App your brand, or brand your app?
September 25th, 2009 Posted in Mobile CommerceThere are over 30 million iPhones in the market today, along with 11 million iPod Touches, and each one has access to the innumerable apps that have innumerable uses.
Everyone has an app for them, from fans of: Starbucks to farts to the MLB.
Do you have one? MLB CEO Robert Bowman suggests you have do.
The league, which has two apps, one free and one costing $9.99, insists their apps have increased the usage of their mobile page exponentially. They claim an estimated 25 million page views DAILY.
Bowman suggests an app over a mobile website. His reasoning? Searchability. He reasons there are millions of websites, but only several thousand apps.
Another pro of apps? Revenue. Apps can cost as little as a dollar, yet still bring in money if there are enough users. And Bowman suggests you try charging for them. If it doesn’t work, simply take it down, rework it, and try again.
The MLB was one of the first brands to begin using an apps, which allow users to watch streaming video of baseball games. They also announced a new feature called Quad View, which allows users to watch four games at once, being released just in time for the playoffs.
Sounds too good to be true, right?
Well, there are some drawbacks. As it turns out, people commonly get rid of apps to make room for new ones. In fact, the odds of a person using an app even the day after they download is only 20 percent.
So what can you do to make sure they come back to your app? Update. Send mobile updates of contests, coupons, top scores for games, or even a simple reminder to use it.
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