Developing a mobile app has become much easier these days. Companies now have access to sophisticated and easy development platforms and tools and can benefit from developing an app incrementally involving value additions over time. But the real challenge is to maintain a smooth user journey and to get continuous traction.
This is why experts say that after launching a mobile app, the real work begins. What are the crucial challenges that apps in the post-launch scenario face? Of course, the biggest challenge is to withstand the competition in a crowded marketplace. But there are several other challenges as well. Are you building a mobile app from scratch? Before that, let’s take a closer look at all these challenges encountered by app projects.
Carving a space in a highly competitive market
Irrespective of the uniqueness of your startup app idea or its perfect execution, it is very unlikely that similar apps do not exist in the market. Since every app niche and category is now crowded and over-exhausted with competition, carving out a distinct space for your app in the marketplace can be a real challenge.
The challenges get manifold for startups who need to work on apps with limited manpower and financial resources. Putting up a neat effort with all your disposable resources and coming with an app product that sails above the competition requires a detailed plan powered by the deep audience and market research.
An audience validated incremental development approach that focuses on updating new features and changes for the app based on audience feedback can be very fruitful in the long run. In the post-launch scenario, it is more important to watch the user feedback to decide on the value additions and changes for the app project.
Keeping the flock together
As soon as an app project is finished, the developers and designers tend to focus elsewhere, and a sense of complacency settles in. This can be detrimental to the post-development and post-launch support for the app project. You need to keep the flock together for ongoing support, maintenance and value additions.
Frequent app updates
Building an app and launching it can never be enough. The app development and marketing process is a continuous one involving frequent engagement. An app project needs to go through frequent twists and turns, many value additions and updates with new features and security fixes.
Unleashing frequent app updates remains a continuous challenge. By hiring an expert development company with years of contract, you can keep the app updated with a continuous value creation stream. An expert mobile apps development company with exposure to numerous app projects can help understand the app project and how it can be developed better by tweaking things here and there. They can also bring the most critical security updates as per the industry standards and compliance norms.
Maintaining scalability
If, as an app publisher, you are confusing scalability with growth, you can be a victim to a very dangerous scenario. Growth and scalability have close connections, but you need to understand the differences. Scalability is more about accommodating increasing users and audience activities, while growth is grossly about business and revenue growth.
An app, after its launch, can slowly inch towards more user acquisition and increased traction. Naturally, over time it needs to scale up its capacity to allow more user interactions and user footfall without undermining the app performance.
App Marketing Challenges
After an app is finally launched, the focus remains upon reaching out to more users, getting more users onboard and ensuring more traction and engagement. All these require tremendous app marketing efforts comprising multiple channels and tools.
For startups with a very limited marketing budget and resources, it becomes doubly challenging. It is advisable to use a robust analytics engine and keep a close watch on the important KPIs. Instead of targeting too many channels, choose a few that best resonates with your app niche and audience.
Investment and funding
However meticulous and disciplined a way you plan your app development when the app is finally developed and launched, it is very likely that you will have a fund crisis to maintain the post-launch marketing, maintenance and other responsibilities. But getting investment from potential investors is not easy unless and until you can build an app that instantly grabs market attention and looks like a lucrative opportunity for investors.
Partnering with an established brand or another successful app is a good idea if your app offers a great user experience and perfectly resonates with the user expectations. But then, there is the challenge of significant investors being soft on big brands in the app industry.
Changing market dynamics
There can be hardly any doubt that the app market is continuously in flux and new and newer trends continue to thrive. When you think you have come up with a unique technology solution, the industry may move to something else. The changing market dynamics always prove to be a challenge for app marketers.
Most of the era-defining changes that appeared in the app market satisfied users and helped businesses thrive and prosper at an unprecedented rate. The users now push for innovations by looking for advanced technologies and unique user experience attributes.
Conclusion
All these post-launch challenges for app projects are validated by the experience of many app projects across the niches. These challenges need to be taken as opportunities to turn the app into a winning product.
