Building an app is easy, but how about ensuring that the app goes viral and drives thousands of downloads?
Overwhelming!
There are an estimated 2.2 million apps available in Apple App Store and 2.9 million apps in Google Play Store (source: Statista). With so many apps available, it’s difficult to drive downloads and keep people engaged. However, it is not impossible. With the right strategy in place, you can make your app go viral! Today, we will talk about just that.
How to Make Your App Go Viral:
A Guide Many often the concept of virality is associated only with marketing. We admit that marketing plays a key role in helping an app go viral but this is not the only component. The objective of virality should also power the app development process.
Build a Unique App
No matter how much you spend in marketing, it’s not possible to gain and retain your users if you are not offering something unique. For that a competitor analysis is crucial. Install your competitors’ apps and minutely note what they are offering.
Now, try to exceed those by offering something innovative. This will ensure that your users are getting something new from your app and thus the app is enhancing their convenience.
Not sure how to beat your competitors in the game? Engage professional mobile app development services and let the experts brainstorm innovative ideas.
Keep Your App Simple and Innovative
One of the major mistakes you can make while making your app unique is going overboard. Simplicity is the key to virality. If the users fail to understand how to use the app, they will uninstall it and opt for a simpler one.
Remember, the users are not here to appreciate hundreds of features that your app offers. They are here to execute their work. Let your app help them do it without any hassle.
No matter how much unique your app is, it should always be intuitive and simple to operate. Complex navigation is a big no. If you think some elements need a little elaboration, include them in the app onboarding process. Let the users try it hands-on so as to get a hang of it.
Let Your Users Spend Longer Time on Your App
The more a user spends time on your app, the more attached they become to the app. It will enable them to check various features the app is offering, browse the products/services, and these will be retained in their memory.
And as you can understand, the more attached they are with the app, the reliability of the app increases. Naturally, they will feel confident using the app and recommend the app to their acquaintances.
Here is an example of how popular apps increase the users’ time on the app. Say, Uber or Zomato - a cab booking and a food ordering app. They show the driver’s/delivery person’s journey to the destination on the inbuilt map in real-time. It would be enough for the users to know that the driver or the delivery person is on his way. However, monitoring the car movement on the app keeps them hooked to the app and they keep tracking “where and why did he stop? Which street he is taking?” and so on.
Push notification is yet another weapon to encourage people to interact with the app. Here is a study by Invesp. Sending mobile app push notifications can increase app engagement up to 88%. Further these can boost app retention rate by 3-10x. Leverage the power of push notification and boost your app engagement rate.
Rewards & Incentives
As you can see, we are gradually entering into the arena of digital marketing right with push notifications in the previous pointer. And by now, you must have understood that the distinction between app development and marketing is fading to the extent of being invisible.
Coming to the aspect of rewards and incentives, it’s common human psychology that users prefer to perform an action when they have a certain motivation.
Rewards can be given in different forms. It may include unlocking new features, winning badges for certain actions, temporary access to the premium version, and so on.
You can also reward people for inviting their acquaintances or converting for the first time. Rewards greatly stimulate necessary action.
Marketing Campaign
Create a buzz in the market before and after the app is released. The pre-release campaigns should include your app’s usability, benefits, and so on. You can use your social media platforms and your website for marketing pre-release campaigns.
Post-release campaigns may include user-generated content, rewards, and so on. All these will encourage more people to join the community and use your app.
You can engage professional digital marketing services to create innovative and creative campaigns for the app. Go beyond static images in favour of videos and animations. These will help the app go viral.
Way Forward
As you can see, you need to put some extra effort to make your app go viral. Implement these strategies and keep implementing these to get your desired results. Found the blog useful? Share your thoughts with us.
