Should You Make a Disposable App?
The topic of disposable apps got some stage time at IBM’s 2013 Impact conference. Judy Asher, manager for research and technology at Ford Motor Company, discussed the phenomenon as part of a talk on the changing nature of mobile. But are disposable apps a good thing?
Dr. Dobb’s defines disposable apps as those “intended to exist only as temporary pieces of software devoted to (for example) a four-day IT show such as IBM Impact, a new car launch, or some other short term special event.”
Companies specialize in quickly making mobile apps and crowdsourced testing can fit comprehensive testing into a limited schedule. But creating a worthwhile app still takes time. Organizations need to ask themselves if it’s worth the effort. ReadWriteWeb points out that the ROI for disposable apps is often nonexistent.
Today, many businesses create apps for a variety of occasions, including one-time events like conferences and product announcements. But for most businesses, building these apps is a process that can take several months. At Demo Mobile 2013, Raw Engineering CEO Neha Sampat showcased an app her team built in a week.
… said Sampat. “If it takes you three to four months to build an app you’re only going to use for a month leading up to an event or a conference or an announcement, there’s no [return on investment] there.”
It might still be worth it from a brand perspective. People are interacting with the brand in a way they’re comfortable with and that allows the brand to capture data. But first, the app has to make it into the app stores (in time for the event) and be found by users. If the app gets buried, or a company doesn’t spend time and resources promoting the app, no one will ever know about it.
It’s also questionable from a consumer perspective. What happens after the app “expires?” It’s this “then what?” phase that Carin van Vuuren, CMO of Usablenet, an app and mobile website developer, doesn’t like. DigiDay reported Carin's comments:
If you’re creating an app for every single campaign, then you’re not fully leveraging browser-based devices. ...The companies that do this are likely not investing into a multichannel infrastructure and are using apps as a placeholder for that. It’s like app spam. It drives me crazy when I go to an event and they’re asking me to download the app. I’m not going to use this when I leave here, so why would I download it? So it clutters my phone? Send me to a URL. With HTML5, app-like experiences are very possible on the mobile Web.
Really, it’s not hard to uninstall an app. If the app is free, the benefits can outweigh this minor inconvenience.
Ultimately, it comes down to whether or not brands feel disposable mobile apps are worth the effort and expense.
