Successful mobile teams move fast to deliver new functionality, drive usage, boost engagement, improve conversions and create apps that stick. These practices are foundational to future-proof apps that customers love and use again and again.
Guide
Future-proof your mobile app with feature flags and experimentation
Everything you need to know about how to build, test, and deliver mobile apps that last.
Millions of apps in the Apple App and Google Play stores are getting squashed by high user expectations, right and center.
Remember...
Mobile app engagement and sales are not about more fancy features.
It is about getting more out of the onboarding experience by providing a relevant experience after someone downloads your app.
You can improve your mobile app effectiveness using feature flags and focusing on these elements:
Feature clarity
Test earlier in the product lifecycle so your target audience engages with the features you release.
Relevance
Reduce the inefficiency of development backlogs. Build specific app interactions for users.
Value
Use the onboarding experience to show why your app is useful. It'll motivate users to engage and eventually pay for what you're selling.
See what you need to deliver features that last and grab your users' attention after just one use. All tactics, zero fluff.
Learn:
- The benefits of a/b testing and ways to improve delivery
- How feature management impacts user experience
- The experience your users when they use your mobile app
A better way to release
Large-scale, 'big-bang' launches were once the most common way of releasing exciting new app functionality and redesigns. Mobile product and engineering teams worked tirelessly to get the new features ready, while marketing and PR departments prepared accompanying launch materials.
For every successful Big Bang release, however, many others failed to gain traction. Worse still, some were so harmful that they caused teams and even entire companies to stumble or crash.
Test. Validate. Release. Repeat.
Rolling out new features for every app user at the same time can be a recipe for disaster. Instead, roll out more frequently and with fewer risks, validating your performance and impact on the customer experience before launching.
Stop launching and start rolling out
Avoid failed launches by adopting modern product development techniques like feature flagging, gradual rollouts, and product experimentation. Futureproof apps have faster and more resilient development cycles, which result in better customer experiences.
Experiment, learn and deliver value for users.
Learning from real-world results is the most reliable way to understand how your products impact user behavior. This knowledge is the key to making product investments that keep your app relevant and reliable.
Feature flagging, testing and constant iteration help your team prioritize the projects that deliver measurable outcomes.
Build and release with confidence
Enter feature flags. Also known as switches or toggles, they allow you to turn functionality on and off without deploying new code. This increases control, allowing you to release more frequently and test and learn without impacting the user experience. Set the flag to “on” to execute the new code. Set the flag to “off” and the code is suppressed.
Remotely configuring functionality allows you to say goodbye to messy rollbacks and hotfixes. If you detect errors, performance spikes, or user backlash, you can immediately roll back the changes without going through the app stores to redeploy code.
With feature flagging, you can:
- Learn how to create a strong foundation and deploy changes faster and more safely than ever.
- Make data-driven decisions that resonate with users by conducting controlled experiments.
- Test features, UI/UX changes, or content variations. Then use it to tailor in-app interactions with users.
Two examples of testing at depth getting magnified results for digital businesses
Quip used Feature flags to gate certain features on their mobile app to safeguard against any potential buggy releases. When releasing application updates on mobile, the turnaround can be slower than web or desktop releases as app updates have to be reviewed by the respective application stores.
Therefore, the team utilizes feature flags to mark beta features so that, in the event of a feature release not going as planned, they can quickly toggle it on or off, providing both more flexibility and peace of mind.
quip
Real-time app updates
Reliance on app stores for distribution and product updates can add complexity to shipping a new feature. Arduous app store review processes and internal debates slow you down.
Feature flags allow you to roll back in production without a deployment or app store update. You can also release new functionality gradually, without requiring users to update their app version continually.
Feature variables allow you to configure all kinds of product levers to modify, test, and measure app functionality without additional deployments or app store releases.
So, spend more time iterating and improving the user experience, instead of preparing and waiting for the next app release every time you want to make a change.
Test in production more safely
Testing in production mitigates the quality assurance (QA) inadequacies of relying entirely on “lab testing” or testing in a simulated environment, and “dogfooding” where employees use their products as a test before releasing them to the public.
Internal testers are prone to bias because they are overly familiar with the features. Testing in controlled environments often requires data and simulated conditions for devices and network speeds. It is virtually impossible to account for every real-world scenario and type of user.
Feature management makes it possible to test in production. This results in a more streamlined way to catch production bugs and, at the same time, create a resilient mobile app experience. Feature flags allow mobile teams to continuously test, deliver, and deploy software all without the risk of rolling out bugs to the entire user base and dedicating emergency release cycles to hotfixes.
To effectively test new functionality in production, make the new features available only to your internal testers using the live app store version of your app.
Depending on how the internal testing goes, you can then include a segment of real users before starting to increase the availability of the feature across your wider audience.
