You’ve built a mobile app, then what?

So you’ve gone through the development and you’ve finally built your mobile app… but where do you go from here?

Healthcareweekly reported that one of the most common hurdles healthcare apps fail to get over includes not understanding their customers and the market they’re in. However, this often occurs across more than industries than just healthcare.

There is still quite a bit of work to do even after the app has gone live to keep customers satisfied!

Here are some of the most important things to do once you’ve built your mobile app.

Table of Contents

Meet App Store Requirements

No matter if you plan on launching solely on iOS on the App Store, to Android users in the Play Store, both or any other app store location, you need to check that your app meets all their listing requirements.

Firstly, there must be no glitches in the app. A company like Apple is built around creating the best user experience. They cannot fulfil this promise to their customers if their App Store is offering glitchy or unfinished products.

Next, perform some App Store Optimisation (ASO) to increase your app’s rankings in the App Store. Ensure that your descriptions are relevant and accurate to the category you want your app listed in. It should be short, to the point and include your app’s and brand’s keywords. Also, add some eye-catchy but informative images that show the user what they get from downloading it.

Finally, your app must have value. Apple’s App Store alone has more than 1 million apps listed already so if your app doesn’t stand out or offer something different, you will struggle to get downloads.

Getting that value across to your users comes from marketing, which brings us to the next point…

Market Your App

ComboApp reported that over 65 percent of small businesses (including your rivals) and almost all big brand companies have already developed a mobile app. That’s an awful lot of competition, making marketing campaigns even more important.

The number one goal for app marketing should be to increase rankings in app stores. Higher rankings are key to generating organic downloads.

This mobile app marketing guide goes into thorough detail about this but here are the main points to consider.

Once you have finished building your app, invest in App-Install Ad Campaigns. While paid promotions will lead to inorganic downloads, they will increase rankings in app stores. In turn, this will increase the number of organic downloads, leading to a further increase in rankings, etc..

Social media marketing is also vital to getting more downloads, particularly influencer marketing. Grow your list of influencers and connect with them through social media and email outreach.

Like and comment on their social media posts. This shows to them (and their audience who you’d like to download your app) that you regularly take part in their community, gaining their trust and accessing a pool of potential new users. If either the influencer or their audience members happen to respond to your interactions, engage back with them.

Don’t forget to add links to download your app in your email signature and social media pages. Update the profile, cover and background images that show the app in use. You could even consider updating your voicemail to encourage callers to check out and download the app too.

Use Analytics To Monitor Customer Behavior

The idea behind app analytics is to show you what your customers respond to in your app and how it can be improved to improve the user experience.

71% of all app users churn within 90 days across all industries, making customer retention vital to being a success.

There are a number of analytics solutions available, such as Google Analytics and Appsee, but they all provide key insights into your app’s performance and user behavior.

For the features that are performing well, leave them be. For the features that are not performing well, implement some A/B testing techniques. This will allow you to see measurable real-time effects of a change.

Be Prepared For App Maintenance

You may think that you have created the perfect app but after a while, you may run into something that just slipped through the net. If this happens, you need to be prepared to correct the problem quickly and roll out the update.

App maintenance goes beyond small bug fixes though. Customer feedback can help take your app to the next level. One thing that customers often talk about with apps is implementing additional features or functionalities. Take the feedback on board and if it’s something that you’d be interested in, develop it and release it for download.

The final app maintenance you need to be prepared for is big, app-defining software updates. This can be in terms of the app store provider’s software being updated that you must now comply with, or making wholesale changes to your own.

Ensure that you have the capacity to make any of these changes if and when they are required. They could happen sooner than you think.

Go Back Over Everything

While this may seem a bit generic, it’s vital. Ask yourself these questions:

Is the app fully ready for download?
Do I have a landing page for my app?
Have I developed my list of journalists and influencers to help promote the app?
Do I have a digital marketing strategy?
Are my developers ready to make changes quickly if and when they’re needed?
Is my branding complete?

There are so many things to go over but by just going back over your to-do list, you can put your mind at ease and take away the stresses that come with building a mobile app.

Conclusion

Developing an app is hard work but what comes next takes just as much effort to get right. By marketing, maintaining and making improvements to your app and the customer experience, you will see the number of downloads (and your bottom line) increase and avoid asking yourself, ‘now what?’