The Fastest Growing App Categories – and How to Succeed in Them

July 18, 2017

someone holds their phone up while sitting in a coffee shop People are spending an average of 3 hours and 23 minutes a day on mobile phones apps in 2017.

But, before you jump headfirst into building your next app, take a moment to “read the room” (or, read the app store, in this case) and get an understanding of which apps are hitting it big in the current market — and more importantly, why. We’re in the business of watching and analyzing app trends, and we’re here to help you stay on top of the app game.

In this list, we’ll cover the fastest growing app categories for this year, and the highly desirable features that drive successful apps in each category. If you’re trying to decide what type of app to focus on for your business, some of these categories definitely warrant a closer look.

Messaging & Social Apps

Growth: With a usage increase of 44%, social apps experienced the highest year-over-year growth from 2015 to 2016, according to Flurry Analytics. This category is booming, especially among younger generations who are constantly seeking new and exciting ways to create social connections with their friends.

The Features You Need to Succeed:

Comprehensive Modes of Communication: When it comes to their social lives, consumers are looking for as much as they can get in one app. Moving away from the one-app-for-one-purpose model, users are increasingly turning to messaging apps that also provide voice and video calling capabilities. Google Hangouts and Facebook Messenger are good examples of social media apps that have expanded to meet the growing need for comprehensive communication.
Communitainment: This term describes communication apps for the sole purpose of entertainment. Apps like Snapchat, live.ly, musical.ly, and Twitch allow users to stream mobile videos and create content to share with their friends. Consumers don’t just want to connect with their friends, they also want to be entertained and delighted while doing it.
Streaming Capabilities: Users, particularly younger ones, are turning to messaging and social apps for live streaming. Periscope, for example, allows users to set up a live stream in front of audiences. This meets an audience need for sharing their lives with others in real-time.

Business & Finance Apps

Growth: Usage increased a respectable 30% from 2015 to 2016, according to Flurry Analytics. These apps are rising steadily and reliably, as more convenient and enjoyable sources of information than traditional business news channels.

The Features You Need to Succeed:

Real-time Information: No business and finance app will survive in today’s market without real-time data capabilities for stock prices and business news. Consumers want information instantaneously, and if an app doesn’t give you a leg up on getting news fast, what’s the point or using it? Real-time data is the bedrock for leading apps in this space, such as Bloomberg and CNBC Business.
Analysis: The latest news is only part of the puzzle for business professionals. These apps must also provide users with analysis and commentary, as well as actionable steps to act on that analysis. The capabilities for analysis and data-driven recommendations is where these apps can truly shine.

Shopping Apps

Growth: Flurry Analytics reports that app usage increased 25% from 2015 to 2016. Shopping apps have become quite a threat to brick-and-mortar retail stores, as they have the digital edge of convenience, especially when capturing impulse purchases via mobile.

The Features You Need to Succeed:

Fast Loading Time: As more and more users turn to mobile shopping, they’ve come to expect fast loading mobile sites and apps. In fact, a 1-second delay can result in a 7% drop in conversion (purchase) rate.
Aesthetics: People judge the credibility of sites based on aesthetics, and can determine credibility in less than four seconds. This is more important for shopping apps, where people will be entering in personal payment information. Apps like Canopy are particularly known for their simple, refined look, giving off an instant impression of credibility and trust.

Personalized Shopping: The greatest disadvantage of online shopping is the inability to try on clothing. Apps like JackThreads have gotten around this by giving users a trial period, where they can receive, try on, and return clothing. Shoppers only pay for what they keep.

Health & Fitness

Growth: Flurry’s data shows health and fitness app usage increased 18% from 2015 to 2016. For consumers who don’t want to pay a personal trainer, or attend weekly check-in meetings in-person, an app is the next best thing for support and coaching in health and fitness goals.

