Rocket Farm Studios Celebrates Our 7th Anniversary!

January 27, 2016
 
Ashley Rondeau

December marked our 7th year as Rocket Farm Studios and as we look toward our decade mark, we’ve been looking back to how far we’ve come since our pig took flight for the first time. Like each year before it, 2015 was a big year of growth and change. Here’s just a sampling of what’s been going on:

  • We launched our new website! Working with ForwardJump, we did a complete overhaul of our website to better showcase our past client projects, improve our site responsiveness on desktop and mobile, and provide a better blog experience for our readers.
  • We’re rocking on mobile industry content. From infographics, to our weekly blog posts, to client videos, and speaking engagements; we’ve been creating content that has been putting Rocket Farm on the map.
  • We’ve grown our client base. From startups to enterprise-level companies, we’ve been adding clients to our roster. Unfortunately, most of the projects we have are hush-hush are the moment, but we couldn’t be more excited about what’s on our plate. And because of that…
  • We’ve grown our team. We’ve added developers, marketers, and finally even got Scott’s profile on our company page. It’s great to see The Farm grow!
  • Oh, and we came in 2nd place in a Hackathon and met The Woz. That was a good day.

2016 is already off to a great start with some fascinating clients on tap to jump into the mobile world with us. We can’t wait to see what comes our way!
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So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.

5 New Statistics That Will Define Mobile App Strategy in 2016

January 21, 2016
 
Ashley Rondeau

Part of our job at The Farm is to make sure we’re always learning as much as we can about the app industry so we can better serve our clients. And right now, there’s a ton of great news stories (nothing about the elections, don’t worry) that have made us say “uh, that’s pretty important.” Here are 5 statistics to come out recently that we think speak volumes to where the industry will go in 2016.

1. 4 out of 5 US Companies See Positive Mobile App ROI

A great report was just put out by Red Hat Mobile with a ton of information ranging from the maturation of mobile app strategy in businesses to the prevalence of KPI usage which we’re always a fan of. But the stat that most caught our eye was this one:
www.redhat.com files resources mo red hat mobile survey 012016.pdf
If there’s any more proof you app advocates (appvocates?) need to show your boss as to why mobile apps are important for your company, this is it. Nearly 80% in this survey of IT decision makers have said that they’ve seen a positive return on investment from their app. With good press like this, we are bound to see even more companies take the mobile plunge this year.

2. Global Economy Issues Hike Up App Price

Not in the US! Don’t worry, but if you’re in Canada, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore or South Africa, you’ll probably be seeing an increase in app prices in the Apple App Store. This is due to fluctuations in exchange rates in currencies.
Granted: a) the price changes are small. In Canada, the lowest pricing tier will start at $1.39 CAD, from $1.19 CAD; and b) Apple has done this before. Still, it seems the prices are usually going up rather than down, and since mobile apps make doing business overseas easier and easier for US companies, this is a trend to keep an eye on. After all, we know many people already hate paying for apps. What will happen when apps regularly start breaking the $0.99 barrier in the US?

3. Most Health and Financial & Payment Apps are Insecure

How insecure? 90% of tested apps in one survey were exposed to at least two of the OWASP Mobile Top 10 vulnerabilities.
https www.arxan.com wp content uploads 2016 01 State_of_Application_Security_2016_Healthcare_Report.pdf
Mobile security is set to be a big topic this year, and the app industry as a whole hasn’t been doing a good job. As more people depend on mobile apps for extremely important things, namely finance and healthcare, it’s going to take a concerted effort to plug many of the biggest vulnerabilities. If you really don’t want to sleep at night, you can read more scary stats in arxan.com’s report. Note to self: invest in mobile security stocks.

4. Chat Apps Kept Users Engaged for 30+ Minutes Per Session.

That right there is why everyone is trying to leverage messaging apps. Most companies can only dream of seeing engagement times like that. Once you add chat into the mix, you’ve suddenly got a very sticky app. And here’s the good news for leveraging these chat apps to advertise your own company:

Users are not opposed to engaging with brands on chat apps. 79% of messaging app users claim that they are likely to engage with brands during their chat app experience, according to a 2015 MEC survey cited by Digiday. If users are open to engaging with brands that are trying to promote their products, they are likely to want to interact with news and media companies as well.

