So you built, or want to build, an app. Obviously the creation of a successful app involves many moving parts and a multitude of steps. The research, planning, hours and effort required add up to a helluva process - but that’s only half the battle. To fully bring your idea to life there is an important final touch you can’t forget - user acquisition. Given the competitive mobile app market, gaining usership can be a battle. With over 2,000 new apps published every single day, you better plan ahead and get your marketing act together if you don’t want to end up with a dead app. You worked way too hard for that. Now that we have you a little rattled, don’t panic - there’s plenty you can do to get noticed. Start with social media. For example, you can easily set up advertising such as a pay-per-install campaign on Facebook. Find out what tweeters are tweeting and get your hashtags rolling. While you do that, here’s a few tips that will help you get the visibility you need to get those coveted downloads and industry buzz: Learn and Master ASO You’ve heard about SEO and know what a pain in the ass it can be. ASO is certainly not the same thing, but a game you must play if you want downloads. App Store Optimization, ASO, is the sprint to get your app visibility in app store search rankings. Tools such as App Annie or SearchMan are helpful to manage and monitor your soon-to-be-climbing ASO. Keywords are important in ASO, so be sure to carefully think about the title and description you put together. Think about what kind of search the user you’re targeting will type. For example if you were marketing Pandora, you would want to include keywords such as “online radio,” “free streaming,” or “music playlist.” Get inside your audience’s head and figure out what they will search to try and get to an app like yours. Word-of-Mouth Never, under any circumstances, underestimate the power of word-of-mouth. Get your friends and family to download your app and ask them to spread the word. Even better, ask for their feedback and make the changes they suggest. Few people are going to care more about your success than your friends and family, and fewer still will give you the honest feedback you need to improve. Mom may not be the savviest app user, but she’s not afraid to give it to you straight. Utilize the Blogosphere Bloggers are always looking for a hot topic to muse about. Guess what? Your app is a hot topic and damn straight they should be talking about it. Tech bloggers not only love to get their hands on the latest technology, but vie to be the first ones publishing their witty thoughts on it. Comb through tech publications, find out where the early adopters chat, and fire away offering first time access to your app. Writers eat that up. Keep in mind, while you may not have a ton of control over this, do what you can to coordinate publication releases at or around the same time. What this does is hits the Internet like a charging horse, click-a-clacking across the information highway to maximize hype and improve results. And hey, you’re a patron of the internet too - get involved yourself. Comment on the blogs, share on social media, be interactive and boost that buzz. Become a Student of Your Users Listen. L-I-S-T-E-N. Was that not clear? Listen to the users who took the time to download your app. People are happy to provide feedback because they want products they want (see what I did there). If you can fashion your app to something users really want, they’ll tell their friends and increase their own usage. Don’t be surprised if they may have some pretty radical requests. Keep an open mind. While your vision for the app is certainly brilliant, try not to hold too tightly to these original ideas. There may be great suggestions outside the round-one-dev-box that can take your app places you never thought of. Ratings and Reviews Plug in functionality that asks users for ratings and reviews. Users don’t really care what you have to say about your app and what it can do. Users care what other users think and listen to their peers far more than you. Apptentive is a great app to get started with this. Ask users for reviews and again, listen. Make the changes that affects common use cases as quickly as possible. The Internet is instant, it lives in your users’ pockets and purses. They are not a patient bunch and will speedily move on if dissatisfied. Keep Users Happy This is a no-brainer and a theme you may have picked up on. But seriously - keep users happy. ASO also looks at user behavior such as discard rate (how often an app is deleted), ratings, download counts and frequency of use. Ensuring your app is something they really want will increase their use of it, and encourage them to tell their friends how great it is. If you can keep your users happy they will have no reason to delete your app and rate it highly. Happy users are the gold to go after in your marketing campaign. Publishing your app and getting people to use it can certainly be overwhelming - but you can do it. Mobile users want you to make their lives easier with a new fantastic app. Get the word out there, actively listen, and build a happy user base.

