App Analytics & Marketing Blog

When you want to create an app, the first key question you need to ask yourself is simple: which platform do I want to develop for?

It's a common belief that Apple’s iOS is the superior platform. Advocates cite an overall higher engagement for iOS users and a frighteningly high OS fragmentation for Android.

Localytics put these beliefs to the test and found surprising results.

Mobile customers are on-the-go. With 74% of smartphone owners claiming to use their devices to get information or directions specific to their location, it seems that a latent understanding of where you are has become something we expect from our mobile devices and the services which run on them. From making personalized recommendations to offering helpful information, mobile apps have an opportunity to surprise and delight their users by engaging them through location-aware experiences. 

If you think about promoting your app today, you may get déjà vu and remember your early days of building a web presence. Marketing and development back then involved a lot of people talking about the need to build a website for their business. 

So, your app isn’t the new kid on the block anymore. You’ve conducted a launch campaign, increased downloads, and optimized ad spend. Now, you’re coming up on another hurdle: handling your first round of updates, or even moving on to V2.

But there’s no need to panic; updating your app is considered a good thing, even when it’s because of nasty bugs. The App Store looks for you to regularly release new app changes to keep things current, and users know that updates are meant to make their experience better. All in all, it’s a positive.

According to CNN, February has just entered into the record books as the snowiest month in Boston’s history.

How did you spend those snow days? Did you venture outside? Did you overcome your boredom with a little personal shopping? Were you curled up with a good book?

According to our data, Boston residents spent much of the time doing all of the above via their apps, with usage up by as much as 30% on days of heavy snow.

You know what’s annoying? Not knowing when your taxi will arrive. Or having to call a restaurant to get an update on your order. Or continuously logging into a website to see if you have new messages.

Ain’t nobody got time for that. Can’t these hugely valuable pieces of information just be delivered to us automatically, when we need it? 

Why yes, yes they can – through transactional push messaging.

How do you listen to music? Do you listen to it during the car ride to work, while walking through the city, or over loudspeakers at home? Each of us has our own unique listening patterns that we develop as we find purpose for music in our lives. These listening patterns have become a major focus of music service providers in the digital era, and big data is how they are attempting to raise the bar.

Before we start, let’s be clear: thinking “app-first” for your brand does not mean prioritizing mobile over your other business channels.

What it does represent is your ability as an organization to think in terms of where your customers are going; not where they’ve been. Apps are everywhere, and that’s not an accident - mobile, often on-the-go users are driving the technologies that businesses use today to interact with their target audience.

Sometimes it feels like we’re on our phones all the time. Checking email first thing in the morning while we’re still bleary eyed, catching up with news on lunch breaks, sitting on the couch at night watching Netflix after a long day’s work.

That feeling isn’t entirely misplaced; studies estimate that the average person checks his or her phone upwards of 150 times a day. 

Trying to get more people to download your app from the App Store? Your icon can be the difference between your app being instantly recognized or blatantly overlooked.