6 Essential Features of Mobile Apps to Make Yours Stand Out

Beautiful and functional with a distinctive colour palette and a simple, friendly app icon – what’s not to love?

Thinking of building a mobile app or integrating one as part of your business? Here’s a quick run-through of six key pointers to attract users to download and keep the app on their phone screens!

1. Quality App Icon

The tiny app icon is your first touchpoint with users, whether seen on a piece of marketing collateral or when it pops up on the list of results with a relevant keyword search. This icon is a pictorial representation of your brand, so be sure that it communicates what your brand is about at a quick glance. Play around with colours, shapes and symbols that invite instant recognition and communicate the essence of your brand. If yours is based on an established brand, you would want to make the association as strong as possible through the app icon, to leverage on your existing market recognition.

2. Simplicity

A tech-savvy bunch, practicality and convenience weigh high on Singaporeans’ list of priorities when it comes to mobile app usage. Think clear, uncluttered screens and easy, fluid navigation – a user interface that is easy on the eyes and a joy to use.

Cue a simple, seamless and well-thought-out mobile app experience, one where each screen transitions to the next intuitively, and visual text is minimised. If your app requires account creation, make sure the user is not overloaded at any of the starting steps, even before logging in for the first time! Whichever industry or purpose the app is meant for, it would most often than not benefit from an uncluttered and clean mobile app interface, with an efficient layout and effortless navigation.

3. Speed

Speed is another key criterion of an appealing mobile app. Imagine being stuck in a seemingly never-ending queue at the supermarket, and how you were close to going to a similar shop nearby. This is the same frustration users go through when they find content load speeds on an app unbearable! Avoid perennially loading symbols, slow response times or excessive intrusive pop-ups, as any of these may drive users away before they are able to discover the great value proposition your app has to offer!

While you want to gratify users with easily accessible navigation, we recommend not overloading your app with too many features which might affect its speed, or confuse your user about the main value proposition.

4. Good image resolution

As visual creatures, images help to enhance our in-app experience, communicate content and deliver value. Adding inspiring graphics or even stylish animated transitions (i.e. GIF), say, at the welcome screen or slider gallery will help to capture attention much more effortlessly than a ton of words. Find the optimal balance between speed versus functionality and image resolution – to create a worthwhile experience that will keep users coming back.

5. Consistency

The most common mobile operating platforms are iOS and Android, so ideally you would want your mobile app to be available on both of these platforms to reach a sizeable local audience. While coding for both versions are generally similar, minor tweaks to the flow can be made to optimise the app for both interfaces. Don’t forget to test your app across various screen sizes and resolutions so your users can enjoy a consistently great experience!

6. Bright & distinctive colour scheme

Finally, an eye-catchy and modern colour scheme is integral to enticing users to download and utilise your app. From buttons, fonts to colours and navigation, tap on brand colours to give your app a distinctive look and feel reflective of your brand personality, and use complementary hues to produce an aesthetically pleasing, elegant and effective app.

Make Your App Idea Soar (We’ll Do the Legwork!)

Looking to take your mobile app idea and make it profitable? However rudimentary your app idea is, we can help you take it further with the right marketing plan and development. Let our professionals at 2EZ Asia team kickstart the legwork with relevant market research — creating basic wireframe sketches — delving into the user flow — prototyping, user testing and refining — and finally, bringing it to market!