How Businesses Can Improve Their Apps

App creation, in spite of what you might have believed when you first sat down with your coder, is never really done. There are always improvements to be made and concerns to address. There are always things that you can do to improve your buyers’ experiences. How, though, do you figure out what those concerns and improvements are? In this article we will show you 4 things that you can do to make sure that your app’s users have the best experience possible.

1. Customer Feedback

This is the easiest (and, frankly, most obvious) place to start. Pay attention to the ratings and reviews your app receives in the app store. Make sure you read every email you get about a user’s experience. Look for independent reviews online. Don’t, though, wait for people to just volunteer their insights. Come right out and ask for it! Encourage your buyers to send you feedback directly. Tell your buyers that you’re eager for positive as well as negative feedback.

Make sure that it is as easy as possible for app users to send you feedback. You might even build a “send us feedback” option into the app itself. If your feedback rate is low, there is nothing wrong with offering users an incentive for sharing their opinions.

2. Go Back Into Research Mode

You probably did some market research when you were still developing your app idea. You don’t have to limit your market research to your development phase. Remember: life moves pretty fast and what your market was clamoring for six months ago might have changed. Find out what your competitors have been doing to improve the apps they’ve released. You know the drill.

3. Test Test Test

Make sure you thoroughly test out any change you make before releasing it to the public. Do not, however, limit this to formal software testing or QA. Instead, offer your “update” to existing and new customers as a limited edition beta test. People love participating in beta tests. It allows them to test your product (and its updates) for free and make them feel special. It’s a great way to build brand loyalty while simultaneously improving your company’s app.

4. Analytics

Tracking user behavior is not limited to a web based or cloud environment. Tracking user behavior is something that mobile developers do too. App analytics solutions like those at Appsee.com let developers track both small trends like user level analytics and big trends, such as aggregated level  analysis of touch heatmaps and UI analysis.

Just like in a web based environment, this data can tell you things that you would never learn through a survey or independent review. For example, if you notice that 90% of your users are force quitting the app from page X, that might mean that there is a bug in the code that causes the app to freeze on that page. Analytics are like flashlights pointing toward the areas that are most in need of your attention.

Remember: releasing your app does not necessarily mean that all of the work is done. If that was true, we’d all still be using first generation iPhones and OS1. If you want to keep your customers happy (and sell more apps and products) you have to always be looking for ways to improve your buyers’ experiences.

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