Chat apps just might become 2016’s battleground for mobile advertising. So basically, expect to have a nice text conversation with IKEA in the near future.

5. Tablets Are Tanking

Remember when we wrote about how only businesses are really using tablets? Well, now there’s more evidence that people are abandoning tablets for daily use, even in tasks that tablets used to excel at. For example, smartphones surpassed tablets as the preferred device for holiday shopping in 2015. In 2014, the opposite was the case.
But what about what everyone said tablets were for? Video! Well, video viewing on tablets declined by 7% while it rose by 33% on phones. Why get up off the couch for your iPad when your iPhone is right there, ready to play that cat video?
This is a trend that we’ve been aware of, and it’s beginning to become clear that tablets are really only long for the business world. So because tablet usage is trending down, the mobile app industry will be responding accordingly as this year goes on.
What are the mobile trends you see shaping 2016? Sound off in our comments section!
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So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.

3 Reasons Why Apps Fail

January 11, 2016
 
Ashley Rondeau

One of the scariest app statistics we mentioned in previous blogs is that retention rates fall to near 3% after 30 days. And remember how we wrote about how the top 25 apps don’t change much from year to year? These stats point to what we all know: most apps fail.
With millions of apps on the market, it’s inevitable that most will fall by the wayside. But is it purely a numbers game? Do failed apps have traits in common? We think so. Here are 3 reasons why apps fail to gain traction with their audience.

1. Not understanding your audience.

49% of developers build apps they want to use themselves, and surprise surprise: these developers end up generating the least amount of revenue. Turns out that if you don’t know who your audience is and do the due diligence to find out what segment of app users would want to use your app, you won’t be able to predict whether you’ll be successful.
Who is your app’s target demographic? Do they use Android or iOS? What actions do they want to do on a smartphone? What other apps do they already use? These are the types of questions your team should get answers to before starting on the app. When we built goMentum for Leaderclips, we were crystal clear on who the audience was (network marketers), the size of the audience (teams up to 100,000 people), and what they wanted (a communication & learning tool). That helped us design the app that catered to each user-type and each user-need. It’s a lot of up-front work, but it is invaluable when it comes to creating a successful app.

2. Not solving a problem.

A lot of apps fall into what we call the Google Earth conundrum. Remember when Google Earth first came out? It was a very cool app that let you virtually tour the world. How many of you still use it? Exactly. It’s a fun app, but there’s no real problem it is solving for it to be used regularly. As of this writing, it has nearly 100 million installs on the Google App Store. Compare that to Google Maps, which people use everyday to get around: nearly 1 billion installs.
If your app solves a problem to a group of users, there is a good chance it will be a success. But the prettiest app in the world that doesn’t solve a problem won’t see long term success. It doesn’t matter if your audience is very niche; if your app can solve a specific issue for them, you can win that niche. So before you build, ask yourself why your app should exist.

3. Bad user experience.

Benefit from The Only Hybrid Cloud Perfecto
An infographic from perfectomobile.com shows that 58% of app frustrations come from user interface issues. This highlights the biggest reasons why apps fail: users don’t like using them. So if you’ve found your audience, and if your app solves a known problem, none of that matters at all if your app isn’t a joy to use.
Developing a great app is not easy, but there’s no excuses for 44% of defects to be found by the customer. None! Take the time and spend the money to build the best app you possibly can. Build it, test it, release it, then fix the next batch of problems quickly. And repeat. With the audience as fickle as they are today, you might only get one chance to make a good impression. Put your best app foot forward by releasing a fully vetted product while continuing to listen to your audience to improve and iterate.
Why do you think apps fail? Sound off in the comments below!
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So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.

4 App Design Lessons I learned From My Parents

January 5, 2016
 
Ashley Rondeau

My holidays were fine, how was yours? Good! To make the time go by, I decided to observe how my parents used their iPhones. They’re in their sixties, and only got iPhones a year ago, making them adept at using them, but not experts by a long shot. So I wondered: how do my tech-challenged folks use their smartphones, and how does their usage speak to app design? After all, the Greatest Generation is embracing technology more than you’d think, so they make up a big target audience for app developers. Here are 4 things I learned watching my parents interact with apps.

