Launching a mobile application: the complete guide for project developers

A mobile application is a piece of software that is installed on your phone or tablet, enabling various actions through these devices depending on the application used.

In 2021, mobile apps have become ubiquitous in all industries.

There are various types of mobile apps:

Connection apps like Uber or Airbnb;

Social networks:

- There is a growing trend of 'Mobile First' networks like Instagram or TikTok: they first launched a mobile app before releasing a web version.

- Other networks have chosen to offer a web version very late or to remain mobile-only, such as Snapchat;

Productivity apps: calendar, task reminders, emails, project management, etc.;

Games: Candy Crush, Fruit Ninja, or Doodle Jump;

E-commerce apps like Zalando, Sarenza, Amazon, or AliExpress;

Meal delivery apps: Deliveroo, Takeaway, or Uber Eats;

And many other types of apps, such as banking, communication, map navigation, weather, music listening, book reading, ... In short, an infinite number of applications.

There are more mobile users than PC users, especially among younger generations.

On the mobile side, tablets are also widely used. Of course, less than smartphones, but they still have their success.

⇒ Mobile is one of the best media to reach your audience!

The main benefits of a mobile app:

Increases awareness;

Improves brand image;

Accessible everywhere (and easy to access);

Optimised customer experience: the interface of an app is often more user-friendly than that of the web and is easy to use;

Ability to use the specific features of a smartphone: geolocation for transport or mapping applications like Waze, the accelerometer, or gyroscope (the rotation of a mobile, the speed at which a mobile phone will move), ...

⇒ Mobile apps offer a wide range of application possibilities.

2nd step of your project: finding the added value of your mobile app for your user(s).

You need to ask yourself why they would use your app.

The added value is the solution that your mobile app provides to meet the needs and/or problems of your users. It is also what they are willing to pay for, such as features, your expertise,...

The features for the user type:

The next step in your project is to think about the key features of your app that will meet the needs of your users.

Don't go into too much detail at this point.

Remember the principles: Less is more and KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid):

Your customers use your app for only 2 or 3 features, so there's no need to add too many.

The example of Hom'Gry:

Some essential features for the app:

Having a choice between different dishes

Being able to easily place an order

Knowing when the dish will be delivered

Knowing the price of the order directly

If you have multiple personas, you can have different features, as shown in the example: Claire, a user of Hom'Gry, and Nicolas, a restaurant owner.

Next, these features need to be ranked in order of importance.

This ranking is important if your budget is limited, so you know into which screens you need to put the most effort.

It's also useful if you need to change a feature that doesn't work: you can choose another one from the list.

The example of Hom'Gry:

Here are examples of important features:

Being able to easily order a dish

Knowing when the dish will be delivered

Consulting the list of available dishes for a given day

Here are examples of secondary features:

Being able to update allergies

Being able to change the password

These are interesting but not essential features.

The importance of not adding too many features to your app:

To emphasize this point, we quote Andrew Chen, who has led the team for driver growth at Uber, among other roles. Currently, he is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, the most renowned venture capital firm in Silicon Valley:

"There is an important design principle that says 'Do less, but better' [...] Don't compete on features. If your core concept doesn't work, rework the description rather than adding new things."

If your mobile app has 10 main features and doesn't work, there's no point in adding an 11th or 12th. There is a problem with your added value or features.

You need to revise your basic concept and relaunch your app in the market.

Before focussing on operational marketing, let's first explain various tracking elements to consider in the context of a mobile app.

Define what an active persona is:

It is important to define the action that will transform your simple user into an active user.

Should they create an account?

Should they use your mobile app daily/weekly/monthly?

Should they buy features on your app?

...

Example: Facebook considers a user active if they interact on the site by liking, sharing, commenting, sending messages, or clicking on another link in the past month. If a user doesn't interact for 30 days, they are considered inactive.

Example: Twitter: an active Twitter user is someone who follows at least 30 accounts and is followed by at least a third of those accounts.

Example of Hom'Gry:

An active user is someone who orders at least once per quarter and has placed a minimum of two orders in the first quarter.

Defining your active persona helps in determining acquisition and retention rates.

Acquisition Percentage:

The acquisition percentage is the likelihood that a visitor to your mobile app becomes an active user.

The traditional acquisition process:

A visitor lands on your site's homepage, sees the download link, downloads your app, creates an account, and performs an action defining an active user.

Not all visitors will follow this path to the end.

To measure the acquisition percentage:

Divide the number of active users on your app by the number of visitors who visited your landing page.

