12 Essential Services to Give Your Mobile App the Upper Hand

One of the main misconceptions many entrepreneurs and developers have about succeeding in the online industry is thinking that it takes a hit app to make it big. There’s certainly no lack of apps to riches stories floating around the web, but one important tip I share with most of the mobile entrepreneurs I meet is; Think about how you can improve the overall mobile app life-cycle.

Source: fashionablymarketing.me

To put it in context, the mobile marketing industry will see 37% growth by 2016. An estimated 44 Billion apps are expected to be downloaded and the mobile coupon industry alone will be worth $46 Billion by the same year.

This major ramp up in mobile app development and usage is creating opportunities for entrepreneurs unlike any other over the last decade. From beta testing to app development and user engagement, there’s literally a niche to be filled through every step of the mobile app customer’s journey.

Here’s a look at our top 12 go-to services from various stages of a mobile app’s lifecycle. If you’re thinking about your big break in the mobile industry, try to think of where your service can fit in and truly be a game changer.

Beta Testing

uTest:  In a nutshell, uTest delivers  a community of more than 45,000 professional testers from 180 countries and helps companies like Google, Microsoft and Intuit extensively test software applications in real-world conditions. In other words, uTest provides live testing for mobile apps and software through a series of crowd-sourced tests, including functional, security, localization and usability testing.

PerfectoMobile: The service lets you test your app remotely using a selection of real mobile devices. PerfectoMobile‘s MobileCloud enables developers and testers, located anywhere in the world, to access a comprehensive range of the latest mobile handsets and tablets via the web. Users can develop, test, deploy and monitor their mobile applications and services without having to physically obtain the handsets

TestFlight: The use of TestFligh to beta test your app is almost a must. Here’s how it works; After registering yourself as a team leader and registering your devices for testing, you set up a network of beta testers by sending invites or by advertising a link to you application opened for testing. It’s a fairly straightforward process that eliminates the need to send an .ipa file with the provisioning profile.

Distribution

Ask many app developers and the vast majority will tell you that the development aspect is actually the easy part of the process. I’ve previously shared a few strategies on how to avoid the “what now” moment once your app goes live. Here are services that will help propel your app towards end user’s devices.

BuzzDoes: Launched at Apps World London, BuzzDoes is a reward based viral distribution service that encourages app users to recommend and share the apps they’re using. Integrating the BuzzDoes SDK into your app enhances it with social and viral aspects.

NextPeer: This service makes your game better by making it really social. Using Nextpeer, players can instantly start playing with friends, invite others to the game and enjoy a whole new multiplayer experience. There is no cost to integrate the Nextpeer SDK into a game, but Nextpeer does participate in revenue-sharing with developers who monetize via virtual currency.

AppStores.com:  Dubbed as “Adsense for apps” the recently launched AppStores.com brings relevant downloads to mobile apps through their network of app sites, galleries, and network of mobile publishers. AppsStores.com have partnered with mobile website publishers ranging in all types of different content, to run HTML5 optimized app ad units. These ad units allow users to see what your app is going to look like before they ever get to the app store or marketplace.

Notable Mentions: Social “scoreboards”- OpenFeint , Scoreloop , GameCenter and W3i (AppsMarketing Partner)

Monetization

Although the mobile industry is consistently seeing impressive growth, mobile developers are still divided on how best to monetize mobile apps. Freemium games are still leading all app revenue models, now accounting for more than 65% of app revenue. Below are alternative methods of monetizing your apps.

Startapp: StartApp tackles the critical challenge of monetization on the Android platform. Here’s how it works. Android users download StartApp-monetized applications to their phone, which is bundled with a search icon and bookmark link. Once the app is on the user’s device, developers have two monetization options: either up-front pay-per-downloads or ongoing revenue sharing from the new search option.

Mobclix: Mobclix is a real-time bidding mobile ad exchange that connects the best apps with the best ads. The Mobclix ad exchange provides complete transparency and visibility for developers to maximize revenues and advertisers to increase performance.

AdWhirl: The AdWhirl SDK provides a framework that allows developers to display banner ads from different ad networks in their iOS and Android applications. You simply tell AdWhirl what ad networks you want to use and the percentage of requests to allocate to each network, and AdWhirl handles the ad requests.

Notable Mentions: Smaato, MoPub, Inneractive, AdWhirl, Matomy Mobile , and TargetedMobi (AppsMarketing Partner)

Engagement and Analytics

Good apps require even better analytics. Measuring app engagement can be accomplished in a variety of ways: by the number of minutes per session, how often users update their app, actions within the app, and how many times an app has been referred to a friend. Here are the services you should be using to find out what’s happening under the hood.

Appoxee: Appoxee allows app developers maintain a constant communication channel with their users, which in turn substantially increases the lifetime value of an application and allows the developers to maximize the revenue potential of their users. We’ve also shared an in-depth post about Appoxee detailing how to create post app download engagement.

AppFiguers: AppFiguers s a reporting platform for mobile app developers that brings together all of your app store sales data, worldwide reviews, and hourly rank updates into one intuitive and informative reporting solution.

Localytics:  Boston-based Localytics offers one of the most powerful mobile app analytics platforms, which gives publishers of smartphone and tablet apps the tools needed to build more successful and profitable apps. Among the many features are screen flows, funnel analysis, cross-app conversions and customer retention analysis. All of these features are available to Localytics Premium and Enterprise subscribers.

Phew…Time to turn it back over to you - I admit, that’s probably enough tools and resources to make your head spin. The one thing I should stress is that there just isn’t a “one size fits all” model when it comes to the mobile app life-cycle. As the ways of the web have taught us, you will have to go through a series of trials and errors to see what works best. We’re here to help make sense of it all. Have you used the services mentioned above? Share your experiences with our readers. We’d love to hear about it. You can also reach out to us via Twitter @Apps_Mktg and on the AppsMarketing Facebook page.