Now that we are in the second month of 2015, hopefully you are able to write today’s date without cursing at yourself for mistakenly writing “2014,” and scribbling a 5 over that 4. Even if you are, there’s a lot to expect in mobile in 2015. From wearable advances to mobile app evolution to changes in the way we make phone calls, here’s what we predict will happen in 2015 mobile. WiFi Calling For those who fight the good fight against low mobile reception, WiFi calling is the answer to boost mobile signal without draining battery life. As such, 2014 was a big year for WiFi calling as T-Mobile and Sprint made a push to expand coverage to hot spots with WiFi access. This means the pressure is on the remaining mobile carriers to support WiFi calling. Not only will mobile carriers support WiFi calling, but they’ll also promote the feature to fill in the missing spots on the map where reception is low and frustratingly not connected. Wearables It’s hard to imagine wearables truly taking a permanent hold on the appendages of America, but 2015 will be a big year for their advancement. Smart watches for example haven’t quite captivated consumers due to low battery life and overreliance on mobile phones themselves, however things are changing. Apple Watch is on its way, set to release in early 2015. This is an exciting move for the company that changed the way we listen to music and use telephones altogether. Not only that but consumer interest in the wearable subject has improved, as a Forrester survey of 4,500 US adults found that 42% of respondents would be interested in purchasing a wrist-based wearable. This is up 28% from 2013’s survey, a tangible nod that signs are pointing to wearable use. With the biggest companies putting skin in the game and consumer interest increasing, the wearable game is going to get a lot more interesting. Mobile App Advertising Mobile applications are positioned to play a larger role in the 2015 world of marketing. Mobile devices are used at a significantly higher rate than a desktop, and 80% of that mobile use is spent on apps. So it naturally makes sense that a mobile application would be used to promote businesses as well as offer important tracking user information. Vincent Tessier of LAPLACEMEDIA puts it well as he predicts, “For 2015, we expect that both programmatic and native advertising will dramatically change the face of the mobile advertising industry. Brand budgets will continue to rise as best practices from mobile pure players have been learned in terms of tracking and native, as well as programmatic is bringing effectiveness in reaching the right audience.” Hardware Advances The aforementioned Apple Watch is one such example of advances in mobile hardware that we can expect in 2015. Google is set to release its modular smartphone Project Ara, introducing users to the concept of swapping out components of the device they find useful or not.  Aside from the release of big projects from industry giants, we can expect to see more hardware integration as apps integrate with devices and utilities for everyday life. Expect to see more app integration with smart homes, medical devices, etc. Apps Breaking Apart, Becoming Singularly Focused We’ve traditionally been supporters of the concept of building apps incredibly skillful at one thing. You nor your app can be everything to everyone, and building applications that users love involves keeping it simple, usable and solving one problem exceptionally well. We are now seeing other companies realizing this seeming truth, as mobile apps are not only being built with a simple focus, but already successful apps are breaking their functionality apart into separate apps. As we recently mentioned, Facebook spun out their Messenger function into a separate app - and we can expect more of this looking into 2015. 2015 is shaping up to be an exciting year in mobile, app development, and technology in general. What are you looking forward to most in 2015 mobile? Let us know in the comments below.

Mobile apps are a way of life at Barefoot. Yes for the obvious reasons in that we design and build them, but also because they help make our business and personal lives easier. We admire the work others put into their mobile apps, and are constantly surprised at what people come up with month after month.  There are many mobile apps almost everyone with a smart device uses. Communication apps like email or Google Hangouts help us stay in contact while on the go. Task management apps like Asana or RedminePM keep us on track with projects we’re working on either on our own or with others. Then for fun are gaming or social media apps like Candy Crush, Twitter or Facebook.  Yet which apps do we really get the best of both worlds, enjoyment and utility? We walked around the halls of San Diego’s Barefoot offices to find out what they thought.   Mint We have jobs and we make money, thankfully. Managing that money can be as easy as checking a Bank of America or Chase mobile app, but that just reflects how much cash we have to blow while agonizing over broken March Madness brackets. There are many other things to consider in managing money, such as tracking how well you’re paying off those grad school loans and department store credit cards. Enter Mint, the app for managing all of your money, all over the place. Once the app is downloaded, you can sync the app to your bank accounts to get an idea of how much cash you’re sitting on. Then you plug in any loans you have, mortgages, car loans, student loans, you name it. The app gives you your net worth by balancing your cash vs. debt. Then once you’ve resolved once and for all your tired of paying interest on that study abroad semester in Rome, you can set a goal for paying down debt, and getting on track.   Hype Machine On the entertainment side of things, we love music apps to keep our days going. Spotify and Pandora are great, but we also love a lesser known app called The Hype Machine. “The app aggregates music from blogs all over the internet and then crowd sources a fresh list of top tracks,” says Peter Holmes, our creative director who may or may not have an affinity for DJ’ing on the weekends. What he means is, Hype Machine checks in with the hundreds of the most popular Internet bloggers every day for the latest, most talked about music, then puts it in one easy place for listeners to discover. You can listen to the newest songs posted seconds ago, the most popular of the day tracks, and see what your friends are listening to and discovering. This way, you can listen to the newest and most hyped music before you commit to buy.   Docusign Docusign may be responsible for sending fax machines into extinction with the dinosaurs. When released we remember our accounts team excitedly talking about how much faster they were able to sign contracts and move the process along for clients. The reason why is the app provides a secure solution to collect signatures by allowing others to electronically sign documents. Hunter Jensen, Founder and CEO here at Barefoot, didn’t hesitate to bring up the app stating, “Docusign hands down saves me more time than any other app.” With Docusign we can import documents to sign or send signatures, place fields throughout documents to make it easy for signers to know where apply their excuse for a signature, and allows for signers to scribble right on the mobile device for circumstances like travel or trade shows.   Sidecar We recently discussed the most popular of the transportation apps, Uber and Lyft. While we certainly do get plenty of utility out of those two, Sidecar is the new kid on the block trying to make a name for himself and is starting to prove he can play with the varsity squad. Sidecar functions in a similar way as Uber and Lyft in that when you download the app it syncs with your Facebook account to get your profile information. Once you’re ready for a ride to happy hour, flip on the app and it locates the nearest drivers to your location. The difference with Sidecar however is that this transportation app is the one that started the idea of entering your destination location before the driver is selected. This is so the app can calculate how much your ride will cost, removing the surprise $40 bill for a ride around the block. Then once your pick up and destination locations are selected, Sidecar displays a list of drivers for you to choose from with varying prices and vehicles. Sort of like a Tinder for commuting, users can swipe down the driver list that displays the driver’s name, profile picture, image of their vehicle, and the price of the ride. The prices vary given the quality of the car and how far the driver has to come to get you. This means - if you’re picking up a hot date you can pick the swankiest car available. But if it’s a night out with the bros, who cares, pick the cheapest and closest.   It was tough to narrow down the list to just these, and we know there are hundreds of fantastic apps developers and users enjoy. What are your favorite mobile apps? Let us know in the comments below.