Visibility

We haven’t met, so let me introduce myself.  My name is Jeff Rohrs, and I know you.  I may not “know” know you, but I know your type.  You’re most likely an early adopter—or at least a fast-follower—and my guess is that as you read this your smartphone in your pocket or at least within reach.  If you don’t have a smartphone, I encourage you to read on, because the odds are that you will join our ranks soon enough. Apple’s iPhone army and Google’s Androids will see to that.

Now, for those of you with smartphones, I want you to take it out & fire it up.  Look at your default screen.  Never before has there been such a visual testament to your mobile life—both personally and professionally.  I suspect you’ve got all of the “usual suspect” apps on that first screen—phone, text, email, maps, weather, time, photos, and probably music.  The thing that defines your smartphone as yours, however, are the apps you personally installed.  Is that Facebook I see?  And Twitter?  Your favorite news source?  A sports app?  A financial app?  Maybe even an addictive game like Angry Birds?

You know that first screen like the back of your hand, and not just any app makes it there—only your most used and most important.  Now, I want you to flip to the last screen of apps on your smartphone.  On my iPhone, that’s screen #4—but I’m also one of those neat freaks who bundles apps into folders.  Stretched end-to-end, the apps on my smartphone would stretch at least 10 screens.  How many screens would your apps stretch?

As you tally up your app count, I want you to look at your last smartphone screen.  The apps there look awfully lonely, don’t they?  I suspect that you downloaded them once with purpose and excitement, but now, they’ve been pushed to the end of your smartphone’s world—the “Island of Misfit Apps” if you will where apps go to die. 

Most often, these apps don’t die because they’re bad or even unwanted.  They die from what I term “disuse apptrophy,” a condition that has symptoms every smartphone owner—and app developer—can recognize:

•    A state of initial download euphoria and use
•    Followed by a dramatic drop in use due to decreased interest, changed priorities or “life”
•    Which triggers a slow slide of the app from the first or second smartphone screen to the deepest, darkest final screens where usage is nil
•    Until finally, the app meets its maker (i.e., the delete button)

While nothing can save terrible apps from deletion, apptrophy has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with marketing strategy.  If your brand’s livelihood depends on a mobile app, it’s time to listen up. 

The days of “build it and they will come” apps are long gone.  We now live at a time where nearly every brand recognizes the utility of offering apps—either as a primary revenue stream or to increase brand engagement with mobile-first consumers.  With everyone competing for the same shelf space, the apps that stand the best chance of surviving and thriving are those that fight apptrophy and increase visibility by taking these simple steps:

1.    Stable, Eye-Catching Iconography
Take another look at your smartphone’s first screen.  I suspect that where we to remove the names of each app there, you could still name the app based solely on its icon.  The best apps have stable, eye-catching icons that don’t change and are recognizable even if presented at 10% of their size in a folder structure.

Before you “evolve” your app’s icon, think long and hard about whether your installed user base will immediately recognize the new icon as yours.  As simple as that sounds, I’ve seen more than a few apps succumb to apptrophy because their “awesome new icon” confused users to the point they no longer associated the icon with the app they once loved.  Icon design and stability is critical if you want to maintain—let alone grow—usage.  So before you go tweaking what works, test how average users will react.

2.    Balanced Push Notifications
Many app developers are awakening to the power of pushing notifications directly to the user’s smartphone screen—even when the app isn’t open on screen.  Such notifications can definitely drive reengagement with dormant apps; however, they also have a dark side.  Push too many notifications to the user’s home screen, and they’re likely to turn off push notifications altogether because of how they both annoy and drain battery life.

The best course of action is to prompt users to opt-in to push notifications and explain their value during opt-in (to the extent the smartphone operating system allows).  Balance your need to push information with a keen understanding that yours is not the only app pushing information in this fashion.  Only the most important information or alerts that the user has specifically requested should hit your push communications. 

3.    Email Registration/Subscription
It amazes me how many apps don’t ask the new user to register and opt-in to ongoing communications from the publisher.  App developers need to take a page out of the social networks’ marketing book. 

Every single social network requires an email address in order to register.  While the email address provides a convenient way to distinguish users, it also provides social networks with an external means to reengage dormant users.  Those Facebook friend updates aren’t for your health—they’re for Facebook’s,  Each such email update drives return visits and increased usage of Facebook.  The same thing holds true for app developers that leverage email. 

The email address isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have if you want to awaken the sleeping masses who downloaded your app but whose usage declined over time.  Apps with solid email marketing (newsletters, promotions, etc.) and triggered email (alerts, updates, etc.) communication programs stand a far better chance of fighting off the dreaded scourge of disuse apptrophy.  They also have a great way to upsell and cross-sell users on other apps or products.

4.    Social Media Integration
While it’s great when you can directly communicate with a user to get them to reengage with your app, don’t discount the power of peer pressure to accomplish the same feat.  Facebook updates, tweets, reviews, posts, comments, etc. can increase app awareness and usage within existing social circles. 

Does your app present users with the opportunity to push appropriate messages to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, and any companion websites of yours?  If not, there’s a prime, nearly no-cost way for you to decrease apptrophy by leveraging the power of your existing user base and their networks.

5.    Scheduled Updates
Last, but not least, the update process affords app developers with another opportunity to remind existing users that their app exists. I have some apps which I swear push updates just to pique user interest on what might be new.

If you want to take it to entirely different level, however, take a page out of the Angry Birds book—release your app with the promise of new levels, content or features to come in future months.  This builds anticipation—and anticipation is kryptonite to apptrophy.  Not all apps can leverage this strategy, but I suspect we’ll see more actually make the update process a strategic part of their engagement strategy with users.

In the 5 minutes you took to read this article, my guess is that ten more apps hit the mobile app stores—and hundreds more were dreamt up by ambitious publishers.  Simply put, user attention is in short supply today. If you don’t want to get lost in as the app universe expands exponentially, you must plan to combat apptrophy from day one with strategic, ongoing communications with users.  Failure to do so is tantamount to letting your app become invisible over time.

And as a reader of a publication called “Visibility,” I know you’d never want that to happen.  Right?