App design becomes more important

Users are beginning to heavily favor apps that are clean and crisp. The novelty of companies simply having an app is wearing off and users are demanding responsive and swift designs that takes full advantage of the Android or iOS platform. Smartphones have become the “remote control for life”. And just like a remote control people want to access what they need very quickly and with as few button clicks as possible. Take the Uber app for example, a complex process and product that is accomplished with a single button. Click one button and your ride shows up, even payment is handled seamlessly. The Amazon one-click buy button is another great example, no address or credit card information, with a single click a package shows up at your door two days later.

Swiss Army Knife vs. Single Blade

Mobile users appreciate single, swift solutions to problems and app developers should take notice sooner rather than later. The Swiss army knife style apps that come loaded with features are fading in popularity because they don’t solve users problems quick enough. A good example of the unbundling that’s occurring is Facebook Messenger. Why not just include it with the normal Facebook app? Because that app is already so feature laden that it’s tough to do a simple/common task, like chatting with friends. We are discovering that the feature depth of mobile apps definitely has a limit as consumers continue to push for a fast, simple solutions with a remote control like experience.

Support Everything

Smaller, more nimble companies are winning the platform support game with their adaptability and ability to develop quickly. Large, mature incumbents are now forced to develop and test their legacy software for the desktop web, iOS, multiple versions of Android, and sometimes Windows phones. This is not optional for most companies, not developing for every platform means lost revenue and vulnerability. Mature companies with lots of resources should be at an advantage here in theory but they usually lack the adaptability and talent to crank out new software on new platforms. It’s easier to develop from scratch for a platform versus adapting your existing codebase, advantage newcomers.

Mobile doesn’t need SEO

Everything done on the desktop web starts with a Google search. Even sites I know the full URL for, I will still type in the keywords into Google search. Website builders have to be very savvy with headings, articles, back linking, and site structure, all in the name of Google rankings. Mobile rarely begins with a search engine and SEO is not a valid customer acquisition strategy like it is on the desktop web. Linking to a new app from an existing high-traffic website seems to be the strategy to boost the number of installations for larger players. Unfortunately the frustrating trend of “Download Our App” popups that appear when you visit a mobile website seems to be gaining in popularity. This is a weak customer acquisition strategy and does nothing to incentivize the user. But the lack of SEO should continue to result in cleaner designs for mobile apps and more interesting customer acquisition strategies.

Mobile users are worth more than desktop users

Mobile users become very committed to applications because of the lengthy download process. Finding the app in the store, waiting for the download to complete, letting the icon occupy limited screen real estate, and finally learning the nuances of the user interface. Desktop users rarely have to complete any of these steps and therefore don’t come back nearly as often, making them far less valuable than mobile customers. People wonder about about the reason money is pouring into app development, I think this is a huge piece of that puzzle, the scale of difficulty of acquiring mobile users outweighs how valuable that user base can become. To swap services the user would have to go through the hassle of downloading a competitor and learning the new user interface, not likely unless they are very dissatisfied with their original experience. It’s not as easy as clicking another link or typing in a different URL. Advantage to the incumbent app providers here.

Customer acquisitions strategies.

Again, without SEO and link strategies the mobile app world is a very different place for those wanting a clear-cut path to gaining users. Cranking out articles related to your space, receiving links from prominent sites, does nothing to attract people solely on mobile (but might convert desktop prospects to mobile users). The old search engine marketing model (the Adwords machine) is emerging in the form of placement deals on Android but there is no equivalent of “featured results” yet on Apple/Google stores. Seems like a massive missed opportunity here because plenty of companies are ready to pay to acquire users. Again I hate the “Download Our App” trend that has become very popular for news sites/apps. I am much more interested in the rise of offline advertising and user incentives; like placing rewards apps on iPads near a cash register (Belly) or having in-app payments for physical products (Starbucks).

The new war: Payment

Users want a one click experience on everything, including payments. Huge players have entered this space in an effort to create that experience and capture market share. Amazon, Apple, Paypal, and Google have big interests in being the preferred provider/processor. And the smaller guys disrupting the space like Square, Stripe, Swipely, and Braintree are pushing them to develop even faster. This has been a long time coming (10+ years?) and whoever delivers one-button payment across multiple platforms will explode in popularity. You have to wonder where old school giants like Visa and Mastercard are placing their bets and what will happen to their almighty 2% merchant processing fee.

Platforms evolve

Android and iOS are always going to be in a constant state of change and one can only guess about the long-term strategies of Apple and Google. I think Google will continue pushing for a browser/HTML focused world and place search at the heart of the mobile experience. A great prediction from Coursera Startup Engineering course comes to mind when talking about the future of Google/Android: “The most likely scenario over the next 24 months is that Android and Chrome merge by doing backwards compatible rewrites of many Android Java API calls into Javascript. Similar to MacOS’s Carbon to Cocoa transition in the early 2000’s. And this means if you want to play the really long game you might want to start looking at Google Drive Apps, the Chrome Web Store, and the Chromebook Pixel.” If Google can get every piece of software they have running in a browser, it makes them very nimble if/when a new platform comes along. It also separates them from having to deal with the fragmentation issue of Android, something they can’t afford to ignore. As for Apple, the inventors of the modern smartphone, they will continue pushing in the same direction, focusing on app development and selling hardware, expanding their reach and hold on users. The amount of cash Apple has is simply ridiculous, it would be awesome to see them use this hoard and take another step in their vertical or horizontal integration.

Hope you enjoyed the first couple posts, another one on mobile revenue and advertising coming soon so stay tuned.