It’s not the destination, it’s the journey. This is especially true when it comes to mobile apps. Yes, you might often be measured by the “destination” (mobile KPIs) but that’s not to say that the journey is any less important. The journey that a user takes to complete an action is critical because it speaks volumes about their intent and your app’s usability. In analytics lingo, one way to assess these critical journeys is through user flows.

Let’s rewind for a second though. What is a user flow?

User flows are for the visual learner. Via distinct arrows, where thickness indicates number of navigations, user flows show you the inbound and outbound journeys for every screen and popup within your app.

They enable you at a glance to assess how the bulk of your users (and the minority) are moving from one screen to another. When drilling down into specific user flows and screens, you can obtain powerful insights regarding user intent and usability.

Click on the image below to see a video of an interactive user flow with Appsee. You’ll see how you can drag and toggle elements to zoom in on the parameters that you want to measure. When hovering over a specific screen you can obtain a summary of the number of sessions and impressions per screen.

**Pro tip: If the number of impressions is disproportionately larger than the number of sessions, this could indicate a confused user journey and warrants further investigation.

There are two angles from which to examine via user flows: investigation and discovery. You can utilize user flows to actively investigate specific screens that you know tend to be “problematic” and/or have a direct impact on CR. Contrastingly, if you simply want to monitor navigation patterns on a routine level, you can utilize user flows to discover behavior trends across factors such as devices, user demographics, and OS.

The following use cases serve as examples of how mobile professionals can make the most of this pretty, yet powerful, feature. While this list is definitely not exhaustive, you’ll surely walk away with even more ideas of how to monitor and improve user journeys in your app.

User Flow Use Cases

New vs. Returning Users

It’s a known fact that an in-app journey will be different for a new user versus a returning user. How you identify, examine, and optimize around these differences can have a significant effect on your UX. Naturally, these two types of users are going to have different intents when entering your app. User flow analysis is a terrific way to compare and contrast the behaviors and experiences of these users. First, a new user will have certain tendencies. They might be more inclined to peruse the app, checking out all the goodies and assessing if they actually want the app to occupy their coveted background screen space. Whereas a returning user will probably know exactly where he/she wants to go, meaning that their path will be more direct, probably with fewer “random” navigations. That said, if you see on your user flows that new vs. returning users are navigating in the same manner, it might be cause for concern.

Shop > Crash

The Shop/Product feed screen is a major component of any mCommerce app. The only way users will fill their “cart” is by first interacting with this essential screen. From this screen, users can also demonstrate a variety of intentions/needs. When using user flow analysis to better understand your shop screen’s ability to convert, here are a few key questions you should ask yourself:

• Is there a difference in how new users are behaving versus returning users?
• What is the percentage of navigations from the Shop screen to My Cart screen out of the total navigations?
• Is the number of navigations from Shop to My Cart dramatically higher (or lower) for new users than returning users?

And what about crashes occurring from the Shop screen? How many new users are experiencing crashes compared to returning users? What about different versions and devices?

Let’s take a look at how Appsee’s user flows answer this essential performance topic. You can see below that 10.6% of new users experienced a crash after visiting the Shop screen for the first time. This is quite a high percentage and is certainly going to affect churn rates. A user’s trust and reliability in the app is going to plummet if he/she can’t even shop during a first session.

That’s not to say that crashes are not also catastrophic for returning users. A positive characteristic of returning users is that their interest in your app is higher and that they are more likely to become “loyal” users. But, if the crash continues to happen, even to a returning user who has built trust in your app, they will eventually churn. As seen below, there is still quite a high crash rate of 9.4% that is still cursing returning users.

Illogical Journeys

This use case may cause you to scratch your head. Illogical user journeys happen all the time. Some might be negligible, others can indicate a bigger underlying issue in usability and/or performance

For example, why would a user, new or returning, go from the Shop screen to the Login screen?

• This flow simply is slightly illogical and requires further investigation.
• This might signify a bug in the app.
• Maybe there’s a navigation issue, where users are tapping on something that they think will take them to the next step, but actually, it’s taking them back to the Login screen.
• Perhaps returning users want to create a new account or actively log out of the app.
• Is there an error or some interruption/prompt that caused them to do this?

Not only is it confusing, but it can also be downright frustrating for users if their intended journey is disrupted. And what’s the result of confusion and frustration? You know the answer already: churn, churn, churn.

Different Versions/Devices

When analyzing app user behavior, it’s necessary to take different versions and devices into account because technology can be finicky, and what works for Android, may not be working for iOS (or vice versa). “Working” can mean many things. For example, maybe a particular illogical flow is occurring on Android and not on iOS? Perhaps a popup on iOS is causing more users to quit the app than the same popup on Android?

With Appsee’s user flows, you can toggle between iOS and Android to understand differences and similarities between the two operating systems. You can also go back and forth between version types and phone vs. tablet.

High Intent Screens

There’s a reason these high intent screens exist, but what’s actually happening in these big boy screens? For example, let’s take a look at the Login and Payment screens which are highly trafficked by users. The former because so many apps use Login to identify and personalize your app experience, and the latter because for shopping and food and beverage apps, as well as many others, this is The Big Cheese, the most important screen to visit.

• Via user flows, we recommend that you drill down to the inbound and outbound journeys from these specific screens, and ask the following questions:
• Is there a high percentage of users quitting the app just before the Payment screen? Are any journeys ending in a crash?
• Are there inbound screens to Login other than the splash/opening screen?
• Was there an abnormally low number of users navigating to the Home after Login? Where are they going instead?

Pro tip: User Flows + User Session Recordings

User flows improve mobile professional’s understanding of where users are heading within the app. They’re able to zoom in on the intent of users in specific settings, whether it’s a first-time user or a returning user, iOS or Android, or any other parameter that you want to measure.

Yet, believe it or not, there’s a chance to take this analysis one step further–to not only see the connections between screens but to then dive into the individual sessions and see what users are actually doing thanks to user recordings.

Some analytics tools, like Appsee, provide these user session recordings for app teams so that they can quickly and easily investigate certain problems or abnormalities within journeys. Earlier in this piece, we mentioned the importance of tracking crashed sessions on major screens like the ‘Shop’ screen. Session recordings go one step further by enabling you to see the crash during the user’s session.

Within Appsee’s user flows, as you’re selecting a flow for review, you can hover over any specific screen and a pop up will appear. From here you can watch all session recordings of users who took this exact path. For example, if you hover over the arrow that leads from Shop > Crash, you can watch all sessions that include this exact flow. By watching recordings of these specific crashed sessions you can better understand the in-app events that preceded these crashes.

User flows enable mobile professionals to delve into specific user paths in order to figure out what’s working, and what’s not. Now that you have all the tools, the resources, and plenty of starter ideas to get the user flows flowing, it’s time to get analyzing.

Give user flows and session recordings a try with a 14-day free trial with Appsee.

Go with the Flow: How to easily measure and improve user flows was originally published in Product Coalition on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

2018 was a blockbuster year for mobile in all kinds of ways: Global app downloads soared, consumer spend was up, and the average time spent in mobile apps also grew. In this truly mobile-first epoch, there has never been a better time to get into mobile. However, if you’re a brand looking to choose a mobile app development company, the selection process can be very confusing. What are the characteristics you should be looking for when it comes to finding a development partner you can trust?

We set out to find the answers to these questions by scouring app industry award sites, directories, online sentiment, and reviews, as well as conversations on social media.

Here’s what we found:

1) Not Just a Mobile App Development Company

Almost all award-winning app development companies describe themselves as more than a straightforward development solution. Their teams represent mobile product specialists, made up of people from all kinds of backgrounds, who are invested in the projects they’re involved in bringing to life. Each mobile app development company tended to be involved right from the start of the app ideation process, through to post-launch support, and ongoing iterative development.

2) They Know What Makes Them Unique

We also found that each leading mobile app development company we looked into had developed and communicated key aspects that make them unique. By definition, these qualities change according to the mobile app development company in question — sometimes it’s their style of working, the particular makeup of their teams, or where they place particular emphasis when it comes to approach.

9 Champion App Development Companies

To bring our discoveries to life, we’ve hand-picked 9 app development companies that we think epitomize our findings. In no particular order, we’ve dived into the individual characteristics of each mobile app development company to provide insights into their positioning, specialisms, and representative portfolio work.

1. Fueled

“We wake up in the morning to create apps that people will use, apps that make money, apps that top the charts”

Who is Fueled?

USA and London based Fueled is a full-service digital agency that covers not only apps for iOS and Android app development, but also websites, branding and blockchain development.

What’s their thing?

Fueled specializes in building custom apps for clients from scratch and focuses on building apps that do something rather than sell something. They state that a key vision for any new product is to see it become an “essential part of users’ daily lives’ which means they are selective in the projects they choose to build.

Although multi-platform, Fueled started out as an iOS-focused mobile app development company and are today considered one of the leading iPhone app development agencies. Fueled are also working with market leaders Google Home and Amazon Alexa to pair iPhone and Android apps that are already widely used.

Which mobile apps did they create?

• QuizUp’s Trivia game — Fueled created the world’s biggest Trivia game app, which continues to top the Apple & Google Play stores.
• Afterlight photo editor — Available on the Google Play Store, this app is one of the most downloaded paid apps of all time. While the iOS version already existed, the company turned to Fueled to build their Android version.
• KeyMe — Key copier app — A great example of Fueled’s interest in practical solutions, this product lets iphone users scan their keys then order a new one from a kiosk.

2. Fuzz

“Creating beautiful, usable products engineered to perform”

Who is Fuzz?

Fuzz is a New York-based mobile app development company that’s been around for more than 14 years. They’ve created more than 300 apps and completed over 500 projects in their time. In 2016, Forrester Research named Fuzz among the “most significant vendors” for designing and developing B2C mobile applications. This mobile app development company has been ranked among the top 5 mobile app developers in New York, and are mentioned as a key player in the Wearable Apps Market Report for 2019–2028.

