With customers always on the move and companies seeking more ways to stay top of mind, many businesses are shifting their focus towards mobile. The popularity of Android, iOS and simple web apps is causing the mobile landscape to be splintered, leaving companies confused on what the best way to reach their consumers is. On Wednesday morning members of the Illinois Technology Association hosted a panel to answer these questions and discuss the future of the mobile industry.
There is no one size fits all solution to conquering the mobile space, especially if you have a limited budget or limited access to developers. Ultimately, the most important thing is providing a seamless experience for the customer regardless of the platform.
Here are nine tips we gathered from the panel that included speakers from Google, GrubHub, Ethervision and Appolicious:
1.Keep it simple:
Start by mastering one or two things and work on doing them really, really well. “You have to stand out and you have to do what you do well. Keep it simple at first, you can always add features and let feedback guide you to the next step,” said Randall Cross, President of Ethervision. To choose the correct features, Cross recommends having a concrete understanding of who your customer is and how you can connect with them.
2.Stay focused
“They key is not to do three apps poorly but to do one app really well,” said Mike Evans, the co-founder of GrubHub. Don’t invest in a large audience that you can’t satisfy. “If you are fortunate to get a user to sample your application it better work well,” said Brad Spirrison, Managing Editor and Vice President of Content Services at Appolicious.
3. Master one platform at a time
Creating an app should be like writing a short poem, not a book. This means keeping the user interface simple and being able trust that the suggested task could be completed by anyone whose hands the app ends up in, regardless of their level of knowledge. Because you can’t put every component of your company into an app, Spirrison recommends choosing one thing and making it really engaging, cool and simple to use. Eventually, you will want to have a presence on all platforms to get universal critical mass. Remember apply user feedback and refine the app before porting it to a new platform.
