Presentation I put together for existing business owners who are wondering about if and how a Mobile App might help their business.

1. What Can an App do for
Carl Brown, PDAgent, LLC
my Business?

2. What we're going to cover today
• How do Apps help existing businesses?
• What functions do business Apps perform?
• What elements go into Apps, and what effect does that
have?
• What device or devices should I target?
• What are the steps in building and publishing an App?
• What can an App end up costing?

3. How do Apps help existing businesses?
A.k.a. What's in it for me?

4. Increase your
customer retention
• If a customer gets used to
using your App, they're less
likely to go to your competitors

5. Put a modern face
on your business
• Some customers refuse to do
business with companies that
don't have Apps
• Just like many of us don't do
business with companies that
don't have websites anymore
• I expect that more potential
customers will start excluding
businesses without Apps over
time

6. Internal Only Apps
(an Aside)
• Some companies have
developed Apps just for their
employees to use
• Point of Sale, Data Collection,
Time Cards, etc.
• That’s another presentation,
though
• We’re talking about customer-
facing Apps today

7. How might Apps hurt businesses?
No reward without some risk

8. Poor Apps are more
annoying than poor websites
• They're more intimate
• They are more closely
associated with your brand by
your customers
• It took more effort for the user
to install it
• Be careful before getting an
App done “on the cheap”
• Better no App than a poor one

9. Have to keep Apps
up to date
• A good App can become a
poor App as technology
progresses
• When services change,
features your customers
depend on will break
• You are expected to respond
to that

10. Not a revenue source
• Do enough people pay you to
read your website for it to pay
for itself?
• But you have a website
anyway, right?
• For most businesses, Apps are
better thought of as a
marketing expense than a
revenue generator.

11. What functions do business Apps perform?
What kind of App might be right for my business?

12. Novelty Apps
• Can be good marketing, if they
take off
• Will be a waste of time if they
don't take off
• Lots of competition in the
novelty space
• High risk/high reward
• Games fall into this category,
too

13. Content Apps
• Inform your customers
• Customers may come to
depend on you
• Customers may come to think
more highly of your brand
• May make your customers feel
they should reciprocate

14. Tracking Apps
• Can be a useful service
provided to your customers
• Can give you good
demographic and marketing
info
• Good lock-in for customers
• They won’t want to have
to re-enter their data into
another App

15. Social Apps
• Allow customers to share their
opinions about your products
or services
• Can generate high adoption
• Needs to be curated
• Failures or mistakes become
very public
• But those may be turned
into opportunities if
handled correctly

16. Service Apps
• Win-win
• Customer does work for
you and feels more in
control
• Creates data for you to use to
enhance retention
• “I see you ordered two
large pepperoni pizzas last
time, would you like the
same thing again?”

17. Hybrids
• You can combine two or more
functions
• Here we have:
• Content (Find Stores)
• Tracking (Favorites)
• Streamlining (my Card)

18. What elements go into Apps, and what effect does
that have?
Should I use build-in User Interface elements, or build custom ones?

19. Standard UI
• Customers will know how to
use it already
• Much less expensive to build
• No novelty or wow factor

20. Custom UI
• Customers will have to figure it
out
• Much more expensive to build
• Can be cool enough people
show their friends
• Can be confusing enough
people hate it

21. What device or devices should I target?
Aren’t there a lot of them? Doesn’t that get expensive?

22. iPhone
• First “App Phone”
• Biggest App Store
• Most Apps per user
• Popular with the early
adopters
• Only one new model per year,
lots of App downloads at new
model release and Christmas

23. Android
• Selling like crazy in the US,
from all carriers
• Fewer Apps downloaded per
user
• Much fewer paid apps per user
• Many different devices, hard to
support/test them all
• Less consistent user
experience

24. Windows Phone 7
• Looks promising as a platform
• Not a lot of market
penetration, yet
• I’d say avoid, at least for now
*Full Disclosure: I don’t program for WP7

25. Blackberry
• Uncertain future as a platform
• I’d say avoid it unless
something drastically changes
*Full Disclosure: I don’t program for BlackBerry

26. iPad
• Great device
• By far the most popular tablet
• More screen means more work
to design for
• Not as portable
• Might not be a good fit for your
business
• More expensive an App if it is
a good fit

27. Android Tablets
• Would be nice to have a
competitor to the iPad
• Sales have been disappointing
so far
• I’d say hold off for now, but
hopefully soon

28. What are the steps in building and publishing an
App?
Just how much work is this, anyway?

29. Step Zero: Register with App Stores
• You have to have accounts on the various App Stores
that you want to submit your App to.
• Or you have to ask your developer to publish it for you
• Either in your name or theirs
• This step can take a while, so Don’t Leave it Until the
Last Minute

30. Step One: Purpose
• Pick your audience
• Pick your functionality
• Pick your goals
• Pick your target platform(s)

31. Step Two: Sketch
• Sketch out our screens
• Sketch out how they transition between them
• Sketch out what data needs to be saved
• Sketch out other functionality (media, server access)

32. Step Three: Development
• Developer breaks App up into tasks
• Checks off the tasks
• Hopefully gives you feedback as they go
• Developer declares “Code Complete”

33. Step Four: Testing
• The more people (especially customers) you can get involved in
testing, the better your App will be
• Test the wrong things, not just the right ones
• What happens if the user types nothing but punctuation in the
email address field?
• What happens if the customer gets a phone call in the middle of
this step?
• Fix the bugs you found in test
• If none were found, testing was probably inadequate

34. Step Five: Submit
• You or your developer submits the App to the Store
• Some Stores this is quick, some have a review cycle that
can take multiple weeks
• Some Apps get rejected and have to be re-worked. Your
contract with the developer should specify any costs
associated with this.

35. Step Six: Marketing
• Technically, this should start earlier that after Submission
• This is a topic that several books have been written about

36. What can an App end up costing?
How can I make decisions without hard numbers?

37. Survey says:
$6,453
• Well, why didn’t you just say
so?
• That’s just an average, it
can depend wildly on
features
• “... most did not include
their personal time in
these figures.”
• “... the cost would be at
least five or ten times
more when using a
contracted team.”

38. Realistically, though
• Simple Utility App (2 screens, like iPhone built-in Weather)
with your Artwork - $2000 (iPhone only, you submit)
• Simple Navigation App (like iPhone Contacts) with your
artwork and built-in UI - $4000 (iPhone Only, you submit)
• It goes up from there.
• Multi-platform (iPad, Android) can add much more.

39. Open-ended costs don’t help me plan
• You should do a two (or more) phase approach
• First, a discovery phase
• Deliverable is a design document
• Once design is locked, only then get a cost estimate
• A reputable mobile vendor (in my opinion) should already
work this way

40. Any Questions?
Contact me at CarlB@PDAgent.com