What’s their thing?

Fuzz’s product teams work in a completely cross-disciplinary way and in two-week sprints. These sprints are categorized according to the discovery, product design or development stages and span the full cycle of app creation. As a client of this mobile app development company, you’ll be presented with mood boards and competitive analysis, UI design and wireframes, proof of concepts and a launch plan. Fuzz also operates a continuous build approach to mobile app development, meaning designs and prototypes are constantly refined as necessary.

Which mobile apps did they create?

• ShakeShack’s order ahead app — A mobile ordering app to save time and order ahead, rather than wait in line.
• Forever 21’s retail shopping app — Fuzz partnered with Moovweb to create a new content management system for Forever 21, enabling them to scale and localize more effectively.
• YMCA’s Y-MVP App — An award-winning fitness product designed to encourage youth to engage in physical exercise each day — designed to supersede the previous kiosk model, which required physical check-ins at YMCA kiosks.

3. Dot Com Infoway (DCI)

“360° Mobile & Web solutions to turn your ideas into world-class products and help you reach your target customer”

Who is Dot Com Infoway?

Established in 2000, India, USA & Australia based Dot Com Infoway has grown from 5 to 100+ full-time staff in 2019. With nearly 20 years of experience when it comes to providing outsourced IT services, the company today consists of a talented team of developers, UI and UX designers, SEO experts, marketers and more.

What’s their thing?

DCI’s mobile and web solutions are truly 360° in scope. The agency offers comprehensive web and native app development services, as well as server management, app marketing strategy and delivery, in addition to blockchain development and wallet integration services. DCI are unique in their offer of 24/7 support as well as for their specific experience in providing school management software and providing marketing for the mobile games sector. When it comes to app development and methodology, DCI openly declares a UI-focused design process — starting with a clear definition of business goals, and an understanding of the product’s target users and competition. DCI also stresses the importance of gathering user feedback early in the prototype process so as to inform the design and development process.

Which mobile apps did they create?

• Barotta’s food delivery app — DCI helped to deliver this pre-paid food delivery app, which offers users up to 100 different healthy Barotta combinations and range of convenient online payment options.
• Media Voice Magazine’s content app — DCI was brought onboard to create the ipad version of this popular Indian publication which covers a range of topics, from business and politics to the arts.
• Jumbo’s club privileges — DCI worked with The Jump and Spar Privilege Club to create an app that would be easy to use and replace the need for a physical rewards card.

4. Yeti

“We’re dreamers and solution architects with the heart, know-how, and experience to be a true partner on your product development journey”

Who is Yeti?

Yeti is a San-Francisco based software company offering services for rapid application development services as well as software product strategy. They specialize in the areas of IoT, mobile app development, Web & UX.

What’s their thing?

Yeti brands it’s own unique product development methodology as ‘Applied Agile ™ — the team have pioneered this approach for the last 7 years as a way to empower both development teams and executive sponsors. They specialize in working with small teams looking to scale and improve their user experience. In conjunction, they position themselves as a true development partner for businesses looking to deliver striking and standout products. In addition to building data-driven web and mobile apps, Yeti’s experience also encompasses conversational interfaces, interactive kiosks and integrations between devices and apps.

Which mobile apps did they create?

• National Fitness Campaign’s mobile app — Yeti teamed up with the campaign to help promote free fitness and healthy living across 4,000 US based cities and abroad. The app was designed to enable users to engage with their local fitness courts in new ways.
• PlayStation’s future engagement app — Yeti worked with PlayStation to concept a future product release as a new way to connect gamers with content they care about, while simultaneously rewarding in-game action.
• Chelsea Handler’s excuse generator app — The ‘Gotta Go’ app was built to supplement comedian Chelsea Handler’s Netflix series. In three taps, the app sends real calls and texts to your phone, providing an excuse for exiting awkward social moments!

5. Citrus Bits

“Pragmatists and idealists; right brains and left brains; minimalists and kitchen sink throwers — we’ve got them all!

Who is Citrus Bits?

San Francisco and Los Angeles based Citrus Bits describe themselves as at the intersection of user-focused design, app development, digital strategy, and emerging technology. This mobile app development company specializes in helping brands maximize the benefits to be had from mobile technology, and have delivered more than 300 successful apps across a range of verticals.

What’s their thing?

CitrusBits emphasizes the diversity of its team and their backgrounds, claiming this helps to foster their in-house freshness regarding ideas, approach, and product development. When it comes to mobile development, CitrusBits specializes both in iOS and Android apps — they also have specific experience in helping enterprises boost productivity through custom solutions for their workforce.

Which mobile apps did they create?

• Fully Raw’s award winning vegan app — Vegan influencer Kristina Carrillo-Bucuram turned to Citrus Bits to create an easy-to-use, clutter-free content app for her followers, featuring recipes, videos, shopping lists & more.
• Leef’s mobile storage app — Leef’s mobile provides a means for users to transfer, view, edit and share files from their wearable devices and drones, directly to their smartphone.
• Quicksilver’s inventory management iPad app — Citrus Bit created an order processing and inventory management platform for Quicksilver’s extensive product range — it was designed to integrate with both their POS and SAP.

6. Usemobile

“Think, plan, develop!”

Who is Usemobile?

Usemobile is a Brazilian mobile app development company dedicated to creating state of the art mobile apps that stand out from the rest. The company offers Portuguese and English language capabilities and state their mission as simply to ‘make the best apps’ they can.

What’s their thing?

Usemobile utilizes Java programming for Android native apps and Swift for iOS — they state user experience as a key focus for their developers and ensure friendly layouts throughout their designs. This mobile app development company has specific experience with a range of IOT products, including smartwatch app development and beacon development for stores and events. In order to ensure companies are paying attention to the right metrics, Usemobile uniquely offers a ‘management panel’ which summarizes the main usage statistics of any app they develop.

Which mobile apps did they create?

• 12 Min Book Summary App: Usemobile’s 12min-Book Summary App is available across a number of iOS platforms and won the Editor’s Choice award from Apple. The app works by extracting the greatest ideas from bestselling non-fiction books to create a unique micro-book which can be digested in audio or text form in just 12 minutes. Usemobile also created a Smartwatch app version of this product which you can see here.
• Kumon Audiobook App: This app was developed for the Latin American branch of Kumon, designed to assist learners of Japanese and English. The app helps users develop their reading, listening, and audio-repetition of these languages by associating the sounds with meaning in a clever way.
• Gerencianet: Usemobile created this app for one of the biggest payment intermediaries in Brazil — it enables the issuing of tickets without registration fee payment. Vendors using the app only pay a few after they receive a payment from a client and the app enables balance transfers between Gerencianet accounts as well as bank accounts.

7. Savvy Apps

“We’re dreamers, creators, designers, builders. But more than that, we’re mothers, fathers, advocates, friends, travelers, foodies, tech snobs, geeks, artists, athletes, musicians, adventurers, and wild at heart”

Who is Savvy Apps?

Founded in 2009, Virginia-based,mobile app development company Savvy Apps have been producing apps since the early days of the app stores. (They’ve told us they’ve even got the skeuomorphic designs to prove it. A number of guiding principles underpins Savvy App’s approach — among other things, they aim to ‘inspire emotion’, ‘fight for users’ and be ‘frontier dwellers’.

What’s their thing?

Savvy Apps offer the full range of services necessary for designing, creating and maintaining a successful app product. On the development side, they highlight their experience across both iOS and Android development platforms, in addition to web, Vue.js., backend, Firebase, and Estimote Beacon development.

Savvy Apps is really a one-stop shop — if you’re in the ideation stage, their ‘investor kickstart’ model will help you to communicate your app’s story to investors and their ‘concept testing’ will confirm the viability of your product. Once the build process is complete, the AppSavvy team can continue to assist with your marketing strategy, providing guidance on ASO tactics, deep linking, push notifications execution and more.

Which mobile apps did they create?

• Sprynt’s Ride Sharing app — App Savvy worked with on-demand and eco-friendly ridesharing company Sprynt to deliver their iOS app experience, This included support on the branding, analytics and push notification side in addition to development.
• Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry app — Share Our Strength turned to App Savvy for help with the early ideation and Android development of their No Kid Hungry’s ‘Cooking Matters’ app — all part of a wider initiative to help end childhood hunger, by inspiring families to make both healthy and affordable food choices.
• Optimizing the Motley Fool’s finance app — The Motley Fool enlisted the help of App Savvy to boost engagement among certain segments of its membership base. App Savvy came on board as a dedicated iterative design and development partner.

8. The App Solutions

“We build scalable intelligent web & mobile applications that simplify people’s lives”

Who is The App Solutions?

The App Solutions started as a small but ambitious team of 5 developers in 2014. Since then, they’ve established a number of strategic partnerships as well the high-profile acquisition of Grossum software development which enabled the agency’s expansion into web. Today they house a team of 30+ engineers and offices in two countries (Ukraine and USA).

What’s their thing?

The App Solutions highlights their interest in working with funded startups and enterprises, and companies that are similarly focused on transforming the way people use and interact with technological products and services. They also emphasize their intention to build lifelong relationships with clients, as opposed to delivering one-off development projects. The App Solutions focuses on building intelligence into the products they create. Their team of business analysts is on hand to undertake detailed analysis of the competition and industry landscape, delivering a detailed technical specification of requirements, and their software engineers make use of Big Data analytics, AI and cloud platforms for the building of scalable intelligent products.

Lastly, The App Solutions offers ongoing support to their startup customers, following the lean startup approach of constant iteration — they even guarantee a bug-free app within three months of launching a new product. Their on-site app calculator is quite a neat little tool, check it out here.

Which mobile apps did they create?

