How to create a specialized application for P2P transfers

This will be a story about personal experience in the development and marketing of mobile applications. Enough painful experience to say about him: learn from our mistakes.
At the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015, mobile became a global trend. Indeed, every second person in your city has a smartphone, just look around. Over this short period, phones have become our inherent attribute. It even got to the point that in some US states a law was passed prohibiting surfing on the phone while moving around the city. And you are most likely reading this text in a mobile application.

So, we uploaded our application - PAY2YOU - to the Google Play Market in September 2014, and to the AppStore - in early December of the same year. Just at that time, P2P transfers became one of the main drivers of the turnover and revenue of payment services. In the fintech market, the serious growth of the money transfer service between cards has really begun.
They were primarily developed for Android, because there are more of these devices. Although, it should be borne in mind that iOS users often have a higher level of solvency when it comes to shopping in the AppStore, or in-app payments. So, if you are planning a paid application or with purchases inside it, it may be worth focusing on iOS users.

welcome to reality
Now imagine the situation: a year has passed since the application was published in the market. You managed to survive the period of growth of active users. And since then, the trend has declined. The number of installations decreases, the turnover and the number of transactions decreases. Not critical, but it’s obvious that one must intervene. But what exactly to do? And here comes the moment that can be described with a phrase from the rules of life of Elon Musk: "The most difficult thing is to come up with the right questions."
There are a lot of such questions, but there are several primary ones:

What needs does the application solve?
The main competitors - who are they?
Are there any examples of successful applications worth aligning with?

Honestly, there’s no point in developing the application itself if you yourself do not fully understand that the client will receive valuable value by using your product. Therefore, you are likely to step on a rake that stuffed cones with so many developers. And we got stuffed as well.
Despite the fact that our application is the only mobile solution for p2p transfers in Ukraine, the service itself is not unique. Therefore, we decided to add some useful features to it.
For example, what does each of us encounter every time we want to transfer money to another card? With the fact that you need somewhere to take the number of this card. Memorizing countless numbers is obviously not an option.
So in the Android application there was a function of adding friends from the social network, and transferring money by simply selecting a friend from the phone book.
image
Of course, there is also a save map function. PCI DSS approves, if that.
image
What indicators to measure?
In the process, this question will arise for you by itself. But, obviously, it’s better to ask him yourself before you even decide to show your creation to the audience.

What KPIs should be used to evaluate audience quality?
This means that you should immediately decide on who you are going to call "active users" with all the ensuing parameters:
→ time spent in the application;
→ the number of conversions for the reporting period;
→ the number of visits before the conversion;
→ how much money one active user should bring you during his lifetime in the application, etc.
Later, you will definitely add a churn rate or an outflow indicator that will spoil life at the slightest opportunity.

What is the most cost-effective installation of the application?
That is, what indicator of the CPA model will be breaking even for you and when will it become such.
For example, we launched contextual advertising for an Android application with a modest daily budget. After testing it for about two weeks, we decided to increase the budget to a more serious amount. As a result, the cost of conversion (installing the application) decreased in direct proportion to the increase in the advertising budget. However, this factor was also influenced by the approaching New Year. This period in itself is characterized by an increase in sales.

And then the time will come to ask yourself:
What increase in audience will be a success?
How much does it cost to attract one client now?

After giving clear answers, you will understand that the life of the application alone does not bring you money, even if you have killer features implemented.

Instead of an epilogue
In fact, an application for P2P translations is a very fertile ground for activity. Mobile is growing and living. The number of people with smartphones in their hands is increasing every day. P2P is growing rapidly (by the way, you also need to not miss the moment, because over the last year there have been five times more competitors in this market in Ukraine).

And a little inspired lyrics in the end. The average check for the application at the moment is 1800 UAH. In fact, an indicator that such an application really solves the everyday requests of users is a decrease in the average check. Because the need to transfer money via mobile arises most likely spontaneously. For example, in a situation where you need to quickly chip in a company for someone for a present, a p2p transfer becomes a cash transfer, only in non-cash form.
In a word, to learn better from the mistakes of others.

Also popular now: