“78% of business applications are abandoned after their first use”
According to the latest Gartner survey, companies are frustrated with enterprise mobile app development and are instead refocusing on responsive websites to address their mobile needs.
Even among existing business applications, more than 80% will be more likely to fail due to lack of data, problem information, end-user involvement, or lack of innovation and growth of their mobile applications to meet customer needs. Since the chances of success are high, companies need to take the right steps to build business mobile apps the right way.
Pitfalls to Avoid When Building Business Mobile Apps
Building and deploying business mobile apps is not an easy task and is viewed by most businesses as a high risk, high reward situation. Done right, business mobile apps help business operations run more efficiently across organizations and drive ROI. However, organizations focus on the wrong approach to business applications. More often than not, the lack of a clear understanding of what the application should do and who the users are, the processes that the application will support, the technology / platform for execution and their management are often the main reasons why they fail. business mobile applications. So what is the correct way to build business applications? Although the right approach depends on the situation and strategy, here are some general guidelines for building business mobile apps the right way.
No clear scope
Often times, the demand for business applications and their scope are simply based on a few people’s opinion and biased knowledge. Despite spending a great deal of time and money to create a business application, enterprise mobile application development teams work in a vacuum and on assumptions without even asking what their customers (internal or external) want or need. In many cases, this can cause the project to be killed or the business application to crash.
The right direction:
Business applications are mission critical and designed to accomplish a specific, highly focused task. Therefore, to be successful, companies must start by defining the problem to be solved by working with end users and other stakeholders. You must be clear
whether the application will suit employees, customers, suppliers or all of them?
Will the mobile use the latest technology or will it replace existing technology?
More information and data points generally mean a higher probability of success. Once you’ve prepared a list of business processes and a roadmap around those processes has been established, it’s time to shift your focus to understanding the end user.
Lack of end-user participation
60% of workers use applications for work activities, but more often business applications are developed in isolation without talking to the people who will use them. Therefore, it is not surprising that among the many reasons for failure of business applications, the biggest stumbling block is not serving the user. The features and functions of a business application don’t mean much and it won’t be successful unless users start using it.
The right direction:
Above all, companies should avoid the assumption that they know what is needed.
Successful business mobile apps focus on solving one or perhaps two problems for the end user and the business. Therefore, companies must always include end-user feedback from the first prototype and continuously collect feedback to improvise the application until the final version release to be successful.
Employee / Vendor / Channel Partner Applications – Create focus groups for each of them to determine the business problems they face and how business applications can solve them.
Customer-facing applications – A great way is to use surveys and focus groups of current and potential customers to understand what services / products they would like to access through mobile applications, as well as the functionality of the application that they would love to have within the app.
A deep understanding of your pain points, current problems, and therefore a clear view of the goals of the application. Additionally, active collaboration and user engagement can further drive the interactive user experience throughout the development cycle to ensure an ongoing and participatory sustainable experience.
Poor user experience
A Forrester estimates that 64% of employees rarely use business applications due to poor design and user experience. This is not a surprise considering that many application developers, who already have to deal with many pressing problems, do not give the user experience the importance it deserves.
Also, business users, designers and developers disagree when it comes to user experience and UI design often becomes a source of frustration and eventually the user interface does not. meets one or more functional requirements. It is typical for companies to want to build a feature Swiss Army knife, when all they need is a single-purpose business application.
The right direction:
Keeping things simple is the key! Business applications should be easy with clean interfaces for usability. App developers should aim to create an app that has a clear purpose and meets their business goals, rather than trying to bombard the app with multiple features. An application must be easy to use and intuitive so that it can be easily understood by anyone and this can only happen when business application developers put themselves in the shoes of their end users to avoid the worst pitfalls of business applications.
Outdated technology
In addition to a poor user experience, outdated technology, and a lack of strong backend integration with public APIs and backend resources in sight, sprawling technology is often a major reason for business application failures. Many companies continue to use legacy systems that are not compatible with mobile services and therefore cannot meet user expectations for further additions and changes with the arrival of new technologies. Business applications can also crash and only add to a company’s ‘money-wasting’ project stack if it has an inefficient API strategy or its BYOD and MDM policies are not efficiently implemented and managed.
The right direction:
Strong and secure back-end integration capabilities, the right API strategy ensure sustainability and relevance of the application. Given the challenges of device fragmentation, you must make efforts to optimize business mobile applications on a variety of platforms. One solution is to choose the platform and technology stack for your business application by understanding why your business needs mobile applications for which business processes, the needs and wants of your users.
It can also depend on the choice of your primary audience. While at one time, BlackBerry was the standard for business applications until Android and Apple’s iOS dominated the scene. They both have their own unique software and interface features. Beyond operating system and device types, there is also an industry or market preference for certain devices that tend to be the most popular choice. So, for example, in the entertainment industry and the retail industry, Apple devices such as iPad, iPad Pro are preferred, while many of the major industries and retailers prefer popular Samsung or Nexus devices for the Android operating system.
Poor post-launch analytics and management
An often overlooked aspect of a successful mobile application is business application management and analytics. Whereas application analytics refers to how often the application is used and how the application is working and how people are taking advantage of it, and helps to provide valuable information about the application. This information will help you understand your application performance and what your users are saying so that you can constantly improve your application and its overall performance.
The right direction:
An application is unsuccessful unless it generates commitment. Therefore, application developers must incorporate analytics into the application to help the business understand the user experience of the mobile application. By regularly testing the application to improve performance and using the analytics tool to measure adoption and engagement, it helps companies identify usability issues and issues. Key metrics for tracking mobile app analytics include app users, crash reports, session lengths, performance analytics, and monetization metrics. By continuously monitoring, analyzing, and managing your business application to adapt to the changing demands of your application users and ever-changing technologies, they will make a dramatic difference in the popularity, lifecycle, and ultimately success of your application. commercial.