• Ernst & Young’s money app — The App Solutions worked with Ernst & Young’s employment team to create this game-changing recruitment app. The product allows existing employees and trainees to find details regarding job openings and recruitment events, as well as communicate directly with the company’s in-house HR representatives.
• Nioxin’s hairstyle consultancy app — Nioxin approached The App Solutions for help in creating a tool for their salon staff — the android and iOS app takes salon visitors through a series of questions to identify the best fitting product for them.
• Conectric’s energy usage app — A truly intelligent solution for reducing building energy consumption, The App Solutions provides the software ecosystem required for Conectric’s energy management app. The back-end gathers data from sensors like weather conditions, while the front-end provides features such as thermostat control.

9. Netguru

“Yes, we can build that”

Who is Netguru?

Poland based Netguru began in 2008. Back then, they quickly set a precedent for things to come with the acquisition of their first client, Agora S.A., the biggest publisher in Poland. In 2015 they were named Forbes’ Diamond and have since received positive and comprehensive coverage by the Entrepreneur, The Next Web, TechCrunch, and more.

What’s their thing?

On the mobile app side, Netguru boasts a team of 500+ (UX designers, full-stack developers, QAs, BAs and more). They specialize in providing optimized custom mobile app development solutions for both iOS and Android and highlight their experience with delivering personalized UX for their clients. In addition to the deployment of native technology like Swift, Java, Kotlin and more. Netguru’s development team also has extensive experience with cross-platform hybrid applications using React Native for iOS and Android, or PWAs.

Netguru’s provides an interactive chart of their development process here, a real-life example of their innovative approach to delivering information. By playing with this tool, you’ll see how detailed QA testing is essential to their process — they also emphasise the importance of transparency, security, speed, and building trust with their clients.

Which mobile apps did they create?

• Shine’s self-care app — This unique product offers users motivational text messages and articles which they can choose to share, ‘positive thinking’ audio tracks, and a ‘check-in’ function for users to actively reflect on the positive moments of their day.
• Countr’s social shopping app — Netguru worked with Manon Roux to deliver a new kind of social shopping platform through Countr. Features implemented include Machine Learning for product discovery and a personalized experience for users based on a well-thought-out recommendation system
• ShiftWear’s smartsneaker — Netguru was contracted to develop software for the ‘world’s first app-driven ‘smartsneaker’. This fun product offers real-time sneaker customization and a marketplace for these sneaker designs

10. Dom & Tom

“Led by our twin Co-Founders, we are driven by passion, innovation, and the successful collaboration of our team, clients, and users”

Who is Dom & Tom?

Dom & Tom started their mobile app development company in 2009 after identifying a gap in the market when it came to iOS apps. With the twins’ combined experience of software development, finance, and project management, they were perfectly positioned to establish their successful Queens, New York based app development agency.

What’s their thing?

Today Dom & Tom offer web, iPhone and Android development services to Fortune 500 companies as well as innovative startups. They’ve received a plethora of awards from the likes of Inc. 5000 for their rapid growth and strong workplace culture, and they place particular emphasis on pushing the boundaries of digital innovation. In addition to comprehensive app development services, Dom & Tom offer a suite of broader product strategy and planning services to ensure that the end result is a well-crafted mobile app. During the discovery services, they’ll perform competitive analysis, user research and create roadmaps. During the development stage, they emphasize their focus on ‘outcome’ rather than ‘output’, highlighting the support they provide for UX and QA testing. Once the app’s been built and tested, Dom & Tom’s product team will be on hand for any post-launch hosting and maintenance support as well as for product iteration planning.

Which mobile apps did they create?

• NBA’s Stats-in-A-Box — Dom & Tom worked with the NBA to create a native mobile widget for use on Android & iOS. The product showcases real-time scores and stats for use across partner apps for fans to ensure they’re always up to date.
• Seventeen Magazine App — Dom & Tom worked closely with America’s popular teenage audience targeted magazine to build a well-thought iOS experience for the brand’s young audience.
• Smart office Employee app — Designed to increase in-house employee collaboration and foster better productivity, Dom & Tom helped create this inhouse ‘smart office’ app for a global management consulting brand.

Top App Development Resources

In addition to choosing a top-notch mobile app development company, you can build an even better mobile brand for yourself by embracing some of the below additional resources:

Appfutura is a great tool for finding suitable app developers, software development companies and digital marketing agencies wherever you are in the world. Appfutura works closely with all the active firms listed, independently certifying them, and verifying any reviews left for a particular company.

If you’re interested in chatting, networking and swapping ideas with fellow mobile app product specialists, marketers, geeks and growth hackers, we highly recommend the Growmance Slack community. Established by a software company, it’s free to sign up, and you’ll find channels for growth, tech, getting feedback, and more. Further, you can discuss the experiences with particular agencies directly with the community.

Steve P Young’s App Masters Youtube channel is a great place for learning more about mobile app growth hacking — you’ll find info on Advance ASO strategies, vetting app ideas, monetization, and more.

Summary

Hopefully, you’ll find this mobile app development company deep-dive insightful. Once you’ve made the crucial decisions regarding your app development, you’ll want to get the right analytics in early and start tracking user behavior and performance. Read this blog next for a run-through of the industry’s top app analytics.

What Makes a First-rate Mobile App Development Company? was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This post was originally published on UsabilityGeek.

Mobile ads are part of many apps’ monetisation strategy. However, there are good mobile ads, and there are bad mobile ads. The last thing you want to see over your morning cup of coffee is this type of review for your mobile app, complaining about a poor quality ad:

Why do these bad mobile ads even weasel their way into apps in the first place? The reality is that too many app publishers are guilty of prioritising their own business needs over their users’ needs. Your monetisation strategy can only work for you if your app has users coming back. Bad ads, or too many ads, will send those users running even if your overall app design is perfect.

A report by SOOMLA on user churn shows that some ads cause churn of 8 users per 1000 ads displayed. Take this reviewer, for example, who called the game “fun” but encountered so many ads that they decided to give the app an unfortunate nickname:

Another App Store reviewer summed up a recently published game like this:

Here is some more bad news: your app might have bad mobile ads showing to your users, and you do not even know it — not until reviews like the above have already been published.

This is why, as an app publisher, it is imperative to monitor your mobile ads for quality, placement, and content. They have a direct impact on your app’s UX as well as engagement and retention.

Should you choose to accept it, your mission is to maintain a healthy balance between your needs for monetisation and your users’ needs for whatever value your app offers them.

In this article, we will discuss how to ensure a steady stream of revenue from your app, while still offering users the stellar user experience they are looking for. We will talk about ad quantity and ad quality, and the effect ads have on your app’s UX. Also, you will learn several methods for detecting all sorts of bad mobile ads before many of your users do.

Why You Need Mobile Ads In The First Place

At least 90% of apps today are free, including most of the apps you find in the Top Grossing charts. Where does the money come from? That is what app monetisation methods are for.

When it comes to monetisation, app publishers have a variety of routes available to them. Here are just a few of them: there is the pay to download option, there is the freemium option, and then, there is the wide and wonderful world of mobile ads.

Mobile ads are an excellent option for many app publishers, because you will be able to keep your app free for users, but you will see some revenue come in fairly quickly. They run on the famous and sometimes infamous advertising technology called programmatic advertising, which automates the media buying process and uses accumulated user data to send the most relevant ads to the most relevant audiences at the most effective times.

How does mobile app advertising work? You start by choosing an ad network, which will mediate between the app publisher (you) and the advertisers. You then select what ad formats you want to use (more on those later). Then you decide on an ad pricing model, meaning what user action you get paid for: when the user sees the ad, taps on the ad, or converts.

Meet The Mobile Ads: From Banners To Videos

There are several types of mobile ads to choose from, and different verticals tend to choose different kinds:

• Banner ads appear at the edges of each screen in your app.
• Interstitial ads cover the entire screen and are typically shown during the natural transition points in the user journey, for example between two game levels.
• Video ads also cover the user’s screen, and they often include a “close” button to skip the ad.
• Rewarded video ads do the same but also offer the user an in-app reward if they watch the video in its entirety, rather than skipping it.

Why Mobile Ads Need A Babysitter

It is easy for app publishers to sit back and allow programmatic advertising to work its magic. Unfortunately, integrating with ad networks is only the first step of the monetisation process. While ad networks are full of ads by honest advertisers wanting to build their business just like you, there are a few bad seeds who are out to make a quick buck off of you and your users. They will sneak past the network operators and bring low-quality, unethical, or inappropriate ads into your app. Mobile ads require monitoring and occasionally a little fixing if you want them to be effective without losing users in the process.

App stores do their best to keep bad mobile ads out — in 2018 Google removed bad ads from 1.5 million apps — but these efforts might take longer to get rid of bad ads. Ultimately, the responsibility to prevent bad ads is on the people creating the app — that is you.

When app publishers neglect to monitor their mobile ads, bad ones creep in. This result is a poor user experience and a lot of angry users. When users really hate the ads they encounter, they go running back to the app store to write a scathing review or to download a competitor’s app. Let us take a look at the different types of bad ads you will be battling when you are trying to prevent user reactions like this one.

Know The Enemy: 4 Types Of Bad Mobile Ads

Bad Mobile Ad #1: Technically flawed ads

Technically flawed ads are ads that, due to a technical issue, damage the user experience and typically cause the user to quit or “kill” the app. Examples of technically flawed ads are ads that do not have a “close” button, bringing the user journey to a complete halt. Another example of a technically flawed ad is one where the close button does not work, leading to unresponsive gestures and frustrated users.

Bad Mobile Ad #2: Abusive ads

Abusive ads might seem like technically flawed ads, for example, ones where the “close” button does not function. This time, though, it is not a flaw, it is a feature. These ads are purposely out to trick users into tapping on them. They do this by giving users the assumption that they are drawing on something else, by telling them their phone has a virus, or by placing misleading buttons that make them think they are closing the ad when instead they are really being automatically subscribed to a service.

Bad Mobile Ad #3: Low-quality ads

Low-quality ads are ads that do not display correctly for the user, for example, due to improper resolution or size. This often occurs due to screen fragmentation on Android, and may also be affected by the user’s screen orientation. Low-quality ads can make your user experience feel less polished and can affect conversion rates.

