I’ve got two friends that nearly kill each other every week. No, they’re not wrestlers, fencers, race car drivers, fire acrobats or bomb defusers. Worse.
They’re in love.
A boy and a girl that know each other for about 10 years, every since they were 16.
Their relationship is a special one.
They live with each other in a small flat that’s almost devoid of furniture and decorations. They have each other.
They know each other so well, that they’re brutally honest and their love is a fiery and violent one at that.
When one gets drunk and comes back home at three in the morning, he falls down, she kicks in in the shin and tells him to get up and go to sleep. Then she looks at him, kisses him on the temple and drags him gently to bed where she hums a tune so he can go to sleep. He does the same for her. Shin part included.
When they fight, they go all out. They’re not a man and a woman. They are two warriors with a combat knife in their teeth and a steely gaze, unwilling to back down, unwilling to give an inch to the other one.
They don’t hold back. I’ve seen both of them flinging chairs, pizza boxes and old Nintendo games at each other with impunity. Their apartment’s riddled with holes and scars. I think their flat got the worst of it during the years.
But at the end of the day, she comes right up at him, grabs his face and holds him in such an embrace as if he’s the last, most precious thing she ever has in the world.
To someone who doesn’t know them, you’d say that he’s beating the living saints out of her and in comparison she’s making the Spanish Inquisition look like a choir boy.
How does this story tie in with today’s thoughts?
Maybe our phones and apps haven’t kicked us in the shins yet, but it’s still the same feeling.
People experience the same relationship with their mobile phones. We kick them, we throw them at the walls, they annoy us, they screw us over, but at the end of the day, they’re still coming to bed with us.
They’re an extension of our lives, a mirror of our actions, desires and history.
I’ve talked about the importance of understanding user experience, design and engagement in the past. But I never really got at the heart of what mobile apps mean to people and why companies and developers should really focus on that emotional dynamic.
Understanding that intimate relationship people have with their mobile phones is key if you actually want your mobile app to have a place in your mobile users’ hearts.
Why it matters
If you want your app to be a success, go down in history and make your users more than happy to pay for what you’re offering, then you need to understand how people view apps today.
According to a new study from Compuware, the majority of smartphone users (85%) still prefer mobile apps to mobile websites.
Apigee’s 2013 Mobile App Behavior global survey of more than 760 smartphone owners in the United States and Europe found that 82% of those surveyed believe there are critical apps they can’t go without for even a day.
Spain emerged as the most app-reliant country with 93 percent admitting they can’t go one complete day without apps, while half of the U.S. respondents said they couldn’t last just four hours without apps.
Let’s see what users expect of apps.
But despite their love for apps, 79% report that they would only retry an app once or twice if it failed to work the first time.
Only 16% said they would give it more than two attempts.
They expect their apps to load in 2 seconds flat or less. That means you have to put performance and stability first if you want to meet the loading time ceiling.
Not a very happy truth but it’s how we as a species changed our perception towards the internet today.
If you’re like me, you remember the days when downloading a song took half an hour.
But with computing powers and better processors, a paradigm shift was inevitable. We’re less patient with loading times.
Even more so our perception has changed each time we encounter specific words.
Data from Applause (a mobile app analytics tool) shows that reviews with the word “crash” are eight times more likely to be 1 or 2 stars than the average review.
Add into the pot the fact that the Apple Store and Google Play sport some 800 k apps apiece. Add to those apps, individual app stores in the world and we’re somewhere near the 2 million app mark right now.
Seems like the app market is nearing saturation.
Looks grim doesn’t it?
Actually it looks like that on the surface.
What the situation implies right now is that users will start targeting apps that provide them the reliability they need.
Introducing you, smart devices and your user
First date. First impression. You have three shots, make em’ count.
People have a very intimate relationship with their phones nowadays. It’s not just the apps, but it’s how apps live in harmony with each other.
When one of your best friends is your mobile phone you need to treat it like a first date.
This is where app etiquette comes into play.
As one user once posted on Techcrunch: ,,Life is too short for buggy apps.”
Assuming you’re already with me on effective UI and a you want a good user experience for your app users, time to start giving your mobile users a reason to love you.
First thing that you should do is make sure you’re starting out on the right foot with your users. Besides thanking them for downloading their app (there are a lot of apps that still fail in regards to etiquette today), Explicitly! saying that you would be happy to get their feedback on your app and how it can be improved and upgraded. You establish the dialogue from the get go and you’re not just putting out a one sided product in their hands.
Second thing, should be whether or not you’re going to incorporate a walkthrough for your app. Remember, that people mostly use apps in their downtime, and don’t have time to go trough an excruciatingly slow step by step description of what your buttons do.
A survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2012 revealed that more than half of all smartphone app users surveyed have either declined to download an available app or deleted one from their device because of concerns about the collection of their personal data.
When was the last time when you sent out a push notification or added into your app description assurances about protecting your users info? That’s a deal-breaker for a lot of users nowadays and concerns about user privacy will be around for as long as we have internet.
The emotional dialogue between a mobile user and his app(s) is dependent on the trust you provide.
The end idea?
In 2013, mobile apps will generate $25 billion revenue; tablets apps are expected to contribute nearly $8.8 billion, while smartphone apps are estimated to account for $16.4 billion. Apps are around and will be around for some time.
It’s not that you shouldn’t go for a mobile app. It’s just that the cultural perception has evolved in the last few years. Users now know what they want from their mobile apps. They want apps, they want to fall in love with them and this is what’s going to separate good apps from run of the mill average Joe apps.
Nurture the relationship between your mobile apps and your users. People will hate an app, will curse it, but if there’s an emotional stake involved, things will turn out well.
If you liked this you might also be interested in:
What app marketers should know about mobile users in 2013
The Importance of Creative Design For Mobile App User Experience
User Expectations with Mobile Apps – Catching up with EffectiveUI
