How Much $$ Did You Waste On Your App?

Does your business have its own app, or are you dreaming of creating one?

Whether you have the ability to develop it yourself, or need to hire someone, it’s a very complex and often costly endeavour.

In theory, the idea of having your own app is great. You need consumers engaged in your own proprietary interface. The opportunities to what you can do within your own app are endless, and it’s just cool in general.

So let’s say you develop your own app. Now what? How do you get your current and potential customers to download it? Unfortunately, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. And even if people are willing to download it, how will they find it?

Why Businesses Might Want Their Own App

You’re visible to your customers constantly. How many times a day does someone unlock their phone and view their screen? Every time they do, they’re seeing you. Making your way onto someone’s phone is a huge accomplishment and massive branding and recognition opportunity.

You can use it as your own direct marketing channel. You have the power to include anything you want in your app, so it’s a great place for sales, specials, etc. You don’t want to become spammy, but there’s an opportunity for permission-based marketing within your own app.

You can give your clients endless value through your own app. From customer loyalty programs to app-specific benefits, you can really make it worth their while. Customer retention is a struggle for all businesses, and your own app can be used as a tool to provide continuous value.

You can use it to provide excellent customer service and keep the line of communication open. Having your own chat or messenger — which allows customers to connect with someone immediately — is just one of the ways you can use your app to engage with customers. Long-term, this will increase customer loyalty and engagement.

You will appear significantly cooler and more established than your competitors. Let’s face it — companies who have their own apps appear legitimate, successful and current.


Questions To Ask Yourself Before Getting Started

If you’re seriously considering developing an app, there are some fundamental things you should consider first.

For a more in-depth discussion on this questions, check out this post.

-Why do you want one — to promote an existing business, or to make money?
-Do you want it to be for Android, iOS, or both?
-How much of an investment can you afford to make?
-Do you want to build it yourself, or hire someone?
-What do you want the functionalities to be?
-What type of risk is involved?

So, You Developed An App. Now What?

This is where a lot of companies get lost. The good news is that recent reports are showing that the average mobile user spends 85% of their usage time in apps. That is a huge number, and it demonstrates the opportunity for companies with apps. But how do you get people to download your app? How will they even find it?

This is a very futuristic conversation that’s talking about what’s to come in regards to app searches. I’d like to take some key points away from a really great Whiteboard Friday, which you can watch here. It’s discussing a very important component of getting your app found for searches — it’s referred to as App Indexing. This is what we need to understand, in order to be able to target those long-tailed keyword searches. It’s actually possible to get your app found, and that’s what we’re going to talk about now.

The first part of App Indexing is understanding what deep links are. A URL takes you to a page with a website. A deep link is the same thing, except we’re referring to an app. A deep link take you to s specific screen in an app — they are essentially the same type of thing. Up until now, there have been various types of deep links, but Apple has coined a new term and they are now leading the way with what they call universal links. This is apparently the new direction that all apps will be following.

A universal link is essentially when you have one link that spreads across various platforms — it goes from your desktop, to your mobile site, and subsequently to your app. Facilitating this all comes down to code, and luckily there are people who know how to do this. What this means is that rather than mapping, the search engines are looking for these deep links that say yes, here is this content that you’re looking for - it doesn’t matter that it’s coming from an app, because the URL is where they get the information from. They are able to index and rank these “pages” or screens now.

So now, apps have the chance at coming up within the search results, if a number of other factors are lining up. Just the same as regular searches, the search engines want to see a high level engagement, and see that this app is considered valuable. Also, the more people download an app, the higher its perceived value and importance, which is also a ranking factor. And, they’re also going to be pulling from your own personal history on these searches. Each person will see slightly different results that are skewed to their preferences.

Now, to ad another layer onto this, Google has recently confirmed that they are going to be starting this, and Apply already does it. What I’m talking about is app-only indexing. You’ve probably already figured this out, but what this means is that because of the deep link structure, there is a possibility for apps to appear within the search results even when there isn’t a corresponding website. Crazy, right?

Next, will be the prevalence of app streaming. It’s already happening now, but it will likely become more popular as companies want to give their audience an opportunity to test out the app before they download it.

Because let’s face it — persuading a customer to download your app is hard. It seems to be the biggest hurdle, causing companies to feel like they’ve wasted this huge investment.

But fear not — times are changing and if you do it right, you’re going to have the opportunity to have your app coming up within the regular search results.

There are other factors involved in this process as well, such as ASO (App Store Optimization), and if you’d like to know more about that, I’d suggest checking out this post.

Do you think it makes sense for small businesses to develop their own apps?