BusinessDigital Product Development Challenges

Introduction

Nowadays, each web or mobile product company struggles with some issues and faces digital product development challenges regarding IT development, user traffic, conversion, or other topics related to digital product development. Each company constantly working on improving its results in particular areas in order to achieve a better market presence, generate more revenue, and increase the number of app users or customers. Keeping in mind the current global economy, the situation of high-interest rates, investment slowdown, and inflation the challenges are biggest than ever. Product and IT teams need to work harder and more to keep traction, keep users, and customers, and focus on generating revenue. The consistent and well-defined product development process of the mobile application or web application is crucial here. 

As a person responsible for client management, sales, and marketing in Mobile Reality @ Digital JavaScript Product Agency, I analyzed a lot of cases with prospects or with our previous and current customers.  I witnessed different digital product development stories, failures, and successes I am the person who has access to different product development processes and experiences. As a co-founder of NFT Reality I am facing the product challenges by myself, and I can identify with my business partners and their problems. In this article, I would like to point out four main digital product web mobile development challenges in 2023 that in my opinion most companies offering services through their mobile apps or web app are struggling with.

#1 Increase traffic

Possible reasons for slow users traffic growth in your web app or the mobile app

We managed to complete the product design workshops and concept phase, and we invested in digital product management and product development processes such as mobile development or web development and digital product release. The web application and/or mobile app is the market. We have traffic on our marketing website, but it is too small to think about the break-even point or proper traction and revenue generation. Why the traffic is so small? It can be caused by dozens of factors, for example:

• not SEO-friendly marketing website,

• lack proper keywords in page content, which impacts on the organic search of your product,

• lack of proper amount of quality content, which could boost your website in organic search among your competitors,

• lack of proper marketing activities,

• a poor market presence.

Possible solutions to achieve higher user traffic

SEO topics and issues can be solved in the following ways:

• SEO audit:

  it is good to check SEO quality with some 3rd party tools like SEranking, SEMrush, or free audit tools provided by Google. These tools allow you to scan your website and check all SEO metrics that need to be improved or fixed. The SEO audits are really helpful and are allowing you to improve your page a lot. Generated SEO reports include different aspects like proper headers, lacking page titles, or descriptions, and many more.

• SEO services and external agency or freelancer:

  on the other hand, is always good to consider hiring an SEO specialist or finding an agency that will provide you with SEO services and SEO expertise. Finding the proper ones is always the challenge, but what is not a challenge these days?

Regarding the content of your marketing website:

• Articles and blog posts:

  The easiest way to start writing. If you are not willing to invest in a content marketing specialist, just start writing by yourself. At the beginning, do your research with a keyword planner about what keywords and phrases are trending in your target groups and what topics related to your product may be interesting for your target audience. When the topic is chosen, start writing. When an article is done, make the content assessment with some external tools that may correct some aspects and suggest some changes to boost the SEO of your blog post to be treated well by Google algorithms.

• Content marketing services and external agency or freelancer:

  On the other hand, you can hire a writer who will be creating articles or blog posts on topics that will interest your audience and potential Clients. If not hiring full-time, you can always outsource writing a single article or a couple of them to some freelancer for a marketing agency.

Lack of marketing activities and poor market presence are combined. We can not have a great market presence without marketing activities. By marketing activities, I don't have in mind paid campaigns that cost a lot, but starting from a simple presence on all portals, websites that aggregate the digital products like web applications or mobile applications, that provide a listing, rankings of such digital product based on categories, features, etc. We have plenty of such websites like G2.com or Clutch.co . As result we should achieve one consistent profile of our product on different sites, which could redirect traffic to our website, mobile page, or a site on an app marketplace (iOS App Store, Android Google Play, HUAWEI AppGallery). Later on, we should consider guest posting on different channels, which is connected to content marketing. Then next steps can be really various, but we do not have to spend thousands of dollars on marketing to increase traffic. Organic traffic requires work, and time and it is no easy to boost, but it is achiveable.

#2 Conversion (a visitor to an app user)

Possible reasons for the low conversion rate

The digital product development was completed, the product development strategies are in place, the marketing activities are running, we are achieving proper traffic on our website, and we see a satisfying number of visitors and user sessions on our marketing page, but the conversion rate from visitor to the app user is not good. Probably, you haven't evaluated the user journey through your website, which may cause fast user resignation from your product proposal.

Possible solutions to increase conversion rate

First of all, let's check what users are saying about your web app or mobile application. The reviews and opinions are great pieces of knowledge of what can be improved or changed to increase the satisfaction of your customers. 

