Optimizing the Mobile User Experience via Understanding User Behavior

Apps March Forward

As app development marches on unabated, there are many things that may be argued among developers and publishers. Though, one thing will be agreed upon. The Holy Grail for creating the optimum mobile user experience is via understanding user behavior. More and more developers who also design, UX and UI designers, are coming to terms with this. How are users using your app? Understanding their type of behavior is paramount to creating that killer mobile user experience. There are three types of mobile user “states of being”. By understanding where your users fit in, you will be empowered in your mission to give them what they want when they want it.

• There are those that NEED IT NOW. This group includes those who really need information in an instant. They don’t want to sign in every time to use your app. They are busy people wanting to know when the movie starts, when their plane from JFK is taking off to Heathrow. What time their dinner reservation is. You get the picture. These are the people you see at the airports, on lines poking, swiping and pinching frantically.

The insight you would gain from studying the behavior of this type of users is to make the experience as smooth as possible. For example, such a user should not be prompted to sign in, answer surveys or anything on the way to his or her content.

• The second group includes those who are on the long train ride home, those at the doctor’s office or waiting in the line at the post office. Basically, these are people who are bored with lots of time on their hands.

You would learn that this type of users just wants to spend the time and enjoy it with an app that is aesthetically pleasing with fluid navigation. These users spend a lot of their downtime with one app, so you should make it as engaging as possible, so that they do not lose their interest and prompt them to bounce to one of the other hundreds of apps out there.

• The repetitive user is one that is always seeking the same type of information throughout their days and nights, sports scores, weather info, the latest International news. This type of users is one who is constantly using the same sites to obtain the same type of information. They get what they need and move on.

In optimizing for the repetitive user, you would learn from their behavior that they follow the same pattern for the most part each time. You would see that they click on the same buttons each time, much of the time in the same order. You’d want to optimize the navigation experience based on their collective behavior. Getting a handle on these groups is by learning their behaviors via measuring, refining your app and relaunching. Then doing it all over again.

As web traffic from mobile has surpassed traffic from the desktop, a visual mobile app analytics tool must be implemented to learn user behavior. Upon understanding the behavior of your users utilizing the features of such a tool, including user session recordings, touch heatmaps and realtime in-app analytics, you can then plan your optimization strategy. You stand to gain insight of not only how they are using your app, but why they do what they do when they do it.

The features in a visual mobile analytics tool as the ones mentioned above give you an overview of how the users are engaging with your app. User recordings allow you to witness this engagement through their eyes and see where they are experiencing friction or indecisiveness. Touch heatmaps will present you with an aggregated image of all taps, swipes, pinches conducted throughout the app. Lastly, visual in-app reporting presents you with an overview of what is happening behind user actions, and providing you with pinpoint insights you will use to optimize.

Optimizing your app in such a fashion not only will maximize the mobile user experience, it will also show your users that you understand them and give them what they want, hence bringing them closer to your app and increasing loyalty.

Guest Post by Alon Even – VP Marketing at Appsee.com, the most advanced visual mobile analytics solution. His areas of expertise are online marketing, mobile analytics, and mobile UX.