The most effective way to sell a mobile app idea is to create a complete prototype so that your stakeholders can get a sense of the full experience of your app.  People are visual, and by showing your idea in action you can capture the excitement and give a sense of what the app really does.  That’s the advice of Marco Paglia, Google’s Design Lead.  An effective presentation can help you secure funding or get your company’s buy-in on the concept and design.

In other words, your prototype needs to be fully functional and complete with graphics and transitions. In order to sell the idea, the prototype must be striking and visually appealing.   Then it is invaluable in selling the idea, showing it around the company, sharing it with stakeholders, and demonstrating its importance.  For more information about this and other effective design tips watch the video:

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According to Marco, you need to have all of your design elements and characteristics in place. This may be relatively easy for a company like Google that has a lot of experience and resources.  Some new startups may have trouble with this because they don’t have the knowledge or resources to bootstrap a design.   For me, it’s rather simple to come up with a functioning prototype.  In fact, it can be done in a few days.  I’ve seen a lot of early stage startups get stuck, however, and take many months and burn many dollars to do this.  A good part of the needed process is narrowing down the wide range of ideas in the room and communicating information on effective mobile design and best practices.  Sometimes the stakeholders will have ideas that I know have turned out poorly in the past for other mobile projects, and it can take a lot of time to persuade them to move in the right direction.

Trusting your project lead and limiting the team to experienced people can also keep your costs and down and get to market quickly.   Inexperienced members can cause the team to lose focus, so it is helpful if there is an empowered project lead, a person in charge who can make tough decisions on where to focus so that resources aren’t wasted by spending time on peripheral issues or detours.

It is possible to complete a mockup or prototype in a matter of days if you have the right team.  Delays are sometimes unavoidable if key stakeholders don’t have much experience in mobile apps or with software development.  It often takes a lot of time and resources when your project lead has to show how some ideas have not worked with examples that are relevant to the project.  Your project lead has a stake in the project because he or she wants it to turn out well and doesn’t want to be associated with a flawed project.  Remember that project leads are invested in you making the right choices, so hire experienced project leaders and listen to them.

As part of our continuing coverage of Apps World 2014 in San Francisco, I talked to Brent Hieggelke, Chief Marketing Officer of Urban Airship.  Urban Airship provides notification services for app developers, and this ties very nicely with beacons that can trigger events like personalized notifications when a user is at a particular location in the store.

Until now marketers could only learn about their customers through their web browsing and mobile app usage, but now data are available on a customer’s physical movements throughout the shopping experience.  Can you imagine the possibilities?  Thus far, advertising costs have dropped dramatically because of the very precise targeting available through online advertising.  Now, retailers can set up all sorts of A/B testing to see which displays and retail environments are most effective.  This can drive further revenue and savings for retailers.

Watch the video to find out the new possibilities for retailers to gain unprecedented insights from their customers:

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Apple has chosen to call their offering iBeacon and has designed it so that Android phones can also support the technology.  The solution allows users to set their preferences to allow beacon-triggered events.  When sending messages, however, retailers should need to know that the most effective messages must be relevant and timely for the user.

Other potential uses include welcome messages when a user enters a retail store.  When combined with other data about the user’s needs, the message can present the user with a personalized offer and discount.  It is also possible to collect exit surveys when a user leaves an establishment.

MobileCast Media offers iBeacon development services.  For more information, please contact us.

Transcript:

John: John Houghton with Mobile App Development TV here at Apps World 2014, here with Brent Hieggelke. How are you doing Brent?

Brent: I’m doing fine John, good to see you.

John: I wanted to find out about iBeacon, tell us briefly first what iBeacon is.

Brent: iBeacon is a new capability that Apple announced at their last conference and it’s got the industry really excited because what it does is it takes a mobile experience indoors and creates completely new capabilities for what those might look like.

John: I think of it in two ways. We now have a lot of data on what people are doing online, what they are doing on their mobile devices, but now we have the option of collecting with permission data about what they are doing in the physical world.

