The Eight Keys to App Success
Background: Last year, I got frustrated. I had spent 14 months pouring my heart, soul, and meager life savings into an app I was proud of.
An app that was earning less than a hundred bucks a month.
What was I doing wrong? I set out on a mission to find out.
I contacted three dozen successful app entrepreneurs (appreneurs), mobile marketing experts, and mobile analysts. I interviewed them on video and asked each of them: What is the secret to success on the App Store?
There was conflicting advice, of course. Everyone’s got a different opinion. Besides, apps are different. Is it an app or a game? Are you on Android or iOS? Is it for kids, casual players, or hard-core gamers? Do you have a marketing budget? Will your app be paid or free?
I’m a bit thick sometimes. I have to hear something a few times before I believe it. So when I heard the same powerful ideas in multiple interviews, I started to pay attention.
But it still wasn’t quite coming together for me. So I went through every single video interview, writing down their answers. Over the next few months I consolidated all of the advice they’d given into a book.
What follows is from Chapter One of the book.
The Mobile App Success Formula
As an entrepreneur, you’re short on resources. It goes with the territory. Where should you spend your time, money and energy? The decisions can be paralyzing. Where will it pay off the most?
While the exact formula will be different for every app, there are a handful of keys to success that are critical to understand. Understanding why they are important — and how they help you as a developer — will put you ahead of the crowd.
1. Solve a problem (or enhance a life). Our mobile devices are part of our everyday lives. Apps that earn a place on them are useful, entertaining, and become essential to our routines.
2. Find the right-sized niche. Don’t take on losing battles. Find a space where you can compete and win.
3. Think small. Keep your development time short, and your feature set small. From the beginning, your app should do a very small set of things extremely well.
4. Keep them coming back for more. Retention is your most important metric. You must keep them coming back to your app — or find out why they’re not returning.
5. Pick up a few marketing tricks. Even if you hate marketing, if you learn just one or two tricks, you will be ahead of 90 percent of developers who do no marketing at all.
6. Treat it like a business, not a hobby. If you want to make your app business a financial success, it’s time to get serious about the way you approach it.
7. Don’t give up. Learn, test, strive to improve. You don’t fail unless you quit.
8. Don’t go it alone. Work with other appreneurs and entrepreneurs to reach your goals faster.
Keys #1–4 are below. Keys #5–8 are in Part 2.
Key #1: Solve a Problem (or Enhance a Life)
“It comes back to that key question, ‘What value do you actually add in someone’s life?’” — Ted Nash
For all the talk about the app world changing at lightning speed, the purpose of business itself really hasn’t changed much at all.
Fundamentally, says Ted Nash, CEO of Tapdaq, successful businesses only ever do one of two things: solve a problem or enhance a life. “Regardless of where that business exists, regardless of where the application exists. It could be on wearable device. It could be on mobile, it could be on desktop,” says Ted. “As long as you’re really fulfilling a need and adding value to someone, it doesn’t really matter which platform that you start with.’”
It’s where many appreneurs (and entrepreneurs in general) go wrong: coming up with a solution where no problem exists. “If you sit back and say to yourself, ‘What’s the real problem here? How do I fix the problem?’” says Graeme Warring, founder and CEO of WEPLAY.MEDIA, “Then you’ll figure out what the best path is.”
Odds are, your app idea — no matter how original you feel it is — is really just a variation on what’s come before. “Take what’s already there, figure out what the problem with it is and then come up with your unique spin to it,” says Graeme. “Whether you’re making backpacker hostels that are 20 times better than any other backpacker hostels, or bus trips better than everyone else’s bus trips, or an app that’s better than the other one, that’s usually because you’ve figured out what the problem is and you’ve addressed it.”
“An app is more than just an app,” says Peggy Anne Salz, mobile analyst and head of MobileGroove. “It’s a way to remove friction, enhance lives, answer questions, be our personal companion, offer assistance, offer enhancement.”
Consider Uber as an example. “It’s an app company basically; without the app there is no Uber. That comes from removing the friction in our daily journey,” says Peggy Anne Salz. “If you want to look for an opportunity, think of where there is friction right now on your daily journey. Focus on that.”
After his partner was having trouble conceiving a child, Will Sacks had an idea. He did his research and created an app to help women track their ovulation. The app had already helped over 200,000 women become pregnant when Paul Kemp interviewed Will on the App Business Podcast.
“Try not to get distracted by copying other apps and trying to emulate successes. They’ve already happened,” advises Paul. “Take a problem in your life. Interview people, research people. Get to those problems and create an app. You’ll find you’re more likely to be successful.”
Keep your eyes open for problems to solve. They’re all around you.
Key #2: Find Your Niche
Think of the app stores as a vast ocean. There are areas where a lot of action happens, where everyone’s attention is focused: the red ocean. There’s blood in these waters. “That’s where the sharks are,” explains Peggy Anne Salz. “There’s a lot of fish to eat. But do you want to battle with all the sharks?”
Better to pursue the blue ocean. “It’s calm, maybe not so much fish, therefore not too many sharks,” says Peggy. So in terms of apps, “It’s not the mega bucks that you are hitting, not a million dollars a month. But plenty to live well.” In the red ocean, Peggy points out, you could lose big time to the sharks. But in the blue ocean, there’s the opportunity to prosper. (She recommends the book Blue Ocean Strategy for more about these ideas.)
So many app creators spot the excitement of the red ocean from miles away. They want to jump in and compete with the sharks. But if you’re looking for a long-term successful business, seek out the blue ocean. You can find all the fish you need with less of a fight.
