Understand how engagement, user behavior, features, and design should all be factored into your planning process in order to develop a top-ranking mobile app.

1. How to Build a 5 Star App

2. THE MOBILE APP LIFECYCLE
DISCOVERY PRODUCT PERFORMANCE

3. DISCOVERY
You need to get ready to build your five-star
app before spending money on it.
Understand true product value on mobile
What makes a great mobile app?
Validate your product and design

4. DO I NEED MOBILE?
Insight From Sensors Quick Reward Flow Defend Your Brand New Channels and
Interactions

5. CONTEXT DRIVES ENGAGEMENT
Match content to fit
people’s daily lives
Capture data to form
personalized experiences
Use data to perfect
content offerings

6. BEHAVIOR IS CHANGING
Mass adoption of
cloud & social
Increased data
adoption and speeds
Multi screen
ownership
Comfort with regular
transactions

7. DISTRIBUTION, REWARD, ENGAGEMENT

8. WHAT MAKES A
GREAT APP?

9. GOOD ENOUGH IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
Re-think your minimum viable product.
Exceed your users’ expectations.

10. Don’t do them (yet). Focus on your core experience.
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000
kicks once, but I fear the man who has
practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
NICE FEATURES?

11. Build the right features, with the
right services, on the right devices,
for the right people.
WHO IS YOUR
LAUNCH CUSTOMER?

12. WHAT ARE YOUR TARGET DEVICES?

13. DESIGN AND PROTOTYPING
Where do you go from here?

14. GO LOW FIDELITY
Paper is your cheapest option

15. SEE YOUR DESIGNS LIVE ON DEVICE
Build and design to your form factors as you’re doing the work

16. USE YOUR PROTOTYPE
Does your app flow work?
Are your core features accessible?

17. MAKE IT PRETTY
Use platform features to build amazing UI

18. DESIGN FOR THE PLATFORM

19. SHOW AND TELL
Before you write a line of code, get this feedback.

20. DISCOVERY SUMMARY
A process that builds a strategy roadmap to set your
design, business, and engineering goals.
What is Discovery?

21. PRODUCT
How to create a development culture to ship five-star apps:
Deconstructing mobile myths
Mobile development insights
How to ship

22. RUTHLESS PRIORITIZATION
Need a product owner/manager to cut, cut, cut!
Management can’t just throw features over the wall.

23. FOLLOW GOOD ENGINEERING PRACTICES
Know your platform Write clean code Make it “just work”

24. LATENCY KILLS IN ALL WAYS
Connectivity kills the
user experience
Slow performance kills
the user experience
Bad design kills the
user experience

25. BUILD AND TEST
ON DEVICE
Can you do your own QA?

26. GET BRUTAL AND HONEST FEEDBACK
Just like during discovery, you need to get feedback to focus on shipping.

27. PRODUCT SUMMARY
Just like during discovery, you need to get feedback to focus on shipping.
Ruthless
Prioritization
Running the products
on device
Shipping weekly
builds
Close the
feedback loop

28. PERFORMANCE
Prepare for the future:
Getting ready
for launch
Measuring your
success
Launching and
sustaining momentum

29. BETA TEST
Just like Discovery, feedback is crucial

30. Make it easy for users to reach out directly to you.
SUPPORT YOUR USERS

31. Listen to user feedback, and take it seriously.
SUPPORT YOUR USERS
Send your feedback directly!

32. This is done at the tail end of the “Product” phase.
Analytics, event tracking, deep-linking, etc.
ARM YOUR APP BEFORE LAUNCH

33. Good Store Ranking
CONQUER STORE RANKINGS
=
Better Distribution
Engagement
Reward

34. START YOUR
MARKETING ENGINES
What channels are used for distribution?

35. LAUNCHING IN 10, 9, 8…
All media should be delivering one message:
DOWNLOAD NOW!

36. MEASURING ENGAGEMENT BY THE MINUTE
Usually 1-6 minutes a day.

37. GROWTH ON MOBILE IS ABOUT REACH
Measure daily active users, since mobile is not about # of features.

38. METRICS TO CARE ABOUT
All media should be delivering one message:
Distribution Engagement Reward
(#reviews, #conversions,
happiness)

39. MEASUREMENT TOOLS
ANALYTICS CRASH REPORTING TRACKING INSTALLS

40. PERFORMANCE SUMMARY
GET READY TO LAUNCH
Marketing, support, beta testing, analytics
ONE MESSAGE. ALL CHANNELS:
“Download now!”
MEASURE DISTRIBUTION, ENGAGEMENT AND REWARD
TURN INSIGHT INTO FEEDBACK, ITERATE

41. THE MOBILE APP LIFECYCLE
DISCOVERY PRODUCT PERFORMANCE