Developing And Marketing Mobile Applications Presented by: Leesha Roberts, Senior Instructor, Center for Education Programmes, UTT
MOBILE MARKETING
What is a Mobile App? A mobile app is a software application developed specifically for use on small, wireless computing devices, such as smartphones and tablets, rather than desktop or laptop computers.
Why Mobile? Mobile is not only a new medium, but also a new business model entirely. The opportunities are great, but the trick is learning how to harness the market to the benefit of the business.
Planning for Mobile Apps 89 percent of media time is spent by people (males and females) on mobile apps. Most business with Mobile Apps have a mobile marketing strategy in place to promote that app. The failure rate for an app is very high.
Trends in Mobile App Usage
Trends in Mobile App Usage
Mobile Apps and Marketing Your mobile app must have a marketing strategy embedded in your development process. three pre-requisites of an effective marketing strategy: Plan ahead Make your app easily discoverable Think continuous, long term marketing
Plan ahead Develop an App marketing plan before you start building the App. For example, your website landing page should be used to promote your app. Once you start building your app, you can give information about its impending release to target customers who re already in the habit of checking out your website s landing page.
Make your App easily discovered Optimize your App details for App Store and Google Play. Get feedback before actual release Reach out to influencers in the app industry
Think continuous, long-term marketing The mobile App plan is continuous. There are 3 primary stages for marketing your Apps: Pre Launch Launch Post Launch
Cost Vs. Profit Development is costly. Effort and expenditure is worth it if you expect a good ROI.
Cost Vs. Profit So is it Worth Developing Mobile Apps? mobile app development involves a development cost and a profit factor. It also has a satisfaction factor for an app to be created and approved by the app marketplace as well.
TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The Mobile Ecosystem Mobile is an entirely unique ecosystem. The ecosystem can be seen as layers, like the internet. It is made up of different parts that must all work seamlessly together.
The Mobile Ecosystem
Designing for Context When designing your Mobile App Think about Context from two perspectives: Context : The formation of Mental Models for the mobile interface.
Designing for Context Context : The Environment to which the app will be used: The physical context: Where will the app be used e.g. in a car, on an airplane Present device access: use of one medium over another e.g. computer website, over mobile website. Present state of mind when using the device e.g. time constraints, in traffic, at home relaxing
Design Questions to consider Who are your users? What is happening? When will they interact? Where are they? Why will they use your app? How are they using their mobile devices?
Types of Mobile Applications The mobile medium type is the type of application framework or mobile technology that presents content or information to the user. You need to decide what type of Mobile Application you are going to create
Types of Mobile Applications It is a technical approach regarding which type of medium to use; this decision is determined by the impact it will have on the user experience. The technical capabilities and capacity of the publisher also factor into which approach to take.
SMS Pros: Most Basic Mobile Application Considered a Designed Experience Ubiquitous and can be integrated with other mobile application types. Works on any mobile device instantaneously Useful for sending timely alerts to the user
SMS Can be incorporated into any web or mobile application. Simple to set up and manage Cons They are limited to 160 characters They provide a limited text based experience They can be very expensive
Mobile Websites A mobile website is a website designed specifically for mobile devices, not to be confused with viewing a site made for desktop browsers on a mobile browser. Pros They are easy to create, maintain, and publish. They can use all the same tools and techniques you might already use for desktop sites. Nearly all mobile devices can view mobile websites.
Mobile Websites Cons They can be difficult to support across multiple devices. They offer users a limited experience. Most mobile websites are simply desktop content reformatted for mobile devices. They can load pages slowly, due to network latency.
Mobile Web Applications Mobile web applications are mobile applications that do not need to be installed or compiled on the target device Pros They are easy to create, using basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript knowledge. They are simple to deploy across multiple handsets.
Mobile Web Applications They offer a better user experience and a rich design, tapping into device features and offline use. Content is accessible on any mobile web browser. Cons The optimal experience might not be available on all handsets. They can be challenging (but not impossible) to support across multiple devices
Mobile Web Applications They don t always support native application features, like offline mode, location lookup, file system access, camera, and so on.
Native Applications These applications actually should be called platform applications, as they have to be developed and compiled for each mobile platform. Pros They offer a best-in-class user experience, offering a rich design and tapping into device features and offline use. They are relatively simple to develop for a single platform. You can charge for applications.
Native Applications Cons They cannot be easily ported to other mobile platforms. Developing, testing, and supporting multiple device platforms is incredibly costly. They require certification and distribution from a third party that you have no control over. They require you to share revenue with the one or more third parties.
Games The final mobile medium is games, the most popular of all media available to mobile devices. Technically games are really just native applications that use the similar platform SDKs to create immersive experiences. Pros They provide a simple and easy way to create an immersive experience.
Games They can be ported to multiple devices relatively easily. Cons They can be costly to develop as an original game title. They cannot easily be ported to the mobile web.
Application Context the application context deals with the user experience. Applications can be presented in a variety of ways, ranging from a simple task-based utility to an experience meant to consume the user s focus and attention. There of course is no right or wrong direction only what is best for your user.
Utility Context The goal of the utility is to give users ata-glance information, therefore offering users a minimal design aesthetic, focusing the design around the content in view, and often using larger type and a sparse layout.
Local Context Locale applications almost always have at least one thing in common: a map on which they plot the requested data points visually. The user s goal is to find information relative to his present location, and content should always be designed with this in mind.
Informative Applications The informative application is an application context in which the one and only goal is to provide information, like a news site, an online directory, a marketing site, or even a mobile commerce site, where the key task of the user is to read and understand and it is not necessary to interact.
Productivity Application Context The productivity application context is used for content and services that are heavily task-based and meant to increase the users sense of efficiency.
Immersive Full-Screen Applications These applications are meant to consume the user s focus, often doing so by filling the entire screen and leaving no trace of the device user interface to distract the user.
Mobile Information Architecture Your information architecture (also known as IA), is the foundation of your mobile product. A well-engineered product with good visual design can still fail because of poor information architecture. The truly successful mobile products always have a well thought-out information architecture.
The Elements of User Experience: Jesse James Model
Keeping It Simple When thinking about your mobile information architecture, you want to keep it as simple as possible. Support your defined goals. Clear, simple labels Site Maps Limit opportunities for mistakes Confirm the path by teasing content
ELEMENTS OF MOBILE DESIGN
Design Factors To Consider Context Message Look and Feel Typography Graphics Gestures
Categories of Mobile Apps There are by and large two categories of mobile apps Income Creators (e.g. gaming apps such as angry birds) Branding purposes (location-based apps such as foursquare, Swarm, GoogleNow)
Single Platform Vs. Cross- Platform Apps Important question: Is it better developing single-platform apps or multi-platform apps? A single-platform app is much easier to handle, but will work only and only for that particular platform. E.g. An iphone app, for instance, will work only for that platform and nothing else.
Single Platform Vs. Cross- Platform Apps Choosing the right platforms and then deploying your app effectively can become quite a challenge for you, but it also increases your app s reach among users.
Single Platform Vs. Cross- Platform Apps The three most popular mobile platforms are the ios, Andriod and BlackBerry. If you are going to develop three different apps for these platforms, your cost of developing will end up becoming triple of what it was intended to be.
Coding Methods When developing an application which can be downloaded and installed on a user s device, there are two main avenues for writing code: NATIVE DEVELOPMENT - Apps are separately coded for each respective platform in their native language (I.E. Java for Android, Objective-C for ios)
Coding Methods HYBRID DEVELOPMENT - Apps are coded once, typically in a web based language and the code is adjusted to work on various platforms
The Process of Building an App