How to Support App after its Launch

This article is about how to prepare your app for a meeting with your potential audience and at the same time not to spoil the first impression about the product.

Of course, everything is possible with advanced market research and consumers’ needs in significant problems solutions in a particular niche.

In other words, we are talking about product’s “usefulness” to the ultimate niche of consumers.

Even before the MVP-version is ready, it is necessary to take care of the future and implement a number of features that will help to improve the product and make it more attractive.

Attention is focused on such components as: correcting minor inaccuracies, tracking and communication with the audience, analytical component. All of these are important factors to qualitatively create basis for further MVP development.

Let’s consider these elements one by one, from a practical point of view:

1. Customer Support.

1.1. FAQ.

In each application, in which there is the logic, or any non-obvious processes must be present section describing these points.

Most often, this section has a name — FAQ (which is defined as — frequently asked questions). To some extent, it helps to reduce the number of questions that the users will ask while mastering application.

1.2. Helpshift.

As the product is being used, the user will accumulate a number of questions or comments, which he would want to express elsewhere. In order minimize the negative review online thus no to spoil the application’s reputation, at the very beginning, it’s necessary to obtain such component as Helpshift. This is a very effective tool, which helps collect feedback directly from the app.

1.3. Chat.

If your product has formed a broad audience and to you it’s important to immediately resolve issues as they arrice, you should think about using this functionality — chat. This form of communication will always keep your product in “good shape”. The con of this approach is that it requires extra effort including the financial input.

2. Product’s rating and reviews.

2.1. First impression.

The movement the application had “successfully” passed moderation and got into App Store/Google Play, the first acquaintance with potential users of the product takes place.

When a positive / negative the comments in the App Store / Google Play, it is necessary to engage into personal communication with users, since there are several significant advantages:

- If the product owner personally has a connection with the audience, it portrays the owner’s image and his/her product in the best light.

- If you have formed a loyal audience, in the future it will be easier to promote certain innovations or better yet new products.

If the reviews are not constructive, nor undeservedly spoil the application’s reputation, you may appeal them to the App Store / Google play and request their removal.

2.2. Product’s rating.

To figure out the product’s success, it’s worth considering giving the user ability to rate the app directly in it. This will be a sort of safety net, since the first evaluations will not go directly into App Store/ Google play, but into your internal statistics. This will give you a little time to fix critical bugs or approaches.

One of the most common tactics is to add Appirater function inside the app. In other words, it’s a separate page or add-on, where a user can evaluate your app’s work.

2.3. Evaluation service — Apptentive.

The next slightly more advanced tools are such services as Apptentive or similar to it. Their principle is that the evaluation dialogue screen is dynamically generated from the back criteria or after the certain order of accomplished actions.

You must admit, that more intelligent and less compulsive rating will be most preferable in most situations.

3. Version stability, analytical component.

3.1. Bugs/issues tracking system Crashlytics/Testfairy.

Due to the nature of mobile industry, after the product’s release to a large audience, it is used on multiple devices and platforms, which in return creates defects and inaccuracies. Services such as Crashlytics/TestFairy and similar are used to keep track of these crashes. They collect crashing statistics (amount/date), after looking at the reports you can analyze what needs to be fixed.

3.2. UI Bug Tracking System.

To correct inaccuracies in the visual mapping interface, we use such a service as Instabug. This additional functionality is for the users’ audience, which by shaking the device from side to side, brings up a menu where you can make a Bug Report, for the visual display of the product on a device and send it to the developers. Such services complement support and minimize the time required to report errors.

3.3. Bugs Prioritization.

Further we will focus on which crashes/bugs should be fixed in the first place.

At first you should analyze the amount of crashes and identify the most common ones. The same should be conducted with the iOS version and identify the devices which have crashes. Try looking from the user’s point of view; what causes the most inconveniences/troubles while using the app? Also keep in mind your target audience and be guided primarily on it not single cases. Once the statistics are ready, allocate the high priority bugs and eliminate them with the next release.

3.4. Force update or message.

Sometimes there is a need for users to update an existing version to a newer version. This could be conducted for various reasons: serious crash, incorrect data, vulnerability, etc. For such situations use such a thing as Force update. This is a dialogue with a message about upgrading, at the entrance to the application, if the user does not accept it, he/she will not be able to use this application. This approach is not often used, only in extreme cases, but it is worth knowing about.

3.5. The analytical component.

In order to have a complete understanding of the errors / users, there are services for collecting analytical data and application’s work reports.