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I work at a company trying to get more people into our app. The logic is completely flawed: "we want more engagement, app users show more engagement than web us

by efxhoy 3y ago

I work at a company trying to get more people into our app. The logic is completely flawed: "we want more engagement, app users show more engagement than web users, so if we get more users from web into the apps we'll get more engagement". It's obviously completely flawed but the product people and analytics department don't seem to get it. At least we aren't doing hostile stuff to get people into the apps, yet.

javajosh 3y ago
A good compromise is to educate users on how to add a shortcut to their homescreen. I don't think people (including product people) know about this feature, and mobile browsers bury it. The pareto principle applies: 80% of stickiness is that icon, which you can get for 20% of the effort of an app.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  It doesn't work for me. All icons on mobile look the same to me: I mean, Android's Material Design icons really look the same to me and even the icons from iOS never really stick in my head. That "settings" icon for instance with all the gears looks like a movie poster for The Golden Compass and not a settings dialog. The App store and Adobe Acrobat and many applications have meaningless logos based around a generic triangle... Once something gets a mobile icon I will struggle to find it, but if I want to find something on the web it is a quick search, often autocompleted when I type a few letters, or easy to find in the bookmarks or maybe my history.
  - javajosh 3y ago
    On Android the shortcut icon is derived from the favicon, so material design doesn't apply. (There is also a "badge" for the browser app itself).
    - PaulHoule 3y ago
      One way or another there are a bunch of Google-app icons that all look the same to me. Third party apps on iOS or Android generally have nondistinct icons: I have many icons that are basically a letter like "H" with no indication that one of those icons controls my stereo and another one does something else. I use Microsoft' RDP on my iPad all the time and I struggle to find the icon not least because the colors blend into the background but it is just some arrows without stems like the logo of some british railway from the 1970s. I find myself deleting apps aggressively because the junk apps make it hard to find the few apps I really use, most of all I use the web as much as I can because it is so easy to find anything on the web.
      - javajosh 3y ago
        Well it sounds like your problems go far beyond the thing we're talking about. Good luck!
      - infotogivenm 3y ago
        Personally it’s been a long time since I launch anything besides ~4 apps (phone, messages, browser, mail) from the homescreen. There are wayyy too many apps for that (because of BS like reddit is doing) - I always drag down and start typing the app name into search to launch.
        jghn 3y ago
        I've gone the other way and just don't use very many apps. I'll only use an app instead of the site if I find the app provides actual added value *to me*. And that is not often the case. And for cases that force you to the app instead of the webpage, I don't use that site on my phone. Which tends to start a cycle where I stop or at least greatly reduce using that that site.
freedomben 3y ago
I'm generally not cynical about human motivations, but after seeing many of these things and how thoroughly the "internal propaganda" at tech companies works, I think those are just the reasons they tell themselves. The real reason is the control and the deep analytics that you can get from mobile apps. Plus having an app icon which really does boost engagement, but nowhere enough to justify on its own.

by efxhoy 3y ago

javajosh 3y ago

A good compromise is to educate users on how to add a shortcut to their homescreen. I don't think people (including product people) know about this feature, and mobile browsers bury it. The pareto principle applies: 80% of stickiness is that icon, which you can get for 20% of the effort of an app.

PaulHoule 3y ago
It doesn't work for me. All icons on mobile look the same to me: I mean, Android's Material Design icons really look the same to me and even the icons from iOS never really stick in my head. That "settings" icon for instance with all the gears looks like a movie poster for The Golden Compass and not a settings dialog. The App store and Adobe Acrobat and many applications have meaningless logos based around a generic triangle... Once something gets a mobile icon I will struggle to find it, but if I want to find something on the web it is a quick search, often autocompleted when I type a few letters, or easy to find in the bookmarks or maybe my history.
- javajosh 3y ago
  On Android the shortcut icon is derived from the favicon, so material design doesn't apply. (There is also a "badge" for the browser app itself).
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    One way or another there are a bunch of Google-app icons that all look the same to me. Third party apps on iOS or Android generally have nondistinct icons: I have many icons that are basically a letter like "H" with no indication that one of those icons controls my stereo and another one does something else. I use Microsoft' RDP on my iPad all the time and I struggle to find the icon not least because the colors blend into the background but it is just some arrows without stems like the logo of some british railway from the 1970s. I find myself deleting apps aggressively because the junk apps make it hard to find the few apps I really use, most of all I use the web as much as I can because it is so easy to find anything on the web.
    - javajosh 3y ago
      Well it sounds like your problems go far beyond the thing we're talking about. Good luck!
    - infotogivenm 3y ago
      Personally it’s been a long time since I launch anything besides ~4 apps (phone, messages, browser, mail) from the homescreen. There are wayyy too many apps for that (because of BS like reddit is doing) - I always drag down and start typing the app name into search to launch.
      - jghn 3y ago
        I've gone the other way and just don't use very many apps. I'll only use an app instead of the site if I find the app provides actual added value *to me*. And that is not often the case. And for cases that force you to the app instead of the webpage, I don't use that site on my phone. Which tends to start a cycle where I stop or at least greatly reduce using that that site.

freedomben 3y ago

I'm generally not cynical about human motivations, but after seeing many of these things and how thoroughly the "internal propaganda" at tech companies works, I think those are just the reasons they tell themselves. The real reason is the control and the deep analytics that you can get from mobile apps. Plus having an app icon which really does boost engagement, but nowhere enough to justify on its own.