How To Provide A Better Mobile Experience On Your App

User experience is everything when it comes to maintaining engagement. It’s all about how people feel when they’re using your app. This casts a pretty wide net, and encompases countless factors and variables.

As usual, giving people what they want always comes back to listening, asking questions, and providing the changes that people are asking for.

Here are just a few of the main complaints consumers have on a regular basis about the apps they use.

Inconsistent stability and reliability

People tend to use apps when there’s an immediate need. For example, I’m at Target and I want to compare pricing of the gaming system I’m about to buy my kid. I go to open the competitor’s app, and it crashes. Not only do I make my purchase at Target instead of with the competitor, I am completely turned off by the other app. It let me down when I needed it most, and I ultimately overpaid for my gaming system.

That’s all it takes to lose a customer. Make sure your app is consistently reliable and available every single time someone tries to access it.

Things just aren’t happening fast enough

In addition to 24/7 service, consumers expect things to happen fast. If I click into your app on my trek up the stairs, and I reach my destination while my phone is still clocking, you’ve lost me. I back out of your app and move over to something else that is going to give me the immediate satisfaction I’m looking for.

Use application performance monitoring to make sure your app loads quickly and can run anywhere.

Why do I need to type in my location?

The user interface must be simple and intuitive. People expect their apps and devices to know basic things, like their location. If one app can pull my location instantly, yet another requires me to type it in, I’m obviously going to use the app that does the work for me.

You want to remove as many barriers to usage as possible. Keep it simple and focus on solving problems without expecting the user to do any of the work.

Why won’t you play nice with my other fav apps?

One thing that can kill an app’s usage is when it won’t integrate with user’s other favorite apps. For example, maybe you have a great app where I consume content. I come across an article that I think is absolutely hilarious, but there’s no button to share it on Facebook. Do you actually expect me to do the work to copy and paste the URL, and head over to Facebook to post? Please.

If you want to keep people in your app, rather than sending them elsewhere, you’ve got to play nice with the apps they’re already using. If people can’t easily share what they’re doing, they’ll find a different app that makes it easier for them.

You’re killing my lifeline

How many of your favorite apps completely annihilate your battery? Battery consumption, data, and memory use are all factors you want to consider. No one continues to use apps that kill their batteries – it’s just that simple. A dead phone is useless, which deems the app useless as well.

Those complaints are straight from the mouths of customers, so be sure to consider all of them on your next build!

Post originally appeared on gojilabs.com.