Does your business need a mobile app: three conditions that make it pay off

Our app’s store page collected 1,071 views and 26 preorders in three weeks, with nothing spent on promotion. For a zero budget that is a decent result, and it also shows the ceiling of that channel: tens of people, not thousands. From there comes the first thing to understand before any budget conversation. An app does not create demand. It serves demand that already exists, and code quality has no bearing on that.

The scenario has to repeat often

Apps live on repetition. Installing costs the user effort, and that effort is only repaid when they come back. A good example from our work is a system for a college. A mobile app and a web platform run together there: schedules and announcements in the app, points, reports and rankings on the web. That split is justified because schedules get checked daily while reports open once a month from a desktop. The system has been in production for over a year, with roughly 99 percent of students covered by the points system, and those students confirmed the split themselves by using the app for exactly the daily things.

The test is simple. Will a person open your product at least once a week? If not, they do not need an app, they will simply forget it is installed.

You need device capabilities or offline work

This is what a website cannot give you. Camera and file processing, background location, working on a plane or in a basement, notifications as a channel you own. Take an app for drivers that saves a parking spot and warns before the time runs out. Offline there is a condition of existence, because an underground car park has no signal and the product would be useless exactly where it is needed most.

A separate word about notifications, since they are often the main argument for building an app. You do get a channel. You pay with attention. One unnecessary notification a week is enough for a person to turn them off for good, after which the channel is gone and the app remains.

Somebody has to come back

The most uncomfortable of the three conditions (and the one most often ignored). An app brings no people by itself. App stores give some search driven flow, and that still does not make them an acquisition channel in the way a website with organic traffic or a base in a messenger is. The numbers from the opening are exactly that: three weeks of a live page bringing tens of interested people.

So the question of where the first users come from gets answered before development, and we wrote about that question in the mini app article. Without an answer the app will work perfectly and stay empty.

What you pay after release

Lines that rarely make it into the calculation. The first is platform updates: operating systems change their requirements, and an app nobody has touched for a year eventually stops building or disappears from the store. Then store rules, because requirements for permissions, privacy and listings keep changing, and that work is mandatory even though it is not on your roadmap. Two platforms, if you support both: a cross platform stack reduces the volume, and testing and releasing still happen twice. And reviews, because the first ratings cannot be rewritten while recent ones weigh more.

A website is calmer on every one of those points, because there is no intermediary between you and the user.

When a website is enough

When the scenario is one off or rare: an enquiry, a price calculation, a booking, evaluating an offer. When you need search traffic, because apps are not indexed and the entire organic flow stays with the website. When the product is unproven, a page with a form and manual processing gives the same demand signal several times cheaper.

Between the two poles sits a third option, a messenger mini app. It removes installation and registration and works well on short paths. Offline it does not give you.

How to test the decision before building

Count the frequency: how many times a week will one person open the product. Not «could open». Will.

Find the scenario that does not work without an app at all. If there is none, the app is a convenience, and conveniences almost always lose on payback. Test demand cheaply: a store page with preorders, a form on the site, a direct question in your own channel. Any of them gives a signal before the budget is spent.

What I do not know

We have no data showing how many such projects pay off on average. We see our own apps and our clients’ apps. That is a handful of points on a chart, not a market.

People often object that a competitor has an app, so they need one too. Maybe. Check first whether anybody actually uses it, rather than downloaded and deleted it: the rating and the number of reviews say more than the mere fact of its existence.

Back to those 26 preorders. It is a normal result for a page nobody promoted. It also shows what to expect from a store as a channel. An app solves retention for people who already arrived. With nobody to bring them in, it stays a well made thing that nobody knows about. Want to check whether that is your case? Tell us where your users will come from and we will start there.