How to launch a successful mobile app

Once Abraham Lincoln said: “Give me six hours to chop a tree and I’ll spend four hours grinding my axe”. He surely knew that planning is essential for any successful business. And your mobile app is such a business. Very often developers release their apps without due planning and as a result get disappointed in seeing bad results or no result at all. In this article I’d like to share some ideas about successful app launching.

Know your goals and KPI

Mobile app business is a full of competitors. It doesn't matter whether you’re a big company with money or just two friends developing an app, you need to have clear goals and a plan on achieving them. To be successful at the mobile apps market means to understand what happens to your application once you’ve launched it. Here’re four recommendations to consider when planning to release an app in the market. You can also take help from Internet marketing company like ITC to populate your app in the market.

Track your app’s performance

For launching successful and profitable app you need you need to track its performance and user experience. You need to use both qualitative and quantitative methods for tracking these data. Quantitative methods are the data from such analytical platforms as Flurry or Kontagent, which track certain actions and offer binary data. Qualitative data are direct reviews from users which express their emotions, level of interest and non-binary data.

Concentrate on the first-time experience

Here I mean the process when a user launches an app for the first or second time. Many successful developers pay more than 50% of their efforts to the first-time experience. It’s important to track every action in during this period with the help of precise data and beta-testing.
Very often it is difficult for developers and manufacturers to find out the problems about the app they’ve developed. That’s why you need clear goals to see if you can stick up to the plan.

Involvement indices

Before starting a big campaign many developers determine the main involvement indices for measuring app’s KPI. These indices include time spent in the app, number of sessions per day/per week, number of repeated actions.
You may consider these indices to be simple and uninformative, but they are important when planning your campaign. High involvement index is the key factor in success.

Concentrate on conversion

If you’re planning to release an app, it’s important to estimate the expected CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). If you launch a paid app then this parameter won’t work until you introduce payments within your app. But it’s important to determine CLV before entering the market. This is a very important factor.
You may determine your initial CLV by testing your apps on beta-territories. It’s becoming a common practice for developers to test their apps on such beta-territories as Canada, UK and Australia. These are English-speaking countries and their population reflects demographic characteristics of other English-speaking countries.
It’s hard to find out KPI without testing it on a large user database. So you need to try to launch your app on 1-2 non-English-speaking territories. If your initial rates are low, then you’d better concentrate on improving your app. If users can’t adapt to your app, then you need to change this situation. If users quickly adapt in the app but also quickly abandon it, then you need to improve your involvement index.
And finally, try to estimate your Customer Lifetime Value. If your CLV and involvement indices are high but users still don’t buy your app, then re-consider your monetization strategy.