When you acquire a new house, you do not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and then forget about it. You also need to invest in upgrading it & maintaining it to ensure it lasts for a long time.
The same holds true for your mobile app. As soon as it goes live, the responsibility of your mobile application developer moves from app development to maintenance.
Investing in a good mobile application maintenance package saves your app from getting obsolete.
No matter how much initial thought is poured into the initial mobile app development, it can never cater to all the internal and external factors that may affect your app in future.
And if your mobile app does not keep up with changing times, it will crash and burn, eventually getting kicked out of the scene.
Here are 8 essential services that you should look for when picking a mobile application maintenance package.
#1 Keeping Up With Hardware Changes
As new mobile devices keep cropping up, your app will need to deal with different screen sizes & features than what it was originally designed for. For instance, introduction of fingerprint and face recognition.
Make sure the maintenance proposal includes provisions for keeping your app up-to-date with these hardware changes.
#2 Improving User Interface
Your mobile app developer may have put in a lot of work towards making the app’s UI attractive and functional. However, you need to ensure it does not get outdated to keep the users hooked to it.
In other words, you need to cope up with your users’ expectations and keep improving the UI of your mobile application.
Your maintenance package must include a systematic maintenance plan for the UI, so you do not fall behind times in nurturing the best user interface.
#3 OS Compatibility
Whenever a new version of iOS or Android comes out, your existing app runs the risk of not continuing to work as expected. This gap may lead to annoyed users abandoning your app completely.
Your maintenance plan must include proactive audits on beta versions of these updates to avoid last minute problems. This facilitates timely intervention by your app developers to make the required changes in advance.
#4 Software Update
Mobile app developers, in a common practice, prefer making use of pre-coded software libraries to eliminate a lot of redundant coding work.
This also means that your app software needs to be kept up-to-date with any changes in the associated libraries.
Your maintenance package must include support for this to ensure continued optimality.
#5 Downtime Management
Even the globally renowned mobile applications have been victims of downtimes that have severely hit their bottom line.
Timely and regular app maintenance helps in detection of such downtimes before it gets too late.
Therefore, your mobile app maintenance plan must include scheduled maintenance, so you are ensured of prompt and effective solutions to restore normal functioning during such situations.
#6 Ensuring Security
Even if you have adopted the best encryptions and security protocols during your mobile app development, dedicated hackers and cybercriminals can find security loopholes in your app that they can exploit.
Regular app maintenance helps ensure security.
An ideal mobile application maintenance package will include services to ensure that the latest security protocols and measures to protect the app are in place and the users are protected from the threats of nasty cyber crimes.
#7 Monitoring Performance
Your app maintenance package must have services to follow up on how your app is performing, while keeping an eye on responsiveness, loading times and other lags.
Apart from monitoring the technical performance of your app, the maintenance services should also stay tuned to your analytics reports. You must analyze customer usage patterns, track user engagement and conversion rates, and know your retention/churn rates.
Ensure that your app maintenance package includes provisions to monitor these metrics to help you minimize loss of users, improve your app, and keep the app in its best condition.
#8 Bugs Fixing
If your app is not checked regularly and bugs not fixed in a timely manner, you will end up losing users.
As a matter of fact, amassed bugs can also lead to your app crashing or completely failing. They can also increase your app development costs if left untreated for a long time.
Go with a mobile app maintenance package that promises to fix bugs & errors within few hours. Include SLAs to enforce timeliness of response.