Secondly, let's think of data analysis. Start by installing Google Analytics events in your product that will be reporting about activities in your web application or mobile app. This knowledge should give us some awareness about the modules and features that are not used by our customers at all, and in consequence, we are losing them because of their frustration about the product. 

Moreover, let's analyze video recordings that might be provided by such tools as Hotjar. When we see how users behave in real, in different mobile devices and web browsers, we will be able to recognize the points where we are losing them.

As a result, we might come to the point where the app development process will be required to continue on a bigger scale to reorganize the product and implement new features or modules, which should attract our application to potential users, keep them in the app, and convert them to paying users. It might affect app development costs in the long term as well.

#3 Digital Product development pivot

Possible reasons why pivot is necessary

Services that we sell through our mobile app or web platform are not finding a satisfying number of users. Customers ask us to implement our services in a way that we haven't thought of so far. Our analysis, customer reviews, and feedback clearly show us what additional features, modules, and changes need to be implemented to start generating the proper user traction. Usually, the MVP shows us if the pivot or reorganization has to be done. 

Personal expeirence with the NFT Reality digital product development process

A possible way to deal with pivot

To be honest, I can not think of any other proposition than starting the product development process again. I am fully aware that it generates additional app development costs, but I don't see any other alternative. Moreover, I know web application development is not easy and straightforward, and this kind of decision is tough. If it is a mobile application or a web app, the process is the same. Only the development team is different. Extending the app development team with new app developers (mobile developers, web developers, UX/UI designers, and QA testers) to speed up the work might be the solution. Please be aware that proper project management and product ownership are crucial to not burning out money. Everybody needs to know goals and requirements and have to be focused on their tasks. Managing the team is not easy, but without it, chaos will appear. If you are not willing to extend your internal team or invest more money in keeping your IT app development team at the size that you had, you can always hire a software agency like Mobile Reality @ JavaScript Digital Product Agency that can usually start a new project, begin new web app development or mobile app development process in a week or two and thanks to their expertise and experience deliver a new version of the mobile app or web app, or new modules in the most efficient and fast way. Software agencies are flexible and can offer you services adjusted to your needs, a combination of mobile app development services and web development services if necessary. It is good to consider such an option not to invest in an IT team that needs a long-term perspective and plan.

#4 Velocity of IT development

What causes this issue

As a tech specialist, is it familiar with your situation when the business team is making pressure on you and the rest of the tech team to speed up development and deliver a particular set of features ASAP? Yeah, tech guys, mobile developers, and web developers know that situation. It is even better when the business team requested an advanced mobile app or web application, which you estimated for a couple of weeks of work. You don't want to resign from the quality of the development process, you would like to be sure that user experience will be on the proper level.

Possible solutions to speed up the IT development process

Artificial intelligence, this term has recently been supercharged by ChatbotGPT achievements and OpenAI results. In Mobile Reality @ JavaScript Digital Product Agency, we have started discussions about engaging artificial intelligence-related tools in our work to speed up mobile app development and web development processes. According to different opinions and research, AI can generate over 40% of code, compared to the result from last year where the discussion was on the level where AI was able to support developers at 20%. Of course, everything depends on the projects, requirements, and particular tasks a mobile developer or web developer must do. Nevertheless, we cannot miss such an opportunity, like combining artificial intelligence with automated code generation and using tools like GitHub Copilot or Tabnine that can speed up your and your team's development process.

The second option is to extend your team temporarily. Hiring is not an option here because this process takes time and requires additional effort. Let's consider hiring mobile developers, web developers, UX/UI designers, or QA specialists from software agencies like Mobile Reality @ JavaScript Digital Product Agency or any other that matches your technology stack. A flexible approach and experts adjusted to your needs should help a lot. On the other hand, you can try more risky options (as agency developers are tested and are dedicated to your project during regular work hours) and work with freelancers using platforms like Upwork or Freelancer.com.

Conclusion

These four digital product web & mobile development challenges are, in my opinion, the most frequent ones.  Each of you can have your own problems regarding web development, mobile development, gaming apps, virtual reality, and many other IT project types. Each of you for sure has your own solutions. Personally, I hope that this article helps a little bit and gives you some inspiration for solving the problems. Feel free to comment and let me know what you think.

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These resources are crafted for those looking to refine their approach to building and managing software projects. Whether you’re contemplating the most effective development methodology, weighing the pros and cons of outsourcing, or deciding on the right pricing model, our insights can lead to informed decisions. Contact our team for a personalized consultation on software development business strategies. We’re here to help you navigate the path to success in the digital product landscape.