Q&A talks with ShoutEm CEO Viktor Marohnic about mobile apps for business.
Q: Your company, ShoutEm, has as one of its goals to make mobile apps affordable for everyone. How do you define affordable? What type of investment is a small business looking at for a mobile app?
A: Our goal is to match the costs of running a web site. Running mobile apps should be in the same range. ShoutEm subscriptions start at $29 per month. If you compare that with $10K to $50K for a custom developed app, that is clearly a big savings. One more thing I would like to mention is that ShoutEm as a company was build on principles of using our engineering skills and create technology which allows small business and people running on limited budget to launch mobile applications that can be compared with most advanced social apps like Facebook or Twitter at the moment.
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Q: How does a company decide what platform to build their mobile app on? Is the iPhone the undisputed leader? Or does a company need to build mobile apps across many platforms?
A: We choose the platforms based on the success with end users. During our last couple of years of experience in mobile apps development, we learned that users engage the most on iPhone and Android phones. If end users are happy, our customers will be happy as well. Apart from iPhone and Android, we are very excited about the iPad and Windows Phone 7 platforms where our next development will most probably happen.
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Q: Are mobile apps just tools for customer building or can they be effective tools for internal use? Should companies develop apps for communicating with their employees?
A: Primary goal of our apps is to take brands mobile and bring them closer to their fans. Some businesses, however, are successfully using our platform for their internal use. Internal usage of our apps happens most frequently with small companies who have dislocated teams or number of people on road. They use this tool to create sort of a virtual workplace and exchange daily information. It is more casual sort of communication, fun, photos, and usually brings people closer to each other even though they are not working in the same office. Think of it as virtual water cooler or coffee room. Sometimes the best ideas come out places like that.
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Q: What are some of potential problems with mobile apps? Obviously you’re in the business of promoting mobile apps, but are there downsides for companies? Can they be wrong for some businesses?
A: Bad apps can damage your business reputation in the same way as an ugly website. That is why we constantly improve our apps based on the feedback from our clients and they have less risk in publishing bad application to iTunes or Android marketplace with us. There is a pretty good chance that a company that is not experienced in mobile app development will overpay for a badly developed app and updates and fixes will even more increase the costs over the time. Again, if you think of it in parallel it is similar to what happened with the first versions of business websites 10 years ago and how sometimes they did not really serve the purpose.
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Q: One of your more successful apps is the Napa Valley Wine Tasting finder. Was that produced by an umbrella group for the wineries or did the businesses come together? Can competitors come together for mutual benefit on a mobile app?
A: This is a local tourist guide that is collecting info about Wine Tasting events and delivering it to Napa Valley visitors in most convenient way though a mobile app. I would say that local tourist guides are already doing the job of promoting local businesses; we just make it easier for them. I’m just back from the business trip in Bay Area where I’ve met the Wine Tasting app publisher. Their goal is to build apps for wineries and promote them all trough they central app. Wineries would, in that case, have apps more oriented to their wines production and business information about their winery.
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Q: What is the best way to promote a mobile app once a company makes the plunge? How do you let current and prospective customers know the app is out there?
A: The best way is a word of mouth. Put in some great content and people will talk about it. To push an app from start, an email campaign definitely works the best. On top of that, banners and download links on the website are mandatory. There is also an option of QR codes that take users to iTunes or Android Marketplace to download page. On top of that, our apps are deeply integrated with all major social networks. We support Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. For end users, it is really easy to share the content and apps to their online social networks profiles.