Bad Mobile Ad #4: Offensive Ads

Offensive ads have no technical flaws, but they are flawed in content and placement. How they are “offensive” can depend on your audience. Users can find some content offensive due to different personal factors, and they have no problem uninstalling your app to avoid that. Apps directed at kids should not include, for example, adult content. Another example: if you have a health and fitness app, you might want to blacklist ads for fast food joints.

Hunting Season: How To Find Bad Mobile Ads In Your App

Here is a toolbox of methods that will help you detect any bad ads in your app and take care of the problem before bad reviews start to come in.

See how ads affect users with session recordings

You can quickly get data on what ads users tapped and how many impressions an ad got, but those numbers will not tell you anything about the actual user experience of the ad. To understand your mobile ads’ UX, you need session recordings. User session recordings allow you to see your app the same way your users see it (and interact with it), by creating a video replay of individual user sessions and providing a play-by-play breakdown of every interaction. With this clear, real-time visualisation, session recordings allow app publishers like 365Scores to monitor for bad mobile ads proactively.

What bad mobile ads can you find by using session recordings?

• Poorly placed ads — ads that interrupted the user journey, for example, an interstitial ad that shows up in the middle of a game instead of between levels.
• Ads that cause the user to quit the game — sudden quits might indicate a problem with an offensive, abusive, or technically flawed ad.

Uncover bad mobile ads with touch heatmaps

As touched on earlier, bad mobile ads can suffer from common UI ailments such as poor resolution, sizing issues, misplaced buttons, and broken links. These issues are hard to pin down. Touch heatmaps help deal with the bad full-screen ads by showing an at-a-glance map of user interactions, superimposed on each of your app’s screens. By filtering the heatmaps to display specific types of interactions — such as first, last, or unresponsive gestures — you can easily monitor for bad mobile ads.

What bad mobile ads can you find by using touch heatmaps?

• Technically flawed ads — ads where the button is missing, improperly placed, or leads to a broken link can easily be identified using heatmaps of screens with a high number of unresponsive gestures.
• Low-quality ads — heatmaps display the ad precisely as the user sees it, and enable you to identify churn-inducing issues like low resolution or improper size.

Use an ad fraud console to blacklist bad ad providers

Ad fraud is a concern every app publisher faces when they choose to use mobile ads for monetisation, and it is not getting any better, according to reports from Adjust. Luckily, most of the monetisation tools leading the market include a fraud prevention feature. Ad fraud prevention tools analyse data from your app’s advertising campaigns to detect abnormal activity, such as too-high metrics, anonymous installs, and more. They then blacklist any offending ads that might cause your users to fear for their safety.

Bonus tip: Choose better ad formats with the Better Ads Standards

The Coalition for Better Ads was founded in the wake of the rise of ad blockers and aims to help improve ad UX. Better Ads Standards is the result of research the organisation ran with over 66,000 consumers. You can consult the Better Ads Standard to learn what ad formats users like the least. The Better Ads Standards are focused on desktop and mobile web, but the same insights can be applied to mobile apps as well.

Too Many Mobile Ads = Bad Mobile Ads?

Once you have got a method for keeping ad quality high, let us talk about maintaining ad quantity low. Yes, your app needs to bring you revenue. However, as you saw from the negative reviews above, the only thing users hate more than ads is too many ads. Do not pile ad after ad on the user, because that will only lead to interrupted user journeys, poor user experience, and app abandonment.

How many ads should you show? Well, there is no magic number, so it will take a bit of trial and error. This post by Google AdMob recommends a best practice for setting the frequency of your interstitial ads: start low and carefully increase the ad frequency until you find an optimal volume. How do you know when to stop? You guessed it — session recordings.

TL;DR

Bad mobile ads might worm their way to your app no matter what ad network or programmatic provider you choose. At the end of the day, your app is your baby: when it makes a mess, it is up to you to clean it up. The trouble with bad mobile ads is that you will not always get alerted to them right away, and in the meantime, they will turn into abandonment, churn, and negative reviews. At your disposal is a small arsenal of tools you can use to fight bad ads: user session recordings, touch heatmaps, and fraud detection tools. Remember, though, that your work is never really done. If you want to make these tools really work for you, keep using them regularly to scout out bad ads before they affect your users.

(Lead image: Depositphotos)

In a world where we are constantly hit with digital stimuli, we all just need to take a moment to relax. Mobile apps might seem like unlikely allies in silencing all that noise, but in fact, the self-care trend in mobile apps was is booming. One of the apps leading the charge is Headspace.

Headspace is the brainchild of former Buddhist monk Andy Puddicombe, who returned from a Tibetan monastery with a drive to spread the word about meditation, and advertising executive Richard Pierson, who needed a way to relax from the stress of his job. They decided to do a skill-swap, and Headspace was born. The Headspace app now ranks as one of the top 10 apps in the Health & Fitness category and has over 30 million users and 1 million subscribers.

The Headspace app explains meditation in terms to which anyone can relate. It fulfills Puddicombe’s wish to demystify meditation by implementing a fun-loving, modern look, quirky illustrations, and never-boring microinteractions. It also offers subscribers a huge library full of different meditation sessions ranging from 1-minute to 20-minute sessions for sleep, productivity, mindful eating, stress relief, and more.

The Appsee inbound marketing team had the pleasure of meeting Frank Bach, lead product design at Headspace, while attending MobileOne in Paris last year. We were excited to hear about his career journey so far, his thoughts on product design, and the Headspace app’s unique design and empathetic UX strategy. Check out his insights below.

How did you get started as a product designer, and what led you to your current role at Headspace?

I originally trained in brand and graphic design. That’s what I went to school for in northern Canada, in the pre-iPhone days. The web was still in its infancy back then and as new technologies were coming out, things started to get really exciting.

Naturally, I’d design websites as part of brand packages for clients and eventually, that led to an interest in e-commerce, editorial, and apps. Once I learned about product development and how to build in user research and insights into the process I couldn’t look away. I’d never worked in that manner before, and I immediately set a goal of only doing projects that would push me further down the UI/UX path for the next year. My partner and I then shut down our design studio and set our sights for LA.

Working at Headspace, well, I was a user of the Headspace app and it was part of my discovery of meditation. I have so much respect for the teachings, the co-founders, the team, and it seemed like a dream job. I was working on projects for Red Bull at the time, which was an incredible learning experience — but a little too high octane for me — and I ended up chatting with one of the designers here and that eventually led to interviewing… the rest is history. It’s been almost 3 years now and I’m still so grateful.

I’ve always been hyper-driven, and sometimes it’s at my own detriment. I’m better at gauging it now, mostly due to paying closer attention to my health and meditation, but in my early career I was stressed and overworked, and moments away from either a panic attack or heart attack. It wasn’t a good situation. I needed to build a wellness routine and treat myself better, and meditation was the first piece of that puzzle.

Describe some of your responsibilities at Headspace. What does your day-to-day entail?

Day-to-day, anything from strategizing product and growth initiatives, contributing to the design system, defining processes and tools, team mentorship, discovering new ways we can innovate across the organization, some meetings, and a couple of good healthy breaks to read, catch up with a friend, or deepen my meditation practice.

The Headspace app utilizes empty states in multiple instances within the user experience. Can you elaborate on the strategy behind including them in the app?

We use empty states in our app experience to inform the user. Whether that’s a list without results, a page without content, or the app on first-use. We see them as an opportunity to inspire and engage with our users, all the while communicating what is important and relevant.

Can you share some details/insights on the process of creating Headspace animations, such as the Blue Sky animation?

Some are ‘Wisdom’ videos, which share Buddhist teachings, and others are ‘Technique’ videos to share tips while on your meditation journey.

They’re storyboarded by our brand team, considering all aspects of production from the audio overlay to the playful animated characters. We worked with Nexus in LA to bring them to life and bring motion into them. Our members love them so much.

What has been your favorite project at Headspace so far?

Headspace, to me, is one big project with many micro-projects within. As my role has changed over the years, I’m contributing in new ways like strategy and mentorship, which I find just as challenging as designing screens for the app.

If I had to pick one project, I’d say launching V3 of the Headspace app, where we evolved from a linear meditation journey to a meditation library and set the foundation for a more robust content and user experience.

In its Best of 2018 roundup, Apple named self-care apps the App Trend of the Year and mentioned the Headspace app as an example. What are your thoughts on this trend?

It’s about time. We’re seeing the taboo aspect of mental health slowly eroding. People are more open to discussing these topics and better understanding the importance of self-care, too.

We’re getting busier, more bombarded by information every day, in a way that our ancestors never have — and we’re discovering ways to cope with that. I’m proud to be a part of this trend.

Speaking of self-care, one of the challenges of self-improvement is keeping it up. How do Headspace’s product design and growth strategy encourage users to stick to it?

We approach this in several ways, since people are all motivated differently. Metrics people like run streaks. Some like a friendly reminder notification. Others enjoy emails when we release new content.

Whichever method you prefer, we aim to be your companion, to live a happier and healthier life.

Another tech trend we’re seeing is “digital wellness” — keeping our screen habits under control. How does Headspace manage to balance its medium, a mobile app, with the relaxation needs of screen-weary users?

We realized a long time ago that we need to meet people where they’re at. Devices are a part of everyday life, and it’s by changing our relationship with them that we regain control. That’s our approach.

We’ve also got some meditations and sleep content available on Google Home and Alexa for those who would prefer to meditate sans-phone.

What can we expect from the Headspace app for 2019? Can you reveal a little secret or two?

We’ve just released a Family Plan, as well as a Student Plan. We’re getting new content into the Headspace app very regularly. One of the major projects we’re working on is Headspace Health, where we’re working with the FDA and medical community to create digital prescriptions. Think of a future where your doctor could prescribe you Headspace.

As a design team, we’re constantly iterating and trying to create the simplest and frictionless product experiences.

What’s your mobile design pet peeve? Something you notice in apps and really dislike?

