The unintended consequences of upgrading the company App.

The unintended consequences of upgrading the company App.

You can imagine the scene. The Marketing Department are in a meeting with the ever enthusiastic App agency team and they are all discussing new functionality for the company's App.

And it all makes sense! More data collection opportunities, more promotional capabilities and and and....

That same week the programming is done and the new version goes on the App Store.

Then, oops, existing App users login and see a message similar to the one above (this is a real life current example). They go back to the App Store to fetch and install the new version and find, oops again, that their phone isn't muscle-clad enough to use the new version.

So, our loyal user has the choice of upgrading his or her phone to use your App or kiss you - and your brand - goodnight and goodbye.

A bit of desk research has shown me that some of Europe's biggest brands are falling into this rather obvious trap. [Competitor] brands that are aware of this are, by default, having traffic driven towards them. Hats off to the budget supermarkets who are running quite sophisticated Apps that run on what are now considered elderly phones.

Simplicity will usually win over complexity! 

#marketing #team #data #brand #research #programming #complexity #opportunitiesaregrowing #app #loyaltyprogram #consequences #loyaltymarketing