Mobile App Maintenance Is Important: When and How

Quick Go-Through: Mobile app maintenance is necessary and should never be overlooked by businesses. By maintaining a mobile app from time to time, you can ensure that your app performs seamlessly, there are no serious bugs, and responds to the ever-changing market demands and user expectations. This blog will help you dive deep into the importance, types, process, best practices, and cost of mobile app maintenance.

In today's universe of endless applications, delivering an app alone is not good enough. In 2016, Apple eliminated 50,000 obsolete apps from its App Store.

Almost anyone can get into mobile app development that would not last for six months. With advanced technology and fierce competition, meeting the standards and updating the app is crucial to ensure users enjoy it instead of abandoning it. So, to sustain the app is also an essential element.

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Also, 25% of the users stop using the application within the first day, and an overwhelming 72% within a month, as per a report. So, maintaining the app is of utmost importance for businesses.

Investing in excellent mobile application maintenance services saves the app's purpose and prevents it from becoming obsolete. Do you want to know and learn about why mobile applications need updating, how often they should be updated, etc? Here in this blog, we will walk you through all these questions one by one. Read on to get detailed insights into mobile app maintenance.

What is Mobile App Maintenance?

Mobile application maintenance refers to optimizing the existing features, functionalities, and services, updating them per the user's expectations. It is an ongoing process. After the launch of a mobile app, it includes updating, fixing bugs, and improving the mobile app architecture and functionality. Plus, it integrates maintaining the application's compatibility with the changing operating systems and devices. It provides ultimate technical support to the users and ensures the security and reliability of the application.

It is a crucial aspect of the app development process. Application maintenance service helps ensure the application's continued success and user satisfaction. If you have mobile business apps for your organizations, then you should consider the aspect of mobile app maintenance. By now, you have an idea of mobile application maintenance, right? Do you want an insight into cutting-edge mobile app development services for businesses for tomorrow? Read our blog and get an insight into it.

Types of Mobile App Maintenance

Before you move forward with maintaining your app, it's better to understand the outline of the different app maintenance types. Understanding these will give you an idea of what action to take or which approach to opt for in specific scenarios.

Emergency Maintenance

It is a mobile app maintenance type that you need to perform when an urgent issue occurs. It could be a security breach, any critical bug causing the app to crash, or any other issue impacting its functionality.

Preventive Maintenance

This involves monitoring your app proactively for any vulnerabilities and rectifying them. Preventive maintenance helps address potential issues to avoid downtime and reduce user impact.

Perfective Maintenance

This maintenance type is all about enhancing the app user experience. Perfective maintenance includes enhancing functionality for better user engagement, reducing the app size, and optimizing loading times.

Adaptive Maintenance

Adaptive maintenance is modifying your mobile app to stay current with advancing trends and technologies. It also ensures that your mobile app stays relevant and competitive.

Corrective Maintenance

This mobile app maintenance type focuses on fixing errors and bugs in your app. It's vital to rectify these concerns to avoid downtime.

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Why Do Mobile Apps Need Constant Updates?

Will you consider downloading an app that was updated some months ago? With mobile app development, you want to stay in business for the long haul. For that, make sure your app is relevant and updated continuously to meet users' ever-changing needs. Today, users keep checking out the latest updates on the app store.

The frequency of updating apps depends mainly on the features released. However, it is usually every month.

Here are a few reasons why all your apps must have a mobile app maintenance plan:

