The top mistake clients make when building their app

By Zhou Wenhan, co-founder of 2359 Media.

This is an excerpt from a presentation given at CommunicaAsia 2013 on Why Apps Fail. Original slides can be downloaded here. The article was also published on 2359 Media’s blog.

I am here today to give an eulogy to the masses of apps out there that have crashed and burned. Specifically, we are talking about apps spawned from companies that failed to make an impact despite having massive resources that indie developers could never muster.

This is a subject that is close my heart. In the past 4 years that 2359 Media has been in business, we have seen over 50 apps move from ideation, design, development, to launch.

We have engaged with enterprise clients in countless meetings, and seen how decisions are made in a group setting and how they impact the end result months later. Some decisions set the app on a path of failure.

I have distilled some learnings from my observations so that we can all invest our time to build apps that will be well worth the ride.

Too much money producing too little results

The problem is well documented by multiple analytics companies like Localytics, Flurry and Distimo:

“80% of branded apps analysed by Deloitte had been downloaded less than 1,000 times. ”

For a professionally developed app that cost upwards of 5 figures, that is such an expensive way to reach your customers. To put it in perspective, cost per click in online advertising might only be $2, versus the $10 that you have just spent to get someone to download your app.

However, the bigger problem is that apps rarely survive first contact with the users.

“26% of the time, customers never launch a mobile application they’ve downloaded more than once”

This means that 75% of users do not come back after their first time. And since they have downloaded your app, the reason behind this abandonment must be your app. So let’s find out what can go wrong: