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App Development

Life after the release of the mobile application

Life after the release of the mobile application

The release of the mobile application is only the beginning of the journey. It must remain functional. Despite the fact that testers have caught most of the errors in the application, they can and will occur, and this is normal. In addition, user habits and technologies change every year, and a truly promising product must change with them in order to remain relevant and profitable.

If you have collaborated with a studio and developed an application from scratch, then the easiest and most obvious thing to do is sign a technical support contract with this studio.

Previously, live typing support was a clause in the main software development contract. But we isolated this service, raising its value and significance.

The clause in the contract read something like this: “We will do it for N thousand rubles” (with the Fixed Price payment model) or “We give you M hours of our support services” (with the Time & Materials model). The technical support contract says: “For N amount, we guarantee you M hours of our support services.” In other words, this is a booking of a specialist by you. And no one can encroach on a specialist whose time is booked.

Changes can be preventive and qualitative. The former include updating the libraries used, monitoring hosting and servers, and maintaining the overall health of the application. The second includes the introduction of new features, support for new versions of operating systems, optimization of the product interface, taking into account new standards in design and user behavior data, scaling the backend if the number of users has increased dramatically, etc.

For greater transparency in relations with the support team, conclude an SLA, or Service Level Agreement (English “service level agreement”). This is the document which specifies the amount of support (number of hours per month), roles on the project, response time depending on the status of the task (critical, urgent, normal), what will be the result of the response, as well as how the time of the project manager, developer, tester is planned and paid, analyst and designer.

SLA work is the result of negotiations. The manager offers to choose from two conditions: either the client pays money for support under the Time & Materials scheme (and this means that the task can be completed at any time within the paid time), or the work goes according to SLA and the client pays a subscription fee (and this means that the team is booked for a specific number of hours and is always ready to quickly respond to incidents).

Such things cannot be left in the format of an oral agreement.

Mobile App Marketing Fundamentals

When it comes to how to promote a mobile application, two areas of work are most often distinguished: generating a stream of new users and returning current users (as well as those who deleted the application), the so-called “work for retention”.

There are two ways to promote in generating a flow of new users: organic and paid.

Organic promotion requires almost no financial investments. It includes:

  • Email distribution. Suitable for working with the collected target base, which can turn into loyal users of the product;
  • Store search promotion (ASO, or App Store Optimization). Makes it easier for your app to be discovered in the App Store or Google Play. As part of the promotion, you need to correctly formulate the title and subtitle, choose the right keywords, prepare an attractive icon and illustrations;
  • Content. It includes articles, podcasts, videos. Tell your potential audience about your successes and failures and thereby create an image of a product that can be trusted;
  • Transferring traffic from your site or other resources. For example, if you already have a website, then offer to download the application to visitors who have entered it through a mobile device, and place banners advertising the application.

Paid promotion works as an aid to organic.

It includes:

  • Motivated ASO. The application reaches the top points in the issuance of stores due to installations made by users for money or some kind of bonuses;
  • Contextual advertising. With it, potential users see your application when they search for something through the search engines on the phone. It is only important that your application solves the very problems that the user turned to Google or Yandex;

Media advertising.

Takes the form of banners on websites and mobile apps that sell ad space. By clicking on the banner, the user gets to the page of the store with your application;

Targeted advertising in social networks. If you are primarily counting on installations from Russia, then use the MyTarget system to target popular social networks. Reach out to a global audience through Facebook and Instagram ads;

Social media crops.

  • Look for specialized communities with a large number of subscribers on VKontakte and buy advertising posts from them. The method will be cheaper than the previous one, but the effect will be weaker;
  • Affiliates (CPA networks, arbitrage networks). Installs are generated through the work of a webmaster whose task is to buy one install for less than the amount for which he sells her to you. The affiliate network acts here as an intermediary between you and the webmaster.

Metrics and conversion

Analytics helps to set goals, adjust the development strategy, evaluate the success of advertising campaigns and the effectiveness of business processes. In order for your eCommerce application to generate the desired income, you need to analyze the following metrics.

The cost of attracting a new client, or Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Shows the amount you spend on a customer who does not just enter the application, but makes a purchase. It is calculated by dividing the cost of an advertising campaign by the number of buyers attracted during its implementation.

Cost per install, or Cost Per Install (CPI). Shows the amount you spend to acquire a new app user, whether they make a purchase or not. Calculated by dividing the app’s ad spend by the number of successful installs.

Revenue Per Install (RPI). Shows the amount you receive from one successful application installation. It is calculated by dividing the total revenue for the period of the advertising campaign by the number of installations. If the value turns out to be slightly higher (and even lower) than CPI, this is a serious reason to think about changing your marketing strategy.

Click-To-Install Rate (or simply Install Rate). Shows how link clicks or clicks to your banner ad are converted into actual app installs. Calculated by dividing the number of successful installs by the total number of clicks. Usually the resulting value is multiplied by 100 to see the result as a percentage. Sometimes it is more profitable to pay not for a click, but for a thousand ad impressions. In this case, you need to track Click Through Rate (CTR) – the ratio of the number of clicks to the total number of ad impressions.

The degree of conversion, or Conversion Rate (CR). Shows the percentage of app users who complete a targeted action, including a purchase. From the moment of installation to placing an order, you need to go through a series of steps, or stages of the sales funnel, and at each of them a part of potential buyers is eliminated. Some do not even enter the catalog, others are limited to viewing products, others add something to the cart, but do not complete the purchase process.

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