recruit team

So, you made a choice, it's time to dial a team for development. Who should enter it?

Manager. I suspect that I’m calling developer dissatisfaction, but the main person in the team is the manager. Often, it depends on him how successful the entire mobile direction in your company will be - he coordinates the activities of the departments in the company, searches for resources, monitors the industry innovations and thinks how the application will work.

Designers. As for designers, their part of the work, as a rule, is submitted to an outsourcing, not only internal (that is, within the company), but also external. In this case, you may encounter the fact that the designer has no idea about mobile development. For example, he may not understand that this beautiful gradient drawn by him discharges a battery 10% faster. Understanding with the designer lies on the conscience of the manager, who must clearly convey to him the task.

The developers. The number of developers should be proportional to the number of platforms you choose. At the same time, it is important to ensure continuous development cycles, preventing work from being idle when a person goes on vacation, falls ill, or leaves for a conference. To do this, you will have to duplicate some entities. Either two programmers will work on the platform, or three programmers will work with the two platforms, one of which is oriented in both platforms.

And, of course, let's not forget about testers.

We enter the mobile direction in the company structure

You have formed a team and get down to work. What place will it take in the company structure? Everything will depend on the size of the organization.
If the company is small, then the team works for the entire organization, dealing with all its products. As a rule, there are not very many services of such a company, therefore, most likely, the team will work on one or two applications.

If the company is big, like Mail.Ru Group, where more than three thousand people work, then each department will most likely have its own mobile development team. Each of them can go its own way, prioritize, maintain its own set of platforms.

A few points to help increase the efficiency of interaction between development teams in a large company:

Share your experience. It is important to share experience between departments, because, as I mentioned, there is little information in the mobile industry. When teams make more or less similar products, they will have similar questions. Create a database of rakes that you stepped on, and it will definitely help your colleagues to save time.

Highlight common code that other mobile development teams can use. Describe your components and standardize libraries.

Create shared repositories and shared build servers. Accordingly, there will be no need to buy a large amount of iron each time, since it is quite acceptable to combine the capacities for different teams.

Keep general statistics. Reconcile the data warehouse. General statistics can sometimes lead to interesting conclusions. For example, it is possible to compare how one application influenced the growth of the audience of another.

Share traffic. Think about integration, about using a popular application to bring traffic to the newly launched one. For example, Mail.Ru Group has an instant messenger Agent and a mobile payment application. We thought that the integration of a call for payment of IP-telephony services in the instant messenger can give an increase in traffic in the payment application.

Take care of typing. Our company has a good experience to follow when creating applications of a single style. The user at the sight of a new service feels that he is familiar and close to him, and will probably be more willing to use the new product.

We consider expenses

With the launch of the mobile direction, several new items of expenditure appear in the company's budget.

Mobile devices. Unfortunately, on emulators installed on computers, you will not test the application quality. We'll have to buy a variety of mobile devices, which are very many on the market; in addition, they often go out and quickly become obsolete. Only one zoo Android devices has about 2.5 thousand. In addition to smartphones, be sure to need to buy a few tablets.

Software. Mobile application development requires its own software. I note that you need to use any chance to save money - for example, you can find pretty decent free software or buy a light version instead of the full version. Example: a developer comes to you and says: “I want a full-fledged Photoshop”, and it costs cosmic money. "And for what?", - you ask. - "And I need to cut the graphics." You buy him Photoshop Elements, and he is satisfied: everything works. And it is much cheaper.

Iron for developers. You will also need to purchase servers for builds and testing, since not everything can be assembled in virtual environments. This is especially true for iOS. If a developer needs to keep several virtual environments on a computer, then he needs a powerful machine with an increased amount of memory. In addition, a large monitor will not interfere, since the programmers of client applications work a lot with graphics. In June of this year, we calculated what our developers spent working time on, and found that 32% of the time they spent working on visual interfaces — on cells, gradients, a bunch of buttons, sliders, and other beauty.

