9 Characteristics of Successful mCommerce Apps

THE 9 ESSENTIAL TRAITS OF A
SUCCESSFUL iPHONE OR ANDROID APP
By Jim Nichols,
VP Marketing, Apsalar

We speak with dozens of brand leaders
every week, including many that have ques-
tions about what sorts of best practices
exist to ensure the success of an app. The
good news is that successful apps do share
a number of characteristics, and we’ll dis-
cuss the most important of these below.
The bad news is that the competitive en-
vironment for an Android or iPhone app
is intensely challenging. Recent show that
there are more than 1.5 million paid and free
apps available on Google Play, and almost
as many - 1.4 million - available on the Ap-
ple App Store.
We don’t point that out to discourage
you from introducing an app - far from it.
Rather, we bring it up because any compa-
ny that wants to be successful in the app
arena needs to recognize that it takes real,
sustained commitment. That commitment
needs to extend from initial concepting to
ongoing support and feature development.
THE 9 ESSENTIAL TRAITS
OF A SUCCESSFUL iPHONE
OR ANDROID APP
2Copyright © 2015 All rights reserved worldwide. | www.apsalar.com
Before we continue, it’s important
to remember that the challeng-
es for games are rather different
from those for utilities, produc-
tivity apps and retail applications.
Because Apsalar works with many
of the leaders in the mcommerce
arena worldwide, we are going to
focus this eguide on key success
factors for the latter group.

Before you begin app development, before you
get app developers involved, before you appoint
a product manager, you need to determine what
constitutes success for you. Don’t get caught up
with what the app developer and app publisher
Joneses are doing. For applications outside of the
game genres, being number one in the app stores
is not only unlikely, it’s also probably meaningless
from the point of view of driving your business.
Retail apps, for example, are about driving sales,
not being at the top of the heap in downloads.
Additionally, companion or utility apps have expe-
riential benefits that are not measurable in install
counts. You need to define what success means
for YOU, and then use that as your app develop-
ment compass and barometer.
1 FORMULATE YOUR DEFINITION OF
SUCCESS AND SUCCESS MEASURES

Successful apps are much more likely than
average to have mobile app measurement and
attribution platforms in place before they launch.
They recognize the need to understand consumer
behavior, both to see what is working in their apps
and well as to identify and improve what isn’t.
Without the ability to see and understand in-app
user behavior for your Android and iPhone app,
you’ll have to rely on hunches to assess customer
satisfaction and define your optimization plan.
This information is absolutely critical business
intelligence.
2 MEASURE AND UNDERSTAND
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN YOUR APP

The best apps do things that people can’t get done in other
places. It is not enough to simply offer up another way to
make purchases or find a store. While those tasks may be
elements of your overall app experience, you need to look
at your app as a way of creating unique value. That value
can come in utility, entertainment, convenience, or a host of
other areas. But it needs to be there.
Utility and uniqueness matter in large part because Nielsen
tells us that the average smartphone bears about 100 apps
but only 10-15 are regularly used. With that kind of dynam-
ic, “good enough”...isn’t. A big part of delivering on this app
“must” is ensuring you have outstanding app UI and UE.
Apps that are difficult to use don’t get used. There is no
substitute for great mobile app design. It’s that simple.
3 MAXIMIZE YOUR TYPE OF UNIQUE UTILITY

Phones play a big role in how consum-
ers spend their personal time. The mas-
sive growth in mobile media time hasn’t
come at the expense of PC but rather
as an addition to PC connected time.
People turn to their phones to relieve
boredom, fill waiting time, etc. Because
of this, many brand find their users
open to longer and deeper engage-
ments on smartphones. Look at those
as big opportunities to drive app adop-
tion and usage.
4 MAXIMIZE EDUCATION
AND ENTERTAINMENT VALUE

You could argue that this is a corollary to the point above, but it
warrants a separate discussion because it is so important. An app
should leverage what’s unique about smartphone versus PC use,
specifically any of the following characteristics:
5 LEVERAGE THE UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS OF
THE SMARTPHONE IN YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION
People have their phones with them all
the time. That gives you an opportunity to
create new touchpoints, like serving people
while commuting, standing in line, etc. An
often-cited example here is incorporating
a bar code scanner people can use while
shopping brick and mortar stores.
Hyperportability
Because consumers have phones with them
while away from desks or the sofa, they
offer an opportunity to add value through
location-based services and utility.
Location-Relevance
Location-Relevance Smartphones offer unique ways to com-
municate to users. Leverage them to help
ensure a successful app.
b
c
a

Consumers expect to be able to customize
information and experiences on mobile. This
raises the bar for you and your development
team when it comes to creating a successful
app, but it also affords you the opportunity to
create uniquely personal iPhone and Android
app experiences that drive brand engagement
and conversion.
This app marketing principle is important in
both the experience you provide in your app
and in the messages you use to drive people
back to your app over time. Leverage insights
about in-app user behavior to segment your
users and develop targeted marketing pro-
grams personalized to these segments.
For example, our Apsalar Audiences for Face-
book offering enables you to define segments
of users and export the device advertising IDs
(i.e., IDFA or Android Advertising ID) of those
segments directly into Facebook Ads Manag-
er as Custom Audiences. After all, driving an
install from an app store is only the beginning
of the marketing challenge for most mobile
applications.
6
LEVERAGE PERSONALIZATION
AND PERSONALIZED EXPERIENCE

