WHITEPAPER How to launch a MOBILE APP Successfully! By RG Infotech
Since the launch of smartphones, mobile industry embarks several milestones that attracts several industries and developers to enter with their unique approach. Due to that there are more than 12 million mobile app developers around the world (source) and the numbers continuously increasing day-by-day. Even the leading search engine Google also prefer mobile adaptive websites to rank higher than other and they have already announced their mobile friendly update Mobilegeddon for that. Last year they announced their switching over mobile first index, although it hasn t happened yet, but it will be happened soon. Several specialists have already included it in their SEO 2018 plan and suggest their associates to move over mobile friendly websites and applications. According to the Statista stats, - There are more than 2.32 billion smartphone users exist worldwide and the numbers will reach to 2.87 billion in 2020. (source) NUMBER OF SMARTPHONE USERS WORLDWIDE - On an average around 30 thousand apps used to submitted every month on Apple itunes only. - By mid-2016, around 130 billion apps were downloaded from itunes and around 65 billion from Google Play Store. - As of March 2017, there are around 2.8 million apps available on Google Play Store, while on itunes, there are around 2.2 million apps. (source)
NUMBER OF APPS AVAILABLE IN LEADING APP STORES AS OF MARCH 2017
The above stats are enough to make a clearer view about the mobile industry and the targeted audience, due to which every business wants to build an eye-catching application for their potential users. As there are more than 12 million developers available, you can easily get one for your idea under your preferred budget as well, but the thing is that- Did you get your desired result with it? Or Is your Mobile Application worth to launch? Or How can you make your app considerable? Being an enthusiastic persona, you are surely going through a long process of idealization and validation of your app idea along with planning, resource gathering, market researching and executing, but you have to consider a few more things while launching an app in the market (as there are more than 1800 apps launched every day on itunes and Google Play Store together). Due to the throat-cutting competition, it s hard to survive without proper analysis and research, that s why you have to consider several things to accomplish your goal. Even your selection of developer can affect your goals, so keep your eyes on every aspect. To make it easier to go through, we have broken these points into three segments Before Launch, During Launch and After Launch.
Before Things to consider APP Launch
One of the crucial stage, where you have nothing to lose, but have a huge burden of success and failure. This stage can build your path of success or ruin it completely. So, engage with more concentration and research deeply to resolve each and every circumstance of failure. Just do the groundwork, by analyzing: 1. Targeted audience To whom you re going to launch your app will define your success. You have to know that and you should make it worthy for your audience to download and engage with your app To make it understandable, you can ask three general questions to yourself: a. Who is going to use your app? b. Is your app providing value to your audience? c. Why they have to download your app instead of your competitors? Your answers will make you more convince towards the success of your application and also suggest you some improvements to append in your app. 2. App Landing Page Your app isn t only thing that can attract a user. You should create a landing page with appealing graphics, engaging content and an animated sign up form that help you to build a great email list of subscribers and can further use it to market them directly.
Acquiring an engaging landing page will allow you to make your targeted audience more curious through running a launch countdown, inserting animated screens of your application or adding a promo video. You can create a landing page by using Instapage or One Page Love. 3. Appealing Promo Video A promo video will be a great strategy to generate curiosity among the audience and pitch your concept. Through an appealing promo video, you can showcase main features of your app and help your relevant audience to viral it throughout the internet. An ideal video length considered around 30 seconds to 3 minutes, to clearly describe what actually it does. You can use actual screens of your app or the mockups to show how it looks, key features, functions, etc. You can create animated promo videos through PowToons (paid version should prefer, if you want to remove their trademark) or other third-party video creation tools. Even, you can go through with PowerPoint to create a complete custom video (if you have in-depth
command over it). Apart from it, you can capture the screens while testing or using your app. 4. Active Social Sharing Once you have ended up with the resources like audience selection, promo video making and landing page creation, now, you have to appear with strong taglines, hash tags and regular updates on your social accounts. According to the Statista research, there are around 2.46 billion social media users worldwide, who actively participates on different social media platforms and the number assumed to cross 3.02 billion mark till 2021. (Source) Number of social media users worldwide from 2010 to 2021 (in billions) You can create business page, profiles, and participate in different groups and communities to promote your application. To manage all social profiles through a single platform, you can choose anyone from Hootsuite, Buffer or Sprout Social, according to your convenience.
5. Keep your eyes on App Testing The major reason behind an app rejection on app store is - crashes, bugs and improper UI, and to make it error free, you have to do A/B testing or you can check your app performance manually, before launching your app. A/B testing will enhance your chances to get a better retention of audience and make you able to choose most performing designs and functions for your application. While on other side, manual testing allows you to check whether your application working fine or not as per user expectations. To measure app quality and performance, you can go through 3 rd party tools such as Apteligent, or Crashlytics. These tools will pinpoint major issues, suggest your appropriate performance, and ensure uptime. 6. Explore App Store Guidelines Before making your app live on leading App Stores, you have to explore their submission guidelines, which help you to idealize what exactly a store is looking. On an average, there
are around 20% rejection of apps identifying every day due to several reasons including crashes, bugs, safety issues, legal crisis, etc. So, keeping your eyes on the guideline will help you to get approval on your first attempt. On Apple App Store, there are 5 major aspects, you have to consider safety, performance, business, design and legal. They again divided into several sub-elements, which can be explored at app store review guidelines. Whereas, Google has published its 18 point launch checklist to make you aware about their guidelines.