The Features You Need to Succeed:

Progress Tracking: Users should be able to easily record their progress — whether it be improved time, increased sets, or weight loss. MyFitnessPal, for instance, includes a calorie counter and pedometer, meeting the consumer need for easily tracking activities.
Training Guidance: Knowledge of proper form and technique is important for people to avoid injury and ensure results. Fitness app Sworkit provides over 200 videos led by professional trainers to do just that. In order to fit into that personal trainer role, fitness apps must prove to users that they have reliable expertise in their area of health.

Competition: For many, competition is motivation in itself. Competitive running and cycling app Strava understands this, and includes a leaderboard so users can see how their times compare to other area athletes.

Utilities & Productivity

Growth: Flurry Analytics shows that utility and productivity app usage increased 17% from 2015 to 2016 – still well above the average year-over-year app usage growth of 11%. While the other most popular app categories support different facets of user lives, productivity apps bring everything together to make sure it all gets done.

The Features You Need to Succeed:

Offline capabilities: Lack of Internet connection shouldn’t keep someone from using your productivity app. Google Keep makes this a non-issue, by allowing users to add notes and checklists offline. Once connected to a network, the app will then re-sync added notes across all devices.
Cross-Device Synchronization: For a productivity app to be truly useful, it must not create more work for the user, and that means the ability to sync across all devices is key. Today’s busy workers may use their mobile device on the go, and then switch to their desktop or laptop once at the office. Productivity apps Microsoft Office and Google Drive accomplish this by letting users sign into one account on multiple devices.
Push Notifications: Leverage push notifications to make users feel like your app is an indispensable tool. Many apps, from daily task managers like Any.do to calendars like Outlook, use push notifications to great success.

Simplicity is Key

No matter the app category you choose, remember to keep your app simple and easy to use.

Sometimes, executives, developers, and entrepreneurs get carried away thinking about neat capabilities and third-party integrations for a new app. Remember, all decisions you make for you app should come down to creating the best experience for your users. Seeking outside feedback throughout your development cycle is crucial to ensure that what you’re designing will actually meet consumer expectations and deliver a delightful experience.

If you’re looking for a second opinion on your app idea, or an expert developer to steer you in the right direction for user experience success, reach out to Barefoot Solutions, where our experienced team is thrilled to help you get your app idea off the ground!

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Do Less: Embracing Constraints in UX Design

