Making yourself heard in mobile
Roope Suomalainen, Director, Experience
If you don’t have an app, you do not exist in mobile space. As everyone knows, apps are the best way to provide your services to mobile audiences. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that you have a mobile strategy linked to your digital strategy as well as a clear understanding of your targets and your experience roadmap – how apps tie into your digital brand experience. You need to think about how to reward loyalty and harness marketing via social networking services, what the following releases on the road map are and how to maintain and update the base segment. This shouldn’t be different from other business development or similar projects you are working on. Basically, apps can support your existing business and act as marketing and loyalty tools as well as drive traffic to brick-and-mortar real world stores. However, perhaps the most interesting option would be to create new business based on mobility enablers like location, context and direction.
Once you know why you want to create the app, and you have the concept ready, you should consider the possible business models. Will the app be free, i.e. subsidised by other business or ad revenue? Should there be a freemium model, a subscription, perhaps a paid app or something else? The next topic to consider is the target segment: who are the customers, why would they choose you and what is the competition? Understanding and segmenting the customer base is also extremely important, as different people use different devices. This is where things often go wrong; the first apps may be created for iOS and Android even though customers might be using simple Java-enabled phones. Going directly to smart TVs and gaming consoles might also make sense. Even the smartphone game can be complex: for example, Symbian and BlackBerry combined have almost 70% of the market share in the Middle East.
Getting the business case, concept and customer segmentation right are the time consuming parts. When the groundwork has been done well, technical implementation is more straightforward. The key question there is whether to go native for each platform or utilize cross-platform technologies like HTML5 to reach a wider user base and a larger variety of devices. Unfortunately, there are still some challenges with cross-platform technology compatibility and it may not always live up to the promise. Selecting a right partner is important to make sure that your app’s usability and performance are on the right level and can be maintained to support future devices and functionality. You also need to consider whether to have the app use your existing web infrastructure or perhaps run it on a cloud.
The next hurdle to tackle is the publishing. First of all, managing global deployment with localization across multiple versions and platforms is a huge challenge. In addition, Apple’s App Store and the Android Market both have more than 500,000 apps and Nokia Store has more than 100,000 apps. How do you make your app visible to users and get downloads, where and when should you run your marketing and how do you ensure that your app is preferred to those of your competitors? Without downloads, there is no business case. Unless you have a unique idea and content that no one else can access, someone else might build a better app using your content and find a way to monetize it. It is amazing that the most popular Twitter and Facebook apps are not built by those companies themselves. Usability is really king in the digital world and even more in mobile, where the screen size is limited.
In addition to selecting the key smartphone and other platforms, it is a good idea to keep tablet users in mind as well. What works on a smartphone most likely does not work well on a tablet, and people tend to use the two in different situations and environments. Cars are also connected, through various technologies such as MirrorLink. Most TVs sold are Internet enabled, but you can also get your apps and services on the big home screen with a game console. The real opportunity lies in integrating all these different devices and ensuring a larger presence in your customers’ everyday life.
Mobile business opportunities are emerging and most of the technology is already in place. Now is the time to create the concept that will change consumer behavior.
For more information, please contact:
Roope Suomalainen, Director, Experience, tel. +358 50 564 5988, roope.suomalainen@ixonos.com