1. Notifications need to be simple and logical…to delete.

app-store-notificationThe very first thing my parents did when I arrived, after feeding me, is hand me their phones and told me to “make all the red numbers go away.” Wow, did they hate those notifications. Because of the whole “teach a man to fish” philosophy that I ironically learned from my parents, I asked them to try to get rid of them first.
A few times, they did it just fine. The notifications themselves and the steps to remove them were intuitive. However, in many instances, the poor design of the app made me realize that if you’re not used to notifications, it can be a frustrating exercize in trial-and-error to figure out what you’re supposed to do. Some apps would have a red notice (often pulsing, to my parents’ great annoyance) and when you pressed it, it wasn’t immediately clear on the next screen what exactly they should be looking at.
I had no idea how bothersome a homescreen or app full of red notifications can be until my parents pointed it out, and this is a good thing to keep in mind when designing your app. If you can’t get rid of the red number in two touches, your logic can be simplified.

2. Quick access to favorites & remembering preferences is key.

Unlike the younger generation, my parents used their iPhones as phones. As in, using it to actually talk to another person. One day, my mom was trying to call a friend she knew she had called before, but couldn’t find her in her recently dialed section. Since she finds it difficult to save numbers by creating a contact profile, she just uses the recently dialed lists until she sees the phone number she semi-recognizes.
After I saved the contact for her, I also reminded her how to access her most frequently dialed numbers and saw her eyes light up. Here was all the numbers she called the most in one easy-to-find list! While she went off to show my father, this interaction showed me that while our smartphones can do nearly anything these days, it’s important to make the things you do the most as easy as possible. For my parents, and for a lot of us, an app that learns our favorites and preferences can make navigating the app so much easier.
Another example: my dad complained to me that he has a hard time getting to my Facebook profile. Fascinating! It seems easy to me: just type the person’s name into the search bar. But my dad a) hates typing on the little screen, and b) didn’t even realize the search bar existed. So he would have to open the Facebook app and just scroll through the timeline until he saw a post by me. Sometimes, he would click on a friend of mine, then click on “suggestions,” and find my profile that way. Watching him navigate showed me that it would be easier if the Facebook app could learn that I was a frequent “contact” for him and put my profile somewhere as a frequent destination.*
*The desktop version of Facebook sort of does this.

3. Pressing is intuitive, swiping is not.

701-one_finger_swipeMy parents get buttons. They see a button or even a link on screen, and they can push it like a pro. Swiping, on the other hand, was not an intuitive move for them. It makes sense: they grew up with buttons. Everything had them: microwave, TV, TV remote, washing machine. Swiping? When did they ever do that?
Because it wasn’t intuitive, they didn’t realize that swiping was an action they could take on many apps to access menus and shortcuts. Each time I showed them that what they wanted was behind a swipe, they asked “well, how would we know that?” Fair enough! It was a great reminder that app design has to make clear what actions are available to the user at all times. In other words, as Don Norman said, it’s all about “perceived affordance.”
And it’s not a bad idea to remember that pushing a virtual button is still much more intuitive than swiping pixels on a screen.

4. Make apps legible.

The complaint I heard the most? “That’s too small to read. Where are my reading glasses?” This happened over and over again, and as they sat with their phones at night, I could see them squinting to read on the tiny screens.
Some apps were clear, uncomplicated, and legible. They liked those apps. During a conversation about my health insurance (since they’re my parents, of course), I showed them the app I use to manage my Oscar Health.
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They actually stopped me and said “oh that is a nice looking app. Looks easy to use.” And they’re right. It’s an extremely simple and clear app to read. It’s almost minimalistic. They don’t know anything about actual app design, but they knew what they liked. It was another lesson on how to design apps for the masses. Keep it clear, keep it simple.
Maybe “can my mom use this app?” is the question we should be asking ourselves whenever we build. What do you think?
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So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.