Four years since the app launched: what have we learned?
Mobile specialist, trainer and co-founder of the Mobile Training Academy Rob Thurner points the way to avoid the hazards and deliver successful apps…
Put the champagne on ice: there are only a couple of months until the mobile app celebrates its fourth anniversary.
Apps have enjoyed a meteoric rise to prominence in their short lifetime, having first appeared on the screens of early adopting iPhone users back in July 2008.
By March 2012 Apple reported 25 billion downloads, with app downloads tracking at one billion per month, a number matched by its major app store competitor, Android Market.
Apps have made a healthy contribution to Apple’s revenues, generating an estimated $6 billion, which includes the 30% Apple takes in its share of app download spend, charges from in-app payments, and revenue from iAd, its in-app advertising business.
Global explosion
Today’s smartphone users, who now outnumber non-smartphone users in the UK, USA and other leading mobile markets, have a choice of around two million apps in the stores hosted by Apple, Android, Microsoft and BlackBerry. Further to this, app downloads are now tracking at two billion per month.
For the marketer, the logic for investing in apps is compelling. There are three key reasons:
1) Personalisation
Mobile is the ultimate personalised marketing channel: we don’t share our handsets, and most of us never part company with our phones.
When I download an app, it becomes “mine”, creating an easy, convenient and instant one-to-one shortcut to the chosen brand through a bookmarked icon on my handset or tablet which can be accessed 24/7, in all locations, with or without internet access or cellular signal.
2) Payment channel
Through iTunes Apple established a convenient, secure and trusted channel for music lovers to download and pay for music.
Users set up their accounts online, added credit card details just once, and agreed terms and conditions authorising Apple to charge them via their mobile bills for multiple purchases, typically at low transactions costs, ranging from 78p to £3.
The iTunes store then added books, other goodies and Apps to be paid for using the same payment channel. This payment model has since been replicated by Android and Microsoft.
3) No credible alternative
For many years, mobile internet fell well short of its potential in delivering a satisfactory internet-based engagement channel for information-hungry mobile users.
This created a vacuum for apps to gain traction and multiply, unopposed. The phenomenal app success story has been turbo-charged through slick marketing by the app stores, and by the emergence of advertiser-friendly specialist app companies which talked the right language when appealing to client and agency based creatives, developers and C-level staff.
Success factors
Whatever the business sector and consumer proposition, apps are all about delivering a clear consumer benefit, delivering engaging content, maximising download volumes and ensuring frequent use.
This explains why the biggest app categories are games and social networking, which account for 62% of all app usage.
If you are struggling to tick one or more of the following boxes, your app is unlikely to hit the mark with download volumes or frequency.
| Consumer benefit | Examples | Y or N |
|---|---|---|
| Utility | Access to social networks or bank details/identify music) | ? |
| Entertainment | Games or music/film downloads | ? |
| Information | News or sport/travel/weather updates/currency exchange | ? |
Get it right and the rewards are sensational. Take Angry Birds, Rovio’s legendary app, which achieves 1 million downloads every day, occupying the world’s smartphone users with the cumulative play time of 25 years gaming every day and generating monthly in-app ad revenues of $1 million.
Consider the phenomenal success of Shazam, the audio-tagging app which has achieved 200 million downloads. There are two strands to Shazam’s success.
First there is its accurate, user-friendly audio recognition software allowing music lovers to identify and buy the music they’re discovering at festivals and in clubs, tagging their favourites and sharing via social media.
Secondly you have the extension of the service to recognize TV and radio ad jingles, taking app users directly to corresponding sites and apps. And what has been the result of all this? It took Shazam 10 years to log its first billion tags, and 10 months to log its last billion.
User engagement and conversion to sale
The 2012 Super Bowl proved to be a watershed for Shazam, which ran an experiment in audio tagging 50% of the ads broadcast. Viewers Shazam’d ads as much they commented about the brands on all social media channels combined.
However, Shazam’s real success lies far beyond the tag numbers: on average all Shazam TV campaigns have seen 65% or more “post tagging” engagement. And critically, Shazam interactions convert to sale: for instance, a campaign by Old Navy resulted in a 27% conversion to sale.
According to CEO Andrew Fisher, consumer use of Shazam to respond to TV ads far exceeded expectations, no doubt easing negotiations to sign an exclusive deal with ITV in the UK.
Native apps bring a range of consumer benefits and revenue streams for B2C and B2B business. As a rule, the apps which enable users to access other native functions on the handset to create a highly personalised experience are most likely to encourage repeat usage.
Consider the cameraphone, photo library, contact book, calendar, social media profiles, GPS, accelerometer, calculator and browser.
API plug-ins, including Google Maps, weather updates and Facebook Connect are all popular, allowing the app to aggregate and compile highly personalised data, fed in real time. The app then provides a concierge service.
Read the second half of Rob’s insight tomorrow (6 July), which advises on how to avoid the five main app pitfalls on Newsline.