In 2023, there were 257 billion mobile-app downloads globally. This highlights the industry’s fierce competition and makes consistently improving mobile apps’ user experience essential, considering factors such as ease of use, functionality, and design satisfaction.
Why Is the Mobile-App User Experience Important?
The mobile-app user experience greatly influences its success in the marketplace and impacts its popularity among users. Benefits of creating a mobile app with an excellent user experience include the following:
enhanced user satisfaction—When users have a fantastic mobile-app experience, you can be sure of their satisfaction with the app.
increased user retention and loyalty—Users who have an excellent mobile-app experience are more likely to use the app repeatedly, increasing both user retention and loyalty.
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competitive advantage—In a highly competitive marketplace, a mobile app that delivers a great user experience stands out from the competition, increasing its market share and delivering profits to its developer.
enhanced brand image—When users have a great experience with a branded app, it helps build a positive brand image.
increased user engagement—Providing a brilliant user experience encourages users to spend more time on an app, leading to increased user engagement.
increased return on investment—Every dollar that you invest in the user experience results in a return on investment (ROI) of $100.
Six Best Practices for Improving the Mobile-App User Experience
Mobile users now have high expectations for the smartphone apps that they use, so be sure to follow these six best practices for improving the mobile-app user experience:
Persuading users to provide the necessary app permissions and consent.
Getting users to sign up for an account.
Teaching users how to use the mobile app.
Helping users personalize the app to suit their needs and requirements.
Some types of mobile-app onboarding flows that you can implement include the following:
function-oriented—This onboarding flow focuses on the app’s main functionality and when and how the user can use it.
progressive—This onboarding flow teaches users how to use the app by making them actually use it. For example, if the user is on a screen that lets them take a photo, an arrow points to a Camera icon that triggers taking a photo.
benefits-oriented—This onboarding flow describes how the user can benefit from using the app.
Design influences 94% of first impressions, so you must optimize the design of your onboarding process, which is the first thing the user will encounter when opening your app.
2. Monitor performance issues.
Performance issues have caused 90% of users to stop using a mobile app. You can use App Performance Monitoring (APM) to better understand your mobile app’s performance, as follows:
speed—Loading speed measures how fast your mobile app launches and displays content to users. If a page takes more than two seconds to load, it will annoy 59% of users.
retention rate—This measures the percentage of users who use your app continually over a given period of time.
stability—A stable app should offer users a crash-free experience. Monitor crash reports for your app to discover the specific circumstances that lead to crashes.
responsiveness—Your app should provide a good user experience regardless of the user’s device, operating system, screen size, orientation, or browser platform.
3. Use push notifications, carefully.
To improve a mobile app’s user experience, you can use push notifications creatively. For example, you could send push notifications regarding appointment reminders, delivery updates, and shipping confirmations. Plus, you can use push notifications to increase your in-app conversions. For example, you can send marketing messages regarding limited-time offers or seasonal sales or prompt users to upgrade their subscription.
However, 71% of users uninstall mobile apps because of annoying notifications. So make sure that each notification is valuable and well timed. Here are a few things to consider when designing notifications:
Avoid sending too many notifications at once. Delivering too many notifications in a short period of time can lead to notification overkill. When a user can’t process the information, he’ll likely ignore it.
Time your notifications well. The best time to send push notifications is during mobile-usage peak hours, from 6 pm to 10 pm.
Consider using other channels to deliver your message. Send email messages or use in-app notifications to send marketing messages to users.
4. Improve your app’s navigation.
Most users are familiar with standard navigation patterns such as the tab bar in iOS and the navigation drawer in Android, so there is no need to get clever when trying to improve your mobile app’s navigation. Just make sure that your mobile app provides the following
smooth scrolling
seamless switching between pages
a highly visible main feature
easy access to Help and support
search functionality
responsive buttons that provide feedback about their state
easily tappable buttons
The easier your mobile app is to navigate, the more likely users will continue using it.
5. Personalize its content.
Users’ expectations for personalization are rising. In fact, 66% of consumers indicate that they will stop engaging with a brand if it lacks a personalized user experience.
The primary aim of personalizing a mobile app’s content is to deliver greater value to the individual user. Plus, by designing an app for the specific user rather than delivering the same generic experience to all users, you can improve the overall user experience.
You can personalize your mobile app by remembering the user’s settings, providing recommendations that are based on the user’s preferences, and offering unique special offers. To accomplish this goal, you must collect data about your users, including their location, preferences, and behaviors.
Finally, you should also allow users to personalize certain elements of your mobile app themselves—for example, personalizing the app’s icon, switching between light and dark mode, or installing a personal theme.
6. Pay attention to reviews and user feedback.
Reviews and user feedback are valuable resources for understanding users’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction with particular aspects of your mobile app. Paying attention to user feedback is the most reliable way of illuminating areas of the user experience that you can fix, enhance, or add.
You can look through app-store reviews of your mobile app to understand which of the app’ elements are of concern to your users. By gathering, analyzing, and understanding this feedback, you can directly address users’ painpoints and drive specific improvements to features. For example, if multiple users’ reviews complain about a particular feature of your app, you’ll know it needs improvement.
Plus, you could use an in-app survey to ask users for their feedback on your mobile app’s usability, onboarding flow, design elements, and more. Create and deploy such a survey to collect the feedback you need to improve your mobile app and enhance its user experience.
Conclusion
A well-designed, easy-to-navigate mobile app ensures that anybody can use it, regardless of their location, language, screen size, or device. So, to ensure that your mobile app reaches a broad audience and leaves all of your users with a positive image of your brand, follow the six best practices for designing a mobile-app user experience that I’ve outlined in this article.
