With 165,000 medical apps available in Apple and Google’s app stores competing for users’ affections, the reality is only a handful account for a majority of the downloads. London-based mobile health startup Health & Parenting CEO and co-founder John Miles shared some insights at the Stanford MedX conference on how to attract and retain medical app users that’s helped it generate 4 million downloads for its Pregnancy + app to date.
Miles advised mobile health app developers to focus on fundamentals. Tailor your app for specific platforms. Word of mouth is key to downloads so make sure you create an interface that’s easy to use and that users will want to share.
Right out of the starting gate, the process for downloading and setting up many mobile health apps is so tedious that they lose users almost as soon as they pick them up. Why? The file size is too large, there are too many popups. Users also tend to be turned off by being asked to give a lot of information early on, before they’ve decided how much they trust the company behind the app.
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He also noted that Google Analytics can be integrated into apps and give developers a way to monitor flow of users through their apps. Red markers indicate where users have dropped out of the app, through boredom or frustration.
In a Q&A segment after his presentation,he delved deeper into the user psychology of volunteering information.
“People give information based on two things: They trust you or they think they will get something back for doing it. You can justify those reasons up front or piecemeal. It’s better to ask for two to three pieces of information at a time then 12 pieces in one go. There is an art in gaming to engage and reward users.” He noted that people will be more likely to give over personal information if they don’t feel like they are filling out a form.
The launch of its app Tiny Beats offered some important lessons, Miles observed. The app lets women in the late stages of pregnancy listen to their baby’s heartbeats using a smartphone’s microphone.
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“What we did wrong when we launched Tiny Beats one year ago was we put up a sign up screen right away. In hindsight, it was off-putting. We simplified the sign-up process by asking for the user’s name and due date. That helped users learn whether the app was appropriate for them. Then they could go straight into using it.”
It also switched from a long tutorial to a video and that helped users share it with friends much easier.
To quantify how users’ response to its latest app, Miles said it used usertesting.com. The company provides a way for participants in the desired user group to record themselves using the app in their own homes. A short video offered one user’s perspective. The visceral response to the question of where they lived prompted it to tweak its approach, Miles said. “We just needed to know the country they lived in but you could see the fear” when users don’t understand why you need to know that.
“We learned that when you are asking for information it is helpful to be clear, and justify why you want this information. Don’t make the assumption that if you show a field, people will fill these in. It is about gaining trust.”
