There are more than 3 billion mobile apps in both The App Store and Google Play. The competition is getting tougher and tougher by the minute, and how will YOU make your app well-known? Going viral means that your app is sharable, and is worth sharing. Everybody talks about it, and it’s all over social media. It’s safe to say that every mobile developer’s dream is for their app to become wide-spread. Eric Ries, Author of The Lean Startup, proposed a term “viral coefficient” which, if it’s greater than 1 it will lead to exponential growth, and a viral coefficient less than 1 will hardly lead to any growth. Below is the formula.
viral coefficient = (average number of users invited by each active user who invites someone) × (proportion of invited users who actually join or become active) × (proportion of active users who invite others)
However, Subramani and Rajagopalan (2003) mentions that, “there needs to be a greater understanding of the contexts in which viral marketing strategy works and the characteristics of products and services for which it is most effective. This is particularly important because the inappropriate use of viral marketing can be counterproductive by creating unfavorable attitudes towards products.” How will you do so? To give you a little push, here’s 3 ways to make your app get an edge over your competitors and go viral.
Simple and effortless UI
UI stands for user interface. Nowadays, it is important to find the middle of usefulness and design. No one wants a crammed app, not knowing the buttons do. The best app appears “effortless,” and it creates a flow in your app. To do so, you have to trim all the unnecessary “obstacles” and offer a quick and easily understandable interface. For example, social media sign-ins. It’s a click away from signing in, and the user doesn’t have to go through unnecessary username and password inputs. One more thing, put emphasis and effort in to the first screen user sees after logging in. Instead of leaving the user confused on what to do, give a hand and clearly show what you can do with the app and start sharing.
Rewards
If you want to encourage a user to share and spread their network, you should reward them for doing so. This isn’t anything special, its purely psychological. Us humans love rewards. For example, for every 5 friends a user invites and connects, he/she gets an extra theme. More example of rewards can be extra storage (tunnelbear.com does this), discounts, and so forth. Be creative with it!
Transparency & Privacy
Not only your app has to be valuable to share, but it has to keep transparency so your users has confidence in terms of privacy. This means that, after you implement social-media sign ins, be sure to add a little message above that says something along the lines of, “We won’t share anything on your timeline, promise!” and be sure to keep the promise. Always give your users control over what is being shared online. Even if it’s a killer app, it will never go viral if the company doesn’t keep their transparency.
Those were the 3 main tips on creating a viral app. However, before you consider any of these, be sure that you have a clever and well-thought design and an idea! Do you have any other tips? Be sure to comment below!
Sources:
Top 7 launch Tactics That Make Your Mobile App Go Viral at First Day | Credencys Solutions Inc. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2016, from http://www.credencys.com/blog/Top-7-launch-tactics-that-make-your-mobile-app-go-viral-at-first-day.html
White, C. (2013, August 19). Key Ingredients To Make Your App Go Viral – Smashing Magazine. Retrieved April 23, 2016, from https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/08/key-ingredients-to-make-your-app-go-viral/
Leskovec, J., Adamic, L. A., and Huberman, B. A. 2007. The dynamics of viral marketing. ACM Trans. Web, 1, 1, Article 5 (May 2007), 39 pages. DOI = 10.1145/1232722.1232727 http://doi.acm.org/ 10.1145/1232722.1232727