5 Easy Ways to Create a Compelling Mobile App

There's no excuse for a poor mobile experience. Whether you're a retail brand, publishing company or developer of productivity apps, your mobile presence is one of the most important connection points you have with consumers.

And yet so many companies go into mobile development without a clear sense of purpose. That lack of vision produces negative effects, namely unhappy customers, low conversion rates and limited growth opportunity. Here are five tips to help you avoid those pitfalls and create a mobile app experience that delivers strong business results:

1. Know what you're getting into. Building a mobile presence is only the tip of the iceberg. Nate Bosshard, former brand manager for The North Face, found that out when his company developed its first mobile app. 

"I would be lying if I said we had anticipated everything," said Bosshard. "It's a lot of work. You can't just launch an app and think you're done. Customers expect the application to evolve or it will be considered out-of-date. These programs require constant monitoring, updating and maintenance."

Whether you're creating a mobile app or a mobile website, you have to commit resources on an ongoing basis to ensure the investment doesn't go to waste.

2. Have a clear business objective. Why are you building an app in the first place? Is it to educate consumers? To increase sales? To build brand loyalty? As in the early days of corporate websites, many companies believe they need a mobile app, but don't understand the reasons why.

To create a successful mobile app, you need an objective to measure against. If your goal is to educate consumers, then your app shouldn't only offer content for mobile consumption, but also incentives to seek out further information through additional channels (e.g., at an event, through downloadable materials, etc.).

On the other hand, if your goal is to generate transactions, then your app should provide a navigation structure that guides users quickly and easily through completion of a specific task. eBay, for example, does this by clearly highlighting online activity in real time to make it easy for users to place bids or finalize a sale even from a mobile device.

A pretty and functional app is one thing, but if it doesn't generate positive business results, it's not worth the development time.

3. Know and build for the right audience. Mobile app users behave differently from the people who visit your website on a desktop computer. As much as you need to know your own business objectives in interacting with mobile consumers, you also need to understand what users hope to accomplish.

Hotwire, for example, designed its mobile app to focus on last-minute hotel bookings. The company knew its most loyal customers — the customers most likely to download a branded app — were likely to have a specific goal in mind when accessing Hotwire from a smartphone. Hotwire's app was designed to address that need, making it easy for users who rely on the company for last-minute bookings.

4. Don't fool yourself with vanity metrics. Congratulations! Your app has 10,000 downloads! Guess what, it doesn't matter. The number of downloads you get doesn't translate into revenue or even a stronger connection with consumers. If someone downloads your app, but never uses it, that's not a measure of success.

The Draw Something app for Facebook, for example, had plenty of downloads, but the number of monthly active users also dropped from 36.5 million to 9.1 million in the space of seven months. 

Instead of counting downloads, you can more accurately track the success of an app by reviewing statistics like retention rate, time spent in the app and direct conversions. These metrics do more than look good in a progress report; they signal an app's continued relevance, behavioral influence and impact on business objectives.

5. Select the right technology. Choosing the right technology means more than prioritizing iOS over Android or vice versa. You need access to detailed app analytics, the ability to push out updates quickly and easily, and testing tools that allow you to measure the comparative performance of different app iterations.

In the early days of mobile app development, you could only make changes to an app by rewriting the underlying code, and you could only glean insight into user response by waiting for App Store reviews. Now, however, there are mobile experience management (MEM) platforms specifically designed to give business users more control over app optimization. A View From My Seat chose a MEM platform to support ongoing app development and was able to achieve a 22 percent increase in app usage within two months.

Selecting the right technology is a critical factor in driving business results. There are many advantages to creating a mobile app, but you need a smart approach in order to realize all of the potential benefits. If you can avoid common development pitfalls, not only will you increase user satisfaction, but you'll also develop a stronger connection with consumers that ultimately drives business results.

Bob Moul is the CEO of Artisan Mobile, a provider of mobile conversion optimization and A/B testing services.