Review: 7 key elements for creating a successful mobile app empire Successful app empires are created by steady growth. Each app incorporates certain features and focuses on areas of the user experience which will promote user engagement and acquisition. Of course, while an app empire by name would probably have multiple apps, these elements listed below are just as relevant if you only have one. Social Media integration Including some kind of integration with social media is essential for spreading a bit of awareness for your apps and bringing your user community together. Lead users to your social media pages so they can follow you. Invite them to join the conversation, and share their experiences with their followers. Engagement is essential. Social media is the easiest growth hack available. You can use it to launch marketing campaigns, distribute news, build an engaged community, promote a viral spread of awareness, and more. All the big social media giants offer integration tools for free; it’s a no-brainer to include them. Viral marketing tips to help you right away: 7 steps how to make your app go viral. Push Notifications If your app ever has news or alerts to deliver, it’s better to proactively deliver them as push notifications than to passively wait for the user to open the app before they can be delivered. When used well, push notifications are very positive for the overall user experience because they provide timely, actionable notifications. Push notifications have the added benefit of reminding the user about your app and encouraging them to open it up whenever the notifications arrive. This will naturally keep users coming back to the app and improve long-term engagement. Monetization Obviously no app empire can be successful if it isn’t generating revenue. There are a lot of different monetization strategies you can implement, including in-app purchases, paid downloads, advertising, subscriptions—it’s your job as the brilliant entrepreneur to come up with an awesome strategy for bringing home the bacon! Study shows how to boost downloads and get the first 10,000 downloads for your app. Ideally you want to find a balance that generates revenue and limits disruption to the user experience as much as possible. Many startups have foregone monetization at launch in order to better focus on user acquisition—this works pretty well if you can fund it, but an app empire needs revenue to grow and prosper. Scalability Apps need to be designed with room to grow. Apps have a big advantage in this department over many other kinds of products because distribution is built in, you don’t have to worry about getting the product into customers’ hands. But after that, you can still run into problems as your user-base grows. The most common areas of concern are server related. The more users you have, the more robust your infrastructure needs to be, otherwise, struggling servers can have a big negative impact on the UX and drive people away from the product. It’s the kind of problem most people would love to have, in a way, since it comes alongside growth. Take a look at best mobile app design checklist that will rock your business. The problem is that if you can’t respond to the growth fast enough, you stifle yourself. Careful Information Architecture (Flow) Information architecture is the fancy tech term for the way your app is navigated. How one screen leads to the next, where all your buttons go, and how it all comes together to work as a single experience. Good information architecture means that everything in the app is easy to find so that users can open the app and complete their goals without frustration. This is the core of the user experience. All the beautiful pictures and fancy designs are laid on top of the scaffolding put down by the information architecture. That’s not to downplay the importance of aesthetics, but bad information architecture can be much more damaging than bad aesthetics. Room for Expansion As your mobile app empire grows, you want to make sure that growth doesn’t level out and stagnate—you want to keep growing! One way to make that continued growth easier is to build your apps with room for expansion. This can come in several flavors. A simple way to expand is to release an update for your app that adds in a highly demanded feature. This makes your users happy and provides a small marketing boost. Happy customers share the app and stick around longer, this adds up to more downloads and active users. Another area where you can expand is the location where your app provides service. This is most obvious with examples like Uber where the location is paramount and expanding to new areas takes a lot of effort, which can be made easier if you have strategies for expansion early on. For other apps location is not relevant to the app’s function, but the language and design localization can do a lot to improve the user experience. Instead of simply offering the stock English-language version of the app to worldwide users, you would be able to create a more targeted version for markets you are interested in pursuing. In any case, if you build the app with expansion in mind from the start, it can really streamline the process once it comes time to act. Web Presence Having a well-indexed website is extremely important for any app business. A website serves as a hub for all your marketing, and informational resource for users and potential users, and an organic growth driver. The more apps you have and the bigger your apps get, the more important your website becomes. Your website will naturally draw traffic from your social media links and app store pages from users who want to learn more. With decent SEO it will also draw in traffic from searches, which can produce new users. If it has a blog (which I recommend) then you can get even more traffic flow. Software Developers India specializes in iPhone app development and Android app development. We build apps and websites from scratch and our dedicated development team has helped thousands of clients in creating excellent mobile and web assets to propel them forward. Contact us and we can discuss strategies and technologies that might work for you. Give us a call at 408.805.0495, or email team@sdi.la. We look forward to hearing from you.