When starting a new venture such as considering building a mobile app for your business, it’s quite easy to get caught up in the momentum of a growing trend and not put a structured plan in place. It can be quite hard to slow down and ask yourself, “What’s next?”

The need for businesses of all sizes to investigate the feasibility of launching their own mobile app is a good example of this. Many business owners don’t realize that when creating a mobile app the work continues after you have launched it to the app stores. 

In this article we will explore four practices that continue after your app’s launch that you should do to make sure your app sees not only initial success, but ongoing success as well.

The four practices that you should do on a regular basis to help ensure your app’s success are:

Let’s go over these practices in more detail.

Both Apple and Google have published comprehensive guidelines that cover all the requirements that must be met before an app is submitted to their respective app stores. It goes without saying that the app must be fully functional, but have you also considered:

Although these guidelines need to be followed throughout the development of your app, we included it at the “What’s next?” point of the submission process because it should be checked once again immediately prior to the launch of your app.

The author Umar Khan recently covered the essentials of an App Promotion Checklist, and we recommend that you read the article if you haven’t already done so. Taking a deeper look at some of the points he raised, you should remember the following:

Make sure your app’s landing page is clear

Your landing page can be published before your app even launches, but after it has launched it should be updated to reflect that the app is now available, and include the relevant app store badges with links to the app itself.

Promote your app through traditional marketing

Associating your app with your identity is not limited to just online collateral. You can promote your app in almost any marketing material you put out. This can be anything from traditional print advertisements, to catalogs and brochures, or even your email signature.

Use social media, but don’t rely on it

While it is true that social media can bring in great results, the amount of variables that influence this mean that not all businesses will reap the same benefits. Did you know that the average half-life of a tweet is only 24 minutes? This is a vast difference in time when you compare it to the 90 minute half-life of a Facebook post. And Facebook isn’t without its obstacles. Facebook posts that aren’t boosted only reach between one and two percent of your audience. This is why it is important not to rely exclusively on social media to boost the visibility of your app.

Keep promoting and maintaining your app, even after launch

Any marketing you employ in promoting your app should not be limited to the time immediately following the launch of your app. Write about it periodically on your blog, ensure that the app store badges are prominently displayed on your website, and mention it every few weeks on your social media accounts. One of the best ways to encourage regular promotion is consistently adding new content or features to your app. If you do that on a regular basis, you have an easy reason to promote your app as you’ll constantly have new content to promote.

One huge benefit of using our system is that we work hard behind the scenes to make sure our system is regularly maintained. However, it’s important to keep in mind that because of this, there are times that your app will need to be resubmitted in order to update it. The main factors that go into the backend maintenance of your mobile app are:

Software updates are easier to plan for since both Apple and Google are known to release one major update to their operating system each year, followed by several smaller updates that are mostly bug fixes. Each new release, however, takes back end maintenance to ensure compatibility. Most of this maintenance can happen before the operating systems are launched, but sometimes this maintenance must take place after the fact once the app is in a live environment. 

In addition to this you should expect and plan for feature requests from your users, as well as minor bugs that may have been missed during development. Since your audience will be using the app more frequently than you, you should make it easy for them to alert you to any bugs they find, as well as send you feature requests. This can be done by using services such as User Voice and Get Satisfaction on your website, or by adding a “Report a Bug” form or using the Customer Feedback feature.

What is important with all of the above is that you don’t ignore the feedback, and you don’t take your time in correcting any issues. Having a maintenance plan or schedule in place will prevent you from neglecting your app due to time constraints.

App analytics are not vanity metrics. They aren’t just there to tell you how popular your app is. They can also tell you a bit about your audience, which can help guide you in making improvements to your mobile app. We’ve built some key analytics into our system under the “Analytics” tab as well as the “Analytics” tab of our features:

If you’re looking for more data you can also integrate directly with Segment to get a deeper understanding and evaluation of your analytics.

Promote, Maintain, Analyze, Repeat

There is no denying that developing an app requires effort, but what comes with it is the effort needed to maintain it which demands an almost equal amount of effort. Your app cannot succeed or benefit your business’ app if you do not promote it, maintain it, and analyze how it is being used on a regular basis. 

None of these are one-off tasks. They require a continued effort for as long as your app is part of your business plan. Neglect one of them and you may well end up having to start your mobile app strategy all over again and asking yourself, “What’s next?” which is why maintaining your app on a regular basis is a must.