During Things to consider APP Launch
It s time to make your audience oblige with your app launch as you have already created a pitch between them and boosted up their curiosity through social media engagement, promo video and landing page. 7. Submit your app properly Do not make it a hassle, keep calm and submit your app properly on your preferred App Store. Ensure to include all needed information, screenshots, promo video and appealing content. Things that needed to consider while submitting an app
8. Take a look at the performance Keep your eyes on how your audience interacts with your app. It will help you to idealize app. It will help you to idealize the performance and create a path for the beta release, where you can enhance features, functions, and UI as well. To measure your app s performance, you can use app analytic tools that act similar to the Google Analytics, but designed especially for the apps such as Localytics, Google Analytics for mobile, Apple Analytics and alike. These analytics can be use for: 9. Promote to get Ratings & Reviews Once your app approved on the app store, you need to work on its visibility, which can be done through App store optimization, content marketing, social activities, press releases, video marketing and internet marketing. According to the above stats (mentioned at the beginning), we know that there are more than 2.32 billion smart phone users worldwide along with more than 2.46 billion social media users. These stats are enough to clear the need of App promotions for making your app in notice of your targeted audience. The beneath chart showing the percentages of app users who find apps via different channels that included websites, blogs, social media, search engine, friends and app store search. Without indulging into App Store Optimization and other segments of marketing, we can t get their engagement as there are 2.8 million apps available on Google Play Store, whereas around 2.2 million apps on itunes.
Percentage of app users who find apps via each channel App Store Search 63 Friends/Family 50 App Store Top Charts 34 Preinstalled Apps Social 19 20 Web Sites - General 16 Web Search 14 Web Sites - Blog 7 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Percentage of users So, encourage you audience to get more downloads, better ratings and reviews through continual promotions using different mediums. Also keep your eyes on the performance of your app and try to build a great user base on different social networks, where you have already promoted your app and ask them to rate & review your app. Apart from the reviews and rating, you can go with Google AdWords or Facebook Ads or other paid campaigns to promote your app on different mediums as a premium or featured ad, while on other side you can hire an experience digital marketing specialist to acquire their excellence for organic promotions. Promoting an app through paid platforms or submitting it in the premium or featured category on app store, will enhance user attention towards the application and increase the numbers of users, app downloads and app views on the app store. Even, it helps you to get more searches on app stores too. Along with the above listed paid platforms, you can advertise your app through offline modes as well, such as hoardings, paper ads, magazine ads, banners, canopy, etc.
10. Plan to release Beta version Although, several organizations and developers have already planned about upgrade versions of their application just after the development of their app, where they miss the response and exact opportunity they can achieve. So, it s quite necessary to keep your eyes on the responses and user behavior before planning for beta release. Once you have achieved success in marketing campaigning, you get a better response, download rate and user retention ration towards your app, which help you to gather exact data for the beta versions. Through an appropriate approach, you will get to know the things that are needed to improve, function to be included and features that required by the targeted audience to make your path of success. Keep your planning on upper level through enhancing your features and functions in the beta version of your app. The reviews provided by the audience will help you to append improvements in the Beta version and make it worthier for your targeted audience.
After Things to consider APP Launch
Congrats! You have successfully launched your App on your preferred app store, but wait, your work isn t finished yet. You are more responsible now, to spread your app and aware more audience about it. Through this, you will get more reviews and downloads, which surely help you to decide whether to launch beta version or not. 11. Keep your eyes on App Performance To make your app successful, you have to keep your eyes on the performance of your app on App Store How user reacting to your app, the ratio of downloads, and the measurement of performance can draw a path to updates and beta versions for the future. According to the Sensor Tower stats shared on TechCrunch, more than 47,300 apps were removed from Apple app store till Oct 2016 due to their outdated versions. So, keeping an eye over the performance and preparing for updated versions will make your app live for longer duration.
12. Plan your Revenue Model Once you get a great number of download and views on your app, you can plan your revenue model to generate a great revenue through your app. The revenue solely depends on the performance and popularity of your app, which comes through your promotions and sharing. There are several ways to get revenue such as pay per download, in-app advertising, premium downloads, in-app purchase, freemium model and subscription model. Take a look at the given chart below: Direct Revenue Models Freemium Pay per download 11 In-app Advertising 35 Premium 32 In-app Purchase 30 Subscription Model 14 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
The above 12 points have already tested and adopted by several startups and organizations to gain desired response for their apps. Through these steps you can control your roadmap from the beginning of your app to acquire targeted audience and generate conversions. Along with that, you can go through with other possible points that suits to your conditions, to get better results in terms of user retention, feedbacks and app downloads. If you enjoyed this whitepaper, then visit us and do comments on our blog at http://www.rginfotech.com