As a custom app development shop, our answer to client questions is almost always yes. Can you build social login? Yes. Can we add @mentions? Yes. Private Messages? Yes. Camera effects? Yes. Yes. Yes. Software development in 2018 is more powerful than ever, and so is the temptation to add all sorts of bells and whistles to your app. But should you? No. Because what you don’t build is just as important as what you do. The concept of oppositional forces is pretty common in other design disciplines, but much less so in UI/UX design. For example note the deliberate use of negative space in these popular logos, including FedEx’s famous arrow. Music is another example, where the silence is every bit as important as the sound itself. In the world of UX design “negative space” takes the form of functional constraints, or all the things you can’t do. Perhaps the best illustration of this is Twitter, which famously decided to limit messages to just 140 characters. Over time this seemingly arbitrary constraint became the critical seed for a massively popular communication platform. Because make no mistake, we all WANT to write longer messages. But Twitter’s UX forced us to play by their rules, and in doing so created something unique. Facebook offers another great example of leveraging UX constraints. We all know the story- Facebook began as a small shrub living in the shadow of the social networking juggernaut MySpace, which Rupert Murdoch bought for $580 Million in 2005. But Myspace is now essentially worthless while Facebook is valued at $500 Billion. What’s fascinating from a UX standpoint is that Facebook didn’t beat MySpace by doing more, they won by doing less. Specifically, there were two critical UX decisions generally accepted as the reasons why they won the social network war: • Facebook did NOT allow everyone to sign up. At the start they limited accounts to college students only, which gave it a critical sheen of exclusivity and maturity just as MySpace was being overrun with younger kids and spammy content. • Facebook did NOT allow the ability to customize profile pages, allowing for a consistent and clean UI that stood in stark contrast to MySpace’s abrasive user-generated layouts. Instagram offers a more contemporary example; at first I found it frustrating that when re-opening the app, it ditches what you were previously looking at and auto-refreshes to more recent content. For example if you scroll down 20 pictures, when re-opening the app it will jump back to the top of those 20. But over time I came to realize that NOT saving my location and refreshing the content was causing me to compulsively check the app by feeding my “seeker” brain with new content every time. Another fascinating Instagram constraint is the inability to create web links. Hyperlinks are a fundamental currency of the internet, and yet when commenting on Instagram, their UX team has made a very deliberate decision to prevent users from including linked URLs in comments. The only hyperlinks you can create are #hashtags and @mentions. And consider the consequence of that decision: it prevents users from leaving the app and forces the social engagement to remain very basic, both of which work towards supporting Instagram’s primary identity as a lightweight picture based experience. And that’s an important point, because the key to leveraging constraints in UX design is to do so in a manner that strengthens the focus on your app's core identity. Constraints that work against your core value proposition will be damaging, but constraints that pull users back into your sweet spot are invaluable to your success. A great example of this two-sided UX coin is Snapchat, which became the hottest new app in town by introducing a wonderfully simple constraint: disappearing messages. In a world of oppressively persistent social media, where mistakes we made 10 years ago float into our job interviews, Snapchat offered an oasis of consequence free pictures and video. It was brilliant, and the platform took off like a rocket. But over time temptation crept in, and Snapchat couldn’t resist adding new features that directly contradict the temporary messages which defined their identity. Take for example the “Memories” section which saves your old Snaps so you can repost them again. On the surface this may seem like a neat new tool, but if we dig a little deeper, what is the Memories section doing to their core value proposition of not saving messages? It obliterates it. I could elaborate further (public stories!) but the bottom line is that over time Snapchat added new functionality that undermined the key ephemerality constraint that defined their platform. If you go find a millennial and ask them why they like Snapchat, most likely they will mention Snapchat's awesome face filters, because the mental model of disappearing messages has been almost entirely eroded. Certainly they won't know why the logo is a ghost. And not coincidentally, Snapchat is currently in crisis- numbers have leaked showing adoption has started to flatline. The easy explanation is to blame Instagram for brazenly ripping off Snapchat’s stories, but that view overlooks the many ways in which Snapchat removed its own key constraints and evolved itself into basically the same service as Instagram. Instagram could never have competed with Snapchat if the playing field was privacy and disappearing content. There are many more examples of this, including Twitter's recent decision to double their character limit to 280, but I'll take my own advice now and wrap this up. The key takeaway for UX designers and product developers is to ask yourself: What are my key constraints? And do I offer any functionality that could be removed to improve focus on my product's core value?

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Nothing to wear? Try Android.

Since Google announced its release of the software development kit for Android-powered wearables last month, the shower of interest has turned into a veritable deluge. App developers across the globe are caught up in the storm. Why? The components used for wearable devices have gotten little and inexpensive and a large number of consumers have smartphones that are simpatico with a wearable device. Juniper Research predicts that more than 130 million smart wearable devices will ship by 2018. Google is keeping the name of its newest line simple - Android Wear - but they’ve made sure to let everyone know that, while the premise is straightforward, the possibilities boggle. Initially the vanguard mobile device OS will be tailored for smartwatches and comparable trappings, but they will soon offer a closetful of trendy, fashionable body-fitting devices. But whatever form the Android Wear device takes, there are certain requirements that it must meet, according to Google. Alex Faaborg, Android designer, explains the Android Wear concept in a promotional video. “It needs to be incredibly fast, incredibly glanceable... there’s really only two components: the information that’s most relevant to you, and the ability to speak to it and do a quick command.” He goes on to say, “We designed an entirely new UI specifically for this form factor, and its really based around voice and contextual information.” Google has lined up a number of hardware and chip partners to produce this upcoming fashion line - LG, Samsung Electronics Co., Motorola, Intel Corp., Fossil, Asus, HTC, Intel, Mediatek and Qualcomm Inc. It looks like LG will be the first partner to produce - its “G Watch” is poised to debut within the next few months. And the price is far from Gucci-like at only an estimated $300. Google’s announcement “definitely gives wearables a status that it’s a market in it’s own right and it needs to be treated with the respect that a separate operating system branch gives it,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Kantar World Panel. App developers agree. They are are well aware that there are no boundaries in the wearables space, but they also know he/she who hesitates is lost. "A whole new app ecosystem is going to be born," said Shawn Hardin, chief executive officer of Mind Pirate, which released "Global Food Fight," its first game for Google Glass, earlier this year. "Those who are going to make that happen in a big way are going to be valuable companies because of it, and those who wait too late won't be a part of it." And Google - - - look out for iWatch… Sources: http://www.techhive.com/article/2109241/meet-android-wear-googles-bid-to-bring-serious-productivity-to-smartwatches.html http://gigaom.com/2014/03/10/google-to-release-sdk-for-android-powered-wearables/?utm_content=buffereef88&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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Building an App: Overcoming Common Development Obstacles

