Following this week’s episode of The Apprentice and the conversations taking place last night between the UK’s mobile and tech community, Paloma Vivanco-Coutts, mobile marketing manager at Velti and 2010 Apprentice contestant, offers her guide on how to make your app stand out in a highly competitive market.
I really enjoyed this week’s episode of The Apprentice and it was refreshing to see a technology and mobile related task for once- something I’m clearly very passionate about and involved with!
It is fair to say the crash course development of the apps wasn’t representative of just how involved the process is in the real world. However I’m sure the app developer community would empathise with the time frame and pressures these candidates were under.
The outcome was interesting. What appeared to be the less interesting app turned out to have the most global appeal and total downloads. Here are some pointers I’ve picked up over the years – I wonder if they may have swayed Lord Sugar’s decision had I been back in the boardroom!
1) Total number of downloads don’t always equal success. With most applications, there is a tendency for usage to drop off with approximately 25% of them getting deleted after just one use. It is the apps that get downloaded, are monetised and then stay a useful application for users on a daily or weekly basis that are truly successful. I think most people are over the ‘fun, quirky’ apps and are now looking for developers to create something that is genuinely helpful or can challenge or entertain long term.
2) Analysing your data is key – the measurement of success was vague. Lord Sugar mentioned that it could have been Wired’s global reach that helped the girls to win. Ultimately, we don’t know who downloaded the app, where in the world they were, when they downloaded or why they did. A good mobile application is built on an SDK that allows you to gather and analyse all that data. Did the girls have better content or was it simply the placement on Wired that helped them to win? We can’t really tell.
3) Take advantage of native tools. Given the opportunity to create a mobile application, they could have taken advantage of the tools available to mobile app developers – both apps were simple soundboards that could have been created on a web page.
4) Know your Audience. They were slightly off the mark in terms of creating something for their target audience. They knew they were going to be pitching to techies, the internet crowd and gamers so they could have developed a proposition that would have resonated better with that audience. Going to pitch an app that makes cat noises or women talking over each other to Techcrunch was never really going to fly was it?
By Paloma Vivanco Coutts
Mobile marketing expert
Velti
http://www.velti.com/
Follow Paloma on Twitter here
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Totally agree with your article Paloma.
I’ve made comments on LinkedIn about how the episode and results had a lack of business sense – as you say just because the girls had the highest initial download (I suspect partly due to Wired but partly due to an easy to understand description for all – regardless of culture, language etc) there is absolutely no guarantee that this will result in greater profits in the important retention of interest and upgrade business end of the task.
It’s quite possible that an app with just 10 free downloads could actually receive a higher income than an app with 10,000 free downloads if the content/app is of worth and moves the user to part with cash to upgrade etc.
I was astounded as I watched this with my husband – how on earth could they turn an app around in 24hrs and gain global coverage? Watching the teams going through this process in only 24hrs was amusing – somethings which take months of planning and execution were suggested, and the face-pulling of the mobile guys helping them out – Grapple – was amusing to watch.
Our own mobile team delivered some more insight on the process and programme that you may wantto look at if you found Paloma’s views interesting.
In all of this though – how many people have been appraoched to make an app now as it “only takes a day”!! Woudl be interestingto know.