The past decade has seen a veritable gold rush in the tech industry, towards mobile apps. Mobile app development startups are popping up all over the place, and you can’t blame them. Mobile apps are predicted to generate 189 billion US dollars in revenue by 2020, and it is already a highly competitive market. If your app does not meet the needs of your customers, however, they will quickly delete your app and find a better deal on the web. The following is a breakdown of the most common reasons that mobile apps fail to make a splash in the tech industry.

Lack of Mobile Web Optimization

One of the most common mistakes in mobile app development is that many businesses are so eager to jump on the bandwagon that they release too early, without a clear understanding of the market. Customers expect apps to be useful and practical, as well as engaging. If developers do not optimise their products for mobile networks and devices, they can end up alienating users from the get go. Best practice is to develop a full mobile framework around your app, to avoid sluggishness and compatibility issues.

Insufficient Focus

A lack of focus and coherence is another potential adverse effect of jumping into the mobile app market too early. An all too common scenario is that business owners know only that they want an app, without necessarily having a clear vision of what that app actually has to do. This can lead to focusing on form more than function, the end result being an app that looks good at first glance, but is a confusing incoherent mess under the hood. This can be avoided by having a detailed overarching plan. Before you do anything, you should answer the following questions: what is your message, what value your app will provide to users and how it will be achieved logically.

Brand-centric Design

Businesses all to often design apps for the sake of their brand, rather than their customers. While it is great to be proud of your brand, apps are useless unless they provide a valuable service to customers. To avoid this happening, market research is crucial. Much thought needs to go into pinpointing your target customer and figuring out how to most completely meet their needs and expectations. Things to consider are how this customer makes purchasing decisions, how they think and how they interact with technology in general. If you design and develop with this person in mind, you will be on the path to a successful product.

Bugs

Fundamental development and design flaws can be the death of an app. The modern technology consumer has little to no patience for flawed software. The only way to protect your app from such a fate is to develop a closely knit and trustworthy development team. Interdisciplinary communication is a must, developers need to be in sync with business needs, and stakeholders need to be informed about what is going on with the tech side of things.

For every type of app, there are a dozen more competing for that crucial download. The pitfalls are legion, and we have all been witness to seemingly great apps dying out in popularity almost overnight. Being aware of the risks and threats in the market will put you in good stead, and give your app a chance to shine.