The status quo. I love what Google has done with Material Design but my background in brand makes me highly critical of apps that are purely functional. I think we can strive for better as an industry overall. Try something different! Be bold!

Can you share some essential advice for mobile product designers who are trying to break into the field?

Become obsessive. Read about it every night. Listen to all the podcasts. Follow on Twitter, read on Quora. There are so many resources out there where you can learn.

What are your favorite blogs, communities, and/or influencers to follow?

This is a tough one. I don’t really browse blogs much anymore as I see everything happening in real-time on Twitter. I used to love It’s Nice That and butdoesitfloat back in the day.

• Designing for Growth community
• Everybody Headspace community
• LA Design and Development community

Designers, developers, artists, and creatives I enjoy in no particular order: Duane King, Daren Magee, Erika Hall, Bruce Mau, Pieter Levels, Everette Taylor, Micah Carroll, Andrew Chen, Helen Rice, Tanya Tagaq, Daniel Romano, Chad VanGaalen. There are so many talented people in the world.

Got any expert tips for those trying to make meditation part of their lives, especially the busy and probably stressed-out mobile app professionals reading this?

It’s called meditation practice, not meditation perfect. Approach it with lightness and don’t be hard on yourself.

Top item on your bucket list: 3,2,1, go!

• Have coffee with Bruce Mau
• Visit the Samye Monastery in Tibet with my wife
• Accept my own mortality

Thanks for chatting with us, Frank!

Click here to learn more about how health apps use Appsee app analytics to increase sign-up completion and retention rates.

There are lots of iOS apps worth adding to your home screen in 2019 and beyond. You have got Mobike for smart, convenient bike sharing, Blinkist for easy reads and insights and Oh She Glows for approachable plant-based recipes.

Each of these iOS apps is completely different in idea and offering, but all aim to provide their users with the same essential thing: a fantastic user experience.

Providing an excellent user experience depends on many factors. First and foremost, to deliver a stellar UX like the apps mentioned above, you must avoid seeing your product as “final”. The app teams behind the most successful apps are continually monitoring, testing, and iterating their product. How do you do that? True that the answer is partially dependant on your leadership/team focus, yet it is also dependant on the tools that you equip yourself with. In this case: iOS SDKs (software development kits).

iOS SDKs can help improve your app’s UX in a variety of ways, from beta testing and bug monitoring to user behaviour analytics and A/B testing. The blessing and the curse is that there are many iOS SDKs out there. To help you concentrate and simplify your search we have curated a list of the best iOS SDKs tools for 2019.

1. User Testing iOS SDK: UserTesting

UserTesting’s on-demand platform includes a panel of over a million testers that can give you insights in just a few hours. The panel can be refined according to your target demographics. You can also use the platform to conduct live interviews in one day. UserTesting’s tool includes video formats, which bring clarity and accuracy to the feedback. It even automatically transcribes users’ verbal comments and makes them searchable to help you review the feedback faster.

Key Features:

• An extensive network of more than one million users
• User interviews
• Video formats and automatic transcribing

2. User Engagement iOS SDK: Leanplum

Leanplum is a powerful engagement platform that includes a suite of tools for user engagement and mobile growth, among many other features. Leanplum can automate highly personalised multi-touch campaigns with emails, push notifications, in-app messages, and more. With Leanplum you will be able to reach out to users following certain user behaviours, enabling you to nurture relationships even further with key users.

Key Features:

• Multi-touch campaigns
• In-app messaging
• Push Notifications

3. User Analytics iOS SDK: Appsee

Appsee’s qualitative app analytics platform not only includes session recordings and touch heatmaps, but also integrates them right into other built-in analytics tools: conversion funnels, action cohorts, navigation analytics, and even crash video recordings that enable dev teams to replay sequences that led to a crash. Appsee also includes third-party integrations to prominent platforms such as AppsFlyer, Crashlytics, Optimizely, Salesforce, Slack, and more. The Appsee SDK has a very low footprint and only takes one line of code to integrate.

Key Features:

• Session recordings
• Touch heatmaps
• User flows and navigation paths

4. Bug Tracking iOS SDK: Instabug

Another SDK with a multitude of features, Instabug includes a bug reporting tool for your users to send to you and a crash reporting tool that sends you the stack trace information you need, without even the need for breadcrumbs. You can also see how a current version is performing compared to the previous ones, and watch screen recordings to what your users are experiencing. Instabug can integrate with your workflow and send alerts to your whole team via Slack and JIRA.

Key Features:

• Screen recordings for bug reports
• Interactive user feedback
• Bug insights and patterns

5. A/B Testing iOS SDK: Optimizely

Optimizely’s experimentation platform offers solutions for web, mobile web, and mobile apps. The mobile tool allows you to smoothly experiment in real time with any part of your app. Fast iteration is the name of the game: you do not need to wait for App Store review to update your app. Optimizely also enables you to create personalised experiences with advanced targeting.

Key Features:

• Instant rollout and phased rollouts
• Visual editor
• Custom audiences and advanced targeting

6. User Feedback iOS SDK: Foresee

ForeSee offers a suite of multi-channel “customer experience” tools including a self-service user feedback tool. With ForeSee Feedback, you can encourage users to fill out simple surveys and let them report issues to you before they snowball. Plus, you can quickly deploy rating and review prompts for valued users. ForeSee also enables session replay, providing a holistic view of your app’s user experience.

Key Features:

• Easy, self-service deployment
• Personalised rating and review prompts
• Session Replay

Also, because we mentioned apps with payment and location capabilities, take a look at these noteworthy feature-focused iOS SDKs:

7. Payment iOS SDK: Stripe

With just a few lines of code, Stripe’s iOS SDK enables you to receive credit card info safely, without collecting PCI data and using a Machine Learning based fraud prevention solution. Stripe lets you give your users a customised experience with pre-built and time-tested UI components on mobile apps and mobile web. Stripe’s slick UI and customizable payment options/styles enable you to build the smoothest, most reliable payment process for your users.

Key Features:

• Embeddable checkout
• Custom UI toolkit
• Machine-learning based fraud prevention

8. Location iOS SDK: Mapbox

Mapbox is a live location platform that lets developers build using location data. This iOS SDK helps create location-based apps in several categories including transportation, travel, navigation, and even AR. Developers can add pre-designed maps or customise their own. The platform uses a network of over 400 million users.

Key Features:

• Map design customisation
• Turn-by-turn routing
• Offline maps

In Summary

In 2019, you are only as good as your team, and the tools you use. The “best” iOS SDKs are the ones that enable you to gather actionable insights, act confidently on data, and quickly optimise. This special collection of iOS SDKs will help you keep your users’ needs top of mind and ultimately improve user retention and engagement.

Want to see a collection of the best SDKs for any member of your team (dev, marketing, QA etc.)? Check out one of the industry’s most downloaded resources: The Ultimate SDK Guide [2019 Edition].

The Best iOS SDK Tools For 2019 was originally published in codeburst on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

According to mobile app user retention rates from Statista, 55% of mobile app users will abandon an app one month after downloading it. That number grows to 68% after three months. Localytics gives an even more alarming statistic: 21% of mobile app users will abandon an app after only launching it once. Today’s users will not even stick around to experience the app after downloading it. This means that user retention should be taken into account during the entire app design and development process, and should guide decision-making whenever possible.

Retention rate is the most honest and effective way to measure an app’s success and overall health. It is a better indicator of these goals than the number of downloads since downloads do not equate to active users. It is also a better indicator of app health than engagement since engagement rates can vary significantly across app categories. User retention rates point out whether your app is growing, stable, or showing signs of decline, and these fluctuations are directly affected by the decisions you make.

This article will give you a few essential tips on analyzing and monitoring the right elements to keep up your retention rates. Let us first take a look at what user retention is, and how to calculate it.

What Is Retention Rate?

An app’s retention rate is the percentage of users who are still using the app after a certain number of days since they first opened it

For example, if 100 users open the app for the first time on day 1, and then 40 launch it again the next day, then the app’s Day 1 retention rate is 40 users out of 100 or 40%. If out of the original 100, ten are using the app at the end of the month, then this month’s retention rate is 10%.

The way to measure ‘classic’ retention rate is to divide the number of users who opened the app again on any given day since they downloaded it (day N) by the number of users who launched it for the first time on the day they downloaded it. You can find more types of retention rates here.

How can you help optimize your mobile app for the highest possible user retention? Here are five tips on how to do just that.

1. Get In Analytics Early

A common mistake made by mobile app professionals is not integrating an analytics platform until their app is published. That is far too late in the game if you want to optimize your UX and increase your user retention. By that point, you will be bombarded with feature requests, performance and usability matters that will always be at the top of your priority list. Time will not be the only thing you will be short on: if you have not been collecting data and using an analytics tool until that point, you will not have anything on which to base your product decisions.

That is why it is essential to start using an analytics tool right away and implement it even for the testing phase of your app. For example, action cohorts can be used as a critical tool for analyzing user retention. They allow you to understand how often users are returning over a set period of time. To power up your cohort tool, consider using session recordings alongside it. That way, you will be able to see precisely how each user interacts with your app — users who churn and for users who stay.

2. Optimize The Onboarding Experience

Andrew Chen states that “the best way to bend the retention curve is to target the first few days of usage, and in particular the first visit.” That means one thing: your user onboarding has to be spot-on. Onboarding is the number one test for your app’s user experience. The bad news? You have only 20 seconds to make a good impression.

There are a lot of useful tips for creating an excellent onboarding user experience. Lots of them are dos: do keep it short, do show off your app’s unique advantages, and do show them how many onboarding screens remain with a progress bar. The key is to keep your users informed, engaged, and excited to start using the app, without tiring them out.

Then there are don’ts. Do not bombard your users with in-app messages right off the bat. Please do not ask them to rate your app before they have had a chance to complete onboarding. One piece of advice that many app professionals do not take often enough is: do not force your users to sign up before they have had a chance to check out the app.

