• The on-demand economy will be $57 billion market by 2018.
• 42% of America’s adult population has used on-demand services.
• The success of Uber and Airbnb has created ripples in the on-demand funding landscape.
• The on-demand companies serve just 7% of the market.
It makes clear that the future of the on-demand economy is bright and there is a lot of room for the new startups to exploit. But, the million dollar success of the established on-demand service providers has given birth to the slew of startups in the market. Consequently, there are more chances to get lost in the crowd.
That’s where quality services, customer satisfaction, app’s efficiency and intuitiveness, and performance become the key aspects to draw the customer’s attention and retain their interest in the services offered by the on-demand app. Most often, the on-demand app developers focus highly on the productivity and revenue generation, and the least on the other aspects.
As a result, the issue of poor app performance emerges which negatively affect the company’s reputation, frustrate the existing users, retention becomes zero, and spread the bad word-of-mouth. The on-demand app optimization is necessary to let the app serve the purpose and accomplish the business goals in the fierce competition.
The businesses that have mastered the art of On-Demand App Optimization are performing to the notch and staying at the surface in the sea of apps.
Let’s see how you can join the league by standing ahead in the optimization game:
• Optimize the communication
Technically, the impeccable performance of all the app features won’t guarantee that the users will use the app again and again. In the stiff competition, the users need to be engaged to not lose them to the nearest competitor. They can be kept hooked to the app with constant communication as it reminds the users about the app installed and the services it offers.
The emails or push notifications at regular intervals help the company in tracking the changing user’s demands, understanding their preferences, analyzing the changing buying patterns and adapting to their changing needs. In this manner, the seamless communication builds the brand credibility and customers’ trust, which uplift the brand engagement and in turn, the app performance.
Also Read: How to Foster User Engagement with Mobile App Users Segmentation?
• Optimize the efficiency
Perhaps, the aesthetic design, exclusive features, and fantastic user interface engineered during app development have helped the app conquering the thousands of the users and offering the best experiences, but it’s not necessarily the case all the time. The user’s expectations are changing with the passing time, technology, and trends, and upgrading the app is essential to keep the users glued to the app.
Here, the app redesigning, bug fixing and new feature addition are some of the common ways to not allow the app lose its appeal and fad away its magic over the users. The user interface should remain user-friendly, features must be easy-to-understand, enhanced service quality, and the user complaints resolved with appropriate improvement. When the app performs at its best all the time, the success is always on their way.
For instance, the Ola that came to the market after the Uber hit has faced the intense competition from the Uber, but the continuous improvements and marketing strategy optimization has enabled the company to manage its market share. Post-development, when closely monitoring the work and immediately fixing the glitches becomes a routine task, the app’s performance will never go southwards even for a single day.
• Optimize the value chain
The value chain comprises of all the activities from product creation to the distribution and post-sales services that add value to the product. The interlinked activities make the product or service valuable in the market, in turn, adds to the bottom line and help in seizing a competitive edge.
The roots of the on-demand economy lie in the convenience and speed, which hints at the going extra mile to optimize the value chain is a must. The order delivery must be accomplished at the same speed at which the orders and payment are accepted from the customers. By reducing the waiting time and improving the transparency with notifications, the customers can rest assured with the service offered.
Provide a full cycle of treatment to the value chain to Uberize the app and raise a toast to success that Uber and its clones have enjoyed.
• Optimize the marketing strategies
The rigid nature and firm practices have thrown out the plethora of apps from the market. The secret weapon of the on-demand economy is flexibility, simplicity, and ready-to-embrace changes. The one-click app like Uber has done it right. The simplicity in the UI and intuitiveness in the UX has helped the company earn billions. The same is incorporated in the marketing strategy to better cope up with the competition.
For instance, understanding the customers’ need of cab sharing, the company has thrown its hat in the shared rides ring where the passengers can travel the same distance at less fare and the company will remain in the profitable state by dropping the more passengers wanting to go through the same route. Plus, keeping variations in the cab booking rates based on the time and date of the year, the company can make the passengers happy and keep itself in an advantageous mode.
Altering the marketing message and strategy are important to allure the customers and keep the things convenient for them in order to not allow them to find your substitute.
Also Read: How Food Delivery Apps Make Money?
• Optimize the server loading
With one server, the data processing time gets increased by a great length, which increases the response time. The delayed response less often brings the users back.
Consider an example of Uber, where during the peak times like- evening or morning, the large number of requests are placed by the users for the cab booking. In the event, if just one server was employed, then the response time will get slower while the server is also prone to crashing, which all results in a bad customer experience. This is why using the numerous small servers with a load balancer or a cloud hosting server is an ideal solution.
With various small servers using the load balancer, the load gets evenly distributed on separate servers and the request can be responded in a fraction of a second. Also, the static file caching increases the response rate. Thereby the app performance improved by a large amount.
• Optimize the WAN delivery
There is a wide difference between the customers of a decade before and the present times. Previously, the delay in the ordered products by a day or two was acceptable, but nowadays, the customers burst into fumes if there is a delay of a couple of minutes. According to the environment and the customer’s requirements, the wide area network (WAN) delivery model works best in the past, but traditional WAN doesn’t work in the present times.
The evolved need for on-demand apps requires the customers’ demands to be met off the bat as the customers just hate waiting. Reinventing the traditional WAN delivery model with cloud WAN is significant as it enables the most precise and fast goods or services supply at multiple locations, no matter how many requests the app has to fulfill. With WAN optimization, the businesses are not just focused on traffic between data centers and traffic from data centers to the branch, while they are refocusing on the customer experience, that uplifts the app performance.
• Optimize the data transfer
The petabytes of data transfer definitely take more time and it’s a bit difficult as well. With data compression, the volumes of data can be compressed into a few bytes, and transferring the data becomes painless. Additionally, the data storage requires less space on the disk which results in high performance. Different types of the data compressors can be used to compress the mpeg4, JPEG, png and mp3 images or text content in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript form.
Taking a step forward, the SSL and TLS protocols are used to transfer the data securely and privately between the two networks. But, adding a layer of security may impact the app performance, so SSL and TLS optimization are vital that can be achieved through session caching, OpenSSL, IDS and session tickets.
Read About: What Are the Benefits of ON-Demand Grocery App Development?
Wrap up
The on-demand app is the most talked about ‘business technology’ of the decade that’s going into the mainstream because the new generation wants the goods and services in cheap, convenient and transparent manner. When it’s not offered, soon the businesses find itself on the outskirts. Of course, all the startups springing up like mushroom after the Uber success won’t enjoy the great feat. Don’t fret! Your startups can be turned from little-to-no-value into a billion dollar business when the surge in the customers’ urge for immediate gratification is meet with on-demand app optimization in every way. It’s inevitable.
Upgrading the app performance with optimized communication, efficiency, value chain, marketing strategy, WAN delivery, server loading, and data transfer guarantees the customer satisfaction in addition to a big leftover money, resources, and efforts to spend. Let’s capture a slice of pie before the on-demand economy reached a saturation point!