Redesigning a mobile app can be suggested depending on many factors that might be already decided or can be discussed later according to the business assessment. With the launch of a new app, an app owner hopes to get increased profit and see his app function properly to bring great results for the business.
However, why many apps fade away after some time which also impacts the whole profit? The main reason is every day thousands of similar mobile apps are launched online. Among the newly launched ones, the old ones lose the strength to allure the target audience.
So, what is your purpose for redesigning an old app? Did you make this decision after seeing your competitors following the latest UI/UX design trends and using amazing graphics updates? How will you understand that your app needs a huge update or you can bring it on the track by making some changes?
Let’s clear all these queries in this blog, giving you the absolute guide on how, why, when you need to redesign a mobile app efficiently!
Why You Need a Good App Redesign
A good app redesign brings lots of perks. These incorporate maximized sales and happier clients for sure. The best part is that your happy clients can fast become your brand ambassadors. They can bring more users, spread good words regarding your organization, and drive more sales.
Here are some benefits of choosing a good app redesign:
1. More Users
In case your app has great functionality buy it doesn’t have an updated and attractive design, people won’t use it at some point. Modern clients know about app design tendencies and trends, as they check many online products daily. Hence your business needs beautiful design.
Reddit presented a big redesign with a card-based feed in 2018. After one year, the platform experienced a 30% increase in its monthly active users.
2. Maximized Conversions
When an app offers users an easy way to fix their challenges, they will use it happily. However, if the app cannot do that, users will get annoyed and leave.
Redesigning the UX of your mobile app provides you a higher conversion rate but with happier clients.
3. More Devoted Clients
Users seek attention. They often come up with sudden user flows or don’t prefer your app design completely. When this occurs, on-time response to feedback is required for making durable relationships with your clients.
For instance, Hulu got many user complaints in 2017 after launching its Live TV feature. Some users found it tough to use. So, Hulu responded fast and came up with a massive redesign in 2019. This design changes Hulu’s landing page and eases top-level navigation. The target audience gladly welcomed these changes.
When You Need a Good App Redesign
In case you need to earn the utmost value from your application, you should know the purposes that when your app needs a massive redesign.
1. Low Conversion Rate
Poor growth of the client base causes less-profitable results for an app. Moreover, it ends up with low conversions that you must prioritize for redesigning your app.
Maybe the conversion rate is low due to the non-alluring UX or less-interested users. Hence, you must work on the areas where your app is failing to perform well.
2. Users Are Finding Your App Non-Valuable to Use
Users’ negative feedback can enforce you for redesigning your app. These negative feedbacks are unavailable on the portals. However, when you check the best app review sites and the Play Store and App Store, you can see what people are saying about your app and its use.
You can identify negative reviews through low app ratings, negative feedback from new and old app users, users’ angry feedback that shows their unsatisfactory experience and a fixed issue that users are experiencing and describing it in their reviews. Assess your app depending on these aspects. And if you find such problems in your application, go for a redesign instantly.
3. Outdated App Design
These days many apps include alluring graphics, new features, and navigation functionality. Check whether your app can compete with them in terms of all such aspects.
In case your app is old-fashioned and providing users a big reason at the same time for uninstalling it immediately, it requires a massive redesign.
4. Changed App Concept
In case a client comes with a new app idea even after started with the previous one that doesn’t match a little with the new one, this is high time to rework on the app idea to fulfill the expectations of your clients. It can cost you more but the app should be redesigned with a new idea and outlook.
5. Rebranding Ideas of Your Business
In case you are thinking about rebranding your business, it is highly important to rebrand your mobile and web apps also.
For targeting your audience, you should be stable so that your clients can identify your brand and buy regularly. Rebranding is a big idea of updating brands. App redesign is a must here.
6. Changing Your Target Audience
Changing your target audience strategy is the biggest reason for the mobile app redesign. When a business changes its marketing strategy, it finally impacts the target audience strategy.
Moreover, there are scopes when business plans for targeting an extra majority of the audience alongside the previous one. Since your app’s priorities can get changed, it can be the biggest reason for the redesign of your app UI.