Here is the formula to calculate your acquisition cost:

Add up your marketing and sales costs and divide them by the number of acquired customers.

This tells you how much you need to spend to acquire an active user.

Hom'Gry Example:

Marketing campaigns attract 250 visitors per week to a landing page dedicated to installing the app. This page explains the app's concept and tries to convince visitors to download it.

Out of these 250 visitors, 100 install the app on their phones.

Out of these 100 visitors, 25 order a dish directly from the app.

Out of these 25, 20 users will place orders regularly, at least once per quarter, as defined.

⇒ The acquisition percentage is 8% ((20/250)X100).

If our marketing campaign costs €1000 per week, then our customer acquisition cost is €50. The user must generate €50 in margin before covering the marketing costs.

The acquisition percentage allows you to measure the performance and costs of your marketing campaigns and check the profitability of your mobile app.

Retention Percentage:

The retention percentage determines the period during which a user remains active on your app. It can be calculated for any period (1 day, 1 week, 1 month). It is, in a way, the customer retention rate.

Hom'Gry Example:

Let's take the case of Hom'Gry to better understand what the retention percentage is, calculated in this case per quarter since we defined that a user becomes active when they order per quarter.

Quarter 1: our app acquired 100 new active users.

We measured the app's retention rate at 80%, so:

Quarter 2: there will be 80 active users remaining (if no marketing action is taken).

Quarter 3: there will be 64 active users remaining.

⇒ The number of active users gradually decreases if we don't find new users.

The retention percentage is generally less than 100%, regardless of the app, even for giants like Netflix or Spotify. The number of active users gradually decreases.

The importance of acquisition and retention percentages:

These percentages are crucial performance indicators that allow you to validate or refute the basic principles of your app.

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measure that determines whether your mobile app is working or not.

There are other interesting performance indicators; we will revisit them in Chapter 8.

These two percentages also help determine whether your app needs more marketing and communication efforts for acquisition or retention, depending on your concept. ⇒ You can adjust your strategies accordingly.

Lifetime Value:

This is the value that an average customer brings to you over their entire life, measured in terms of revenue. Lifetime Value is also an interesting KPI.

To better understand this concept, let's calculate this value for Hom'Gry.

Hom'Gry Example:

We know that:

The average value of an order is €26.7, excluding VAT.

An active user places an average of 1.7 orders per quarter.

The acquisition cost is €50.

The retention rate is 80% per quarter.

The gross margin on an order is 20%: for example, on an order of €10, €8 goes to the restaurant, and €2 for us.

⇒ The total sold over 5 years for 100 initial customers = €22,500 ⇒ The Lifetime Value is €225 per customer.

Knowing that we have a 20% margin on orders, we have a margin of €45 per customer, and their acquisition cost is €50 ⇒ We need to adjust our app because it is structurally not profitable.

Marketing Approach for a Mobile App:

Consider developing an overall strategy.

Mobile app marketing is very similar to traditional marketing.

Here are some possible approaches:

Media;

Promotional events;

Email campaigns;

Sales representatives: to approach customers/users;

SEO: to appear in the top results on Google for specific keywords;

Google Ads: for faster results than organic SEO;

Facebook/Instagram Ads

A community manager

Distributing flyers

...

You can also do SEO in the App Store and Google Play to appear first in certain results, but it's not a magic solution! You have no guarantee of results.

Focus more on traditional marketing.

⇒ Remember that your marketing approach depends on the concept of your mobile app.

Hom'Gry Example:

We decided to mainly use Facebook Ads:

First, we targeted the location: crucial because we only deliver in Liège and surrounding municipalities. We also excluded certain locations.

Age: 25-65+ years: we set a broad age range because we are not targeting a specific age group.

Additional interests: people who like Deliveroo and Takeaway and likely have the habit of ordering food, as well as an interest in gastronomy to best match our persona's profile.

We ran campaigns of different styles but with the same targeting to see which ones work best.

Initially, we divided our budget across different campaigns.

Then, we increased the budget for ads with better acquisition, retention, and conversion rates.

Here is another example of an ad:

We chose Facebook ads to be able to show photos accompanied by text with different messages:

The primary goal of the app is to help restaurants, so we emphasized the message of solidarity in some ads and others focused more on the dishes.

Test different messages to see what works best.

We also have a community manager who manages the Facebook and Instagram pages.

We send a weekly newsletter to keep users informed about the dishes of the week.

We send emails to people who have entered their address in the app; not everyone has ordered, so we try to convince them through this newsletter.

In this section, we will explain how an application works from a technical standpoint.