Brent: That’s correct and that brings a whole new thing, a whole new capability about insights. Today if you had a mobile app, let's say a retailer, you really wouldn’t know necessarily if those customers were visiting your stores. You wouldn’t know which stores, you wouldn’t know which departments in those stores. With this capability you can theoretically know that I went to this department store, on this day and I visited the shoe department. That’s really interesting for them now to know that you’re a shoe shopper at this particular store. So it brings the ability to serve and really segment that customer to a whole another level. Which means that they can turn that around and use that to reengage that costumer when they have certain things that are of interest. So thats why it’s exciting.

John: And so I hear some concerns about privacy, how do we allay those concerns?

Brent: So the good thing is you know this is all really opt in. So even location tracking is opt in, consumer says yes. So in our world we do push messaging so the consumer is opted in first by downloading the app. So if I download your app I’m basically coming to you.  Secondly I’ve said yes to receiving push messages, that’s the second opt in. And if location tracking is at play there is a separate “Are you ok with this app tracking your location?” So at that point the consumer said yes three times.

Last week I went to Apps World 2014 in San Francisco with the intent of interviewing thought leaders on a variety of topics, including User Experience (UX).  Why user experience?  Because if an app isn't useable, it will fail; and many apps are failing because of usability.  When you consider all of the other factors, you can max out each of them, but if your app's UX (user experience) is poor, the app will fail.  The UX of an app is one of the most determinate factors of success.  This is why it's so important for app developers to figure out what good UX is and implement this in their app.  A good UX makes an app intuitive and makes the important features of the app easy to find and use.  This is what successful apps are all about.

I interviewed Peter Merholz, VP of Global Design at Groupon for Mobile App Development TV and he had some very interesting things to say.  He provides three suggestions for improving app usability.  Watch the video to find out what they are:

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Besides the three points, Peter said that you shouldn't try to fit everything from your website into your app.  I've seen this many times and overheard one of the HTML5 tracks with Kent Brewster, Front-end Engineer, Pinterest and Dave Fetterman, VP Engineering Famo.us (former Mobile Engineering Manager at Facebook).  They were talking about user experience in the HTML5 track and made the point about retrofitting a website onto a mobile device.  I can't remember which one said it, but they used the example of taking your non-mobile-optimized website and look at that on a mobile device.  'See how everything is crunched up and unreadable?  That can't be solved.'  As an engineer, if your boss asks you to design an app that encompasses that much functionality, the advice was to look for a new job. The point here is that mobile apps are task specific. They can do one or a few things well and you have to figure out what those functions are.

Two of the toughest issues for mobile app development company stakeholders are cost and design.  On the iOS platform (iPhone/iPad), particular attention is paid to design, and Android also has its own design language; however, the navigation patterns can be quite different between the two platforms.  In this video episode of Mobile App Development TV, we talk to Pete Petras, who is the US Creative Director for Globant.  Globant is a technology service provider focused on developing compelling experiences with particular expertise in mobile app development.  Pete talks about the cost incurred when companies undertake development projects, and how user experience is becoming a driving factor in app success.  Watch the video now:

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People are figuring out that mobile is a different platform which requires more of a user-focused product definition with an impeccable focus on detail.  According to Pete, "It ultimately does what design should do, it’s invisible in a way, especially when you’re talking about an iPhone.  When you look at the iPhone, all eyes are on the interface."  I've heard it said at Apple before, that good design is invisible, and I don't think a lot of people understand how much work it takes to come up with a design that is exceptional.  When you see it, it looks so simple.

I think design and user experience are the missing factors in many apps, and achieving excellence here takes time and revision.  Usually when I'm working on a design, the client likes the first draft and doesn't want to pay for revisions, but I think this is short-sighted if you're goal is to design the killer app.  You arrive at the first design, and then deconstruct it, to see what the user is really trying to do with your app.  Then you incorporate the new lessons in your redesign.

Just yesterday, there was a post in The Wall Street Journal blog, asking Why Aren't App Designers as Famous as Chefs? John Maeda, the new design partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers says, "We’ve hit this plateau where technology alone is not enough to sell a product.  So what is it that we need to make us want something?  It’s about the design."  Design is something that should be thought of first, and it should be started early in the development project.  You can find out more about Pete's design tastes on his Pinterest Board.