Salary of developers. I will not open a new one if I say that the problem with personnel in mobile development is the demand for specialists who are not satisfied with the proposal. Large companies are looking for professionals all over Russia, they are even ready to give a lift for the arrangement in a new city. For example, we pulled mobile developers into our team from Bryansk, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk and other cities. Accordingly, increased salaries for developers can be a solid expense for the company.

We plan (what else should the manager think)

Planning. Creating the first version is not a quick process. As, however, and the second. The fact is that developers are gaining experience, are learning, and after six months, looking at their code, written at the beginning, they will definitely want to rewrite it. Therefore, the manager must lay 20% of the working time for rework, improvement and acceleration of the product.

Hello designers! Designers can become the developer's worst enemies in the mobile direction. To prevent this from happening, they definitely need to be told that standard components sometimes work better and faster and do not waste battery resources.

What to choose: speed, quality or beauty? Just three points out of three will not work. You can not make a cheap product quickly and efficiently. The manager constantly has to choose, and at different stages of development priorities may change.

Find the chip. You need to find an element that will keep the audience in your application. For example, our team at one time developed an application for Mail.Ru Goods with a shopping horoscope. This is a joking prediction about what to buy on this or that day. We ourselves were surprised, but a sufficiently large number of users - 12-15% - every day open and read this horoscope. Such chips will help to attract the audience at no extra cost.

Promotion. Being engaged in promotion, be sure to remember the requirements of app stores. Even the most minor requirements are important. In addition, not only external, but also internal promotional product is necessary - employees of the company should use the application. Only in this case it will develop more effectively. It is also important to be constantly updated. If this does not happen, the service will be quickly forgotten.

Server part First, be sure to remember that your user is sitting on a slow Internet. At best, it has Wi-Fi, at worst - GPRS. Secondly, pay attention to support for API versions. Think about how you will upgrade versions. Put in your application the ability to deliver a message to the user: "The application is no longer working very well, it's time to go to upgrade." As our practice shows, the migration process is not instantaneous, the user can live on the old version of the application for several months after the release of the new one.

Testing. At different stages of the service life, the cost of fixing bugs will be different. The most advantageous - to fix the error at the design stage. The line of thought should be like this: “But this can lead to a bug, let's do it differently.” If a bug is detected in the production-stage, it may turn out that by correcting the problem, you will have to completely rewrite the application. Versions with critical bugs are generally contraindicated to release, otherwise the user will immediately consider your application to be useless, will not wait until you fix it, and find another.

We monetize

Almost all applications can be monetized. Another question is that it will not always be money that you can touch. There are applications with an obvious possibility of monetization. It:

• paid games
• paid business applications
• content subscription applications

There are other non-obvious types of monetization:

• paid placement (banners and sponsorship)
• freemium model (user is hooked, prompting to pay for additional options)
• pay-for-service (creation of some paid options in a free application used by a certain group of users)
• white label (renting applications and APIs under a brand of another company. As for renting an API, it can sometimes give a good result interaction with offline services. For example, you can work with a company that handles photos in paper cards. You can do for her, an application that allows you to send a photo from the conference in the form of postcards to friends and colleagues.

How to feel the result if the application is free

It is important to understand how the audience perceives your application in order to determine the direction of further development of the service. If the application is free, a simple accounting of the number of downloads of your applications from the AppStore will not work. This requires more laborious work.

First, work out the exact goals you want to achieve. Form a list of requirements that you will take into account. Among them may be the number of launches, the popularity of various functions — evaluate how many users use them, compare and draw conclusions.

Secondly, evaluate the conversion.

Thirdly, learn to collect usage statistics - store all the data. Even if they seem unnecessary today, they can come in handy tomorrow. Constantly analyze, predict, check and recheck your findings and predictions.

Maxim Babich
Head of Mobile Payment Services Development for Mail.Ru Group