In the digital realm, reliability is crucial as it anchors trust and fosters enduring loyalty from users.
In 2023, we conducted a survey with over 3000 Danish people between 18 and 70 years of age about their app preferences. It’s one of the largest studies on app usage conducted in Denmark. Five major themes were identified, which have been turned into the Mobile App Trends 2024 report. Get access to the full report below 👇
Loyal app users represent a bond between the user and the business, built on trust, satisfaction, and mutual benefit. This bond can drive growth, innovation, and long-term success for businesses.
Loyal users are important, as they contribute to a steady revenue stream through repeat purchases and frequent use of in-app services, resulting in cost efficiency by reducing the need for constant new user acquisition. They also serve as free marketers through word-of-mouth, enhancing the app’s visibility and credibility. Overall, having a loyal user base provides a significant competitive advantage and builds a trust-based relationship that can be leveraged for future growth.
This is paramount because perceived unreliability significantly dampens users' willingness to establish a robust relationship with an app. This reluctance can manifest diversely; users might use the app, but may hesitate to engage deeply with its services, or may display a propensity to explore and switch to more reliable alternatives. In almost all instances, an unreliable app simply hurts your reputation.
Reliability is undeniably crucial, yet Mobile App Trends reveals it's a parameter where not all apps measure up successfully. On a category level, especially social media apps show a potential to improve, being the app category with the lowest deemed reliability on average. However, the study also reveals that retail, utility, mobility, and transport apps also rank below average and therefore have potential to improve.
Why do so many app categories seem to score below average on reliability?
Essentially, it may come down to two things:
👉 Technical robustness
👉 Service credibility
While a lot of factors may be attributed to the perceived reliability of an app service, these constitute the major pillars that hold up the edifice of product reliability. In the following we explore what these entails and how to obtain them.
You cannot underestimate the impact that technical glitches and bugs can have on your app's reputation, particularly in public forums like app store ratings. You may have an exceptional service, but when users run into issues, they won't hesitate to voice their frustrations. In fact, research by Bugsnag reveals that just a 1% lower stability score can lead to a drop of almost one whole star in the App Store. That is a staggering impact of technical stability. Not only may it cause existing users to churn, but it may also prevent new users from downloading your app due to unimpressive store ratings.
The importance of technical reliability to your users is quite understandable. Your users need the confidence that your app will consistently deliver when they most need it to. You can easily imagine how crucial this is especially for digital enablers.
Achieving such technical reliability is complex and requires conscientious decision-making throughout various stages of product development. It is no easy undertaking, but there are a few key points to keep in mind to reduce issues in both the short and long run:
Native apps generally offer superior user experience and performance compared to cross-platform solutions. A native approach allows for direct OS integration, reducing complexities and third-party dependencies. This typically results in a more stable and less bug-prone application. Additionally, native development helps you stay in sync with platform updates, thus minimising technical debt.
Throughout development, commit to high standards by conducting peer reviews, and closely following coding guidelines. Quality Assurance (QA) tests, including unit, exploratory, smoke, and scenario tests, are non-negotiable and indispensable for identifying issues early on.
Organise your code into well-defined modules or sections. This not only simplifies maintenance but also minimises the ripple effect of changes, making it easier for developers to collaborate without jeopardising the app's overall stability.
Choose your project's dependencies wisely. Opt for those with robust documentation, active communities, and regular updates. Steer clear of dependencies with known vulnerabilities or inadequate maintenance, as these can compromise your app's reliability.
By incorporating these strategies, you lay down the right foundation to minimise technical debt and prevent issues from facing the users before it’s too late.
Perhaps equally as important to technical reliability is service credibility. While technical reliability asks, "Is it operating consistently?", service credibility delves deeper into the realm of user intent, making users ponder, "Is it operating to my benefit?"
In this day and age, more users have become aware of the fact that nothing comes for free, also not in the digital space – and when technical giants like Google and Meta are able to offer tremendous services for free, the price you pay is, essentially, your own data.
Data privacy emerges as a cornerstone in establishing service credibility, fundamentally determining whether your service manages user data with utmost care and integrity. It goes without saying that all app services must comply with legal regulations, however, once you’ve guaranteed your legal integrity, there are strategies that can be applied in order to increase your chances of building trust in your data handling.
A simple, but powerful strategy is to communicate your intent: Before asking for data permissions, may it be to collect geolocation data, send notifications or display personalised content, communicating what data will be collected and for what reasons gives the users a feel of transparency, leading to sense of honesty and trustworthiness in your application. In apps, this mostly takes the form of a carefully designed onboarding process that introduces the users to your apps key features and why they need data to function.
The compromised reliability scores of some social media apps as depicted earlier could be attributed to their non-transparent data practices. Many such apps, including Facebook and TikTok, heavily rely on data collection while providing minimal insight into data processing, algorithmic interactions, and overall objectives, consequently diminishing service credibility due to the unaddressed uncertainty.
Another key component of enhancing service credibility is accuracy in information presentation. This issue is more difficult to design a solution for, as it largely comes down to asking yourself as a business owner: Does my service provide a correct and fair interpretation of facts?
However, it is crucial to acknowledge that certain information may inherently contain uncertainties or might be beyond the control of service providers. For instance, apps providing predictive data, like weather or price forecasts, may occasionally be imprecise. In such cases, credibility can still be maintained if the inherent uncertainties are clearly communicated.
In scenarios like social media platforms, where information is predominantly user-generated, it may be expected that users apply a healthy amount of scepticism. Nevertheless, platform providers can bolster their credibility by implementing robust practices to combat misinformation and by ensuring users are aware of these mechanisms. Employing moderators, providing options to report incorrect information, and proactively scanning for potential falsehoods are all viable strategies to maintain a truthful and reliable information ecosystem.
Service credibility is a multifaceted concept, intertwining user trust, data privacy, and information accuracy. By acknowledging and addressing these aspects proactively, service providers can cultivate an environment of transparency and reliability, essential in today's competitive digital landscape. Balancing technical proficiency with ethical and user-friendly practices is the key to developing applications that resonate with users and stand the test of time.
Want to dive into more relevant topics for app success? 👇
Reliable apps are essential for fostering user loyalty, which leads to numerous benefits for businesses, and to achieve reliability, apps must focus on two main pillars: technical stability and service credibility.
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