MobileCast Media offers app design and development services.  Please contact us for more information.

Transcript

John: Welcome To Mobile App Development TV, I’m your host John Houghton and today we’re talking about mobile app development cost and design. We’re joined in the studio by Pete Petras. Pete is a US Creative Director for Globant. Globant is a technology service provider that focuses on developing compelling experiences and they have particular expertise in mobile.

How are you doing Pete?

Pete: I’m doing well, thanks John.

John: What does it cost to design and develop a mobile app?

Pete: One billion dollars.

John: One billion, not a million?

Pete: No I guess in this market it’s a billion dollars, right that the bar. No, that all depends on the length of the project, it all depends on the complexity of the app and ultimately whatever the cost is that you figure out that it will actually take to develop. You can do an analysis and say, “hey we have x amount of people that costs us x amount of time and we predicted that this takes six months or nine months to develop and there for that’s our budget or that’s what it’s going to cost us. I would say times that by two, maybe by three. Because nothing ever goes the way you think it will go and a month into it you’re going to have to grow the team by two maybe even by three and then who knows. You’ll have other costs that you’ll have to take into consideration, licensing, who knows, there are all sorts of elements that are always unforeseen and it will defiantly cost always more than you really think it will.

You don't have to look far to see how gamification has accelerated online websites and apps.  Take the Facebook "Like" for example.  This game mechanic has driven the success of the Facebook platform.  If you already have or are thinking about building an iPhone or Android app, you should give some thought to what's going to keep your users coming back.  Applying principles of gamification can be just the thing to make your app successful. Watch the video now:

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In this first episode of Mobile App Development TV, we talk to Danny Maco, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who frequently serves as an advisor to startup companies here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has worked recently as the General Manager of the digital division of University Games.  Even if you don't have a game app, you can still apply the principles he outlines to nearly any type of app.

Gamification is all around us.  I remember in kindergarten, we would get a series of stars for completing various tasks in the classroom.  Those stars really drove our behavior in class.  I'm amazed at how people respond to airline mileage programs.  I know some people who take unnecessary flights at the end of the year, just to maintain their mileage status.  Mileage programs not only generate loyalty, but they help airlines maintain a minimum spending level for their customers.

In this video, Danny explains that there are four variables that drive a successful app:

1. Discoverability

2. Large audiences

3. Retain users

4. Generate revenue

These four variables are driven by gamification.  Danny also provides examples of gamification, citing LinkedIn and how they display a progress bar as you complete your profile.  LinkedIn also provides the ability to see who has looked at your profile, which keeps people coming back.  Another great example is endorsements.  When people receive things, they feel like they should give back, and this provides stickiness and a sense of community.  All of these game mechanics work to continually bring users back to the app to generate revenue.

MobileCast Media offers app gamification services.  Contact us for a quote.

Mobile App Development TV Transcript

This program is of interest to companies developing iPhone, Android, iPad and tablet apps.  To control cost, it’s always good to develop subject matter expertise and that’s what you can gain from this program.  We are based in the San Francisco Bay Area and cover mobile app development news and best practices.

Introduction

Danny Opener: From an online product perspective one of the more powerful examples of gamification, from an element perspective is the Facebook like. Think about how powerful that is. You know, when somebody likes something that you’ve posted, there’s a super strong social element to that.

Voice Over: From MobileCast Media’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, this is Mobile App Development TV with John Houghton.

John: Welcome to Mobile App Development TV, I’m your host John Houghton, and we’re talking today about gamification, now gamification is very important if you want to bring people to your app and get them to stay and have them come back. It needs to have a gamification element. It’s important not just for games but for any type of app.  So we’re talking today with Danny Maco, he is a subject matter expert in this area and he worked recently as the General Manager of the digital division of University Games where his job was to take physical board games and to turn them into mobile games. How are you doing today Danny?

Danny: Good John, thank you for inviting me.

John: A lot of people don’t know what gamification is, what is gamification in your words and why does it matter?

Danny: So there’s often a lot of confusion around what gamification is, and maybe it's better or easier to describe what it’s not. Often people think gamification is taking a non-game product and turning into a game.