Get inspired by some remarkable user onboarding by looking at the Headspace, Slack, and Duolingo apps.

3. Ensure Frustration-Free Gestures

Measuring Gesture UX is becoming more and more critical as the iPhone moves away from the home button and Xiaomi adopts full-screen gestures. That is fantastic news for smartphone users. For mobile app professionals, it can be a challenge. Making your gestures smooth and easy to use is a crucial aspect of your app’s overall user experience.

When dealing with gesture usability issues, an oft-forgotten tip is: remember who your audience is. If your target audience is people on the move (for example a food-ordering app or a running app), senior citizens (for example a health app) or children (a gaming or education app), you should make sure that your UI and gestures are optimized for their dexterity levels. For even better user experience, place your most important elements within thumb reach.

Another problem that can come up with mobile app gestures is gesture-based usability issues. They are much harder to pin down because they do not result in a countable action that most analytics tools can pick up. Probably the sneakiest example of usability issues is unresponsive gestures. These happen when a user tap, swipes, or pinches the screen and expects the app to behave in a certain way … however, it does not. It might be a swiping or tapping gesture that the user expects but that you did not implement, or it might be a broken link on a button or icon. Unresponsive gestures are points of user frustration, and if not handled, they might lead to churn instead of retention. Touch heatmaps are typically the best tool for analyzing gesture usability because they monitor the physical gestures and not just the interactions those gestures create.

4. Make Navigation Smooth As Butter

Navigation is hard to get right. There are a lot of different ways to create a layout or a menu — you will find some examples of menu designs in this article. However, your user retention will directly correlate to how your users navigate your app.

Users come to an app to perform specific tasks. If they cannot find what they are looking for, they will stop trying and go looking for your competitors. Every action associated with the progressing the user journey should be obviously simple, by having icons clearly marked and visible, and keeping the taps and interactions needed to complete a task to a minimum.

When it comes to avoiding common navigation mistakes, the best rule to keep in mind is simplicity. Avoid menus with too many options or too few, do not hide important navigation links, and keep navigations gestures and icons familiar to the user. Always keep the user journey in mind — make it simple, friendly, and smooth. Yummly, for example, manages to make the most out of both the top and bottom menus, by placing three key screens under tabs at the top of the screen and dedicating the bottom menu to the search function, personalized area, and the super-convenient shopping list feature.

5. A/B Test Retention-Risking Areas

If you are undecided about the best way to improve your retention rates, you can dip your toes in the water with an A/B test. A/B testing is a simple and efficient way to understand the decisions your users make in your app. They also help you improve your decision-making process about the product tweaks that might increase your user retention. Go ahead and run as many A/B tests as you can — you can consider having multiple A/B tests running in your app at the same time.

The most important thing to keep in mind when running A/B tests takes us back to item #1 on this list: analytics. To make the most of your A/B tests, use a robust analytics tool alongside your testing tool. Here is an example from Optimizely on running tests to understand customer behavior and increase retention.

Summary

The reality today is that too many retention-related “decisions” are based on guesswork, gut feelings, and knee-jerk reactions. That means many iterations are wasted on details that will not affect the real retention problem. The way to get out of an inefficient iteration cycle (or avoid it in the first place) is to treat each element and interaction as part of a whole user journey — one that should encourage the user to keep using the product. This involves using analytics and A/B testing tools, optimizing gesture UX and navigation, and encouraging users to stick around during onboarding. No matter how if your app is a bonafide “work of art”, users will never fully experience it if your retention rate is weak.

You can start improving your UX and retention with session recordings and touch heatmaps with a free 14-day trial of Appsee.

This story was first published on UsabilityGeek.

5 Ways To Optimize Your App For High User Retention was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Let us talk about Peter. He has just bought a great shirt. It is on trend. The feel, and the price point was a bargain. He gets home, and it feels great. But then. It starts with a tickle, then a scratch, then he realises the label is digging into his skin. When his friend asks how it was, the annoying scratchiness is all he feels like mentioning. However, he is still going to wear it.

Commit the similar kind of sin in a mobile app, and unfortunately, your users are probably not going to be this tolerant. After all, patience is thin, and expectations are exceptionally high among the mobile crowd. Your app users are one of the most complicated audiences you are going to have to reckon with.

We have compiled below some of the top mobile app user peeves that tend to get missed. Repeatedly falling prey to one of these things is likely to annoy some section of your base.

1. You Have Not Designed For Delays

We already know users do not want to experience long wait times each time they interact with your app. However, some responses will still not be immediate. For these cases, it is all about how you present this reality to your users.

The worst you can present during a wait is nothing. However, the loading spinner (spinning wheel of doom) is not a much better visual cue if it gives no estimation or information regarding the length of the process.

This also connects to how you handle the micro-interactions taking place within your app in general. Do it well, and your UX will not just be tolerable, it will be enjoyable.

Solution

If you have not already, you need to talk to your users’ subjective perceptions of time. If you can assess how long things will take, a ‘progress status’ indication is always a good idea. If you cannot provide this, consider a gradually loading skeleton UI solution to clarify that content is incoming content (see Facebook’s Shimmer libraries).

2. Your Users Cannot Read It

Vision is something that is going to vary wildly across any customer base. While one size might not fit all, there are ways to ensure you’re meeting as many needs as possible. Typography standards have been around for a while, and we are confident that most apps today are adhering to the recommended standards.

You do not want to be remembered as the app forcing users to adjust the font size in their phone settings, so this is worth paying attention to. Surprisingly, we still encounter even some big players who succumb to moments where this standard has not been met.

Solution

It is OK to incorporate text-based graphics and images below the standard size recommendations but if you do, ensure you have enabled the pinch to zoom feature as a workaround for those that need it. If your app is primarily text-heavy, you may also want to consider incorporating an in-app ‘change font size’ option. There are several tools out there which can recognise when a gesture has been unresponsive — with their help, you can figure out if your app users are repeatedly trying to zoom in or adjust a view to no avail.

3. You Are Taking People Somewhere Against Their Will

Your users are visiting your app for a reason. They might have accessed your mobile site before, but now they have chosen to experience your full-blown mobile app. In reality, you should avoid sending them somewhere else at all costs. If you are selling goods through your app, do not link customers to the returns policy on your website. If you are signposting customers to video content, it is best to avoid forcing them to open up Youtube. If web linking repeatedly happens within your app, not only are your users going to negatively associate your brand with their frustration, they will also conclude the product is a half-baked solution and perhaps your mobile web experience would be.

Solution

It is always best to reformat any essential content that is hosted on your website and put it directly into your app if you can. This is especially the case if the content is primarily text-based and you are just linking outside to save time. Sometimes, however, the reality is that it is going to take some time for your app to be able to offer a specific feature.

In these cases, you have got a couple of options. Consider whether your app needs to show or feature the content at all. If not, axe it. If you need the content there, you could explore integrating an in-app browser, but this should be a last resort. It would help if you also made it clear to your users that you are going to do this before it happens and show them how they can return to the previous app screen throughout.

4. You Keep Kicking Your Users Out

All kinds of apps today hold sensitive information, so session timeout is often a touchy subject when it comes to security policy.

Still, mobile users operate within a hyper-context switching environment, so if you are automatically ending sessions earlier than expected, you are probably frustrating a few.

Solution

Pay attention to what others in your category are doing. If they are allowing considerably longer between their automatic session timeouts, it is something to investigate. Most banking apps follow a minimum 10-minute session length before automatically signing users out, so if your app is less sensitive than this, you could probably afford longer.

Touch ID has made the repeat login process much more comfortable for most. So if your app requires a login and requires frequent time-outs, get this feature enabled if you have not already.

If your app only works with a login, it is also worth considering whether this necessary. In most cases, you can continue to provide the experience (such as choosing and adding products to a cart) before presenting a login screen.

When it comes to requiring users to log back in for a new session, you will need to figure out a “sweet spot” regarding timing. To achieve that, it is essential that you closely monitor your average number of sessions per week (and compare across demographics), set up session cohorts for particular time buckets, and conduct a couple of split tests. These initiatives will allow you to accurately assess the impact of triggering sign-in requirements on user engagement.

5. Your User Controls Are Set Too Close Together

Tapping the wrong button on an app continues to be one of the most annoying experiences for any user. For gesture-heavy apps (think games or image editing), falling victim to this one bugbear for any screen size can trigger a spike in app kills and negative feedback. It is also worth remembering that your users may be holding their phone in different ways.

Solution

Depending on where you look, the current guidelines for touch targets of c. 40px is based on actual average widths of adult fingers. The thing is, these guidelines are ideals. To get this right, the size of the screen and actual use need to be monitored. If the success of your app relies on a lot of interaction (especially quick ones) a heat mapping tool can help you visualise exactly how your users are interacting with these screens in practice.

In Summary

The reality today is that delivering much less than a perfect mobile UX is likely to have an impact on your app’s ratings and overall conversion targets. Just as perfection is probably a target that continually moves into the distance, in the courtroom of mobile app judgement, all the small things do matter, and your job as a UX designer is never entirely complete.

Still, hopefully, you will be able to confidently say your app is not annoying anyone for the time being.

This article was first published on UsabilityGeek.

(Lead image: Depositphotos. All other photos in this article are screenshots taken when visiting the respective apps. They are being shown in this article for explanation purposes.)

Best Tools for Tracking User Behavior on Mobile Apps

All the Small Things: How Not To Annoy Your Mobile Users was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By John Sela, CMO of Appsee. This post was originally published on TheNextWeb.

Everyone knows that apps fail. No one wants to build a mobile app that gets one thousand downloads and then capsizes into the app store abyss. So how do you make sure that your app won’t turn into one of those depressing statistics? How do you create a winning product that’s adopted by millions of users?

As a mobile app industry veteran, I’ve found that what sets many successful apps above the rest is the way they address a deep-seated need or desire users have. In other words, they solve a problem.

