This is a discussion I gave at the Portland Ad Federation lunch on May 5, 2011. It covers the decisions behind mobile apps, and how to prepare your app for success.
The Role of Taxonomy and Ontology in Semantic Layers - Heather Hedden.pdf
Making Mobile Count: How to Succeed in Mobile with the Right Strategy
1. Urban Airship
Making Mobile Count
May 2011
Jason Glaspey : @jasonglaspey
jason@urbanairship.com
* Confidential *
2. Agenda
• Survey
• State of Mobile
• Roots of Success
• Discovery and Engagement
• Earning Revenue
• Q&A
• Wild Applause (optional)
* Confidential *
3. Audience Survey
Phones
• How many of you have smartphone?
• In the past month, how many have downloaded:
• More than 5 apps, More than 10, 15, 20?
* Confidential *
4. Audience Survey
Clients
• How many of you currently work at an agency?
• How many of you have had a client ask:
• What’s our mobile strategy?
• Should we have an app?
• We Need to have an app!
* Confidential *
5. Urban Airship
• First app in the App Store that used Push
• Over 3 Billion Messages, over 2 Million transactions,
over 100 million devices
• Over 8000 Developer accounts; Over 10,000 apps
• Preferred Push provider for Verizon Developer
Community
* Confidential *
7. Urban Airship
Impressive numbers
Until you compare them to Mobile’s numbers.
* Confidential *
8. Mobile has Exploded
• 10 Billion app downloads
• Over 350,000 apps available on iOS alone
• 30-50 apps/person
• Mobile app revenue will top $15 billion this year
• People Love Phones
• People Love Apps
* Confidential *
9. But your app has competition
40 hours 15 apps 1 month
Time spent Number Lifespan
in-app/Month Used/Month of an app
* Confidential *
10. You app has competition
An app isn’t enough.
A GOOD app isn’t enough.
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11. You app has competition
So let’s talk about how to succeed.
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12. Audience Survey
Brand Loyalty
• How many of you consider yourself to have loyalty
to a brand?
• To a car company, watch company, Apple?
* Confidential *
13. Audience Survey
Brand Loyalty
• Ford
• Facebook
• Apple
• Dunkin Donuts
• Sam Adams
• Cheerios
• The Yankees
* Confidential *
15. Audience Survey
Brand Loyalty
• What are the brands you're loyal to?
• Have any of you ever searched to see if that brand
made an app?
* Confidential *
16. Audience Survey
Brand Loyalty
• What are the brands you're loyal to?
• Have any of you ever searched to see if that brand
made an app?
• If it did, would you download it?
* Confidential *
17. The Roots of Success
• Do you need an app?
* Confidential *
18. The Roots of Success
• Do you need an app?
“Um, yeah... I’m
gonna need you to
build me an app this
weekend...”
* Confidential *
19. The Roots of Success
• Do you need an app?
• Would a mobile website be enough?
Pros/Cons to apps
* Confidential *
20. The Roots of Success
Sometimes your mobile strategy is:
“We don’t need one.”
* Confidential *
21. The Roots of Success
• Know your audience!
vs.
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22. The Roots of Success
• Your app needs to tell a story.
vs.
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23. The Roots of Success
• Your app needs to tell a story.
• A good story isn’t about the product.
vs.
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24. The Roots of Success
• Your app needs to tell a story.
• A good story isn’t about the product.
• It’s about the user.
vs.
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26. The Roots of Success
• Don’t create barriers to your app
* Confidential *
27. Know Your Types of Apps
And different motivations behind them
Revenue
Angry Birds
Branding Product Extension
Weber On-The-Grill Xfinity
Utility Storytelling
ESPN Score Center The Democrats
* Confidential *
29. Why Would Users Download?
• Does it have a clear value proposition?
• Are users asking for the app?
• Will you have to market your marketing app?
• Does it provide Entertainment, Solutions, Productivity,
Utility?
• “Because our brand is great” is a bad reason.
• Plenty of apps are ego trips for Brand Managers
comparable to micro sites of 5 years ago.
* Confidential *
30. Why Would Users Return?
• Many apps have short life-spans or infrequent usage
• 95% of free apps are abandoned in 30 days
• 26% are never opened a second time
• Some are only used when needed (utility apps)
• Many are short-term/seasonal
• (Chow.com Thanksgiving Dinner)
* Confidential *
31. A Powerful Story is Critical
• An interesting story is
one about the user
• The story has to be ongoing,
regularly updated
• Push and/or App Upgrades
• Should delight the user
from day one
• Flipboard vs. Xfinity
* Confidential *
32. Content must be deep
Trip-It Nike Training Club
* Confidential *
33. What is Push?
push noun: direct-to-pocket messaging that delivers messages without user-intervention
1. not SMS; no carrier relationship required
2. requires app to be installed on users device and a data connection
3. can work for any IP-connected device
* Confidential *
34. Push Best Practices
• Give lots of control to the user
• Be clear about how you’ll push
• Don’t over-send
• No Spam!
