Top 5 Reasons Why Most Mobile Applications Fail
In the past 5 years, the digital world has changed a lot and mobile applications have gained a lot of growth. Many businesses shifted themselves to digitization and moved to mobile applications and many startups were also born. Stepping into the digital world or launching yourself in that world is a big step and requires a huge amount of research and funding. In recent years, many applications were launched as startups however not many sustained and failed to impress the audience.
There are many reasons why most of the mobile applications fail to impress and succeed in the market; be it its design, the experience it gives to people, etc. This article will provide a look into Top 5 reasons why most of the mobile applications fail.
One of the main reasons why any mobile application fails is poor research of the market and the audience. What startups fail to understand is that developing an app without doing any market and audience research thinking that people will love it is an assumption that cannot be validated.
It is highly essential to do proper research on both fronts during the early planning stage so that the use case of the application can be identified and the need it fulfills can be communicated to the users. Doing proper R&D allows one to validate the assumptions about the user behavior, acceptance of the application by people, and the product itself. The main purpose of the app should be to fulfill the market gap by addressing the needs of people and creating a demand for itself.
Lack of originality also results in failure of the application as many people launching a new application look at other apps and then make replicas of it in terms of features, design, colors, etc. This results in people rejecting the application and not using it thus, resulting in bad reviews and ratings of the app on the play store.
Another reason why most of the applications fail is the poor on-boarding process of the users. On-boarding is the first interaction a user has once he/she downloads the app and opens it. A lengthy on-boarding process or a process that lacks clarity on how to use the app is more likely to frustrate the user very early, thus resulting in the user ditching your app and moving onto another application very soon.
Features in any application play a vital role in the success of it and having the right balance of features is very important. Offering too many features or too few features results in quick failure of the application as the user is new to the app and it takes time for the user to adopt the application and get used to its use case and its features. Therefore, startups or a person launching a new app should focus on introducing only the core features that are required in order to make the application usable by the end user in its first release. Then further new features should be introduced in subsequent releases after the user has adapted the application and it has become his need to use that application to get his/her work done.
Lastly, poor user experience is also one of the important factors that play a role in the success of the application. An application that has sloppy navigation, having no search functionality for apps like e-commerce applications or delivery applications, use of mediocre icons and typography that impacts the readability of the user, having unresponsive gestures results in unsatisfactory user experience. This not only frustrates users but also makes the application look unprofessional. This makes the user uninstall the application and choose a far better one that has a good user experience.
