Nobody yet knows if the mobile app market has peaked or not. What’s evident is the absolute saturation of apps in the stores. It is becoming increasingly difficult for users to find an app on their own without any advertisement. The algorithms, advertisements and campaigns have completely overwhelmed users.
Because of this saturation, users tend to only visit the app libraries or stores when they have to. Much of it is also down to the device limitations. Cluttering a device with apps that users don’t even use often affects the system performance adversely. Another big factor in the app market is the data tracking. From the user’s point of view, it’s a great prevention. But from the developers’ point of view, it hampers their revenues.
Mobile App Essentials for 2023
Because of the aforementioned issues, it is becoming even more difficult for developers and businesses to attain the user’s attention. Good old techniques of advertisements are also quite dated now. In this scenario, there are some absolute musts for modern day apps. These are essential features and concepts that an app in today’s times cannot survive without.
An app’s prospect cannot be guaranteed by checking these tick boxes. But what’s surely evident is that all of these are pretty much necessary for an app to survive the wrath. Here are five essentials every app must have going into the New Year.
SEO
Optimization for a long time was a concept for the web. The search engines of App Store or Play Store were unattended for a very long time. With ads now taking the center stage of mobile usage, the race to come up in a relevant search has now picked up pace.
Just like Search Engine Optimization for websites, the concept of store optimization for apps has risen to popularity over the last few years. One way to stay on top of the search results is to have an ad campaign. In that case, your app will feature right on top of the search results as a sponsored result. Apart from the paid campaigns, here are some practices developers may follow to get their apps highlighted in stores.
- Documentation: An app needs to submit official documentation that consists of all the technical as well as developer side details that helps the store place your app properly. Writing comprehensive app documentation is a specialization and a carefully written document can help rank your app higher in the searches.
- Description: The description of the app on the stores plays a key role in your app’s rankings. Relevant description along with right keywords will help your app get the right visibility.
- Search: iOS has already adopted the concept of a broader local search. The spotlight feature on iOS shows relevant results across the device. Your iOS app development agency can do proper keyword research and relevant naming of the pages which can result in your app showing in the spotlight for all the relevant searches by the user. This local search on Android is much more dynamic and also shows results from the internet along with local search results.
- Screenshots & Videos: Videos play a key role. Most apps have standard screenshots in the description. If you put a nice video with exciting animation about key pages and features of your app, there are chances that your app will rank higher in the search results.
Advertising
Both Android and iOS offer advertising campaigns for apps. These campaigns involve placing a preview of your apps on sponsored ads in the search results, in featured pages and at the bottom of other apps result pages as well.
One of the best places to advertise your app is on the home page of both the App Store and the Play Store. Both Android and iOS offer great ad packages to place ads right on the home page. This will enable your app to appear right after the user presses the store icon on either platform. Along with the advertising, you also get analytics that help you filter out potential leads. The costs for these campaigns are based on taps. You only have to pay if the user taps on the ad.
Content
Content for apps is very important in today’s time. The meaning of content is very different for apps as compared to that for websites. Content by and large means notifications for apps. Sending regular notifications is the best way to attain utmost user engagement.
These notifications have to be curated. There is a fine line between outright spamming the users and posting regularly with relevant announcements. For every major feature, you can drop daily notifications that act as messengers. The level of creativity for these notifications has to be very high. Any relevant ongoing topic or matter can be covered in your notification by smartly integrating it to something on your app.
Another important piece of content is how you name your pages and write information about your products or services. As iterated earlier, the search bar on a device acts as a local search engine. Anything that matches the user’s input from your app can work wonders for your app’s visibility. Ask your Android app development service providers to add as many relevant keywords as possible in the information and description part of all the pages on your app.
Technology
The platform on which an app is developed matters a lot. Although it is for the development part of the app, it also affects how an app gets updates and maintenance. Choosing the right technology can be a bit confusing given the range of options available in the market today. Primarily there are two options available for an app to choose from in terms of development.
- Dedicated: Dedicated development is when an app is created only for a specific platform. For instance, Android has a dedicated programming language Kotlin to develop apps for Android. While Apple introduced Swift for developers to write codes for apps on iOS.
- Native: Native apps are the ones that have a common base and work on both platforms equally. Native apps share a codebase and integrate UI elements on that common codebase. React Native app development is a new age concept introduced by Meta. React Native uses JavaScript as a programming language and allows developers to have a single codebase for apps on both Android and iOS.
Maintenance
Keeping your app well-maintained is no longer an additional chore. Technologies change hands very quickly these days. To adapt to the changes, your app must be completely updated and ready to embrace that change. A dated app will not only lack performance but also will not pack the latest trending features.
Here are some aspects to consider while rolling out version updates for your app.
- Programming language update: The programming language that powers your app could roll out a significant update that might change the way your programs run. These changes are for the betterment of the overall programming and may incorporate a lot of improvements and fixes. Adopting these changes will make your codes leaner and help your app perform better.
- Operating system update: The operating system that your app runs on could undergo significant changes and updates. These changes are also to incorporate newer features and to improve overall user experience. In that case too, adapting to the OS updates for your app could both enhance the performances and offer new features altogether.
- Device launch: The devices too could have many new exciting features that your app could leverage upon. These features are mostly hardware related. The changes in displays, cameras and other hardware can affect the way your app performs.
- Security threat: Lastly, to keep your app and the precious user data it carries safe from security threats, you have to stay a step ahead of the hackers and keep protecting your codes and the overall framework of your app. Hackers are always challenging the standard codes and coding practices. Thus it makes total sense to keep your programs updated and subsequently update your app regularly as well.
Conclusion
As iterated earlier, ticking these boxes does not guarantee performance improvements or greater user engagement. What it does however is to keep your app updated with the latest trends and software as well as hardware features. Practicing these essentials also keeps your app safe from theft attempts. The emphasis for mobile app development agencies is always to improve the performances and fix the issues. Having regular updates and incorporating parallel software or hardware updates in your app’s versions serves both the aforementioned purposes. You never know what trends stay longer and which one becomes obsolete in no time with technology. The trends and practices that we believe are relevant and essential could become pointless the very next year. The given list here however emphasizes on the basics and stays true regardless of the ever-changing nature of mobile apps.
