Why mobile app maintenance is crucial to your mobile strategy

Our lives have become dependent on mobile apps and devices. Over the past few decades, we have seen a rise in content consumption, lifestyle hacks, instant news, and games. To stay competitive, companies frequently develop new applications to keep users engaged.

Getting things done at the touch of a button is no longer a new concept – it’s an expectation. Even Apple labeled its iPhone ads with “There’s an app for that.” This set a precedent for app developers and helped encourage companies to create easier-to-use software.

Looking at how fast-paced our lives have become in the last few decades, it all makes sense.

We need information and we need it now. Companies around the world are recognizing the opportunity and need to review their strategies for engaging new and existing audiences through mobile applications.

But the mobile app development process is rarely simple.

The market has become fiercely competitive. Brands have invested considerable amounts of money in building intuitive, interactive, content-rich and value-driven mobile apps.

While these aggressive development strategies have certainly yielded rewards in many cases, at the same time, the need for a rapid development process has made applications more prone to errors. This is one of the reasons why it is critical to have a solid application maintenance strategy.

Today, mobile app maintenance has become a market in its own right – helping brands maintain their apps and release high-quality, faster, more intuitive and feature-rich updates that address changes in customer behavior.

In other words, app maintenance has become a critical part of any mobile strategy. Here, we'll share the key steps in developing and implementing a mobile app maintenance strategy.

What is mobile app maintenance?

Mobile app maintenance goes far beyond simply fixing bugs. It is a process that ensures that all important aspects of a mobile application are tested, reviewed, addressed and improved to meet user expectations. It also ensures that the application is compatible with software ecosystem updates and changes while protecting user and application data.

Maintenance is an important part of all application development processes and is necessary to ensure ongoing business success and user satisfaction.

Now that you know how important it is to maintain your branded apps, let's learn about the different types of mobile app maintenance you should consider.

What are the types of mobile app maintenance?

There are five types of application maintenance, each of which can be useful at one point or another. They include:

• Emergency Maintenance: Emergency maintenance is required when something in a mobile app breaks and stops working without notice. As the name suggests, it's the type of maintenance you need when you encounter a major problem that needs to be resolved as quickly as possible.
• Corrective maintenance: Corrective maintenance is a tactic that companies use to resolve small bugs that, although they do not compromise the application's functionality, impact the overall user experience. Problems that you can resolve with corrective maintenance often include application logic and design issues. This type of maintenance is recommended throughout the life of the application.
• Preventative maintenance: Preventative maintenance proactively improves code to prevent bugs from happening. The mobile app development team actively monitors the app and reworks the underlying code before issues arise, improving app performance. Preventative maintenance includes continuous system monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and automated system regression level testing.
• Adaptive Maintenance: Companies may want to introduce small changes to their applications to ensure their compatibility with changing systems and hardware. The application itself does not change because this maintenance only updates it to continue working in newer environments. In other words, adaptive maintenance ensures the compatibility of mobile applications with the operating system on which they will run.
• Seamless Maintenance: To keep improving the mobile app, teams can make significant changes to the app and add new features and functionality. Perfect maintenance is often based on user feedback and the development team's proactive analysis and aims to improve the user experience and overall value of the application.
• Evolutionary Maintenance: Companies may need to consider a long-term approach to mobile application development. Evolutionary maintenance consists of processes to add additional modules to the application to make it more agile, ergonomic and efficient in the long term. This maintenance allows companies to eliminate numerous long-term maintenance operations.

Effective mobile app maintenance is essentially a holistic approach that takes into consideration the six types of maintenance we discussed above. Let's dig deeper to help you determine the best way to maintain your mobile apps.

Top 5 Reasons Why Mobile App Maintenance Is Crucial

Now that you are familiar with the types and functions of mobile app maintenance, let's discuss some reasons why you should invest in consistent maintenance of your mobile apps.

#1 App Maintenance Actually Saves You Money

The value of any app comes from the moment it keeps its target audience engaged. If yours doesn't do this because it's broken, you'll pay dearly for every minute of app downtime. Application maintenance allows you to detect bugs before they cause the application to crash, thus avoiding downtime that can be costly in terms of money and reputation.

It can help when a significant failure occurs, reducing offline time. It can also help you when a significant failure occurs, reducing the time you are offline.

Companies that don't prepare and invest in application maintenance often face substantial problems quickly. Without maintenance, bugs and performance issues accumulate, potentially resulting in major customer backlash.

Remember, you are losing money when your customers cannot access the app. Therefore, any application maintenance costs are an investment that will pay off in the long term.

#2: Maintenance Keeps Your App Secure

One of the biggest challenges companies face today is cybercrime. Malicious actors are becoming more sophisticated every day and mobile apps are among their favorite targets.

This is why maintaining a strict maintenance schedule is essential, as it will allow you to strengthen your application's security with the latest encryption and security features.

Customers download and use your app with the expectation that you will keep their information private, even if they share their personal information to receive personalized recommendations, for example. Failing to keep your information secure will result in your brand's reputation being questioned by customers – and even potential lawsuits.

Apply regular mobile app maintenance strategies to ensure compliance and load the app with relevant and timely security updates.

