There is a growing market for mobile applications but many company-branded apps appear to be little more than a vacuous marketing ploy with little or no real value to an end user. There are some obviously practical and beneficial apps out there like Google Maps or the London Underground Journey Planner, but on the whole most company branded apps are gimmicks with little real appeal other than novelty value.
In fact, it’s better to have no branded app at all rather than a mediocre one. Users who have had a bad experience with a branded app will avoid downloading other apps from that same brand in future. Mobile applications are different to more “conventional” micro sites. A naff microsite will go away eventually, but a bad mobile application is there forever and can do lasting damage to the brand.
A mobile app should be all about adding value to a user, not acting as a substitute for a marketing campaign. If brand visibility is the name of the game, there are far better and more suitable channels to achieve that. Even the most loyal customers won’t download an app unless it does something useful for them. A good mobile app therefore is extremely user-centric and easily facilitates what that user wants to get done on their device. A good app doesn’t need to include a lot of the features that would be available on a company’s website and should focus on tasks that people are likely to complete while using their phones.
One good example of utility in a car insurance app for example would be the ability to get a quote and make a claim straight from the phone’s interface. To be especially useful, the app shouldn’t contain any extraneous corporate background infomation – the user can get all that from the website. Rather it should make an accident much less stressful by offering features such as automatically collecting the GPS location of the accident, or allowing the user to upload photos of any damage using the phone’s camera. One beneficial extra could be to provide a useful prompt list of all the other details that should be gathered. This would be a great aide memoire as not many people are cool and collected after an accident and it’s easy to overlook things like getting the other driver’s name, registration and contact details and how the accident occurred. It’s that degree of usefulness which is important. Ask yourself “what would I need from an app” , not from a corporate or promotional perspective, but from the standpopint of a user who actually wants to do things.
Effective branded apps should also be developed with the needs and the lifestyle of their target audience very much in mind. If, in the case of the example above, a significant amount of business comes from small, mobile or delivery-based businesses where the users depend on trucks or vans either to get to a worksite or to make deliveries, most of those delivery-based businesses will also be constantly on the road. The van or the truck is not only their transport, it’s the office or workshop as well. Making access to whatever service you have to provide match that work and lifestyle as much as possible will meet the needs of these users and above all match the way they use their phones.
The author, Allan Bisset, works with a company that provides short term car insurance and one day car insurance for business and private customers.
Image: DieZBW
Freelance ex -print journo and conventional ad agency copywriter dragged more or less kicking and screaming into the digital era.