• To Follow New Trends: The latest trends flock to the market daily. People appreciate new products and better services. One of the significant benefits of adding new features to the apps is to provide recent changes and fix bugs. The only way to keep your users happy is to update the app to its latest version.
• Open Ways to Renovate: Nothing is permanent in this technological era. Everything is moving very fast and transforming rapidly, and so is the application for maintenance. To ensure an application succeeds, you must eliminate unnecessary features and functions, free up required space, and make room for new updates. Consider this: 71% of users uninstall unnecessary apps within 90 days of installation because they do not find anything exciting or new. A helpful app of yesterday may not satisfy the user today. In this cutthroat competitive market, you wouldn't want to lag.
• Maintain Rapport: Android and iOS app users are constantly checking for new updates and widespread users. They would not want surprises like delays in fixing a problem or functionality losses. They prefer a stable app with improved releases. If you are not updating the app, it may lose regular users and newcomers. Apps with sparse updates are seldom taken seriously in application maintenance and support.
• Modify the Mobile Strategy: Insightful app analytics is crucial for mobile application maintenance. You should update the app for practical purposes (functions and corrections) and strategic purposes (improved marketing and trending). You must think strategically to make the most of an upgrade. Keep an eye on the statistics and trends to expand the capabilities of your app. This would help you update the app to the best of your advantage and modify the strategy to align with necessary alternatives.
• Better User Experience: Continuous maintenance is necessary to improve the user experience of an app. Regular updates indicate that you care for your customers and their experience. Moreover, constant improvements add a positive vibe to the app rating across app stores, ratings, reviews, and overall experience. If the app is dynamically growing, your downloads will never fall. As a result, investments would yield the expected results and a reasonable ROI.
• Better Security: There are high chances of your mobile application being attacked by hackers. The more we rely on the applications, the bigger the cyber threats are. By introducing mobile app security in your business, you can sign up for better protection. It is one of the best ways to make your users feel safe. On the other hand, if the application is left unmaintained, there is a chance that your app can develop ambiguities due to cyber threats.
• Operating System Upgrades: Every operating system keeps updated with additional features and closes any security weaknesses in earlier iterations. Similarly to this, iOS and Android also regularly upgrade their versions. So, once more, it gives the audience a better experience. If you don't update your app to the most recent operating system version, there can be performance problems. The software's performance could suffer significantly.
• Improvement in Sofware Libraries: The behavior of programs once deployed, the creation of visuals, text communication protocols, and other tasks can all be significantly aided by these libraries. Libraries that are used by mobile applications may become outdated. Therefore, software library updates and optimization are essential to maintaining the app's peak performance.

Did you know that mobile apps are predicted to generate around 935 dollars through paid downloads and in-app ads in 2023? Click To Tweet

How Often Should the App Be Updated?

Honestly, consumers are highly demanding. Developing and launching an app is just the beginning of a long-term journey. As a result, expectations from the app market are skyrocketing. You can hire dedicated developers to update the app periodically, as in:

• Regular App Updates: It works as per the schedule and provides significant modifications and innovations
• App Bug Fixes and Innovative Features: These updates respond to any errors and malfunctions quickly
• Choose to Update: It means developers can choose to release updates they want irrespective of the schedule

According to Instabug research, the 100 highest-grossing apps release updates every 14 days. Another Appbot study found that the 200 highest free apps were updated every 18 days.

The frequency of updating an app depends entirely on the business targets and the app's functionality. Let's say a free app should be updated in 20 to 25 days to monetize it through paid premium features, providing ads, and in-app purchases. You can frequently expand the functionality of an app to improve it.

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Top Reasons to Update an App Frequently

As we all know, separating our lifestyles from using mobile apps is challenging. We also need to understand the significance of updating the applications occasionally. The most crucial reason for updates is that they help optimize the user experience. So, the following are the top reasons why you need to update your mobile app frequently:

1: To Fix Bugs

Apps are not immune to mistakes. Regardless of how well a mobile app development company has built it, bugs may appear at any stage of mobile app development. It is most likely when you rush to release the app.

However, there is a positive thing about bugs – you can find them and correct them. You may lose customers if you don't make the necessary modifications in time.

2: Release New App Features and Updates

People are excited about new products, updates, and features. Updating the legacy features or adding new features indicates that you still exist and are working on the apps that require updates. It would also ensure you could keep up with the other competitive apps. Ensure you follow the latest mobile trends, find app updates frequently, have a consistent approach, and be flexible.