• Put push settings in the app.
• Track active devices to see if
you’re oversending
• You want users to LOVE getting
your messages
* Confidential *
35. Making Money with Apps
• Free vs. Paid apps
• 26% of highest grossing apps
are free
• In-App Purchase &
Subscriptions
• Advertising (makes engagement
important)
* Confidential *
36. In-App Best Practices
• Be clear about what
upgrades are available
• Make the app valuable as-is
• Make the purchase process
really clear and simple
• Look for archived content to
create new revenue streams
* Confidential *
37. Questions and Answers
We’ve talked about:
• State of Mobile
• Roots of Success
• Discovery and Engagement
• Earning Revenue
* Confidential *
We’re gonna go quick, but with lots of time for Q&A\n
I want to get a feel for the audience\n
If they haven’t, they will.\n\nThey’re good questions to ask. there are some fantastic answers out there, and some really fun creative solutions. so i hope you get to answer this.\n
I tell you this hopefully to illustrate we’ve seen some trends and spent some time thinking about mobile... :)\n\nfor those that have clients asking for it, hopefully we can help you steer them in the right direction.\n
\n
\n
This is great. But it also means that it’s going to be really hard for your app to succeed. It’s got a lot of competition, and only a small percent are getting downloaded.\n
This is great. But it also means that it’s going to be really hard for your app to succeed. It’s got a lot of competition, and only a small percent are getting downloaded.\n\n\n
So we’re gonna talk about how to succeed. \n
So we’re gonna talk about how to succeed. \n
\n
I found a study that said that these brands have the highest loyalty.\n\nNo idea how accurate that is, it’s not accurate for portland.\n\nWhere’s Stumptown coffee or VooDoo donuts?\n
Go ahead, shout them out.\n
\n
People have loyalty.\nHowever, sometimes I think Brands overestimate that loyalty.\n\nthese are important questions to think about when imagining a mobile strategy. Don’t overestimate demand.\n
You app can’t succeed if an app isn’t what you needed to begin with\n\napp app app app app app - people are asking for apps, they should be asking for customer engagement\n
You app can’t succeed if an app isn’t what you needed to begin with\n\napp app app app app app - people are asking for apps, they should be asking for customer engagement\n
Clients are asking for “Mobile” and “Apps” are the buzzword dujour.\nGoogle has done lots of both. Dedicated apps when the web isn’t enough, but tons of mobile optimized sites as well.\n\nPro: badge on homescreen, push, engagement, revenue, fast\nCons: Expensive, hard to drive traffic, platform dependent.\n
I had a client that made air conditioners ask me “what should our facebook strategy be?” \n\nMy answer was “don’t have one.”\n\nthey insisted because they needed it to answer to their ego (or boss), not because they needed one.\n\nI tried to point them in some other directions that I thought had much larger ROI, but they needed FACEBOOK.\n
Let’s just assume your audience has a smartphone.\n\nThese people still have wildly different reasons for having a smartphone. And their use cases are different, and how they engage with it is different, and how much time they commit to it is different.\n\nHow you meet their needs depends on how they look to their phone. \n
\n
\n
The Breitling app is a glory-filled, digital masterpiece of a brochure. But it’s still a brochure. I can’t imagine opening it more than once.\n\nIt also only has 3 stars. THREE stars, from people who were loyal enough to download a watch app in the first place.\n\nMaybe it’s a success, maybe i don’t understand luxury watch culture, but I can’t imagine John Travolta opening up his Breitling app on a weekly basis. The weber app I open every time I BBQ.\n
This doesn’t seem to be surprising and delighting users\n\nIt seems like a website crammed into an app\n\nCompare features could be a link to the toyota website, that doesn’t need an app.\n\nImagine what a Toyota app *could* do\n
This app required facebook at first.\n\nYou had *NO* idea what was going to happen if you logged in.\n\nHuge barrier. I just uninstalled it rather than risking it.\n
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I find that a lot of apps fall into some basic categories, based mainly on usage. The phone is an intent-driven device. Know intent.\n\nquick apps should open quick, save state on close, have accessible content opening right to where i probably will want to go.\n\n\n
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Have you answered these questions?\n\nUsers return when it’s a story about them\n
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I always use Tripit as my app dejour because i love it. it’s laser focused and solves one problem so well.\n\nmy wife loves the NTC app because it solves a problem for her very directly. \n\nThere isn’t a single nike product detail in the app. You never are asked to visit a store or find a dealer or get pricing/color information.\n
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Surprise and delight your users.\n\nrare for branded apps. 99% of my apps are not branded apps.\n
Surprise and delight your users.\n\nrare for branded apps. 99% of my apps are not branded apps.\n