What is a mobile app’s greatest advantage? A hungry audience

When mobile app professionals are asked this simple question: “What do you think is the best advantage that a mobile app can have?” Most people will respond by saying, “offering a feature that is totally new and innovative” or maybe even “taking a concept that was originally just for desktop and successfully bringing it to mobile.” These are all fair answers, but the truly biggest advantage that one can have in the mobile app economy blows all of these answers out of the water.

The truth is that a team of mobile app creators who successfully identify a ‘hungry’ audience that isn’t getting a particular need or needs met is sure to increase their chances of a more successful business going forward. A hungry audience demands something that the current marketplace isn’t offering. This could be a pain that they want to solve, a problem that they want to fix, or a biological urge that they need to have fulfilled.

The best business models always begin with a hungry audience. This is crucial to keep this thought in mind during ideation and pre-launch, since you have to make sure that your mobile app is going to satisfy a real need that your audience can’t currently solve on their own.

To determine if your mobile app concept will satisfy a real market need of users, be sure to ask yourself and your team the following questions inspired by Adobe’s digital marketing team:

• Does this audience need a mobile app?
• Will this group of people be able to take away more value from our app than they can currently get anywhere else?
• Can we influence customers to download this app?

Once you have narrowed down an idea that “works” with those questions, you still have to maximize the odds of your mobile app idea being a successful one. I’ve listed a few strategies to help you create a pre-launch concept that solves real problems in the mobile app economy today.

1. Improve existing solutions

Successful appreneurs openly admit that copying what works and putting your own useful spin on it is one of the most effective ways to building a winning brand. This is because if an existing solution is already successful, then a market demand has already been validated for you.

Of course, the trickiest part of copying what works involves identifying the “value add” — how you’re going to solve an audience’s needs better than your existing competitors. Plus, there are some other factors to take into consideration like current market share, switching costs, and barriers to entry. But, for the most part, improving existing solutions is one of the ‘safest’ methods for solving real human problems and developing a winning product.

For example, just consider the level of competition in the mobile app industry today. App creators scour through app store categories in search of poor-performing apps that can be replicated and improved. Some even argue that there are no new ideas left, and that every new app release is an improvement of some previous product or a combination thereof.

At the end of the day, if you can build a UX that satisfies needs or delivers a range of emotions better than a product currently on the market, you will have created an app worthy of releasing.

2. Transfer existing solutions cross-country

Transferring existing solutions across states, countries, or even continents is one of the most effective methods of capitalizing on a market deficiency. Just about every multilingual creative has considered copying a popular foreign app, and localizing it for their home country’s market, or vice versa.

For example, a man once translated the Bible for a Spanish-speaking mobile audience, and eventually sold his app for five times the revenue (not bad).

3. Apply existing solutions to the mobile app industry

The mobile app platform provides a unique edge for meeting human needs largely because of how extremely convenient it is for consumers to access. Can you think of any existing products from any industry that can be improved by simply existing in a mobile app format? If so, then you can develop a winning mobile app concept because you will have created powerful “ease of use” for end users.

This is exactly what popular fitness and travel apps have done, such as MyFitnessPal and Almundo. Booking flights and managing diets are things we’ve been able to do on desktop for many years. However, we can do it instantaneously and on-the-go if we can do it on our phones.

It’s a lot easier to track macros if you have all your data available at a glance and can update meals while waiting at the water cooler. Finding hotels and restaurants online is great, but it’s even greater if you can do it while you’re already out and about. These are just two examples of actions that become so much easier to do on a mobile app than on desktop.

4. Address market pain points

Many mobile app organizations have received funding for products in pre-launch simply because they addressed a highly-specific market pain that no one else was addressing. This is why it’s crucial to speak with persistent app users, and chat with them about the everyday pains that they face in life.

Some people like to find market pain points by searching social media for unhappy customers. It’s fairly easy! If you start paying attention to why people become upset with products, and begin writing down the various ways to solve their problems, you can easily build a massive list of mobile app opportunities.

For added inspiration, I enjoyed seeing how some users from Quora responded when they were asked questions like, “What everyday problems do people wish an app could solve?”

Interesting, right? There’s a lot more where that came from. Alternatively, you can hop on Quora yourself, and start asking people questions about the problems that users face in a particular niche that interests you. I’m sure you will gather a slew of information.

Conclusion

The apps we’re most likely to use are the ones that make our lives better. You probably have quite a few apps on your phone, but does that mean you don’t have problems? Of course not!

Maybe not all your problems can be solved with an app, but perhaps some of them can. Humans will always have more problems, but for app entrepreneurs, that’s good news: the next great idea is just around the corner.

We’ve got 99 problems — does your app solve one? was originally published in Startup Grind on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s happening. The industry is changing — again. “Mobile First” is quickly becoming old news and “Mobile Only” has entered the industry jargon.

In 2019, a mobile-centric approach is becoming the key way for brands to connect and engage with consumers for many. For example, eMarketer notes that mobile video ad spending in the US is forecast to increase from $16 billion this year to almost $25 billion in 2022. Similarly, App Annie predicts that in 2019, worldwide app store consumer spend will grow 5x as fast as the overall global economy with a consumer spend surpassing $120B in 2019. Marketers have also employed more sophisticated ad strategies in 2018 across both iOS and Google Play — an indication of maturation in the industry.

Ensure your Marketing Tactics Mature with the Industry

With this shift also comes a number of inherent challenges for mobile growth professionals. The landscape is more competitive and fragmented than ever before — making it more challenging for smaller brands to be discovered. With the launch of iOS 12 and users’ heightened awareness of digital time spent, mobile growth pros will also have to rethink their engagement and push notification strategies.

So how does one not just cope but build a kick a** mobile growth strategy in 2019? How do you ensure your methods and tactics similarly mature alongside this rapidly maturing industry? The answer is, diversify. Harness as many methods and channels to learn from as you can, and make sure you keep both acquisition and retention in mind at all times.

That’s where this collection of eBooks comes into play — we did the grunt work for you and combed through a range of mobile growth resources, provided by global thought leaders and top technology companies, and selected only the most worthwhile reads for your mobile growth stack. In no particular order, these eBooks will help you ensure you’ve got the knowledge needed to accelerate your mobile app growth efforts in 2019.

7 Must-read Mobile Growth eBooks

1. The 2019 Playbook for Cross-Platform Deep Linking and Attribution

The team at deep-linking startup Branch, knows what they’re talking about when it comes to building a bulletproof deep linking strategy. In their newest eBook for 2019, they provide 10 “Pro Tips” for mobile growth professionals. These tips were inspired by key lessons they learned from their 40,000 app client base. The eBook provides practical strategies for embracing fragmentation (as we mentioned earlier) and how to build consistent, individualized experiences (for both first time and returning users). One of our favorite pro tips in this eBook focuses on how to use modern attribution and deep linking to build strategic onboarding flows. Their three-step approach is clear and example driven, with an emphasis on retention and LTV.

2. The Complete KPI Handbook for Mobile Apps

Peter Drucker was right when he wrote: “What gets measured gets managed.” Marketers/mobile growth specialists need to get their hands dirty and spend more time monitoring and understanding in-app KPIs. Why? Retention, engagement, usability, and loyalty, are all essential to mobile growth and cannot effectively be monitored on the surface level.

How does one strengthen their measurement? The first step is a slight change in perspective; looking beyond campaign “vanity” metrics from your attribution platform (such as DAU and CR). The second step is knowing which mobile KPIs matter and how they relate to each other. This eBook will provide you with that confidence and knowledge.

With clear, easy to follow KPI definitions and practical use cases, this eBook supplies a blueprint for mobile professionals looking to track their app and user behavior. As part of your mobile growth arsenal, The Complete KPI Handbook will enable you both to navigate your app’s analytics and make data-driven decisions concerning your engagement and retention campaigns.

3. Lifecycle Marketing Best Practices: 33 Campaigns to Drive Customer Engagement

One of the biggest challenges for app marketers across the industry is to retain active use and an engaged user base over the long-term. In this eBook, the lifecycle engagement experts, Braze, unpack the non-linear nature of digital customer journeys today and consider this reality alongside the more traditional AIDA framework for customer journey marketing. You’ll find practical ideas and suggestions for your marketing campaigns (33 of them!) mapped against each stage of a typical user’s lifecycle stage. After combing through these examples, you can download your own Braze worksheet, structured to help you consider how specific campaigns may need to be modified for lapsing, active, and loyal users when it comes to your own product.

4. Mobile App Growth Hacking: Why it’s changed and where it’s going

This eBook is a must-read for mobile product managers, marketers or growth leads, interested in exploring new tactics for achieving long-term app growth The original standard of mobile app growth hacking — increasing downloads — is considered, then stood on its head. Today, as the eBook explains, you’ll need a shift of focus to truly ‘growth hack’ your product in a sustainable and successful way. To ensure your users stick around for longer, to encourage them to recommend your product to their friends, and to entice them to spend money in your app, you’ll need to deliver a superb user experience. To achieve this, you’ll need new qualitative insights, powered by a range of new tools in your arsenal.

5. Eight Steps to Boosting Customer Loyalty in Apps

This eBook, provided by mobile engagement specialists LeanPlum, provides a comprehensive checklist for perfecting your in-app loyalty initiatives. There’s a discussion about the all-too common scenarios of poor in-app personalization and badly timed notifications, and a run-through of the tools available to those who want to ensure their app doesn’t fall into this bucket of bad UX.

From A/B testing to choosing the right communications channels and bringing chatbots on board, this mobile growth eBook is truly in depth. What’s more, the theory is sprinkled with real-life case studies which help to provide context to the suggestions provided. LeanPlum have also provided a helpful list of push notification ‘power words’ which you can make use of for more impactful messaging.

6. How to Think About Mobile Ad Fraud

The reality is that as marketing technology develops for mobile, so too do the tactics undertaken by fraudsters. This means that in 2019, achieving successful mobile growth is also linked to being vigilant when it comes to protecting your advertising budget. We think this eBook from Adjust should form part of all mobile advertisers’ training schedule — the team define the meaning of ad fraud in the context of mobile apps, how to recognize it, and suggest a range of preventative measures such as carefully considered fraud filter.

