Jācapps COO Bob Kernen knows his way around an app store. As a guy who understands the in’s out out’s of mobile strategies, his guest post today suggests a change in thinking about what makes a great app. So stop multitasking for a second and check out his perspective. – FJ
Reddit recently released an app for their highly popular Ask Me Anything feature (AMA). If you’re not familiar with it, Reddit gets notable people to sit down for a session with their users where they can ask that celebrity anything. The concept has led to some great interviews where the questions didn’t come from a journalist, but from regular folks. And some of them are quite good. From John Fogarty to Barack Obama, all sorts of famous people have done an AMA.
So what’s news about a successful new app from an already successful website? Well, it turns out that this wasn’t Reddit’s first foray into apps. Their initial attempt was just a Reddit app. But where AMA is a growing success, the first Reddit app was mostly a failure. Why did it fail? Well, if you’ve spent any time on Reddit, you know that it is a sprawling site with hundreds (maybe thousands) of topics with users commenting, posting and interacting. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, it can be overwhelming. Exploring it is a trip down the rabbit hole. While this can be an interesting journey on the web, it doesn’t work well as a mobile experience.
AMA is different. It’s about one thing. And if you look at the apps you probably use the most, they tend to have a singular focus. Or even when it comes to apps with many features, chances are you gravitate to just one o them. So when the user has one-touch access to whichever tool they need at that moment, having clear utility is crucial. The “kitchen sink” approach to apps doesn’t always work.
If you look at the biggest digital brands, you’ll find they don’t have an app. They have apps. Plural. Yahoo has apps for weather, sports, mail, etc. Google has apps for search, maps and “now” (whatever that is). Even Facebook, which seems to be a single purpose brand anyway, also has Messenger and Paper.
Think about your brand’s mission. What is your brand’s promise? And what is your audience’s expectation? Once you determine that, your mobile strategy should become clear. And that strategy doesn’t have to be a one-shot-thing where you jam all your assets into a single application.
At jācapps, our new V4 app is designed to be a complete engagement tool for stations to interact with their audience. Output — streams, on-demand audio and web content — and also input — social media, messaging and user generated content.
But if your brand has other attributes, maybe they don’t belong in your main app. Maybe a better tool for your user is a separate app that best serves that audience need. If you’re a rock station, maybe you have an app for the station, but also one for the fans of your morning show, and another for a local entertainment guide.
Each app is an opportunity to super-serve a segment of your audience, and offer a unique, focused and perhaps endemic opportunity for an advertiser.
Great apps solve problems. Apps have a job to do. Identify that job and you just might have a “single bullet theory” app that reaches that goal.
As Reddit continues to evolve, I think you can expect other apps to join AMA in the app stores. So learn from their mistake: stay out of the “kitchen sink” mode and look for opportunities that are unique to your brand.
What job can your app accomplish for your brand and your audience?
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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