8 components of the success of your mobile application (Part 1)

... Last year I was in turmoil. For 14 months, I gave all my heart, soul, and modest savings to the application, which I was proud of.



An app that earned less than one hundred bucks a month.

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What did I do wrong? I set out to understand this.



I contacted three dozen successful entrepreneurs in this field, experts in mobile marketing and mobile analysts. I recorded a video interview in which I asked each of them: What is the secret of success in the AppStore?



Of course, the advice was contradictory. Everyone had different opinions. In addition, applications are different from each other. Is this an application or a game? On Android or iOS? For kids, casual players or avid gamers? Do you have a budget for promotion? Will your application be paid or free?



Sometimes I'm a little ... stupid. To believe in something, I need to hear it several times. So when I heard some powerful ideas in several interviews, I started paying attention to them.



But I still have not seen a holistic picture. So I watched all the video interviews and recorded their answers. In the next few months, I combined all the advice I received into a book.



What follows next, I took from the first chapter of this book.

Mobile app success formula

As an entrepreneur, you lack resources. And that's fine. What should you spend your time, money and energy on? Solutions can paralyze further development. Where does this best pay off?



And while the exact formula for success will be different for each application, there are still several aspects that are important for success, which need to be understood. Understanding why they are important and how they help you as a developer will give you a chance to stand out from the crowd.



1. Solve the problem (or make life easier). Our mobile devices have become a part of our daily life. Mobile applications are useful, interesting and important in our daily routine.



2. Find a niche of the correct size. Do not go where the battle obviously you lost. Find a space in which you can be competitive and win.



3. Do not be ambitious. Allocate a small period of time for development, implement a small set of functions. To begin, your application has to cope very well with a small task list.



4. Make sure that users return to you. The retention rate is your most important metric. You must ensure that your users return to your application — or figure out why they are not returning.



5. Knowing a pair of marketing gimmicks never hurts. Even if you hate marketing, knowing only one or two marketing tricks will help you get ahead of 90% of developers who do not promote at all.



6. Treat this as a business, not a hobby. If you want to make your business financially successful, then it’s time to take a serious approach.



7. Do not give up. Learn, test, try to improve your product. You will not lose if you do not give up.



8. Do not do everything alone. Work with other entrepreneurs to achieve your goals faster.



Keys 1-4 can be found below. Keys 5-6 - in the second part, keys 7-8 - in the third ( currently being prepared for publication - approx. Translator ).

Key # 1: Solve a problem (or make life easier)

“It all comes down to the main question:“ What good do you bring into someone's life? ”, Says Ted Nash.

Despite all the talk that the world of applications is changing at lightning speed, the very purpose of the business has not changed at all.



Ted Nash (Ted Nash), director of Tapdaq, asserts that a successful business has always done only two things: solve problems or make life easier. “No matter where this business exists, and no matter where this application exists: it can be designed for wearable gadgets. It can also be created for mobile devices or desktops, says Ted. “As long as you truly meet user needs and your application is useful for someone, it doesn't matter which platform you start with.”



It is here that many entrepreneurs, developers (and entrepreneurs in general) are wrong: they offer solutions to non-existent problems. "If you sit down and ask yourself:" What is the real problem? How can I solve it? ”, Then you will figure out which way is the best,” says Graeme Warring, founder and CEO of WEPLAY.MEDIA.



The fact is that the idea of ​​your application - no matter how original it may seem to you - is just a variation of what has already happened before. “Look at what has already happened before you, figure out what is wrong with this, and come up with your own unique version of the idea,” says Graham. - If you create hostels for tourists who are 20 times better than other hostels, offers bus tours that are better than someone else’s, or are developing an application that is better than another, then this is usually because you understand what the problem was and decided it. ”



“An application is more than just an application,” says Peggy Anne Salz, mobile analyst and head of MobileGroove. "This is one of the ways to remove obstacles, improve lives, find answers to questions, be our personal companion, offer help and new opportunities."



Take for example Uber. Peggy Ann Selz states: “This application-based company, without an application, is no longer Uber. Because it helps to remove obstacles in our daily trips. If you want to find a good opportunity, then think about the obstacles you encounter on your daily trips. Focus on that. ”



When Will Sacks' friend, Will Sacks, had problems conceiving a child, he got the idea to create an application that helps women determine the days of their ovulation. By the time Paul Kemp interviewed Will in the next App Business podcast, the app had already helped 200,000 women to get pregnant.



“Try not to be distracted by attempts to copy someone’s applications and imitating someone else’s success. All this has already happened. Take the challenge out of your own life. Interview people, study them. Get to their problems and create an application. And you will find that you are likely to be successful, ”says Paul. - Be alert, you are surrounded by problems that are waiting for resolution - you just need to see them. ”

Key 2: Find your niche

Imagine that the app store is a huge ocean. There are areas where a lot of things are happening, everyone’s attention is attached to them - this is the red ocean. His waters are filled with blood. “It's full of sharks. And a lot of fish, which you can profit. But do you want to fight with all the sharks? ”- Peggy Ann Selz.



Better go to the blue waters of the ocean. “There is calm and maybe not much fish, but far fewer sharks,” says Peggy. So within the scope of the applications, you do not “chase after mega-huge money, not millions every month, but sufficient amounts for a good life.” Peggy Ann Salz stresses that in the red ocean you can spend a lot of time fighting sharks. But in the blue ocean you have opportunities for prosperity. By the way, she recommends reading the Blue Ocean Strategy book in order to learn more about these ideas.



