What are effective mobile app update policies and procedures for your organization?

1 Define your update goals and frequency

Before you update your app, you should have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how often you want to do it. Your update goals should align with your app's value proposition, user feedback, and market trends. Your update frequency should balance the need for innovation and stability, and consider the impact on your app's performance, size, and compatibility. A common practice is to use a release cycle that consists of major, minor, and patch updates, each with different purposes and intervals.

2 Communicate your update plans and changes

Updating your app can affect your users in various ways, such as requiring them to download new versions, accept new permissions, or adapt to new interfaces. Therefore, you should communicate your update plans and changes to your users in advance, and provide them with clear and concise information about what's new, what's fixed, and what's improved. You can use different channels to communicate your updates, such as app store descriptions, push notifications, in-app messages, emails, blogs, or social media.

3 Test your update thoroughly and incrementally

Updating your app can also introduce new bugs, errors, or compatibility issues that can harm your app's functionality and reputation. Therefore, you should test your update thoroughly and incrementally before you release it to the public. You should use different methods and tools to test your update, such as unit testing, integration testing, beta testing, and A/B testing. You should also use different devices, platforms, and scenarios to test your update, and collect feedback from your testers and users.

4 Monitor your update performance and feedback

After you release your update, you should monitor your update performance and feedback to measure its impact and effectiveness. You should use different metrics and indicators to monitor your update, such as downloads, ratings, reviews, crashes, retention, engagement, conversions, and revenue. You should also use different sources and methods to collect feedback from your users, such as surveys, reviews, ratings, comments, emails, or analytics. You should analyze your update performance and feedback, and use them to improve your future updates.

5 Document your update process and results

Updating your app can also be a valuable learning opportunity for your organization, as it can help you identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Therefore, you should document your update process and results, and use them to inform your update policies and procedures. You should document your update goals, plans, changes, tests, performance, feedback, and outcomes, and use them to evaluate your update success and failure. You should also document your update lessons, insights, best practices, and recommendations, and use them to optimize your update strategy and tactics.