Is the app development world a mystery?
This presentation was given at a CIPR North East event to find out more about how apps are being used to communicate with people across the globe on a daily basis and how one could work for your organisation.
Jason Yip from NewcastleGateshead Initiative and Michael Dunn, from Gospelware, shared their experiences, giving some top tips on using apps as part of integrated PR campaigns and looking ahead to see how people will be communicating on the move in the future.
Here is Jason Yip's presentation.
2. What’s App All About?
‘abbreviation for application or application
program: a small computer program that you can
download onto a mobile phone’
Cambridge Dictionary
3. What’s App All About?
‘abbreviation for application or application
program: a small computer program that you can
download onto a mobile phone’
Cambridge Dictionary
11. Where to Distribute Your Mobile Apps
5 Mobile App Stores 5 Smart Phone Devices
• Apple iTunes / App Store • Apple iOS
• Google Play (Android Market Place) • Android
• BlackBerry App World • BlackBerry RIM
• Nokia Ovi • Nokia Symbian
• Windows Phone 7 Market Place • Windows Phone 7
12. App Store Statistics February 2012
Number of Apps Distribution
400,000
350,000 Apple iOS
300,000
250,000
200,000 Google
150,000 Play
100,000
50,000 Blackberry
0
Windows
Phone
13. Who and Where to Target Your Apps
Who’s Using Them? YouGov Survey 2011
14. Statistics
• In January 2012 the 10,000,000,000 app was
downloaded from the Apple App Store
• iOS Apps that break the top 50 are generally downloaded over
10,000 times daily
• 18% of iPhone users spend more than four hours a day on their device;
compared to just 4% of Android and BlackBerry users
• 95% of downloaded free apps are opened once or never at all. To put it
another way, 95% of free apps are not in use after a month.
• Almost twice as many iPhone owners than Smartphone users complete
at least one financial transaction on their mobile device each month
15. Why are Smart Phone Apps so Popular?
• Marketing and PR
16. Why are Smart Phone Apps so Popular?
• Marketing and PR
• Demand for Mobile
Communication
17. Why are Smart Phone Apps so Popular?
• Marketing and PR
• Demand for Mobiles
• Natural Touch Interface
18. Why are Smart Phone Apps so Popular?
• Marketing & PR
• Demand for Mobiles
• Natural Touch Interface
• E-commerce Made Easy
19. Why are Smart Phone Apps so Popular?
• Marketing & PR
• Demand for Mobiles
• Natural Touch Interface
• E-commerce Made Easy
• Number and Variety
21. Why are Smart Phone Apps so Popular?
• Marketing
• Demand for Mobiles
• Natural Touch Interface
• E-commerce Made Easy
• Number and Variety
• Cost – Phones & Services
22. Why are Smart Phone Apps so Popular?
• Marketing
• High Resolution Camera
• Demand for Mobiles
• Stills and Video
• Natural Touch Interface
• Microphone
• E-commerce Made Easy
• Number and Variety • Gyroscope , Compass, GPS
• Cost – Phones & Services • Infrared
• Apps Tap into Technology • NFC (Near Field Communication)
24. 5 Tips for Building the Perfect App
• TIP 1 Brand Your App –Think of the Customer Journey
Barclaycard Waterslide Application
25. 5 Tips for Building the Perfect App
• TIP 2 Think of the User Experience
'Just like a real A4 - it's boring
Audi A4 Driving Challenge and tedious', 'I feel ripped off -
even though the game was free!'
26. 5 Tips for Building the Perfect App
• TIP 3 Promotion and Knowing Your Customers
Cooperative ‘Grown By Us’
‘Co-operative’s new app lets
shoppers see where their
food is grown’
27. 10 Tips for Building the Perfect App
• TIP 4 Not Everyone Has an iPhone!
• They are approximately 3 million iPhones in use
in the UK (4% of the total mobile phone market)
• Misguided perceptions that iPhone represents
an important group of opinion formers
• Understand the demographics & perceptions of
the handset user base
• Blackberry with its free BBM has greater
appeal to the teenage market
• Older users just want to phone and text
• But it can all change quickly!
28. 5 Tips for Building the Perfect App
• TIP 5 Look for Quick Hits and Viral Ideas………then evolve it!
Carling iPint
‘Please Note: You must be
over your country’s legal
drinking age to download this
application.’
‘The hyper realistic liquid
tilts, pours and reacts just as
if you were holding a real pint.
And just like a real pint, it
empties when you ‘drink’ it.’
30. Final Thoughts for 2012 and Beyond
• Everyone Becomes Smarter (especially oldies)
31. Final Thoughts for 2012 and Beyond
• Everyone Becomes Smarter (especially oldies)
• Retail will change
32. Final Thoughts for 2012 and Beyond
• Everyone Becomes Smarter (especially oldies)
• Retail will change
• Tablets Boom
• 440% Growth from end 2010 to Nov 2011
• Sell more than PCs
• 77% of the total ‘mobile’ data traffic comes from tablets
Hinweis der Redaktion
Starting a week ago, around January 15th, Apple posted a countdown to the ten billionth (10,000,000,000, with nine zeros after the ten) app download from it's App Store, which now serves the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, and soon, Mac OS. The countdown is for total, not individual downloads, as the App Store has a comparatively small 300-something thousand apps available for download. This is still more than 80% of the market share, or over four times more than the Android Market, BlackBerry AppWorld, and Nokia Ovi Store, combined.
