After talking mobile app security and backend statelessness, it’s time to present the third essential concern today’s enterprise mobile app developers should keep top-of-mind: measuring user experience.
Anyone in IT with a little gray hair knows that the touch interface has completely transformed software. In those ancient, pre app times, there were hours of training, stacks of manuals, a huge learning curve to make something work. Now, we just download and go. A few touches or swipes and even a five-year-old is playing away on dad’s iPad.
What’s important to track now is how well those users continue to use the app. Think of it in terms of these priorities:
• Are they engaged?
• Are they easily getting what they need to get done?
• Are they using it effectively, to the ideal as envisioned by the designer?
It’s possible to get that level of granularity, tracking not only length of use, but what areas within the app are proving most effective, and what areas are proving problematic. Knowing a user is wallowing on a particular screen because of bad UX, for example, would help with next iteration updates and issue resolution.
Indeed, the deeper the data, the more potential value to the enterprise. It allows an enterprise to obtain a truly detailed picture of an app’s optimal use, and thus reinforce that use when appropriate, or work to change user behavior to best meet organizational objectives.
Knowing when and where an app is being used, and on what device, is just the beginning. You can drill right in to experiential data such as how long it takes to make transactions back to a server, the context in which that took place, the memory usage required, etc.
Here’s an example: If you see high transaction times, there’s something wrong either with the app or the system. So, you start debugging to cut down user complaints. With rich data, you can see not only the bug, but the contextual situation in which it arose. You can capture an environmental condition causing problems and then account for that in your code. Resolution is just an update away.
That’s why getting the most out of mobile apps really requires app-level metrics. And with those in place, it’s possible to layer on device-related metrics, location, and more. The user profile and the app performance profile become incredibly vivid. For the user, that means a better app. For the developer, it means cutting through the noise to learn what really needs to be improved, what can be stripped away, and what will create an even better app.
And even more enticing, perhaps, than all this app performance enhancement? The ability to capture user data at such a granular level is a marketers dream. Scrutinizing user metrics such as time of use and location, when layered in to knowns about device type and user demographic can drive ultra-targeted promotions. That’s the kind of information carriers and app builders alike are drooling over. Sure, that visibility will have to be weighed against security and privacy concerns, but those discussions are certainly underway.
In the meantime, if you’re involved in mobile enterprise application development, you’re helping redefine everyone’s expectations of what users can do with their mobile devices — and in the best possible way. Our industry has already changed what people can accomplish while on the move, but we think it’s just the beginning of what mobile apps are capable of.
Keep backend readiness, system security and data monitoring in mind as you build your apps, and your odds of successful implementation, organizational assimilation and user acceptance are going to soar. Then, we’ll really see enterprise mobile apps at their most revolutionary.