3: Improve User Experience

Content is the heart and soul of an application. However, do not ignore the cover. Design is critical because it creates the first impression in users' minds when encountering your app. Consider the following reasons for updating, modifying, and improving overall UI/UX:

• App stores have released regular guidelines concerning design. You should adhere to the latest guidelines and make changes to the UI/UX according to the updated requirements
• Ensure the app design does not contain every single new update mentioned. Adjust the app to par with the latest trends
• The app design should be simple, understandable, and easy to access. If not, users would not know how to use it
• Update the app in alignment with the present branding to avoid misleading users
• Release frequent OS system updates under Android and iOS. If you ignore the OS requirements and updates, it may slow down the performance of your app
• Users are advisers and helpers when you need them the most. With proper user feedback and tracking, you can add necessary functions as required. Collect their wishes, get reviews, conduct polls, and listen to what they say about the app. A social platform is an excellent tool for this. You can check app reviews similar to your app and understand the areas you should focus on and where you should not.

Step-by-Step Mobile App Maintenance Process

Now, let's go through the essential steps to ensure timely and predictive maintenance for your mobile apps.

1. Identification – Define, classify, and prioritize the modifications you need for your app.

2. Analysis – Examine the viability of every modification request and ensure they align with the mobile app's end goals.

3. Design – This step is about acquiring new architectural components based on your thorough analysis.

4. Implementation – You can execute and integrate the desired changes within your mobile app in this step.

5. System Testing – It's a comprehensive internal testing phase that ensures security and functionality post-implementation of your mobile app.

6. Acceptance Testing – Before the final launch of your mobile app, a third-party user tests your app modifications.

7. Delivery – After the successful acceptance testing, the modified applications are released to the prime users.

8. Maintenance Management – In the last stage, you can use tools like Apache Subversion, GitLab, and GitHub for effective code management.

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Best Practices for Efficient Mobile App Maintenance

Mobile application maintenance is significant for keeping your app running seamlessly and increasing user interaction rates. Hence, without proper maintenance, your mobile app may get outdated, buggy, and slow, leading to a bad user experience. So, to increase the impact of your mobile app maintenance efforts, consider these best practices:

1. Track Performance Using Analytics - Analytics helps you track your app's performance, retention rates, and user engagement smoothly. You can use the information to recognize areas for improvement and make data-driven choices for maintaining your app.

2. Have a Master Recovery Plan - Regardless of your best efforts and hard work, you can still face the crisis. So, always have a detailed master recovery plan, including what methods to follow or who to contact to address these emergencies as they arise.

3. Update Your App Frequently – Updating your mobile apps is essential for staying current with the latest technology trends, adding new features, and fixing bugs.

4. Regular App Testing - Testing your mobile app is crucial to identify issues and bugs before they become huge concerns. Moreover, with the help of testing, you can ensure that your app remains user-friendly, secure, and functional.

How Much Does It Cost to Maintain a Mobile App?

The app maintenance cost can be 15% – 40% of the total app development cost for the first year after the launch. Usually, a mobile app can need multiple error/bug fixes, updates, new features, and user feedback execution in the initial year. The mobile app maintenance cost is reduced by 15% to 20% of the initial cost. For example, if your mobile app development costs $200,000, you probably need to spend about $40,000 per year on the maintenance process.

Also, several essential factors impact the overall cost of maintaining your mobile app, such as:

1. App Complexity - If you need to integrate more extensive and advanced features in your app, the upkeep costs will increase. Because it is vital to update all the app features and functionalities on time.

2. Development Approach - The support and maintenance needs for native and cross-platform apps differ considerably, resulting in cost differences for maintaining both app types. As part of mobile app maintenance, developers must adhere to the app store policies for the following operating systems.

3. Hiring Model - The cost of maintaining your mobile apps also relies highly on whether you hire in-house developers or freelancers or go for outsourcing models.

4. Location - The mobile app maintenance cost varies for geographical regions. Because developers from various locations charge differently.

5. Designs - The maintenance costs severely depend on the mobile app designs. If the user interface design doesn't align with standard guidelines, there's a chance you might need to spend more on application maintenance.

ConclusionUpdates dictate the lifespan of an app. If you wish to add more new users while retaining the existing users, do an app bug fix in due time and take an interest in your customer feedback. Mobile app maintenance services understand that. The frequency of app updates depends on the business target, app development dynamics, and the market's tone. Radixweb has a long track of delivering consistent and high-quality mobile app development services to various clients. We can ensure your app meets its goals, maintains a happy customer base, and updates regularly.Contact us to learn more about our mobile app maintenance services.