May 16, 2013 at 15:47New in the life of the application
The process of implementing any idea from an idea to its direct implementation is always not as simple as it might seem at first glance. Any idea has a certain life cycle - generation, investment in form, development ... At each stage, the idea itself can lose something and gain something new. The life cycle of a mobile application, in spite of all its technicality, is no different from other more spiritual and ephemeral projects. The world is growing and changing around, and if you want to be successful, change with it.
What specifically can affect the decision on the need to change the concept of a mobile application or even make some adjustments to an existing product?
Undoubtedly facts. In our case, these may be measurements of key indicators carried out by the marketing department.
For example, take the number of active users in the application. You are actively promoting the finished application, and it seems that there is a certain stable influx of new users, but, for some reason, the number of active users is not growing. As a result, you cannot gain critical mass sufficient for self-development of the application further.
The question arises: why and what to do?
Perhaps the user interface is not intuitive enough - this problem is not the worst - a good designer who is ready to implement the idea of a manager can help to solve it. Perhaps - the user does not understand the main feature of the application. And here it’s more difficult - if not hooked - why? Have the conclusions of market research been drawn correctly? Does the target audience need these features? A lot of questions can arise.
In this case, it is worth paying attention to:
1. How well was the marketing research conducted
In this case, do not save and use the services of dubious organizations. Marketing research is the beginning of beginnings - truthful and relevant information will give you an idea of the market you want to enter, the product, what it should be. Building a business idea from the very beginning on the wrong foundation, it is impossible to achieve the results that you want to get at the end.
2. Review the conclusions that were adopted on the basis of marketing data.
Information gathering and analytics are different things. Even on the basis of current data, completely wrong conclusions can be drawn. Do not be lazy, and review again.
3. Once again, make sure that you are not mistaken with the target audience: gender, age, other social characteristics, interests.
The target audience is, in fact, those who will use your application, and possibly pay for it. Knowing your customer, as well as knowing your product is the basic rule for the seller.
4. To analyze the marketing plan used in the promotion of channels and means with the interests and environment of the target audience.
Do you advertise there? What form of filing do you use? It is important to track each placement channel - in the future you will be able to understand which channel is effective and which is not - just for your product. This will help save both time and money for promotion in the future.
So, if everything is correct, and as a rule, this is rarely the case, you can move on. And look for the reason in the very essence - the main user scenario. I’ll give an example of that applicationwe are working on now.
The main idea of the application was to watch the movement of friends on a map on-line. The idea itself is interesting. The target audience, its interests and promotion channels, we determined for ourselves pretty quickly.
Nevertheless, 2 months after the beta launch, we encountered a problem - with a constant influx of “fresh blood” the number of active users does not grow, but remains at the same level.
They began to look for a reason. And so we came to this: the application is new, but friends are needed to maintain interest - otherwise, whom to watch on the map? Friends are not being pulled into the application as fast as we would like (we will touch on this topic later). And here the question arises: what should the user do in the application while he has no friends online? How can the application be useful to him now?
Making a decision on this issue, we came to the conclusion that we need to come up with a new chip that will help keep the user in the application at this stage.
For us, the solution to the problem was to provide the userinformation about discounts and special offers in the nearest institutions, as well as informing about upcoming youth activities in a certain radius from the user. This idea never occurred before, since when creating the application they simply did not take into account the significance of the fact in which the user may temporarily have no friends. Agree, it is difficult to imagine a person without friends. But! Everyone has different phones, everyone uses different applications, and therefore crossing with friends in one application can be problematic.
By keeping the user with information about discounts and special offers, we achieve the main goal - to increase the number of active users of the application and gradually reach a critical mass. When a user makes friends, this functionality - information about special offers - fades into the background, giving way to the main user scenario.
Making this decision, we did not want to make serious adjustments to the application concept, and, in our opinion, we managed to do it.
The adoption of such decisions depends directly on the project management. It is possible that in our case you would have made a different decision, proposed a different idea. The correctness of this or that decision will confirm or refute the time, well, or the results of the same Google Analytics.
PS application release - in June 2013.
What specifically can affect the decision on the need to change the concept of a mobile application or even make some adjustments to an existing product?
Undoubtedly facts. In our case, these may be measurements of key indicators carried out by the marketing department.
For example, take the number of active users in the application. You are actively promoting the finished application, and it seems that there is a certain stable influx of new users, but, for some reason, the number of active users is not growing. As a result, you cannot gain critical mass sufficient for self-development of the application further.
The question arises: why and what to do?
Perhaps the user interface is not intuitive enough - this problem is not the worst - a good designer who is ready to implement the idea of a manager can help to solve it. Perhaps - the user does not understand the main feature of the application. And here it’s more difficult - if not hooked - why? Have the conclusions of market research been drawn correctly? Does the target audience need these features? A lot of questions can arise.
In this case, it is worth paying attention to:
1. How well was the marketing research conducted
In this case, do not save and use the services of dubious organizations. Marketing research is the beginning of beginnings - truthful and relevant information will give you an idea of the market you want to enter, the product, what it should be. Building a business idea from the very beginning on the wrong foundation, it is impossible to achieve the results that you want to get at the end.
2. Review the conclusions that were adopted on the basis of marketing data.
Information gathering and analytics are different things. Even on the basis of current data, completely wrong conclusions can be drawn. Do not be lazy, and review again.
3. Once again, make sure that you are not mistaken with the target audience: gender, age, other social characteristics, interests.
The target audience is, in fact, those who will use your application, and possibly pay for it. Knowing your customer, as well as knowing your product is the basic rule for the seller.
4. To analyze the marketing plan used in the promotion of channels and means with the interests and environment of the target audience.
Do you advertise there? What form of filing do you use? It is important to track each placement channel - in the future you will be able to understand which channel is effective and which is not - just for your product. This will help save both time and money for promotion in the future.
So, if everything is correct, and as a rule, this is rarely the case, you can move on. And look for the reason in the very essence - the main user scenario. I’ll give an example of that applicationwe are working on now.
The main idea of the application was to watch the movement of friends on a map on-line. The idea itself is interesting. The target audience, its interests and promotion channels, we determined for ourselves pretty quickly.
Nevertheless, 2 months after the beta launch, we encountered a problem - with a constant influx of “fresh blood” the number of active users does not grow, but remains at the same level.
They began to look for a reason. And so we came to this: the application is new, but friends are needed to maintain interest - otherwise, whom to watch on the map? Friends are not being pulled into the application as fast as we would like (we will touch on this topic later). And here the question arises: what should the user do in the application while he has no friends online? How can the application be useful to him now?
Making a decision on this issue, we came to the conclusion that we need to come up with a new chip that will help keep the user in the application at this stage.
For us, the solution to the problem was to provide the userinformation about discounts and special offers in the nearest institutions, as well as informing about upcoming youth activities in a certain radius from the user. This idea never occurred before, since when creating the application they simply did not take into account the significance of the fact in which the user may temporarily have no friends. Agree, it is difficult to imagine a person without friends. But! Everyone has different phones, everyone uses different applications, and therefore crossing with friends in one application can be problematic.
By keeping the user with information about discounts and special offers, we achieve the main goal - to increase the number of active users of the application and gradually reach a critical mass. When a user makes friends, this functionality - information about special offers - fades into the background, giving way to the main user scenario.
Making this decision, we did not want to make serious adjustments to the application concept, and, in our opinion, we managed to do it.
The adoption of such decisions depends directly on the project management. It is possible that in our case you would have made a different decision, proposed a different idea. The correctness of this or that decision will confirm or refute the time, well, or the results of the same Google Analytics.
PS application release - in June 2013.