Whether developing a new app or refining an old one, franchise brands need to pay attention to the basics

These days, everything is instantaneous. The expectations of the average consumer have skyrocketed. They know what they want and when they want it.

With the mobile experience commanding so much consumer attention, it has become vital for a brand to develop a solid app to keep up with its competition and achieve success. Apps are often the most accessible bridge from a brand to its consumer, taking their product and essentially doing everything short of placing it in the customer’s hand.

Franchises from Your Pie to Smoothie King, and MOOYAH Burgers Fries & Shakes to Which Wich have catered to raving fans by successfully developing apps that allow consumers to feel closer to the products they love. However, before a brand sets out to develop strong apps such as these, it is important to evaluate execution from all angles. You must establish what you are trying to achieve and whom you are trying to reach and these five guiding principles below can help set the foundation for success.

App development basics

The initial concept of any app is, at its core, established to make our lives easier. Take for example pizza delivery - while ordering by phone is always an option, there can be operational challenges. Orders can be lost in translation, or miscommunicated, and you run the risk of turning off customers in the process. An app empowers the consumer to order exactly what they want every time, even if they love giardiniera only on the left half of their medium, thick crust pizza with light sauce.

“It’s important for brands to be where their guests are. For Smoothie King, our guests are increasingly on their mobile devices. More than 70% open their Smoothie King emails on a mobile device and mobile access of our website is at all-time highs. Smoothie King was one of the first brands to launch a loyalty program that utilized a mobile application, so for us, the App has allowed us to continue to reach guests where they are,” said Smoothie King Marketing and Communications Manager, Katherine LeBlanc.

Navigation should be swift and effortless, and app load times should be short. Apps must easy to use. Street addresses should only have to be registered once and for the aforementioned pizza, toppings should be accessible quickly and the app should never have to re-load in order to select additional or fewer ingredients.

Loyalty programs

The app has to keep the user coming back. Ease of use and technology are obvious advantages, but unfortunately they will not always suffice. Your rate of return can increase through a loyalty program that is designed to engage the consumer and also shape future purchasing habits. Point systems are an easy way to guarantee loyalty because they can be tracked electronically on an app. A great app has to keep the user coming back for more, or else it will get lost in the icon-filled tundra of the modern day smartphone.

“To create a successful mobile app, it must be built with the Guest in mind. It should be as intuitive as possible. If it has loyalty functionality, earning rewards should be easy and the rewards should be valuable to the Guest and as free of restrictions as possible.

With our new MOOYAH Rewards App, our Guests earn a point for every dollar they spend and they can redeem 100 points for a $10 reward. Because our app is integrated with our point of sale system, we can engage our Guests directly on their smartphones with targeted offers and bonus point opportunities based on their purchase history at MOOYAH. It was created to be a relationship-building tool that will help us increase engagement and loyalty so we had to build it based on what our Guests would want,” MOOYAH Director of Marketing Natalie Anderson Liu said.

App versatility

With the variety of smart phones and tablets on the market, it is vital that apps be easily downloadable across different platforms. Aesthetics must look just as good on one platform as another, and function properly as well. No matter your phone or carrier, consumers should be able to order that pizza without worry.

“As our mobile screens expand, so does the content that is developed to fill it up! Brands need to understand the value of their guests’ phone space and develop experiences that are worth having in any media from social media to mobile applications,” said Smoothie King Marketing and Communications Manager, Katherine LeBlanc.

Just like any product, it is extremely important that app developers understand the user. Audience research is crucial because the customer experience in Iowa City, IA is far different than Boca Raton, FL. Understanding who you are catering to and what their experience will look like can make the difference between success and failure.