Case Study: PlantSnapp
With PlantSnapp, users can take a photo of a plant; the app identifies it for them. Patrice Archer, co-founder and CEO of Appy Ventures, attributes the app’s success to its appeal for a very specific niche audience. “A 35 to 55-year-old mom that likes to shop at a high end shop, who has a house fully paid for, a dog, her kids are teenagers,” explains Patrice. Because he understands the audience so well, he can design and market a product that delights them. “They use this on a daily basis; they expect this kind of design feature and this level of complexity. And the moment you understand that properly is the moment you can start thinking, ‘Okay, I have to design this for them.’”
Case Study: South Africa Power Status
Paul Solt of Artwork Evolution cites another example of an extremely specific customer base with plenty of potential. A student in one of his iPhone programming courses is from South Africa, where they deal with power outages on a daily basis.
“You have to plan your day around it. They publish a schedule but it’s not very accessible. So he’s working on an app that’s going to notify you. ‘Your power’s going out. What are you planning to do when you have power?’” The app helps a specific group of people plan their day for more productivity.
It’s a simple idea, but effective. Better still, another student in the same class — who is also from South Africa — said, “I would pay money for that!” While that doesn’t mean everyone’s going to pay for it, points out Paul, it’s essential validation for the idea.
What’s the Right Size?
Moms who love flowers and South Africans with power outages are two very different niches, but they’ve got something big in common: their creators found a solid niche in the app store, explored it, and came up with an innovative way to capitalize on the idea.
Where do you find the perfect-sized niche? “You want to be where you target an audience that is too small for a very big start up to go after, but also not something your typical hobbyist will do,” explains Mark Wilcox, a senior analyst at VisionMobile and author at Developer Economics.
Don’t try to take on Candy Crush or Uber. And an audience of “everyone who owns an iPhone” is obviously too big.
On the other end of the spectrum, avoid smaller niches dominated by app developers who aren’t concerned about making money from their apps. They might be developing apps for fun, for the challenge, or to boost their resume. Trying to compete with hobbyists is a losing proposition for your business.
A good rule of thumb, proposed by Tim Ferris and other experts, is to work hard to build 1,000 true fans. If you can find that many people who love what you create, you can grow from there.
Key #3: Start Small
You may have a grand vision of everything your app will eventually be. For the first version, it’s smart to scale back.
Don’t fall into the trap of waiting until your app has every feature you envision before you release it. Make sure it has one, two, or even three core features that work flawlessly, then release it into the world and learn from the feedback.
“Always start with the MVP, the minimum viable product. Start very lean,” advises Ted Nash. Build the most basic product that your niche audience will adore.
Then, let that audience tell you what features you need to add next. Listen to what they say about your app. Watch how they use it.
“Really learn from what the users are telling you,” says Ted. “Then build a better product off the back of that.”
Don’t make the mistake of adding too many features in the first version of your app. You’ll be in the position where you’ll have to guess what features users want. Chances are you’ll guess wrong on a few. Those are development resources you’re wasting.
“Focus on the core functionality and make everything else as minimal as possible,” advises Rob Caraway of TapSmith. “It’s words to live by.”
Look to the future, Ted says. “One day the users who are really passionate about you will start monetizing. That’s when you can start to generate a really valuable business.”
Key #4: Keep Them Coming Back for More
“It’s far better to build the product for a really small group of people that absolutely love it, versus building it for a group of 10,000 who just like it.” -Ted Nash
What keeps users coming back to your app?
Answering this question correctly is what has enabled many of the bigger app companies (which started out as indies) to become so successful, points out Ted Nash. They understood what was important in their businesses.
The day-after users — your app’s retention rates — are vitally important. Looking at your users, ask yourself: “How many of them turn to paying customers? Why do they become paying customers? What do they buy? What do they not buy?” says Ted. “It’s understanding that data and continuously iterating off the back of it.”
Your focus should be on quality — and delighting a core group of users. If you’re just out to make a quick buck, you’re going to walk a tough road. “The mobile economy is maturing,” points out Ted. “People who have longer-term attitudes, or are in it for a much longer haul, are building much higher quality applications and games.”
Need an example? Look at Facebook, who used this model very successfully. “They built it for Harvard and gradually moved from one university to another. They knew if this subset of users love the product, then this one will as well,” says Ted.
Once you’re delighting a core group of users, once you’ve ignited their passion, your success can spread. “It’s that type of passion towards your product that one day you’ll be able to monetize,” he says.
It’s a key to success that many appreneurs overlook. “That is super important. A lot of people get lost in trying to build for something that ten thousand people can use, when actually what they should be doing is focusing on building an application that has huge traction for this small subset,” explains Ted.
Bobby Gill, founder of Blue Label Labs, followed this thinking on a photo-sharing app his company built. “There’s nothing unique or novel about it. But the actual product itself is targeted towards mothers who want to share ideas for lunches they prepared for kids,” says Bobby. “The product has been tailored for that audience. It’s designed for them, it’s marketed towards them.”
It’s easy to think that this sounds too similar to existing photo-sharing apps. But because Bobby and his team have catered to a very specific niche of people, the app’s been successful. “It’s got an audience and it speaks to them,” says Bobby.
Excerpted from the book The Appreneur Playbook: Game-Changing Mobile App Marketing Advice from the Pros.
I build world-class mobile apps for small and medium-sized businesses that think big. I’m also the author of The Appreneur Playbook and host of The Appreneur Summit. You can find me at Stormbreaker Studios in Orlando, Florida.