Tablets
In my view the perfect branded app is one that meets the brand objectives, works on their customers' handsets and at the same time it provides a good, engaging user experience. Barclaycard have had a great deal of success for their Waterslide application. Nearly a million people downloaded the game. It is a simple, addictive and highly engaging game. So is this the perfect branded app? No, quite far from it. If you have ever downloaded it you will see that there is very little branding. Just a logo on the home screen. The game was developed to promote their contactless payment cards and network. You may well have seen the adverts on TV. Yet in the app there is no customer journey. No way to find out more or even open an account. So, vast spend on TV advertising and a million downloads later, how has this enhanced the Barclaycard brand? In spite of it being the most downloaded branded app ever, I would argue that it has given the brand very little value. As one cynical colleague said 'it's the kind of thing my teenage son would play'.
At least Barclaycard had some benefit in terms of a positive user experience. Look what happened when Audi put a poorly thought out driving game into the app store. Driving a black car on a black background was unlikely to work for anyone. However, the problem with apps is that users will make a real effort to share their poor experiences. These were some of the comments from users: 'Just like a real A4 - it's boring and tedious', 'I feel ripped off - even though the game was free!'
That is one extreme example. Many brands have developed apps which are much more engaging, and right on the brand message. The Cooperative for example developed an iphone app called Grown By Us. The concept is a good one: as a retailer who emphasises the importance of locally grown food, the app allows the iphone user to scan the barcode of any locally grown product and the app shows you which farm it came from. It will even tell you who the farm manager is. It is right on message for that brand, and it works well. So is this the perfect branded app? Sadly not. There are two big problems. For a start, has anyone ever heard of it? This is a classic case of failure to promote the app properly. Its mere existence in the app store is not enough to generate any significant downloads. The second and biggest problem is, how many of the Cooperative's customers own an iphone? Looking at their demographic, it is very few indeed. So why was it only developed for the iphone?
This may be stating the obvious, but it seems that some brands, and many agencies make the assumption that the mobile world is split into to two categories: those that own an iphone and those that want to own one. There are approximately 3 million iphones in use in the UK at this present time. Whilst at 4% of the total UK handset market, it is a pretty big chunk, it still means that 96% of people in the UK don't own an iphone. In fact, many of them don't even aspire to owning an iphone. For starters the Blackberry with its free BBM has a greater appeal to the teenage market. At the other end of the demographic, older users are largely interested in using their phones for texts and calls. The idea that the iphone represents an important group of opinion formers is misguided. Some brands do well to target the iphone. Take The Guardian's iphone app. For starters its very good, and secondly that clearly meets their demographic. This is proven by the fact that 50% of those who pay for their app still use it on a daily basis, which now represents 5% of the newspaper's downloaded content. However, this is the exception that proves the rule, that most people don't own Apple's handset.
One approach to developing the perfect branded app is to accept that users will only open it once (or twice if you're lucky) and focus on a neat bit of branding. A great example of that is one of the earliest branded apps: the Carling ipint. This was based on a US version, and the concept was simple. Play a game, fill your viral pint, then drink your virtual pint by tipping the glass towards you. It was fun because no one has seen the iphone do that before. It was a great bit of brand engagement, because the only reason you would download the app was to show off to your mates. You're not going to sit on the sofa at home on your own and drink your virtual pint. The brand value was enhanced further by the fact that iphone owners could show it off to their mates who didn't own an iphone.
was the year that the smartphone took off. Sure, smartphones aren’t exactly new, but in the UK (and elswhere) we reached 50% penetration. Even the developing mobile economies are showing a high rates of adoption and will soon seen a majority of people with smart handsets. The adoption of smartphones by a majority of people changes things everything for brands – as Mary Meeker pointed out in 2011, we have reached critical mass. All advertising a can be responsive. Consumers will ‘Tweet’ and ‘Like’ brands where ever they are. And they can compare prices or stock whilst they are standing in a shop.
2011 saw retailers getting into mobile, largely through the mobile web. Many of them quickly found that over 10% of their sales (Amazon, M&S and Halfords to name just three) were coming from mobile devices.A consequence of the growing smartphone adoption is the role of shops. A Google IPSOS study this year found that over 70% of people use their smartphones in shops to compare prices. 22% of smartphone owners changed their purchasing decision in the shop as a result of using the device. That changes the game for retailers; shops will become more like showrooms. But it works the other way round as well. Shops no longer need a retail location. The much touted Tesco Homeplus in Korea is a fine example of that. Others have followed though. Net A Porter created pop-up shops in London and New York using image recongition and augmented reality (IR/AR). In Brighton, John Lewis took the Homeplus model to a Waitrsoe store, and the likes of Debenhams and eBay followed Net A Porter’s example. 2012 will be the year when the very idea of a shop is challenged by smartphones.
Firstly, with more smartphones in everyone’s hands, mobile can be the connective tissue between all brand channels: traditional, digital or social.Secondly, when it comes to brand engagement, most consumers will reach for their mobile before anything else. Brands now need to think in terms of ‘mobile first’.
