How to delight your app customers?

The app market is highly competitive and is quickly becoming a winner takes all space (or nearly). In fact, according to ComScore, 78% of smartphone users spend their time in their top three apps, and 96% of their time in their top ten(1). This leaves very little room for app providers that fall below that rank.  

From a user experience perspective, as the market continues to evolve, customers have increasingly high expectations and see fast loading times, ease of use and data security as some of the key drivers for app adoption (2). On this basis, companies not only need to provide a high quality product, but also need to provide an engaging experience that constantly surprises and delights customers. This is clearly a daunting challenge, but one way this can be tackled is by focusing on a combination of “micro moments” that cumulatively provide an outstanding service.

Product Recommendations is one area we have been exploring with THE ICONIC iOS app for “surprising” our customers. Unlike the traditional “you may also like” recommendations seen at various retailers, we’ve built a custom recommendation engine that focuses on providing personalised recommendations rather than a "cross-selling" tool. The idea is to surprise our customers with great products that might be (or perhaps not) just right for them. In fact, we believe its important to be wrong sometimes, as it provides unbiased recommendations. Current results have been extremely positive and is proving to be an area worth investing.

For those interested in the recommendation space, here’s an interesting summary of research findings from Wharton University.