The architecture of an application is divided into 3 parts:

1) Frontend (= the app installed on the phone):

This is the visible part of the application. There are several possible technologies:

- For developing a native application (= application developed for a specific operating system, IOS or Android):

For IOS: we use Swift and Objective C

For Android: we use Java and Kotlin

A native application requires 2 different developments for the 2 operating systems.

These languages are most suitable for mobile applications.

There is also another approach:

- For developing a hybrid application (= a website adapted for mobile use):

A few years ago, hybrid applications were clearly inferior to native applications.

Today, there are various technologies that can compete.

Flutter: developed by Google.

React Native: developed by Facebook

This approach allows developing an application for both operating systems with a single code, enabling developers to create your mobile application approximately twice as fast.

2) Backend (= server-side):

This is the brain of the application that contains all the logic.

To make your application work, you need a server located somewhere in Europe or elsewhere that communicates with the application installed on your phone.

Let's take the example of Facebook: all users, posted photos, comments, etc., are not stored on your phone but on a server.

A server can be compared to a massive computer, and in the case of Facebook, to tens of thousands of computers to manage their infrastructure.

The server provides the application with information.

Popular technologies:

We use Django and Python (used by Google, Facebook, Amazon, ...)

Laravel and PHP

Node JS

...

It is very easy to find robust languages. There is the TIOBE Index that defines the most used programming languages globally.

3) Database:

This is the memory of the application.

The backend stores all information in a database located on the server.

There are various technologies:

MySQL, PostrgreSQL, MSSQL server

MongoDB, ...

PWA = Progressive Web Apps:

This is another solution for creating an application.

This is a web application, not mobile, that can be installed on a phone.

Advantages:

- Easy to develop

- Well-supported on Android but very little compatible with IOS.

- Does not necessarily require installation: you go to the website, and a popup suggests installing it on your phone.

- No need to publish it in the app stores (can also be a disadvantage: you do not benefit from their reviews, you cannot update via the app stores, and users cannot find you in the app stores).

Choose your project management:

In addition to choosing the type of application and technologies, you also need to choose a project management method.

There are two major methodologies:

1) The waterfall model:

You write, with the development team, a complete specification with all the specifications you want. The development is executed, and at the end, you have a finished product.

2) The Agile project management method and more specifically SCRUM:

This is the most used method in the field of information technology. We use this method internally.

This method involves dividing the development of your application into several phases.

In each phase, we develop predefined features that you test at the end of it.

Once you have validated them, we start a new phase by developing new specifications until your entire application is developed.

After each phase, you give us your feedback, and we adapt the development if necessary, which allows developing the best possible application.

This methodology promotes interactions between the client and the IT provider and ensures better monitoring of the progress of your project.

For us, it is a crucial tool for the success of your project.

Here is an example that illustrates the difference between these two methods clearly:

You have a budget of 30,000€ for your application:

You choose the waterfall method and develop your entire application at once;

Once launched on the market, your application does not work.

You have no budget left to adjust your mobile application.

⇒ The SCRUM method allows you to validate or refute your initial assumptions and adjust the development if necessary.

The importance of making adjustments if your application does not achieve the expected success:

Never be afraid to make adjustments, to go back to previous steps if you realize that your basic assumptions are not correct.

⇒ You can always adapt your project!

Making adjustments represents a new chance for success or even more significant growth.

Adjusting does not mean adding features, but rather revisiting the foundation: you rework a feature instead of adding one.

Examples of companies that have made adjustments:

Twitch.TV: originated from the platform Justin.tv, which offered videos of people filming themselves doing something. There were several categories, but only one worked really well: people filming themselves playing video games. This category was so successful that the company decided to dedicate a separate site to it called Twitch.TV, more tailored to the gaming community, and now it has millions of active users per month.

Facebook: initially, Facebook was only accessible to Harvard students. It was the digital version of the students' photo album. The network then opened to other American universities before expanding to the rest of the world, becoming an essential social network today.

The example of Hom'Gry:

We quickly analysed the problem, and because we use the SCRUM method, we still had a budget to adapt the application.

We did not modify the entire application but only the purchasing system that was not well-received.

What to do to improve my performance?

Some tips:

- Review your marketing strategy: examples:

Allocate more budget to advertising on social media/Google Ads.

Spend more time on social media management.

Rethink your communication: Example for Hom'Gry: perhaps we need to replace the term "gastronomy" with "catering."

Review your personas: Are you targeting the right users?

Review your features.

⇒ Review your initial assumptions!