An mHealth app is a mobile application built with the inherent aim of helping users effectively manage their hospital visits, fitness goals, medical conditions or insurance claims. mHealth apps come in all shapes and sizes and are geared towards several different aspects of healthcare, including lab results reviews, prescription, medication purchases, telemedicine, doctor’s appointment booking & management, and so much more.
The proliferation of these nifty healthcare apps is largely fuelled by rapid advancements in mobile technology as well as Big Data, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, and other nascent technologies.
So you are looking to develop a mHealth app. That’s a smart move, and a great way to simplify the lives of your target users. The truth of the matter is that the mHealth app niche is becoming an increasingly competitive market. That’s why you need to do a bang-up job when building your healthcare app to stand out in a sea of competition.
Here are 6 tried-and-true tips for building a successful healthcare mobile app.
1. Create a Comprehensive Landing Page and/or Website for your App
According to Digital Authority Partners, creating an informative website is the first crucial step in the app’s user engagement and acquisition process for healthcare mobile apps. Unfortunately, nearly 99 percent of mHealth app developers don’t even think about it until the last minute or just before the actual launch. Make sure that your mHealth app website is up and running before you even write the first line of code.
Having a robust website is all about building buzz for your mHealth app before you launch it. It’s also mission-critical when it comes to ramping up ASO for your app. That’s why you need to ensure that your app website is SEO-ready, intuitive, informative, easy to navigate, and clutter-free.
The site itself should load fast to reduce abandonment and boost traffic conversion. Of more importance is that you should include a content-rich blog, live-chat feature, and an informative FAQ page, making it effortless for readers to find info and know all about your upcoming healthcare mobile app.
Also, don’t forget to create a comprehensive landing page for your healthcare mobile app. It’s a crucial tool you can use to tell your mHealth app story, what it does, and what it can bring to the table. Do thorough keyword research to optimize your landing page for search. You can use free/cheap tools like Leadpages, Unbounce or Wix to enhance your landing page and make sure that it delivers outstanding results.
2. Get to Know your Target Users and their Pain Points
You cannot build a great healthcare app without knowing who will use it. What does the typical user look like, and what do they hope to get from your app? Whether it’s purchasing medication, booking an appointment with their doctor, monitoring their blood pressure or whatnot, you must know these touch-points and hot-buttons right from the outset.
Walgreens’ Find Care Now is a great use case of a mHealth app that did meticulous user research. The giant pharmacy store chain leverages its telemedicine app to help their customers (patients) search and find local & digital healthcare services, including online doctor consultations, refill-by-scan, finding nearby clinics, and much more.
3. Create a Great SEO Strategy
Having a well, thought-out SEO strategy and plan can help set up your mHealth app for success right from day 1. Yes, you may not be able to do search engine optimization for your native mobile app, but you can do it for your app website.
Start off by doing a detailed and comprehensive keyword research. Pay particular attention to phrases that describe what your app does.
Don’t know where to get started? Try UberSuggest Tool, a free keyword research and suggestion tool created by SEO goliath, Neil Patel. This is especially useful when you’re looking for derivative keywords.
According to ComboApp, you’re better off implementing your SEO strategy at least 60 days from the launch date of your app. Why? Turns out, Google and other search engines take between 60 and 90 days to pick up a website and its content. As such, you’ll need to launch your app when the site has already be indexed and ranked.
4. Study your Competitors (and know how to outperform them)
Once you know who your target users are, and what problems your mHealth app will solve for them, you might want to also check out your competitors. These are the developers who have created healthcare mobile apps that’ll likely compete with yours on the market. What are their apps’ strengths, weaknesses, and unique selling points (USPs)?
The idea behind a competitor analysis is to learn how to stay ahead of them. Create a matrix of all key features offered by competitor apps. Once you evaluate them in terms of user satisfaction, impact, and other KPIs, figure out a list of functionalities to include in your app to trump others on the market.
5. Know Up Front How you’ll Monetize your App
This is a sin that most app makers commit unintentionally – they develop a mHealth app they eventually don’t how to monetize. Given that developing and marketing a mobile app can be expensive, you must get this part right out of the block. Will it be free to download with in-purchase options? Or, do you plan to make it a paid app?
It’s worth noting that the popularity of paid apps has been plummeting year in year out. In Q1 of 2018, for instance, paid apps accounted for only 5.7 percent of the market share, and that number keeps spiraling down.
6. Define an Omnichannel Strategy for your mHealth App
Digital users don’t use a single channel – they interact with any given company on several different digital platforms and channels. That’s why you need to meet your target audience on the channels they frequently use. Will your mHealth app get more use on a tablet or a smartphone? With it works best as an iOS app, web app or Android app or a blend of all these? Think beyond the OS. Will it be voice activated by Google Assistant or Siri? Will it benefit from an Alexa Skill?
Conclusion
Building a successful healthcare app is no picnic. You need to do serious target user analysis, carry out a competitor study, create a well-rounded app website, and stay on top of SEO.
This post comes from Codrin Arsene, CEO @ Digital Authority Partners, a Chicago digital agency
