It Is True – Mobile Access to Critical Apps Doubles Engagement
Have you ever wondered if it is worth the investment to develop mobile-friendly ways to give your employees access to critical business applications? And, how important is it to focus on the user’s experience in realizing the expected results?
Increase Use of Critical Business Applications with a Well Designed Mobile Platform
Here at CommandHound we went through the same thought process. At the start, we felt that a well-designed, browser-based, and responsive access to our main application would be sufficient for most of our clients since they normally use CommandHound during business hours at their desktops.
The Mobile Question
But the mobile-optimized app question kept nagging at us. Most of our users were indifferent to our web-browser based mobile app. While they used it, there were no comments regarding potential improvements. The only thing we knew was that 90% of our client’s activity was desktop-based. We suspected that there was an opportunity to increase engagement overall somewhere in the mobile world but we did not know where.
Once our development team was able to catch up with our backlog of new features, we decided to take the leap, to follow the wisdom of the crowd, and to invest in the development of cool native iOS and native Android CommandHound apps.
Our Mobile Goal
Our goal was to increase mobile access to CommandHound by 50% and to reach a 50/50 split between our desktop and mobile versions. With these ambitious goals, we embarked on a full UX/UI rethinking effort with best-in-class designers to not only enhance mobile access to CommandHound, but to make it a memorable and truly enjoyable experience.
Our Mobile Prime Directives
Once the decision to move forward with mobile apps was made, we quickly defined 4 prime directives to efficiently guide us through the effort:
1. Best in class UX/UI
Since the decision had been made to devote the necessary resources to build native mobile access platforms for CommandHound, it was imperative to secure the best UX/UI expertise to develop a truly enjoyable and useful app. No compromises.
Invest In a Best In Class User Interface To Increase Engagement
2. Full functionality from the get go
In order to shift a significant amount of traffic from our web version, we needed to make our mobile apps just as functional as our full desktop version. No functionality limitations.
3. All major platforms at once (iOS, Android, wearable (soon))
We wanted to make sure that our mobile apps where available on all the most common mobile platforms simultaneously. We did not want to have to explain why it was not available in some platforms or why some versions were prioritized ahead of others.
4. User feedback and testing
We realized that testing features and UX and UI concepts with real clients was critical to be able to achieving our overall goals. Avoiding being myopic to the market’s needs would help us get the return we expect from this significant investment.
Having these 4 prime directives defined and on the whiteboard helped us make decisions quickly as questions arose through the development effort.
Initial Results
So far, our beta results point to one simple outcome: when a user downloads one of our native apps and begins using it on their mobile device, half of their desktop access transfers to mobile. Wow! In addition, their overall sign in count doubles as their engagement with CommandHound increases.
Good Mobile App Design Directly Drives User Engagement Growth
The power of an enjoyable user experience is without question addictive.
Accountability in the Workplace
Would you like to learn more about how CommandHound uses accountability in the workplace to drive business performance and how the power of a great mobile app has helped our clients drive engagement across the board?
