Working In the direction of Android App Excellence

Posted by Jacob Lehrbaum Director of Developer Relations, Android

Nice app experiences are nice for enterprise. The truth is, practically three-quarters of Android app customers who depart a 5 star assessment on Google Play point out the standard of their expertise with the app¹; its velocity, design, and usefulness. At Google, we wish to assist all builders obtain app excellence, and in flip assist you to drive consumer acquisition, retention, and monetization.

So what’s “app excellence”? This will likely sound aspirational, however it’s inside attain for a lot of apps. It begins with a laser deal with the consumer, and extra particularly, with intuitive consumer experiences that get individuals to the primary performance of your app as rapidly as potential — however that’s only the start. Glorious apps are constant throughout all of their screens and experiences. They carry out properly, irrespective of the machine used. App excellence is achievable when all the stakeholders who affect your app are invested within the expertise of utilizing your app.

One of many blockers that will get in the way in which of app excellence is shared or unclear accountability. A number of the main measures of app high quality, akin to crashes and cargo instances, are sometimes seen because the duty of 1 group within the firm, such because the engineering workforce. Nonetheless, once we discuss to best-in-class organizations² about how they obtain app high quality, it’s clear that taking a cross-functional strategy is essential, with engineering, design, product, and enterprise groups working towards a typical purpose.

So what are some inside finest practices behind app excellence?

Make app high quality a cross-organizational focus — not simply an engineering concern

It’s a method simpler dialog for me on the enterprise finish as a result of I can say “these rivals’ apps are sooner than ours; we have to cut back our load time down from 5 seconds to 4 seconds”.

Software program engineer, x-platform app

App excellence helps drive enterprise efficiency. New options are nice, but when they decelerate app start-up instances or take up an excessive amount of machine area, individuals will finally use your app much less typically and even delete it. Engineers who’ve constructed a company-wide deal with high quality have typically completed so by quantifying the affect of high quality points on enterprise efficiency, by way of:

• Case research exhibiting the affect of responsiveness, APK dimension, start-up time, and reminiscence utilization on enterprise KPIs. Right here yow will discover sensible case research showcasing how builders akin to Headspace and Duolingo achieved app excellence.
• Benchmarking towards competitor apps. Take a look at peer benchmarks and different metrics on the Google Play Console.

Arrange groups round options and/or app consumer journey phases

Firms that manage groups round options — or phases within the consumer journey — usually tend to ship constant experiences throughout every working system they help, carry new apps or options to market sooner, and ship a greater app expertise for all their clients. These groups are sometimes cross-functional teams that span engineering, advertising and marketing, ux, and product — and are accountable for the success of a characteristic or consumer journey stage³ throughout all units and platforms. Along with higher experiences and have parity, this construction allows alignment of objectives throughout purposeful areas whereas lowering silos, and it additionally helps groups hyper-focus on addressing particular aims.

Squads centered on enterprise aims heighten deal with the consumer.

Use the identical units your clients use

If a majority of your customers are on a selected sort of machine, you may construct empathy for his or her expertise if you happen to use the identical telephone, pill or good watch as your main machine. That is particularly related for senior management in your group who make choices that affect the day-to-day expertise of hundreds of thousands of customers. For instance, Duolingo has constructed this into their firm DNA. Each Duolingo worker — together with their CEO — both makes use of solely or has entry to an entry degree Android machine to replicate a good portion of their consumer base.

A user-centric strategy to high quality and app excellence is important to enterprise development. In case you are involved in studying the best way to obtain app excellence, learn our case research with sensible ideas, and signal as much as attend our App Excellence Summit by visiting the Android app excellence webpage.

In subsequent weblog posts, we are going to dig deep into two drivers of wonderful app experiences: app efficiency and the way it’s linked to consumer habits, and creating seamless consumer experiences throughout units. Signal as much as the Android developer e-newsletter right here to be notified of the following installment, and get information and insights from the Android workforce.

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