How to Make Your App Successful in 2020

According to Statista, 204 billion app downloads were made worldwide in 2019. This immense number doesn’t breathe in inspiration, but it is early to give up. Perhaps 2020 is your year to shine, and we want to share several tips for making a successful app.  

For starters, a great app has several distinct features: it solves a problem, entertains or improves the previous experience and is well designed and user-friendly.

Here are a few tips and tricks that will help you to achieve your objectives to create a great app. 

1. Find your USPs

With millions of apps, it's hard to make your product 100% different from peers, but finding one key relevant feature is possible. 

For example, the Slipstream Music app allows people in one room to share their music and generate a unified, mixed playlist that caters to common taste. The unique selling point is a unique functionality that helps to make parties.

2. Create a Multi-lingual app

Not having an app in the national language limits its visibility on app markets. To add, English is a native language of only 6-7% of the world's population. The rest of the world sticks to native languages.

Judd Marcello from Smartling says: ”even if users are comfortable with English, users are far more likely to adopt a product or service (or download an app) that's in their native language."

This is not hard to make a multilingual app. You can translate the app text automatically by adding a Google Translator widget or hire a human translator or an agency for a better quality of the text.

An app targeted to cover the demands of international clients should be adequately localized as well. It’s important to include time zone, date format, and currency differences too.  

3. Invest in the design and user experience

In 2020, an app should be visually appealing, simple to use, and innovative.

Simplistic app style, like that of the WeDo app, with plain icons and clear lines, is always in trend. Now, this service adds 3D graphics and emotion-driven design visuals.

Emotion design isn’t something new, but its ability to generate user loyalty is stunning. Miklos Philips says that "Good emotional design elicits pleasure and a sense of security and safety.” A brilliant illustration of this is the RememBear app concept. The company’s symbol – a cute bear with soft pawns underlines the feeling of security, tied to childhood memories.

Positive emotions make a substantial part of app design, but 2020 will be a year of new experiences and gamification. App owners make their products interactive by implementing voice assistants, biometrics, and gesture-based navigation, as well as VR and AR functionality.

4. Make Your App Viral

If you already have a great app and some early adopters, let people share their experience with your product. According to Entrepreneur, app owners fail due to the lousy app quality and limited promotion of their service. 

Having built-in virality functionality is very helpful. Yet, it's essential to do something more than merely implementing social media buttons. Companies like PayPal, Payoneer, Uber, and Dropbox have incentive and bonus programs. They offer $25 for referring a friend or 125MB of cloud space for a share on Facebook. 

5. Develop a Marketing Strategy

Proper project planning is a cornerstone to build a successful app. Before designing any product, it is important to create its architecture in minor detail and highlight all ins and outs. 

Here are a few recommendations for marketing strategy. 

• Start with smaller markets

Forbes says that presenting your app on smaller markets is an excellent launch strategy. 

Within smaller and niche markets with the humble competition, the chances for the app to be noticed are considerably higher.

For example, besides Google Play with its 2.7M apps, the Android app may be marketed on platforms like Amazon App Store (0.48 M), GetJar (0.85M), Aptoide (0.7M), Opera Mobile Store (0.3M). iOS alternatives include Cydia, with its 45 million active users.

• Invest wisely

Once you decide to create an app, be prepared to handle two sources of expenses: app development and marketing costs.

These days cutting costs by hiring offshore software development companies is in trend. This approach requires profound research on finding a reliable vendor, but you can gain from a balance of price and quality of development.

App development cost depends on multiple factors, like vendor type and location, the number of features, development approach, and the complexity of the design. Therefore, the total app price can even range from $5,000 to $500,000.  

Digital business and your app solution is like any other business that needs its promotion. 

Marketing helps to connect products with loyal users. Thus, it is necessary to allocate a significant budget on marketing efforts like app market research, investing in promotion, connecting with industry influencers, participating in events, dealing with PR, ASO (app store optimization), and so on. 

• Define a monetization strategy

Apps make money in different ways. Target apps that appeal to a narrow audience sell unique and high-cost services. The example is the VIP app, which costs about $1000 to download only.

Yet, most apps fall into the freemium category, meaning they cost nothing in the basic version and charge for "premium" services. This strategy may generate high pay-off. For example, the Instapaper app earned a considerable income for its paid version after dropping the basic version price to zero.

In conclusion, bringing fresh app ideas into a world where there is an app for everything is a challenge. But with a smart approach, best practices of app development, and a well-thought-out marketing strategy, you have all chances to create a champion app.