Smarter Government: Analytics to Outcomes

Before smart phones existed people used their cell phones for the most basic forms of communication: making quick phone calls and sending occasional text messages. Now making phone calls is a lost art form, with new communications dominated by mobile phone applications. Mobile apps have made it extremely easy for consumers to pull out their phone to check the weather forecast, pay their bills, watch a video clip, research a product, or even book a flight.

The growing mobile market has resulted in the increase of consumer reliability on mobile phones and high expectations of seamless mobile experiences. To ensure customer satisfaction, businesses must gain actionable insight into their mobile customers’ behaviors to optimize their mobile site and applications.

In IBM’s white paper, 5 Ways to Optimize your Mobile Applications with IBM Mobile Behavior Analytics, experts discussed best practices to build a great mobile site or app.

1. Keep it simple. With a five inch screen, it’s impossible to put everything you would put on a website on a phone. Provide a clean and easy to navigate interface that includes only the essentials. Most mobile users are only viewing the app to check something quickly, so simplicity is key. Make sure to minimize the menu bar to one icon at the top of the mobile screen.
2. Identify how your customers are struggling. The goal of a mobile app experience is for customers to complete their goals quickly. With new types of mobile devices and changing screen sizes it can become difficult to monitor where and how customers are struggling during their mobile journey. Because users have different operating systems and screen sizes, create Responsive Web Design (RWD) sites and apps to ensure the mobile layout will have the proper display for each device.
3. Know when your mobile customers are interacting the most. Usability analytics allow insight into which links are most popular, how far customers scroll down the page, which form fields are causing customers to convert or drop off, and which areas of a page customers are paying the most attention to. Understanding what customers are interested in and knowing where customers are and aren’t interacting helps you to deliver the most relevant content on your app.
4. Understand your mobile customers’ behaviors. Mobile is more than understanding what consumers click on and what they hover over. You need to know what consumers tap on, double tap, tap-and-hold, swipe, pinch or spread. Gaining insight from these gestures gives you a better understanding of consumers’ intention during their mobile journey.
5. Maximize your customers’ mobile engagement. Mobile devices enable users to be always on their app, which means they can always be on your site. To better engage with customers, use location-based information to improve their experience. Leverage the location of customers and provide relevant offers based on their historical product searches and purchases. You can even provide “tap to call” or location specific information and services.

For more information on how you can improve your mobile app, view the white paper here.