Here’s the scenario: you’ve taken your great idea and built a mobile app, but now you’re churning users or getting negative reviews. So, now you’re wondering, how can I make my app better for users, so they stick around and become loyal users? Well, don’t feel too bad; building an app idea is a complicated business. It takes consistent work to make a successful mobile app.
Read on a bit further as we discuss actionable steps you can take to make your mobile apps better for users.
Keep Your Mobile Apps Purpose In Mind
Your app’s purpose is its reason for existing in the world – the critical problem that it solves for users. It’s essential to keep the purpose of your app in mind during the development process, as it can become lost in the excitement of adding more and more features.
Ideally, the earliest version of the app you launch on the Google play store or Apple App Store will be an MVP – Minimum Viable Product. The MVP contains only the essential features of your mobile app to validate your idea and show people are willing to use it.
Avoid straying too far from the MVP by adding more and more features when the app’s core functionality needs improvement.
Make Sure You’re Delivering On Your Promise
Sometimes as entrepreneurs and marketers, we get carried away when selling our apps to users. So, make sure that your marketing communications are not overhyping your product or making promises your app can’t deliver on, especially in the app stores.
It’s also worth reviewing your website and online ads to ensure they’re all on the same page and honest with your potential users.
In other words, make sure that your marketing strategy aligns with your app’s purpose.
Understand Your Users
When designing an app, your focus should be on meeting the needs of the people who will be using it. This process of designing for the user is known as UX User Experience design.
Providing a good mobile app user experience has a number of benefits:
- People are more likely to recommend the app to others if they have a positive experience using it.
- Increased customer loyalty and repeat business.
- Increased user retention.
The foundation of great UX is User Research. User research is a process that helps you to understand your app users better. There are many different ways to do user research, but some common methods include:
- Interviews: You can talk to potential or current users of your app to learn more about their needs and how they use your app.
- Surveys: You can use surveys to collect data from a larger group of users.
- Analytics: You can look at how people use your app to identify areas where they may be having difficulty or could use some help.
Once you have collected data from your user research, you can start to identify patterns and trends. This information can then help improve your app’s UX and user interface design.
Ask For Feedback
Testing your app and gathering feedback to improve is some of the most valuable work you can do during the mobile app development process. Testing with real people who are not familiar with your product will give you valuable insights into where you need to improve.
The benefits of asking for user feedback can include:
- Helping you improve your product by understanding what users like and don’t like, you can make changes to better meet their needs.
- It can help build a sense of community around your product.
- Helping you to prioritise what features to build next.
There are many ways to ask users for feedback about your app. One way is to simply include a feedback form within the app itself. Make it easy to find and fill out, and be sure to explain why you’re asking for feedback. You could also reach out to users through social media, email, or even in-person to ask for their thoughts on your app. Thank them for their time and let them know how much you appreciate their feedback.
Use App Analytics
App Analytics are a valuable tool when it comes to making your app better for users.
The key benefit of mobile app analytics is anonymously detecting bugs and crashes on mobile devices and tracking how features within your app are being used. This can help you focus your development efforts on areas that are most important to your users.
Implementing analytics in your app is quite simple if you haven’t done so already. All you need to do is sign up with an Analytics provider, download their SDK, and add a few lines of code to your app. Then App Analytics will start collecting data automatically.
The in-app analytics can also be supported by server-side logging of events and usage data on your server. Most developers do this as a matter of course.
Catch & Fix Bugs
Nothing frustrates mobile app users more than a buggy app. Yes, bugs are an inevitability when creating any software, including apps. In the words of Edsger Dijkstra:
“If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in”.
Edsger Dijkstra
Fixing bugs and pain points within your app must be a priority. Why? Well, while we as entrepreneurs and developers may accept the odd bug. The people who use your app will not be so forgiving. Sometimes a frustrated user will reach out to you for support or leave a negative review. Still, most will silently give up on your app completely, never to return. Users silently leaving in frustration is terrible – especially if you’re spending revenue to acquire each new user.
There are three main tactics app developers can use to help manage bugs:
- Error Logging – adding this to your software will help automatically catch and report bugs that may happen silently without you otherwise knowing.
- Bug Tracking System – implementing a system that allows anyone to report a bug to a central database will enable you to track when it occurs and handle it appropriately.
- Gather feedback – make it easy for users to give you feedback on your app. Either in-app or by reaching out to them via email, asking them how they’re getting on and if they need any help. (But don’t forget to respond!)
Finally, remember that not all bugs are created equal. They can range in severity from, “Uhm, that text looks a bit too small” to “everything’s on fire”! So have a plan for handling them appropriately to avoid burning everyone on your team out.
Conduct a UX Review
Conducting a UX review is a valuable way to assess the quality of your app’s user experience. It involves looking at all aspects of the design, from the layout and navigation to the overall usability.
There are many benefits of conducting a UX review for an app. Perhaps the most significant benefit is that it can help identify usability problems that may affect the app’s overall performance. In addition, a UX review can provide valuable insights into how users interact with the app and what their needs and expectations are. It can also help assess the effectiveness of the app’s current design and make recommendations for improvements.
There are many different ways to conduct a UX review. One common method is to use a checklist of specific criteria, such as those listed in the Nielsen Norman Group’s “10 Usability Heuristics.” Another popular way is to use the “Cognitive Walkthrough” technique, which involves walking through the design from a user’s perspective and assessing how easy it is to complete specific tasks.
Ultimately, a UX review can help ensure that users have a positive experience with your app and can achieve their desired tasks and goals.
For a do it yourself guide to carrying out your own UX review, check out this UX review framework anyone can use from UX Planet.
Final Thoughts
In this article, we’ve discussed various ways to improve the quality of your app, including implementing analytics, catching and fixing bugs, and conducting a UX review. All of these strategies can help ensure that users have a positive experience with your app and can achieve their desired tasks and goals.
Could you use some help on a mobile app development project?
At Full Revolution, we love to help entrepreneurs bring their app ideas to life. So, if you dream of launching an app for iPhone or Android devices and could use some help, you can get in touch with us here.
