We do this through:

• Clear and transparent communication with you
• High speed development
• Expert product strategy

The Process:

Understand the vision

The first step in our process is visioning, where we work closely with you to first understand the fundamental problem that your product solves. We then zoom out and outline the dream outcome, your goals and objectives for your app. This step is crucial as it helps us align with your desired outcomes, whether it be revenue, viral growth, product-market-fit, or a combination of goals. We then zoom in, and will ask specific questions to understand your wider business needs, target audience, their pain points, and desired outcomes to help us create a clear vision as we take your app to the next level.

Define a north star metric

We work with you to identify a key metric that will serve as a guiding light for your product’s success and track it regularly. This metric should be a clear indicator of the product’s overall performance and aligned with its core value proposition (e.g. Uber = rides booked, Amazon = monthly purchases per user, Netflix = watch time, etc.).

Business model

Determine the primary revenue model for your product, such as freemium, subscription, or advertising-based. We identify the key sources of revenue and make sure that they align with your product’s vision and target audience.

Code review

We perform a thorough review of the codebase to ensure that the code is clean, readable, commented, documented, modular, and refactored. This will ensure that your product is built using the latest coding principles and is therefore maintainable and scalable in the long run.

Stabilise the product

We ensure that your product is stable and fix all the bugs as soon as they are identified. This will drastically improve the user experience and reduce the chances of negative reviews.

UI/UX design

We then review and improve the UI/UX design of your product to bring it in line with the latest design standards, using intuitive design-thinking and beautiful user-friendly UI. This will significantly improve the user experience and will engage your target audience whilst ensuring your app solves your user’s problems in the most efficient way (e.g. least number of clicks).

Collect data

We will implement data analytics throughout your product to collect quantitative data and qualitative feedback from your users. This will allow us to understand the user behaviour and preferences.

Analyse data

Improving and iterating a product after it is launched is ALL about data. We will regularly analyse the data and feedback collected from users to identify trends and areas for improvement. This will help us identify features which are adding real value to your users. We use this data to make informed decisions about the product’s development roadmap.

Iterate towards product market fit

We continuously iterate your product based on user feedback and data analysis to achieve product-market fit. Once your product hits product-market-fit, you will experience a dramatic inflection point in your product’s growth trajectory 🚀

Monetisation

Money, money, money. We will integrate effective solutions to monetise your product, such as in-app purchases or subscriptions. We monitor the performance of these strategies and make adjustments as needed – maximising for your desired goal, whether it be top line revenue, profit, number of users, etc.

Conversion rates

To understand the efficacy of the paywalls, we track conversion rates and optimise the user flow to improve them. Using data, we identify the key bottlenecks in the user journey and make improvements to increase the conversion rate.

Funnel analytics

Analysing the user’s journey through the funnel is critical for identifying drop-off points, which we then fix with improvements. We investigate to understand the user behaviour and preferences at each stage of the funnel and make adjustments to minimise drop-offs, improve the user experience and ultimately deliver more value to your users (e.g. asking for a user’s date of birth in the onboarding flow often causes a steep drop-off because users first need to build trust with you before handing over sensitive data such as this, so we need to evaluate whether or not it is mission critical to be collecting this data in the first place).

Retention

Growth = acquisition + retention. It is no good getting everyone through the front door if they’re immediately leaving through the back door! We have to keep them inside and interested. Using data tools, we monitor retention rates and implement proven strategies to improve them. Identifying the key reasons for user churn and we make adjustments to reduce it.

Engagement

Tracking engagement metrics, such as time spent on certain parts of the app, informs us to make improvements accordingly. We need to understand where your users are spending their time in your product and where they are extracting the most value. This is so we can understand your users behaviour and preferences and make adjustments to improve the user experience consequently driving engagement up.

Growing user base

We first need to answer the question: “where are your ideal users?” We then implement proven strategies to ensure your product is positioned to target these users through growth hacking (e.g. viral in-app referral mechanisms). We monitor the performance of these strategies, optimising them over the long term. We also ensure your app listing is well designed on the Apple App Store and/or Google Play Store through effective use of App Store Optimisation (ASO).

Improving App Store rating

Having an App Store rating of 4.0* or more is a basic necessity. In fact, we ideally want to aim for 4.7* or more – this is when you start to see real organic growth. We will implement effective strategies that improve your app store rating. Alongside this, we implement incentives to encourage your users to leave reviews and then ensure reviews are responded to and that we are addressing feedback. We monitor the performance of these strategies and make adjustments as needed.

Testing

Throughout all of the above, we conduct regular testing (QA) and other types of experimentation to validate hypotheses and improve the product. This will allow you to make data-driven decisions about the product’s development and iteration. We also rigorously test the app to ensure that it meets the highest standards of quality and performance. This includes functional testing, usability testing, and compatibility testing across a range of devices and operating systems.

Monitor and improve

Continuously monitoring the key metrics and gathering feedback from your users enables us to make ongoing improvements and updates to your product. This is important as it helps us to continuously improve the app and ensure that it stays relevant and useful for you and your users. We will use analytics and other tools to gather data and feedback, and use them to make data-driven decisions for improvements and new features.

At Nordstone, we pride ourselves on our proven process for improving, iterating and scaling mobile apps. We know that by following this process, we can scale a high-quality and successful product for you. If you’re looking to take your mobile app to the next level, we would love to work with you to bring your vision to life. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals.