In the business world, some new synonyms have emerged for the word ‘failure’: ‘acceptable’, ‘that’ll do’, and ‘functional’. Any company that aims at creating mobile apps that are just about ‘acceptable’ has clearly found the shortest route to failure.
The thing is: with mobile apps, the measure of success is not a horizontal scale – with ‘failure’ on one end and ‘perfect’ on another. It’s actually a switch; it’s either ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ with nothing in between.
Here are some of the reasons why mobile apps fail to engage their users:
Lack of Intuitive UI/UX:
User experience is one of the vital contributors towards success of an app. Users feel frustrated and cheated with your mobile solution if they have to exert themselves to carry out basic functionalities in your app.
Users prefer to interact and engage with an app that understands their actions and supports them to make their life easy. There are multiple reasons for a poor user experience, some of them being: long loading time, slow app performance, long registration process, distracting icons, etc.
Ignoring Platform-specific best practices:
Different platforms like Android, iOS, Windows, etc., have their respective interface guidelines and practices. For each platform, the icons, common buttons and images operate differently. For example, the ‘back’ button and ‘Home’ function are more specific to Android than iOS.
In native iOS apps there is no concept of side menu bar, whereas side menu is a common UI element in Android. Similarly various other UI components differ in Android and iOS.
A well ideated and efficiently built app can fail to engage users due to such platform related nuances.
Failure to take Timely Actions on User Reviews
If you release an app which has bugs, it is likely to be discovered by a few initial users, who will definitely point them out while writing reviews of your app. Releasing a buggy app is unforgivable but if you still want to redeem yourself, you should promptly respond to your user feedback, with a promise of fixing the issue as soon as possible. However, if you fail to take this action, there is no saving your app. Its failure is guaranteed.
The Final Word
If you are a serious entrepreneur or a business that doesn’t settle for the second best, you already know that the competition in the mobile app space is cut throat. How do you then differentiate your product?