Succeeding with an app is definitely
NOT a set-it-and-forget it proposi-
tion. You need to constantly freshen
your content to give people reasons
to return. In addition, you need to
ensure that you incorporate new
features and capabilities to keep the
utility fresh as well.
7
KEEP THINGS FRESH WITH
FREQUENT CONTENT AND
EXPERIENCE UPDATES

Social media and social media networks are
important ways to spread the word about
your app and drive re-engagements and
relaunches. Because so much mobile time
is spent in social media apps like those for
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, integrat-
ing your app
into social
conversa-
tions can
yield both im-
mediate and pro-
longed benefits for
your business. More and
more app developers are
incorporating social media
and sharing as central app
experiences. App publishers
should insist on this.
8
GET SOCIAL

Establishing and sustaining an
app costs money. You need mar-
keting support to drive installs
and re-engagements.
Take those last two sentences
seriously. App businesses really
cannot propel themselves. You
need to create a real marketing
plan that focuses on strategies
and tactics to deliver on your
KPIs over the long haul.
Remember, your app is com-
peting with more than a million
apps in each app store, and
about a hundred on the Android
or iOS phones that your users
rely on. Staying top-of-mind and
becoming a regular/ubiquitous
part of their lives is essential.
That doesn’t mean you should
pursue those standard measures
that game companies rely on
to measure their success. Being
on the App Store top 10 is high-
ly unlikely for a non-game-app.
Fortunately top 10 status is un-
necessary and in all probability
doesn’t help you deliver on your
true goals.
So what does matter? Since
many non-game-e apps are
designed to drive sales, let me
provide some examples of how
targeted marketing and preci-
sion messaging give you amaz-
ing tools with which to build
your business. The key is effec-
tively managing your data and
creating rich and informative
user profiles.
9
KEEP SUPPORTING YOUR APP WITH MARKETING

Here are a couple of examples of how to use profiles
and user segments to drive sales:
Those are just three examples of how you can unlock the power of your
user behavior data to drive and ensure the success of your app.
We all have customers that for whatever reason
stop using an app. Often, it’s not driven by dissat-
isfaction but rather that the app has left their top-
of-mind consciousness. By identifying your lapsed
customers and being able to send ads, emails and
push notifications to them, you can make your
app top-of-mind consciousness again.
Lots of people start the buying process but exit
the app before they finish it. With a mobile DMP
you can identify these specific individuals and get
their IDs to your media partners and marketing
automation platform so you can encourage them
to return and buy.
If you know through past purchases that someone
buys a lot of merchandise from a particular brand
or in a particular category, you can use push noti-
fications and other marketing tactics to sell them
additional brand items, or related items, or cap-
ture more share of their category wallet.
LAPSED CUSTOMERS
CART ABANDONS
BRAND BUYERS AND LOYALISTS

A final thought. It may not be necessary to deliver on all these
areas for your app; certainly there may be unique circum-
stances or characteristics that make one or more of these
points irrelevant. But this list of app success factors offers a
strong starting point on which to build your success.
The most important thing to remember is that like any other
worthwhile thing, app marketing success requires strategy,
insight and ongoing dedication to make happen.
CONCLUSION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Nichols is VP of Marketing for
Apsalar. Jim has 20+ years experience
in over 80 different categories,
including developing successful
positioning and go-to-market plans
for more than 40 adtech and martech
companies. He joins Apsalar after
several years as VP of Marketing for
Conversant, where he led various
efforts in the successful rebrand of
the company from ValueClick, Inc.
The rebrand and associated industry
attention for the company contributed
to the $2.3B sale of Conversant to
Alliance Data in December, 2014. He is a
prolific writer for digital trades on brand
marketing, mobile, video, data, and
customer profiling. Publications include
iMedia Connection, Inside Radio,
VentureBeat, ad:tech, ShellyPalmer.
com, Jack Myers, and many consumer
publications. He holds a B.A. in
U.S. History from the University of
Pennsylvania and an MBA in Marketing
from the University of Chicago.
ABOUT APSALAR
Apsalar, the leader in mobile data management, helps direct marketing brands get
better marketing effectiveness by providing a mobile data management platform
that delivers a true understanding of customer behavior in apps and across other
marketing channels.
The Apsalar Mobile DMP enables brands to measure marketing effectiveness,
enhance, manage, enrich and segment profiles to build audiences, and easily and
safely connect to other marketing partners so brands can confidently share their
data and audiences.
APSALAR
ATTRIBUTION
APSALAR
AUDIENCES
APSALAR
DATASYNC
MOBILE DMP
Collect and measure in-app
consumer behavior and
marketing performance.
Measure every in-app action
relevent to your buinesss
Unite your first party data
from all sources, enrich it
with third party data, and
build high performance
marketing audiences
Easily and safely share
customer audiences and
data with your digital
marketing platforms,
including analytics,
marketing automation,
media companies and legacy
DMPs
Get more great ideas and insights
about app marketing by visiting:
www.apsalar.com/resources

9 Characteristics of Successful mCommerce Apps

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9 Characteristics of Successful mCommerce Apps