Appsee – Zahi Boussiba
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About the Episode
What’s the number 1 mistake that app publishers make with user experience? Well today’s guest answers that very question and provides insights on common user experience mistakes. Also, listen to why he transitioned out of building apps and into building a platform for app developers and how you can get started if you wanted to do the same thing.
Zahi Boussiba is the Co-Founder and CEO of Appsee.
Show Notes
App publishers’ top mistake with user experience
The first step in fixing a problem is always the awareness that such problem exists. Companies nowadays lack the visibility of the problems they need to address in their products and processes. Whether it is a technical, usability, or a performance issue, it can be fixed but most important first step is gaining that visibility.
Common user experience issues to watch out
In their experience, Zahi shares that some of the functionalities that users commonly have issues on are:
- Swiping– as detected through heat maps, most users swipe left to get to the next screen. Your apps may not be programmed to respond to these swipes which may be the reason why they cannot get to the next step.
- Entering coupon codes – there may be bugs in the component servers which prevents your users to enter them.
- Log in functionalities – logging in to Facebook cannot be completed due to issues with specific IOS versions and can be the bottleneck that users cannot move forward.
- Complete user instructions – ensure that you place complete and specific instructions to avoid confusion. For example, if you are asking the user to go to Settings to share their location, you need to explicitly place that they have to go to the Settings for their phone, as they may misunderstand and go to the Settings of the game/app instead.
The transition from building apps to building a platform for app developers
Their team had started out developing their own apps but had transitioned over to building platform after noticing that a lot of app developers were having the same challenges as they had. For Zahi, building a service that helps app developers is 10x easier than building a successful app so he is happy that they took this road. So many apps, so many good ideas, so many companies but the average user only uses 25 apps in total so it’s a very brutal market.
How to build a platform for app developers
Zahi’s team started by publishing public data for their product but their first launch was not a successful because they needed more preparation. They didn’t have pricing plans, their product wasn’t good enough yetand they went with the MVP approach, which didn’t work so much for them as they lost a lot of potential customers. After they released the beta though, they came prepared this time around armed with the things they learned from the initial launch. They released something that people are interested in and they were ready – pricing and product-wise.
Tips for indie app developers
Zahi shares that if you are developing an app or game, spend a lot of time in testing the app before release. Provide super easy onboarding experience and ensure you provide the right guidance during first time use. If you have an app that provides value, make sure your users will be engaged from the moment they open the app.
What is the #1 thing you’d like the listener to walk away with from this interview?
Take the lesson we learned from our first failure. We could’ve continued doing the app for six more months just to understand that we could’ve cut our losses after three. It’s very hard to put down your hardwork and say ‘this isn’t going anywhere,we have to cut our losses, lets forward to the next thing’ but you should see things realistically.
Show Mentions
– Fav app: Pool Mania: (Google Play)