As stated by Adjust, fraud prevention is a “serious responsibility…if done without the proper attention to detail and the research necessary, it will end up as the snake oil of our industry”.

7. User Engagement Report: All Things Retail

It makes sense to learn from the best — if you’re in the mobile retail space, this eBook will help you do just that. Iterable has singled out 50 major U.S. retailers (including the likes of Amazon, Gap and Walmart), analyzed their cross-channel messaging and engagement strategies, then bundled their insights into this massively useful 38-page report.

Findings are presented alongside real-life marketing campaign material to help you visualize examples of successful promotional campaigns. You’ll also find a deep dive into the strategies powering some of the most memorable Black Friday & Cyber Monday campaign pushes. For readers that like this eBook, you may also be interested in Iterable’s similar travel engagement report which you can find here.

There’s more where that came from…

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The Best eBooks for Successful Mobile Growth was originally published in Marketing And Growth Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What makes a good product manager? Much has been said and written about product management, and the plethora of books, articles, and tweets might seem overwhelming and confusing. It gets even more complicated in the mobile app world, where everything can change at a moment’s notice, and no workweek or even Monday morning will look like the last.

Don’t worry, we’ve got your back. We looked at articles, opinion pieces, research, and interviews with industry-leading product managers. We included inspiring quotes from leading product managers of the industry, like Julie Zhuo, Marty Cagan, Roman Pichler, and Ken Norton. PMs at top mobile apps like Splitwise also gave us their words of wisdom. Here are several lessons on being a great product manager, collected and curated for new and experienced PMs. (Stick with us, because there’s a goodie bag for you at the end of this article!)

Choose your KPIs wisely.

Regularly tracking your mobile app’s KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) can give you data, but it can also give you a headache. The data you’re collecting need to provide you with value: action items, bug fixes, feature improvements, or design solutions. How do you separate the worthwhile KPIs from the ones that don’t bring you value? Andy Carvell proposes the concept of Minimum Viable Analytics: the data that you need in order to make effective decisions. This means you should avoid tracking too few metrics, too many metrics, outdated metrics, or just not the right ones. He also warns against “analysis paralysis”, when you have so much data you don’t know what to do with it.

“Teams would do well to consider what constitutes Minimum Viable Analytics: the data they need in order to make effective decisions.” — Andy Carvell

It might take a little tweaking, but you’ll want to optimize the metrics you’re tracking to answer your most pressing questions, and not get bogged down with redundant or misleading data. How do you know what metrics to track? Roman Pichler provides a list of 10 tips on how to choose the right product KPIs, which starts with stating your business goals so that you can see how your product affects revenue. Another tip is to avoid vanity metrics — KPIs that look good but bring no value. A perfect example is “number of app downloads”: a lot of users might be downloading your app, but this means nothing if they all have a bad user experience or fail to convert.

Pichler also recommends combining quantitative and qualitative metrics. This means looking at numerical metrics like DAU/MAU to answer the “what” and “how many”, as well as qualitative KPIs such as unresponsive gestures and last gestures, which answer the “why”: why a user ended the session abruptly, or why users are dropping out of certain funnels. To analyze these metrics, you’ll need to use a qualitative tool like touch heatmaps. This tool displays an aggregate of your users’ interactions on each screen and can be filtered by first, last, or unresponsive gestures.

Also, keep an eye out for often-forgotten mobile app metrics. A lot of product managers underestimate certain mobile app KPIs that can be very useful. For example, every PM knows to track conversion rates, but what about the average time it takes users to go from one step of the funnel to the next? This is a metric that could point to UX/UI issues that make your users not know where to tap, like misplaced buttons or unclear microcopy.

Know your users. Love your users. Be your users.

User-centered design is the yellow brick road to the land of happy users. To get there, you’ll need to step into your users’ ruby slippers and really know their thought process, intent, and needs associated with your mobile product, before they even know themselves. Yes, you probably have a good idea of what works in the product (Ken Norton calls this the “spidey-sense”) but at the end of the day, you are not your user.

“Assuming that you are your user is a fallacy that is ingrained in the human mind.” — Raluca Budiu

From personas and storyboards to surveys and user testing platforms, from interviews and focus groups to session recordings, there are a ton of established methods for understanding your users. What’s the best method? The answer is: all of them. Use all the tools in your arsenal, and don’t be afraid of going the old fashioned way: by “getting out of the building” and meeting them face to face.

Also, let yourself get creative with your user research ideas, because sometimes that’s where you’ll find your most valuable insights. One road-less-traveled is utilizing insights gleaned from customer support. Zoe Chaves, senior product manager at Splitwise, happened to do some customer support work when she was starting out. She says this helped her develop her instincts about the app’s userbase and needs while also giving her ideas for specs. If you haven’t had actual customer support experience, that’s fine — you can gain a lot of interesting product ideas by keeping channels of communication open with your company’s customer success team.

In any case, it’s important to keep an empathetic, user-centered approach if you want to create a product that users love. Take a look at the Interaction Design Foundation’s empathy quadrant, which provides four things to remember when it comes to empathy for your users.

Learn (how) to say no.

You probably have heard the PM bar joke: “A product manager walks into a bar. Pours drinks, waits tables, cleans toilets, and puts out fire in stockroom.” As a PM, you’ll be responsible for planning the product strategy and roadmap, maintaining cross-team communication, and making sure everyone is meeting their goals and deadlines, just to name a few. You’ll run between meetings with marketing, legal, finance, users, analysts, and the CEO. If there’s one art form you’ll have to master as a product manager, it’s the art of prioritization. Barron Caster, Director of Growth at Rev.com, says that one of the challenges of prioritization is figuring out what will have the highest ROI. Christos Iosifidis, VP of Product Management at Vivino, states simply: “If you’ve got too many balls in the air, put one down.” Candidly, in order to achieve that you will also need to master the art of how to say no.

“If you’ve got too many balls in the air, put one down.” — Christos Iosifidis

This blog post by Mountain Goat Software provides six guidelines for saying no to a stakeholder, and, yes, you guessed it — number 2 calls for empathy. Don’t just say “no” and leave it at that. Don’t say “not right now”. Offer one sound reason — just one — for saying no. Be transparent about your prioritization, and walk the person you’re speaking with through your considerations. Sebastien Phlix, product manager at Typeform, provides 4 tips on giving a “positive no”, and advises using a “we” mentality and not an “us vs. them” mentality.

(Don’t) be the CEO of your product

A lot has been written about whether or not the product manager is also the CEO of the product. Most thought leaders will answer with a vehement no. Martin Eriksson says, “You are not the CEO of anything”, and advises PMs to “lead, don’t command”. As a product manager, you’re not the boss, but you are the coach, teacher, and leader. “Never forget that as a product leader you are only as good as your team”, says Eriksson.

“Lead, don’t command.” — Martin Eriksson

Marty Cagan admits that there are similarities between the CEO and the product manager role, especially as companies scale. However, he warns against letting the “PM-as-CEO” mindset go to product managers’ heads, in a way that will lose them the respect of their team. He advises product managers to embrace a touch of humility in their management approach and earning the team’s trust.

Remember that even without actually filling the position of CEO, your PM position allows you to have a huge amount of influence on the product as well as the company. In the meantime, however, you can use some CEO leadership lessons in your role as PM without giving the wrong impression; for example, gaining a strong understanding of everything your company does and empathizing with the members of different teams.

Analyze this. And that. But do it smarter.

Peter Drucker famously said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” You already know how important it is to have analytics for your app. No matter what industry you came from, analytical, data-driven decision making is part of everyday life. The difference in the mobile app space is that your users won’t stick around to tell you what needs improving. They’ll drop your app without as much of a second thought.

This means you’ll want to use a great — not just good — analytics tool. You’ll want to get in analytics early, way before your product goes live, to prevent any unnoticed bugs or usability problems from annoying your users and hurting your app’s chances of success. Also, since your time is precious, you’ll want to use an analytics tool that uses automatic event tagging — this saves you a lot of time and gives you insights right out of the box.

If one part of a good analytics strategy is tracking the right metrics, another part has to be using the best tools to track them. Any good mobile growth stack should include qualitative analytics tools. Qualitative analytics, as Roman Pichler says, help you avoid losing sight of “the most important success factor: the people behind the numbers”. These tools enable you to dive deep into the users’ experiences and figure out where they run into friction within your app. Session recordings, for example, allow you to experience your app the way your users do, so that any UX issues (and their solutions) become instantly clear.

“Qualitative indicators, such as user feedback, help you understand why something has happened.” — Roman Pichler

Bonus tip: Remember that there’s no such thing as a final product.

Too busy to even read this article? Running from scrum to presentation? We’ll sum it up for you: first, be empathetic towards your users, your colleagues, and yourself, and second, make your analytics work for you.

“A product is never done, but only evolves.” — Nick Babich

Always remember, though, that your work never really ends. As a mobile product manager, you live in a reality that warrants continual optimization, additional rounds of user research, and product iterations. “A product is never done, but only evolves,” says Nick Babich in his Comprehensive Guide to Product Design. With this in mind, you can create a product strategy that will take you and your team all the way to the finish line.

Still with us? Great! Time for…

Since you’ve stuck with us so far, and because the first day of school/work is an exciting one, we’ve made you a little goodie bag full of great resources that will help you become a PM Jedi master.

The Essential Toolbox for Mobile Product Managers ← even more tools and resources here!

The Playbook of User Centered App-Making

7 Free eBooks for Mobile Professionals

Mind the Product

The Clever PM

Bringing the Donuts

Folding Burritos

Andrew Chen

Mind the Product

Mobile World Conference

Product Management Festival

Open Mobile Summit

INDUSTRY

The 5 Types of Mobile Product Managers We All Know

Product Manager Jokes Volume 1

What makes a good product manager? 5 pro tips was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.