You’ve heard the adage, “the best offense is a good defense.” A quick Google search yields unclear results as to who the author is, but the meaning of the saying is as clear as a sunny day in Los Angeles. Wait… Essentially, if you can anticipate the challenges you may run into in any endeavour, the chances are much better of conquering victoriously. With football season well underway, we have offense and defense on the brain and naturally want to help you with your defense. So what issues can you anticipate when you hit the ground running in building your app? Let’s go: Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail Yeah yeah, we aren’t fans of using hackneyed idioms either. But this one felt appropriate to get the point across in a way that (hopefully) doesn’t revive nightmares of childhood teachers. Those finger wagging tyrants who scolded you to get preparation work done for papers you never wanted to write. Well now that we firmly revived those memories, those ladies and gentlemen were right. You must have a plan detailing where you’re going before you get to work in almost any part of life. Same goes with building your mobile app. What is the purpose of your app? What kind of a problem will it solve and how is it going to do so? Have a plan in place and the obstacle monsters will digress. Nice to Niche Ya Some cold hard reality: Someone may have thought of your mobile app idea already. Now that this devastating information has sunk in and you’ve peeled yourself off the floor, it’s time to get to work. What is going to make your mobile app different from the rest? Facebook has been done and done well (you can argue with that but you’d be wrong), and the world doesn’t need another Facebook. Too many entrepreneurs want to build another version of [insert app you know and love here], but that’s not what is going to make you a success. Figure out your niche and stick to it. The Name of the Game - Competition It’s no secret that there are a ton of apps out there. And the competition continues to swell with 2,000 mobile apps published each and every day. Understanding what your competition looks like and what makes them special will help you find a way to differentiate your app. After building an app that separates you from the rest, you must ensure a skillful marketing strategy to get your app off the App Store/Google Play and into users’ mobile devices. We talked about this at length in The Best Mobile App Marketing Techniques, but as a quick overview remember to: Understand ASO Utilize Word-of-Mouth Marketing Leverage the Blogosphere Get and Read Ratings and Reviews We have some more tricks in the aforementioned article, but there’s a start. We Pledge Allegiance, To Your App Say it with us: “We want loyal users. We will take care of them and meet their needs.” It doesn’t matter if your raving fans are your best friends in real life or Aunt Sue from across the street and isn’t really your aunt but she makes the best brownies so she’s Aunt Sue. They are the humans who will gab about your app to everyone they know, and you want to encourage their loyalty. This is helpful for a couple of reasons, one being for marketing purposes. The second is their frequent use of your app equips them to find your flaws. As strange as that sounds, this is great for you. Having users out there who will take the time to let you know how you can improve enables you to grow your app so it can transform into a product users will pledge their allegiance to - and ultimately make you more money. Get To Work If everything were easy, everyone would do it. While the competition is hot and finding loyal users in a unique niche can be tricky, you can do it. And we can help you get started - let us know how we can help here.

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