Today is the 22nd of January, so Christmas was almost a month ago. Christmas is one of the biggest holidays among advertisement and that shows in app icons as well. But how about apps that are still, after a month, having Christmas vibes in their icon or in the app itself? I scrolled through Sensor Towers top 200 games of today, both free and paid ones, and found a few. This may seem harmless but how does that come off to users? How often should an app make updates?
On an average it’s good to update your app once a month – but that’s the average. That number also changes between free and paid apps when free apps usually update more often. In a way that might be hard to understand, while you’d think that once you’ve paid for the app, you’d get more, more often. However this is due to the in-app purchases and advertisements, which explain frequent updates. Obviously, you do you and take into account your target audience and what they are seeking for, but why is important to update often enough in the first place?
People get bored easily
Such a first-world problem but a real one. There are so many options out there to choose from that people won’t stick around waiting for you to make an update your competitor has done a month ago. And even without competitors, people want and wait for new improvements, without even knowing what those improvements could be. Whatever it may be, people want to try out new things and features.
Keeping up with competitors and trends
An obvious one? Maybe, but also a factor that needs to be taken seriously on many levels. Not only the fact, that you have to follow the footsteps of others in order to stay relevant but to actually distinguish what trends to follow and what not. Something that might be a trend, might now be the best option for your app. This is why all these four factors are connected – cause here you have to take a look at your audience and what they might need rather than what your competitors do.
Constantly keeping up with feedback
Your audience is the reason you do what you do. They are the users and they are the ones behind it all. So whatever the feedback may be, good or bad, take it and use it. If your users give you positive feedback on something, make it even better – don’t ever settle. If the feedback is negative, take is as a booster, not a step back. You have to put yourself in your users’ shoes and do what benefits their user experience.
Don’t settle
Since technology is so advanced today, changes can be made within a blink of an eye. That’s why you shouldn’t wait around for a new feature to gain success; if it doesn’t work, come up with something else. Try out something else and maybe one day you can try that first thing again. But don’t wait around – keep up with the paste of the field. And on another note – don’t settle for something that is already good, yet keep improving it. It might be good for now, but everything is constantly improving – so in a month it could be old news already.
