Achieving app virality is akin to unlocking the high score achievement on your favourite game – elevating you to stardom status and your level to legendary on iTunes and Google Play. Viral apps are all about interaction – making it easy for people to eagerly share it across multiple social networks and through word of mouth. A viral app is the best case scenario for any app developer because enthusiastic (and unpaid) public endorsement is worth its weight in advertising. We can’t tune out our friends quite as easily as hitting the ‘skip ad’ button on Youtube. But the art of making your app spread takes much more than a few enthusiastic Facebook posts, it requires a social interaction strategy right from the outset of creating your app.
So, what is viral?
Viral success is about interaction with people, a conversation where everyone is invited to share and participate in. Most importantly, a viral marketing strategy isn’t something that can be left to chance, an afterthought to be executed once you launch, if you value unlocking the high score in sharing on iTunes and Google Play, make sure the components for viralability are built into your app from the start.
Think:
What does your app give users?
Is it valuable enough to warrant sharing?
How can your app reward users for sharing their experience of your app?
Three Viral Principles
You can lose hours digging around on the Internet for principle app viral marketing strategy, but we’ve got our pick – it’s called the viral coefficient.
Flow: It’s surprisingly easy to pick out the best apps, they’re the ones where the design components you’ve slaved over fade into the background and a user becomes completely absorbed in the app. Offering a one-click sign-in option, instead of forcing users to sign up with a (yet another) username and password they need to remember can remove the indecision users might have about using your app. Not only are users quickly signed up, but social networks can give you important data about your user base, who your app is attracting and how it is being used.
Hand back control: Going hand in hand with social network accessibility is control. Virality and privacy have been marked as each other’s bitter rival, so enforce a policy of transparency. It is vital to be up front with your users about how you will use their data and give users control over what is being shared through the social network they’ve used to sign up with. Make like social fitness app Teemo and let users know what will be shared before they log in. Alleviate their fears.
Prioritise being useful: Your app shouldn’t just exist for more likes and invites – always make benefiting users your top priority. Give people a chance to like the app and figure out how if it works for them. Have something the user can do or take away from the experience immediately, without inviting friends.
Words by Emma Nobel
Follow her on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/emmanobel