With the rapid development of mobile phone hardware and the growing transition towards a digital world, mobile applications (apps) provide an adaptable and cost-effective solution to many real-world problems. However, with the influx of apps published by developers worldwide, ensuring a product’s success and long-term sustainability is becoming increasingly difficult. To remain competitive in this market, adding new and meaningful features to existing digital offerings and tweaking established features has proven to be an effective method of meeting emerging consumer needs and ensuring long-term success¹.
Meaningful updates to an app (as opposed to frequent updates with no observable changes) are especially beneficial for utilitarian products such as health management tools as they can result in increased consumer interest, directly influenced by the consumer thought patterns and risk perceptions². Apps with at least one meaningful update published on the App Store have been found to be almost three times more likely to increase their survival rate on the App Store Top Charts than apps without a meaningful update³.
Meaningful updates can further be categorised into two key domains, including exploitative and explorative. Explorative app updates refer to discovery-led updates often revealed through extensive user testing, that allow an existing app to enter new category domains. These updates can include adding new tools to an app’s existing toolset or appealing to different consumer needs with a new feature set. While these updates can require greater investment in the short term, they have been found to have a meaningful long-term impact on market performance⁴.
In addition, exploitative updates refer to refinements to an existing app to improve the overall user experience without adding substantial new features. Exploitative updates such as a design refresh have been found to have an immediate and continuously meaningful positive impact on app performance, including increased downloads and user return rate.
A design refresh of the Real-Care app developed by Utility Creative resulted in a 30% increase in engagement rate and 117% increase in average engagement time, directly speaking to the cost- and time-effective benefits of exploitative updates as they seek to renew not rebuild, in turn improving the end-user’s experience. Further, a combination of the two meaningful types of updates can prove doubly invaluable in meeting short-term targets and long-term goals, as exhibited by the equipt App developed for the Canadian Police Association, which saw a 140% increase in average engagement time following an joint explorative-exploitative update by Utility Creative.
In an increasingly competitive app market, meaningful updates, whether exploitative, explorative, or a combination of both are essential for maintaining user engagement and long-term success. By strategically refining existing features and introducing innovative enhancements, organisations can effectively adapt to evolving consumer needs while ensuring long-term market performance.