How to design and build a ‘sticky’ app Ritam Gandhi, Founder and Director, Studio Graphene
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pp downloads, usage, and engagement has exploded over the past year, as the pandemic saw general user activity skyrocket, with apps capitalising strongly on the increased share of attention. This is nothing new; indeed, for the past decade the inexorable growth in popularity of mobile applications has been impossible to ignore. The reasons for this are clear; a well-designed app provides a content platform for businesses and creatives which offers a more engaged, personalised and dependable user experience than traditional CRM such as email, while eschewing dependency on social media platforms affords
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direct content with freedom from the algorithmic ebbs and flows associated. The efficacy of applications for a variety of purposes is well-established, as is their increasing market edge over other forms of customer or client communication. The real question is why apps have spiked so dramatically in use in recent years, and how this phenomenon can be capitalised upon. A recent study conducted by App Annie suggests that the average global user now clocks 4.2 hours each day just using apps on smartphones. This is up 30% when compared with only two years prior. This is not solely a question of the market penetration of high-performance smartphones reaching the threshold required to see significant user focus for any contained
platform – indeed, further research has found that most users spend the vast majority (87%) of their screen time using apps. This points towards the innate worth of app development as a means of reaching a significant user base, and servicing an existing audience. As such, an unavoidable design preoccupation is ‘stickiness’. It is clear that there is a healthy appetite among users for more and better applications, in a saturated market that appears to be growing sustainably. Accordingly, developers and clients should look to affirm a core set of foundational principles to guide the delivery of the application and ensure it is able to onboard and retain users more effectively than others offering similar functions.