In summary, use feature flags to:
- Accelerate development by integrating work in progress behind a flag
- Remove blockers to app store releases
- Ensure positive results by gradually rolling out new functionality
- Rollback when there are issues in production without an app store release
- Decouple code deployments from market releases
- Enable product experimentation (A/B/n testing)
UX optimization for onboarding
Want an onboarding experience that drives engagement and numbers, no matter who you are?
Start thinking about First-Time User Experience (FTUE).
When first-time users download your app, the experience needs to make a positive and lasting impression from the moment they open it. If not, the user is likely to delete your app and try an alternative.
Users expect your onboarding process to be clear, secure, and straightforward. Evidence shows that most users expect to take no longer than 60 seconds to start using a new app, while the more information they have to supply, the more frustrated they become.
The ideal onboarding process quickly shows value, educates users, and hooks them from the outset. It often includes a login, permission dialogs, and guided tour, or a tutorial.
You can hook users with an unforgettable first impression.
See the 6 best practices for effective onboarding:
Speed
First-time app users don't want information overload. With UI testing, ensure users need fewer steps to start using the app.
Interaction
Nobody likes too many notifications. Focus on having a helpful interface. Prompts, call-to-action (cta), push notifications, end-to-end animations, etc., can help keep things brief.
Logins
Use behavioral data to build hypotheses for testing to optimize the login UX and decide when is the best time to log in.
Transparency
Always be clear and honest with your users about how you intend to use their data. Be committed to privacy and information security.
Focus
Once a user engages with your app, show more advanced features and functionalities in phases.
Data
Understand and empathize with your users through quantitative methods like a/b testing, and qualitative research such as usability testing.
Through a constant process of testing, learning, and iterating, you can make sure you make the right first impression and keep your app relevant.
Still need convincing? Here’s your own usability testing exercise
Use this exercise to take a step back and look at your app from the perspective of a new user.
Start by asking each user to download your app from the App Store or Google Play and launch it. Then pay close attention as they go through the first-time user experience. Focus on a series of questions to understand their experience.
- How did you feel about the app onboarding experience?
- Did you really need to log in or create an account?
- Did the process take longer, shorter, or about the same amount of time you would have expected?
- How did you feel when you finished your first app session?
- Did you find the process helpful?
- Did you encounter any issues or confusion along the way?
- What parts worked best?
- What didn’t work so well?
- What would you change?
- Would you use this app again?
Strategies to fuel user engagement
Poor UX design, unintuitive interface, poor performance, and instability represent the most common reasons for users losing interest in or uninstalling an app.
Experimentation helps you to avoid those issues, keep people interested, and keep them coming back.
The three steps to optimizing your app for maximum engagement
Step 1
Optimize UX and UI design
Mobile users frequently find themselves in busy, distracting, or time sensitive situations. They’re on the move, in a hurry, and need to complete tasks as quickly and effortlessly as possible.
Incorporate iterative UX and UI concepts into your design practices, and check if your app functionality works smoothly.
- Test the flows and interactions in your app. Make sure key transitions work seamlessly.
- Visual design is subjective. Data is not. Before you commit to a large-scale rollout, test and fully understand the impact of changes.
- Experiment with everything. A/B/n testing your assumptions produces quantitative results that can impact subscription upgrades, ratings, and referrals.
Step 2
Innovate to solve customer problems
Building new features into your app may seem shiny. But if they aren’t relevant to user needs, they can do more harm than good. Always think in the context of driving value for users— and only after first testing your assumptions about what users want.
Below are some tips for measuring how new features can impact your goals before making heavy investments in development.
- Try a painted-door test. It uses an outline or a new feature suggestion to gauge interest before implementing it.
- Learn from what works on other channels. For example, if a new feature succeeded on over-the-top (OTT), can those learnings be applied to your mobile app?
- Prioritize what your users need over what they think by analyzing quantitative data alongside qualitative research such as usability testing and surveys.
Step 3
Prioritize performance and stability
Retention and engagement plummet when apps are slow, buggy, and regularly freeze or crash. Experimentation can help find ways to improve performance, and then validate the right approach by scientifically quantifying its impact.
Mobile app notifications can enhance the user experience. Push and in-app notifications can contain useful information or highlight valuable features, increasing engagement, conversion, and retention. Yet the opposite is true when users feel bombarded by irrelevant messaging. Use experimentation to shape a notification strategy that gets the balance right.
The basic formula for evaluating the effectiveness of a push notification :
- How much value do users gain from the content?
- Are users actually receiving the message?
- Was the notification timely?
- How did users engage with the message?
- What did users do after receiving the notification?
Each area offers an opportunity to test, learn, and optimize the notification experience. Use the above mobile app development tips to improve performance.
Start future-proofing your mobile app
The apps that deliver the best user experiences are the apps that win. Better quality. Better performance. Safer releases. Impact the metrics that matter and keep people engaged with your app, both now and in the long term.
Feature flagging and an experimentation are both proven methods of delivering better mobile experiences. With Optimizely, you can ship faster and more safely.
Want to try to feature flagging? See how it works for your mobile app with a free account.