How Often Should You Update Your App?

updating your mobile app

After you have launched the first versions of your app, where do you go from there? A good guess would be to support and maintain your app.  App development is a continuous process and immediately after you have launched it you need to improve it according to the feedback you get from your testers and users. From this stage, your app takes a lean and continuous improvement approach.

Most popular applications in the app store get frequent updates, sometimes weekly, or twice per month.  You can make smaller and larger updates if you get your release cycle right. In this guide, you will learn why you should update your app frequently, what to update in your app and some of the commonly used release cycles for updates.

Why Should You Update Your App?

App stores are fond of making new OS releases from time to time. To keep up, you need to update your app to align with the new changes. You can add attractive features or remove some from your app to enhance usability.

Your app users will be required to update the software on their phones so that these changes can reflect. Adding features requested by your app user builds a loyal following. Loyal users would be glad to share your apps with their friends and relatives since you have created value.

Launching your app does not guarantee that your product will run at the expected performance. Apps do get bugs that need to be fixed to restore their original functionalities. Besides keeping your app fresh and functioning, updating your application can make your app more safe and secure to use.

App updates are one of the best marketing tools you can use to re-engage your users and also give them a good user experience.  When your app shows up in the update list, users will be reminded of the existence of the software on the phone. Regular updates will keep your app in the mind of the mobile user.

Updating your app allows you to communicate with your technically savvy through release notes.  Therefore, you need to take good advantage of release notes and even include them in your list of app marketing tools.

Monthly Updates

On average, your app should be updated at least once in a month to keep your features looking new and fresh. The App store likes it when you update your app frequently. A good understanding of your market and reliable feedback or data should drive your updates. You can use crash reports and user reviews to determine what you need to tweak or improve on your app.

You need to create a good balance between your updates and the release cycle because you do not want to overdo it. Getting update notifications too frequently can be annoying and tiring to the app user. Therefore, you need to be in line with market trends when it comes to making app updates.  All in all, you need to ensure that your app gets updated at least once or at most four times in a month.

 App Feature Updates

The rate at which you update your features will depend on the type of the feature (large or small) and the amount required to add the feature in your app.  The length time of a feature varies some may take weeks while others multiple months.

Best practice requires that you find a way to reduce the time length of adding features to your app to at most two weeks. A two-week development cycle for your features creates more time for testing and refining your app which still keeps you within the monthly update release cycle.

Independent developers and small team shops can commit to the two-week feature building cycle.  Companies that work with teams can delegate app maintenance tasks with a group working on bugs and the other on app features.

App Bug-Fixing Updates

Updating your app can come with new features and fixed bugs. When you find that updating your feature may take more time, then you would go with fixing bugs as you work on the feature on the side. Bug fixing updates in applications are more common in more mature apps in the market.

When you have solid features in place the next best thing you can do is improving and stabilizing your app experiences. Bugs can be fixed with immediate effect, so it would still work if you adopt a weekly update release cycle.

Differentiating Update Sizes

According to the varying update release cycles for fixing bugs and improving features, it is easy to tell that the prior is a minor update and the later is a major update. These updates are indicated by their version numbers. For example, a feature update on the first version of the app will be indicated as v1.1, while a bug-fixing update will change the number to v1.1.1.

Version numbering is the best way you can understand whether the update is minor or major. Most app user may not understand this language but it helps a lot to those that are tech-savvy. The change in version numbers varies from one industry to another. The first update in most apps is usually fixing bugs to keep it stable as you gather more feedback and data.

Wrapping-up

Updating your app depends on various factors, but it can be tamed with a balanced update release cycle. You have to balance between your feature and bug fixing updates to maintain consistency. With the approach provide in this guide, you are in the best position of giving your users the best app experience.

About 5280 Software LLC:

5280 Software LLC, located in Denver, Colorado is a premier software development firm.  We have worked with a variety of clients over the years.  Our expert team of developers have helped small to medium sized businesses, startups, as well as enterprise level clients such as RingCentral.  If you are looking to build a mobile app, we can deliver flawless apple ios mobile apps as well as android mobile apps.  These apps can be designed for smartphones, ipad and android tablets, wearable such as smart watches, and even smart TVs.  The power of a well designed app to gain new customers is key in today’s market.  We help execute your app development to perfection.  A website is powerful tool for branding and showcasing the products or services you offer.  We can build you a WordPress, E-Commerce, or custom coded website at competitive prices.

Once the site is launched, or if you already have a website, we offer Search Engine Optimization Services to achieve higher search engine rankings.  Contact us today with your website’s URL and we will put together a free SEO analysis of your site with pricing and timeline to get your site ranked on the first page of Google and other search engines. Our experienced and dedicated team has a proven track record and provide regular reporting on tasks completed and keyword movements during your SEO project.  We help businesses and companies gain rankings on all the major search engines.

Many businesses use multiple software packages and services to run their business.  We offer custom software development services to streamline your business process.  We have developed custom dashboards that can pull data from multiple points and display all this information in one place.  Do you use an off the shelf CRM?  5280 Software LLC can customize this CRM or even build a custom CRM from the ground up based on your requirements.  If you need a custom Windows desktop or Mac desktop application, feel free to reach out to us.

We can improve the understanding of your business and marketing outreach through the use of analytics.  We offer a complete solution with the latest technologies to solve your obstacles and scale your customer base.  From the start of any project (and at every stage, step, phase, and release) we focus on the client and always ask for feedback while we develop the project.  Creating a quality solution for a business or startup is our end goal.  Our strategy and processes are based on solid communication with our clients.

All projects are built according to a clearly defined scope of work.  If you need assistance with scope creation, we offer this as a service. This scope of work will be used in the provided development contract.  Make sure whomever you hire for your project provides you a development contract with clearly defined pricing, development timeline, payment schedule, and deliverables.  We would like to learn about your project and help refine your scope of work.

If you have an idea for a mobile app, please emails us your full name or company name and we will send you a signed NDA.  We send NDAs to all potential clients to guarantee your ideas and documents will be kept in confidence.  Once an NDA is in place, feel free to book a free discovery call.  You can also fill out our app development questionnaire to share the details of your project before your call.  We are the leading firm specializing in building solutions for the web, iphones and other smart devices including IOT.  Our company can create a custom solution on a variety of platforms using the most current popular programming languages.  Weather it is a cross platform hybrid app or a natively programmed solution, we have you covered!

We look forward to speaking with you about your project.  Learn why clients around the world trust working with 5280 Software LLC.  We support our clients from mockups, sketch, wireframes, and graphic design, development, product launch and ASO when we publish your app, and even code updates at a competitive price point.  Feel free to visit us on our social sites Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or send us a LinkedIn connection request to learn about our offers to get answers to your questions.

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