7. Complex App UI Design
An app is worthless in case it makes users puzzled in terms of navigation and use. Regardless of how great your app is or how great it is designed, it is worthless if it cannot meet users’ requirements. A complex UI design is the biggest reason for redesigning an app.
8. App Migration to another Platform
An app often doesn’t perform properly on its present platform that requires a fast platform migration. When app migration is required, the whole app functionality and interface might also get modified.
You can redesign your app with a plan that incorporates advanced feature integration, platform migration, and functionality updates.
How to Redesign Your Mobile App
Once you know the importance of redesigning a mobile app, there are some required steps you must consider to make sure to create a great redesign. Here is the redesign checklist for your app:
1. Create Shared Understanding
Being a design, you need to bring everybody on the same platform and make them united over a common object. Talk to stakeholders to know what and why you want to accomplish for the business and on what duration.
Understand their expectations about feel and look, target audience, and functionality. Questioning support and development teams is a good concept to understand your problem areas more.
2. Don’t Consider Anything as the Absolute Truth
You should listen and note down everybody’s propositions and thoughts, but don’t take anything for granted. After all, you must filter through the noise and define where you should focus.
3. Decide What to Do
You can explore several activities to create empathy and understand users better. Value propositions and user journeys are advantageous, but always there is no time for doing them if you are talking regarding something small. Also, personas are fake and fluffy and have a bit of practical application.
Hence, list out the things to do. This helps understand the expectations and motivation of users.
4. Dismantle the Current Design
Designers often totally ignore and overlook the existing design during the redesign process. You can use the existing design and make a new one as per your choices.
There were possibly many studies and thinking that went into the making of the real solution. Your object is to check the existing design, try to realize how it functions and the purpose behind every decision.
5. Review Analytics
After narrowing down your focus on some basic areas, you should understand the design’s performance. If you are redesigning, you might have a luxury of learning from analytics and exploring the real design functionality with no subjective judgment.
You will have usage data when you require justifying your design decisions with stakeholders and a baseline that you can utilize for comparing the new design functionality.
- Behavioral Flowchart – It helps you check users’ journeys and behavior.
- Traffic Analysis & PageView – This helps track visitors’ entry and exit from various pages, what screen size and browser they are utilizing, and places they are coming from.
- Conversion & Timing | Funnel Making & Analysis – This assesses conversion and makes baseline metrics for comparing the new design.
6. Analyze Competition
You might want to know what others are doing. Since your clients will need to select between your product and its substitutes, you should assess their client experience. While analyzing both direct and indirect competition, seek similar and common flows. Decide what has pondered a standard experience for you.
Analyzing competitors helps you find out whether there is any gap in the market. Moreover, you can make an easy matrix where you will list the basic data regarding the competition.
Know what every competitor item is aimed at, how standard their features are, market presence, and what is their revenue model. A comparison with their products will give you an insight into your position.
7. Recognize Basic Problem Areas
In case you have understood everything properly using data from analytics, you can recognize basic problem areas in your current design. These issues include wrong patterns applied, inconsistencies, and bugs, usability problems to visual flows, or unusual solutions for no reason.
Once you find the problems, find solutions for every recognized issue. Competitor study and exploration must provide you sufficient inspiration.
8. Conduct a Test
Maximum app design organizations maintain app testing communities where you can check the app’s performance before making it live for worldwide users.
9. Wait for Changes to Settle Down
Changes you make while redesigning an app might need time to reflect and get indulge in the existing app performance. This is the best plan that requires being pondered by every app owner and developer.
Redesigning an app is not that simple but applying recommended changes carefully and accuracy is the key to make your route easier.
Bottom Lines
The app redesign journey can be either a big success or an unwanted risk based on how you start it. If you are upgrading your app design after checking it cautiously, the redesign will surely bring a higher retention rate, better app functionality, and increased sales.
Author Bio
Mehul Rajput is a CEO and co-founder of Mindinventory, a mobile app development company that provide web & mobile app solutions and UI/UX design services from startup to enterprise level company. His role involves heading the operations related to business and delivery with strategic planning and defining road-map for the future.
Banner Illustration by Ghulam Rasool
