Top Practices For Long-Term App Maintenance
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In this digital world, we can see the growth in the usage of mobile apps. According to research, the average person has around 40 apps on the phone, from which 89% of the time is split between 18 mobile apps. With the increase in the use of mobile apps, more and more people own an app business. Mobile app development companies are now competing with each other in providing robust apps. But not every organization is aware of the importance of investing in mobile app maintenance services.
Building and launching a mobile app doesn’t mean that the work is over. Maintaining and continuously updating the app is a significant task for the app development teams. Regular maintenance and support can make users more engaged in an app. So here, we will have a detailed look at the practices to be carried out for long-term mobile app maintenance.
Mobile App Maintenance: An Overview
Mobile app maintenance refers to the entire process that is followed to ensure a bug-free and seamless working mobile app. The app maintenance process includes monitoring, fixing, refining, and updating the elements that can provide a user experience.
The progress of an app not only depends on the higher number of app downloads. Instead, a large number of active users specifies the success of a mobile app. According to a survey, around 56% of users uninstall mobile applications within 7 days of the installation period.
Types of Mobile App Maintenance
1. Perfective Maintenance
When the targeted user uses the app, specific new user requirements are discovered. Perfective maintenance is a process that considers those feedback. It also involves some functional modifications in the source code to provide a perfect user experience to the active users.
2. Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance is the intervention that aims at reducing or eliminating the occurrence of errors. It mainly works on reducing the complexity of an app. Besides this, preventive maintenance improves the maintainability and understandability factor.
3. Adaptive Maintenance
Adaptive maintenance is concerned with updating the system to keep it informed with the changing software or hardware environment.
4. Emergency Maintenance
Emergency maintenance takes care of unexpected errors and problems that plague the system. Whenever a company finds itself in an unpredictable but critical situation, they must avail emergency maintenance.
5. Corrective Maintenance
Corrective maintenance involves repairing of residual errors and faults in the daily app functions. These errors are errors in coding, designing, and logic.
App Maintenance: The Best Practices
1. App Support
Technology keeps on evolving. New Android and iOS versions are coming out every year. When it comes to hardware, a massive number of devices are released over time with upgraded specifications.
If the companies don’t maintain the app regularly and ensure that it is compatible with the latest devices and OS, then customers will start losing the interest. This can make users move to another more advanced technology.
Therefore, incorporating the latest hardware and software features into the functionality of the app.
2. Keep Updating the User Interface
By keeping up with the changing trends, usage habits, and styles, the mobile app can see long-term success. This means that the User Interface needs to updated regularly.
If the UI of your app is mature, it will make users spend more time on the app. Besides this, if you want your app to be trendy and relevant, you must match the UI with evolving designs and styles.
3. Add New Features
Monitoring an app in the long term and finding out how users are interacting with it is a good idea. This can help you get insights into the features that the users are using the most. The app owner must also find out which features of the app that the users find unnecessary.
The owners can keep the users interested in the app by adding new feature updates to the app based on the user’s feedback. Another thing that the app owner or app development company must check on is the app review. As most of the users tend to leave suggestions for new features and improvements. These reviews can be used to add better updates to the app.
4. Performance Monitoring
Monitoring and taking a follow-up of an app is essential. The development team must keep an eye on the lags, responsiveness issues, and loading time of the app. While monitoring the technical performance of an app, you can also be updated with the app analytics reports.
By analyzing the pattern of customer usage and monitoring the metrics can help you improve your app. This can minimize the loss of the users and keep the app in the best condition.
5. Bug Fixing
Not fixing bugs of an app on time can drive users away. The accumulated bugs can also lead to the app crashing and failing for good. This can increase your expenses if not solved for a long time.
Therefore, the mobile app developers team must keep an eye on the bugs and technical issues.
6. Check Licenses
The majority of mobile applications are built using licensed technology. The most important thing while doing so is to check whether the licenses or the certification of the technology is renewed or not. This point of maintenance is predictable if you have researched the technology during the app development process.
7. Scheduled System Maintenance
Scheduling system maintenance regularly is an excellent way to avoid missing out on bugs or errors. This can ensure that your app is working correctly and up-to-date. Scheduled maintenance can help in avoiding unexpected system down.
Benefits of App Maintenance
- Better User Experience
- Maintains Brand Image
- Minimizes Uninstalls
- Keeps Up the Competition
- Financial Benefits
Conclusion
Mobile App Maintenance is as important as its development. App maintenance is all about keeping your app up-to-date and bug-free. Many different practices can help app development companies in the app maintenance process for the long term. App maintenance is a way to ensure that you get returns on the investment that is made in the app development process.
