Factors Which Make or Break a Mobile App

Yes! You have a great idea, but do you have a great App? A good mobile app is a must as most of the end-users are on a mobile device.

1. Is the App UI simple & tested?

The make or break of an App depends a lot upon the simplicity of the UI. The App should be so simple that a 10-year-old should be able to understand the flow.

Your App should have just enough content (read that – not too much content) to describe the objectives of the App and how can those be met with other available functionalities.

So if you have doubts about your UI being that simple or not, it’s time to get your app tested by a UI/UX specialist.

2. Is your mobile app compatible with the latest as well as previous versions of the desired OS?

As of 2016, Android and iOS dominate 96.8 percent of the world’s smartphones and even there ‘Android’ holds approximately 80 – 82 percent of all smartphones while Apple being the second most popular OS holds approx. 14 – 16 percent of the Market share.

The following is the percentage of users in their respective Android versions :

Marshmallow (6.0) & Jelly Bean (4.1) with another 7.5 & 7.2 percent respectively. Thus one thing that becomes clear is that even when Google has launched its 7th version of android namely Nougat, there is still a big slice of the user base that is playing around with the 4.4 version of Android. Thus, an Mobile App has to be compatible not just with the latest versions of OS but should also work fine with the previous ones, depending upon such statistics or else it loses out on a major chunk of your audience.

3. How does your app plan on facing the challenge of device fragmentation?

Android is the most famous mobile operating system today, the reason could be attributed to its open-source nature, but the same reason is also responsible for the challenges it has raised for development & testing in the name of device fragmentation.

We at Moolya have kept talking about the challenges posed by device fragmentation for years now.

• The previous point talks only about a minute percentage of the permutation-combination that forms with the variety of versions of Android running concurrently in the market today.
• This permutation-combination has increased exponentially with the rise in the number of manufacturers/assemblers in the present market with each trying to bend Android as per their designs of hard wares.
• This number grows again with the number of processors that are available and are developed and
• To top it off the number has to become giant when we include the screen resolutions,
• The RAM-ROM combinations,
• The network carriers (Bands) these smartphones work upon.

To make sure that you are on the ‘make’ side of your mobile app, Make sure that you are solving the device fragmentation challenge efficiently.

4. Is the App being maintained?

Are you providing customer care services? Are you providing real-time updates to your App? Are you continuously evolving your app with the help of the feedback given by your audience? Are you running promotional activities? Are you spending on advertisements? Is your team of ‘x’ sufficient to handle the amount of traffic that is coming to your app? Are you brainstorming over why the app is losing customers?

Are you planning on where and when from here?

Another thing that makes or breaks your app is the maintenance of your app. If your answers to the above questions beings with a ‘Yes’. Congrats, the mobile app is supposed to be on the ‘make’ side of it.

5. Is the app Size managed efficiently?

Yes, the cost of memory has gone down drastically when compared to its inception, but even today the app size matters so much mainly because of the following:

• With more and more, cheap smartphones coming into the market, the average space available to a user has grown thin.
• The memory used by the pre-installed bundled apps by the assembler/manufacturer, leaving behind little for the foreign apps.
• The user mentality of more and more apps in as little space as possible
• The growing number of good apps, that everybody wants in their system.
• The Growing data charges, nobody wants to download a 500 MB app unless either the app is a past hit on the web or the data is of somebody else’s.

Thus your app needs to be efficient on the memory side as well to attract more and more customers.

6. Is your App Monetization strategy subtle?

Let’s agree on one thing, the consumer base in India has not yet matured to such a level that it starts paying for Apps. Yes, an Indian consumer happily pays 5 to 50 k for a smartphone but thinks a hundred times before making a 100 Rs app purchase from Playstore/AppStore.

To keep an app alive, the money has to come from somewhere, and if the customer cannot be asked to pay for it, the owners will have to draw strategies on how the app traffic can be leveraged. Multiple ways are depending upon the domain your app is working in which can be used to make money. Such as

• Providing advertisements,
• Promotional content about a product or a company,
• Additional purchases on upgrades,
• In-app purchases
• Surveying

But no matter what monetization techniques you are using, an app has to be smart enough to not woo away its user base. Your Monetization dreams should not be too aggressive, else that could lead to the break of your Mobile App.

7. Is the Mobile App using the power of Analytics?

Analytics for an app, as we know gives us a look into the behavioral patterns of an app’s user base. With Analytics we can find

• what functionality is being mostly used,
• What functionality is not so good,
• what page or content holds the user and for how long,
• What is the most used version of OS for the app,
• Whether the desired audience is using the app,
• Whether the system resources are being used efficiently,
• Crash reports if there are any,
• How the app can be made better,

With the answers to the above questions and many others, app stakeholders can decide on future marketing strategies and on making the app more user friendly and accessible thus making a sure shot to the success of the app.

8. Is the Mobile App’s Functionality & Performance Tested?

 Last but not the least, nobody likes an App with bugs. A good Testing team is the line of control between the make or break of an App. Your App has to be tested thoroughly both on the functional and performance ends and only then should be released to your desired set of audience.