A lot of application creators notice the thrilling excitement of the red ocean for three miles. They want to plunge into it and compete with big sharks. But if you are looking for a business that will be successful in the long term, go to the blue ocean. You can find as many fish as you need with fewer fights.

PRACTICAL ANALYSIS: PlantSnapp

With PlantSnapp, users can take pictures of plants, and applications identify them. Patrice Archer, co-founder and CEO of Appy Ventures, considers the success of the application to be appealing to a specific audience, occupying a very specific niche.



“A 30-55 year-old mom who loves to shop at an expensive store that has a fully paid home, a dog, and her children are teenagers,” explains Patrice. He can develop and sell a product that his users like, because he understands his audience very well. “They use the app daily. They expect this level of complexity and such features. And the moment when you really understand this will be the moment when you can think about developing something for this audience. ”

PRACTICAL ANALYSIS: South Africa Power Status

Artwork Evolution's Paul Solt (Paul Solt) provides another example of a very specific customer base with great potential. A student in one of his iPhone application programming courses comes from South Africa, where people experience power outages every day.



“You need to plan your day depending on this information. There is a schedule, but it's not easy to get it. Therefore, he is working on an application that will warn you: “The energy will turn off. What do you plan to do at this time? ”” The application helps a certain group of people plan their day more effectively.



This is a simple but effective idea. Moreover, another student from the same group (he also comes from South Africa) said: “I would pay for it!” And although this does not mean that everyone will pay for it, Paul emphasizes that this can already be called definite validation for ideas.



So what size niche is correct?



Flower-loving mommies and people in South Africa who have problems with electricity supply are two very different niches, but they have something in common: their creators found a clear niche in the app store, explored it and offered an innovative way to make money an idea.



Where do you find the perfect size niche? "You need to focus on an audience that is too small for a large-scale startup, but at the same time large enough for start-up entrepreneurs," explains Mark Wilcox, lead analyst at VisionMobile and author in Developer Economics.



Do not try to challenge Candy Crush or Uber. And it is obvious that “everyone who has an iPhone” is too large an audience.



On the other hand, try to avoid small niches taken up by application developers who do not want to capitalize on their programs. They can develop them just for their own pleasure, they can see in this a test or cool lines for their resume. Trying to compete with people who are passionate about their hobbies is not the best solution for your business.



A good rule of thumb, suggested by Tim Ferris and other experts, is to work hard and end up with a thousand true supporters. If you can find so many people who like what you are creating, then further growth of your business can begin with this.

Key 3: Start small

You may have ambitious plans for what your application will become. For the first version, it is reasonable to scale down.



Do not fall into the trap, waiting for your application to get every function you invented yourself before the release. Make sure that he has one, two or even three key functions that work flawlessly, then open it to the world and draw conclusions based on feedback.



“Always start with MVP, a minimum viable product. Start with something very simple, ”advises Ted Nash. Create the most simple, basic product that the target audience of your niche will love.



Then let your users tell you what new features they would like to see in the app. Listen to their product reviews. Watch how people use it.



“Learn from what your users are saying to you,” says Ted, “and then build on the best product based on that.”



Do not make the mistake of adding too many features to the first version of your application. You put yourself in a situation where you have to guess what features the users want. Chances are good that with a few you miss. And it will be resources thrown out for development.



“Focus on core functionality and make everything else as minimal as possible,” advises Rob Caraway of TapSmith. “This rule is worth following.”



“Look to the future,” says Ted. - Once your users, who really like your product, will start generating revenue. And then you begin to transform your business into something really meaningful. "

Key 4: Make sure that users return to you.

“It is much better to create a product for a really small group of people who love it very much, rather than develop it for 10 thousand people who just like it”, - Ted Nash.



What causes users to return to your application?



Ted Nash emphasizes that the correct answer to this question has allowed many large application development companies (which started from scratch) to become very successful. They understood what was important in their business.



Yesterday's buyers, who provide a good customer retention rate (CRR), are vital to your business. Looking at your users, ask yourself: “How many of them will become your customers? Why do they become customers who pay for your product? What are they buying? What don't they buy? ”Says Ted. “It is important to understand this information and, on its basis, to return again and again to the beginning of the cycle.”



You need to focus on quality - and meet the expectations of a key group of users. If it is interesting to you just quickly to put up money, then you have chosen a difficult road. Word Tedu: “Mobile economy is developing. People who treat their business as something that will bring them success in the long term create applications and games of much higher quality. ”



Need an example? Look at Facebook, the creators of which very successfully used this model. “They developed it for Harvard University, and Facebook gradually began to“ absorb ”other educational institutions. They knew that if one segment of users loves their product, then the other one will also like it, ”says Ted.



As soon as you meet the needs of a key group of users, as soon as you ignite their love for the product, your success will grow. “This is the kind of commitment to your product that one day can be monetized,” he says.

This is the key to success that many developers forget. “This is extremely important. Many people are lost in trying to build something that 10,000 users can use, instead of focusing on developing an application that will have huge support from a small audience, ”explains Ted.



Bobby Jill, founder of Blue Label Labs, held these views when his company created a photo-sharing application. “There is nothing new or unique in it. But the product itself is designed for mothers who want to share ideas for lunches that they prepare for their children. The product was addressed to this audience. It is designed for them, and it is on these users that the application is intended to be promoted, ”says Bobby.



At first glance it seems that this is very similar to existing similar photo-sharing applications. But the application was successful - because Bobby and his team pleased a certain niche of people. “The app has its own audience, and these users like it,” says Bobby.



To be continued…