#3: Regular Maintenance Keeps You Competitive

Seamless and adaptive maintenance ensures your app is up to date with all the latest systems and hardware while providing innovative features to your audience. This will keep your audience interested, which in turn will keep you competitive in today's highly aggressive app market.

The competition is always waiting for you to make mistakes and lose market share. Don't give your competitors what they want.

Maintaining your mobile app regularly will allow you to fix issues and introduce new features and updates to take advantage of changing market trends. You will also be able to trust the data collected from your well-maintained application.

#4: Maintenance Allows You to Stay Relevant

New features and extended compatibility can keep up with your competitors, but also allow you to stay relevant in the eyes of your audience. People's interests and behaviors change over time, and they expect their favorite apps to serve them organically. That's why you should keep an eye on new customer trends and use app maintenance to put what you learn into your app.

The “set it and forget it” approach to building a mobile strategy will never work, at least not in this fiercely competitive world. Market trends change every day. Consistent app maintenance is the only way to ensure your app meets the evolving needs and expectations of your consumer base.

#5: Maintenance helps you comply with App Store rules

The Apple App Store is always making adjustments to its policies and regulations. Anyone who wants to publish an app on the App Store needs to comply with these policies – or risk being left out. This is why maintenance is so essential. It allows you to introduce changes to your app to keep it compliant with any new regulations.

The Google Play Store also has a long list of rules and guidelines that your mobile app needs to follow. One of the most important reasons why these app stores have guidelines is that they need to ensure that the apps installed by customers work as promised by the brands.

Here's the bottom line: you will never make a mistake when investing in mobile app maintenance. It sets you up for short- and long-term success. You can make positive changes to the application to ensure quality, high performance, compliance, and competitiveness.

Benefits of Mobile App Maintenance

With consistent mobile app maintenance, you will certainly invest a significant portion of your company's budget to keep your app up and running. So what do you get out of this? Let's take a look at some of the key benefits of investing in mobile app maintenance.

#1: Improved User Experience

Much of your customer base will depend on the app to successfully connect with you. In other words, the effectiveness of your mobile strategy will impact the strength of your business-customer relationship. Customers will simply open the app and make purchases or request services – a process that takes them through different steps.

With an application maintenance strategy in place, companies can avoid any bugs or performance issues that could negatively impact the effectiveness of the application. Regular maintenance of the app will ensure that customers do not face difficulties when purchasing products or transacting on the app. This consistency will go a long way toward improving the user experience.

#2: Increased User Retention

Name a brand that was successful without gaining the trust of customers. There is none. Businesses are built on loyal customers, and to achieve that loyalty, you will have to earn their trust. One of the best ways to make this happen is to show that you're willing to improve your customers' in-app experience.

Releasing regular updates and maintaining the app consistently demonstrates that you want your customers to have a positive app experience. Once you gain their trust, it will be easier to retain them for a long period, thus improving customer retention. Did you know that acquiring a new customer costs five times more than retaining one? Food for thought, for sure.

#3: Maintaining Brand Reputation

In 2017, American Airlines found a bug in its internal holiday scheduling software. The bug allowed many pilots to book time off during the Christmas holidays, resulting in nearly 15,000 flights being grounded with no one to pilot them .

What followed was a huge PR blow for the airline, as thousands of passengers were left stranded at airports. If the airline had maintained its software application, the story would not have made headlines and caused major reputational damage. One of the main benefits of consistent app maintenance is a positive brand reputation.

#4 Financial Impact

The financial impact of extending poorly maintained applications to customers can be catastrophic. A public announcement of a software flaw can cause a company to lose customers and shareholder value.

At the same time, a well-maintained mobile app ensures a great and consistent user experience, helping to increase the ROI of regular app maintenance. Since a significant percentage of customers prefer to shop online, chances are you can count on them to use your app.

If customers trust your mobile app, they will come back to make more purchases through it. That's why investing in mobile app maintenance is vital to meaningful, long-term business success.

Think of it this way: your mobile app is essentially a bridge between your brand and your customers. A strong bridge will ensure strong communication, making it easier for customers to feel closer to their favorite brands.

Embrace application maintenance

Even though adopting all types of application maintenance can be challenging, it's worth the effort.

App maintenance offers the opportunity to embrace the challenges of keeping up with the constant changes in customer behavior and expectations and the advancements introduced in the world of smartphone technology.

Common questions

Do I need a dedicated team for application maintenance?

It is advisable to have a dedicated team or resources for mobile app maintenance because mobile apps require continuous attention and knowledge.

Can I outsource mobile app maintenance to a third-party vendor?

You can always outsource the maintenance of mobile apps and other software to a reliable third-party provider. This often reduces the overall cost of mobile app maintenance, especially if you don't have an in-house team.

What is the cost of maintaining mobile apps?

The cost of mobile app maintenance will depend on the complexity of your app, frequency of updates, team size, and whether the team is in-house or outsourced. It is typically an ongoing operating cost.

How do I prioritize mobile app maintenance tasks?

Prioritize mobile app maintenance tasks based on user feedback, critical bug fixes, security vulnerabilities, and strategic app goals.