Our lives have become dependent on mobile applications and devices. Over the past few decades, we’ve seen increasing amounts of content consumption, lifestyle hacks, instant news, and games. To stay competitive, businesses are frequently developing new apps to keep users engaged.

Getting things done with the touch of a button is no longer a novel concept—it’s an expectation. Even Apple taglined its iPhone ads with “There’s an app for that.” This set a precedent for app developers and helped push businesses to create more user-friendly software.

Looking at how fast-paced our lives have become in the last couple of decades, it all makes sense.

We need information, and we need it now. Businesses across the globe are recognizing the opportunity and need to overhaul their strategies to engage new and existing audiences through mobile apps.

But the mobile app development process is rarely straightforward.

The market become fiercely competitive. Brands have poured considerable amounts of money into building value-driven, interactive, content-rich, and intuitive mobile applications.

While these aggressive development strategies have certainly yielded rewards in many cases, at the same time, the need for a quick development process has made apps more error-prone. This is one of the reasons why it’s critical to have a solid app maintenance strategy in place.

Today, mobile application maintenance has become a market in its own right — helping brands maintain their apps and release high-quality, faster, more intuitive, and feature-rich updates that cater to changing customer behavior.

In other words, app maintenance has become a critical part of any mobile strategy. Here, we will share key steps in developing and implementing a mobile app maintenance strategy.

What Is Mobile App Maintenance?

Mobile app maintenance goes far beyond simply fixing bugs. It is a process that ensures all important aspects of a mobile application are tested, reviewed, addressed, and improved to keep up with user expectations. It also ensures that the app is compatible with software ecosystem upgrades and changes, while protecting user and app data.

Maintenance is a major part of all app development processes and is necessary to ensure continued business success and user satisfaction.

Now that you know how important it is to maintain your brand’s apps, let’s learn about the different types of mobile app maintenance you should consider.

What Are the Types Of Mobile App Maintenance?

There are five types of app maintenance, each of which might come in handy at one point or another. They include:

• Emergency Maintenance: Emergency maintenance is required when something in a mobile application breaks down and stops working without notice. As its name implies, it’s the type of maintenance you need when you encoutner a major issue that needs to be fixed as soon as possible.
• Corrective Maintenance: Corrective maintenance is a tactic companies use to address minor bugs that, while not compromising the app’s functionality, impact the overall user experience. The problems you can solve with corrective maintenance generally include design and app logic issues. This type of  maintenance is recommended throughout the application’s life.
• Preventive Maintenance: Preventive maintenance proactively improves the code to prevent bugs from happening in the first place. The mobile app development team actively monitors the app and reworks the underlying code before issues appear, enhancing the app’s performance. Preventive maintenance includes continuous system monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and automated system regression level testing.
• Adaptive Maintenance: Companies may want to introduce small changes to their apps to ensure their compatibility with changing systems and hardware. The app itself doesn’t change because this maintenance only updates it to keep running in newer environments. In other words, adaptive maintenance ensures mobile applications’ compatibility with the operating system they will run on.
• Perfective Maintenance: In order to keep improving the mobile application, teams can make significant changes to the app while adding new features and functionalities. Perfective maintenance is often based on feedback from users and the proactive analysis of the development team and is aimed at improving user experience and the app’s overall value.
• Evolutionary Maintenance: Companies may need to consider a long-term approach to mobile application development. Evolutionary maintenance consists of processes to add additional modules to the application to make it more agile, ergonomic, and efficient in the long term. Such maintenance allows companies to do away with several long-term maintenance operations.

Effective mobile application maintenance is essentially a holistic approach that takes into consideration the six types of maintenance we discussed above. Let’s dive deeper to help you determine how to best maintain your mobile applications.

5 Major Reasons Why Maintenance of Mobile Apps Is Crucial

Now that you are well-acquainted with the types and functions of mobile app maintenance, let’s discuss some reasons why you should invest in consistent maintenance of your mobile apps.

#1 App Maintenance Actually Save You Money

The value of any app comes from the time it keeps the target audience engaged. If yours fails to do so because it’s broken, then you’ll pay dearly for every minute the app is down. App maintenance allows you to catch bugs before they make the app crash, thus avoiding downtimes that can cost you in terms of money and reputation.

It can help when a significant failure occurs, reducing your offline time. It can also come to your aid when a significant failure occurs, reducing the amount of time you’re offline.

Companies that don’t prepare and invest in app maintenance often face substantial problems pretty quickly. Without maintenance, bugs and performance issues pile up, potentially resulting in major customer backlash.

Remember, you are losing money the time your customers can’t access the application. So, any app maintenance costs are an investment that will pay off in the long run.

#2 Maintenance Keeps Your App Secure

One of the biggest challenges businesses face today is cybercrime. Malicious agents are becoming more sophisticated each day, and mobile apps are among their preferred targets.

That’s why keeping a strict maintenance schedule is essential, as it will allow you to strengthen your app’s security with the latest encryption and security features.

Customers download and use your application with the expectation that you will keep their information private, even if they share their personal information in order to receive personalized recommendations, for example. Failing to keep their information safe will result in customers questioning your brand’s reputation—and even potential lawsuits.

Apply regular mobile app maintenance strategies to ensure compliance and load the app with relevant and timely security updates.

#3 Regular Maintenance Keeps You Competitive

Perfective and adaptive maintenance ensures that your app is up to date with all the newest systems and hardware while providing innovative features for your audience. This will keep audiences interested in it, which, in turn, will keep you competitive in today’s highly aggressive app market.

The competition is always waiting for you to make mistakes and lose market share. Don’t give your competition what they want.

Maintaining your mobile application regularly will allow you to fix issues and introduce new features and updates to tap into changing market trends. You’ll also be able to trust the data you collect from your well-maintained app.

#4 Maintenance Lets You Stay Relevant

The new features and extended compatibility can keep up with your competitors, but they also allow you to stay relevant in the eyes of your audience. People’s interests and behaviors change over time, and they expect their favorite apps to meet them organically. That’s why you have to keep an eye on new customer trends and use app maintenance to pour what you’ve learned into your app.

The “set it and forget it” approach to building a mobile strategy will never work, at least not in this fiercely competitive world. Market trends change every day. Consistent app maintenance is the only way to ensure your application satisfies the evolving needs and expectations of your consumer base.

#5 Maintenance Helps You Comply With App Store Rules

The Apple App Store is always making adjustments to its policies and regulations. Anyone who wants to publish an app in the App Store needs to comply with those policies—or risk being left out. That’s why maintenance is so essential. It lets you introduce changes to your app to keep it compliant with any new regulations.

The Google Play Store also has a long list of rules and guidelines that your mobile application needs to follow. One of the most important reasons why these app stores have guidelines is that they need to ensure that the applications customers install work as promised by the brands.

Here’s the takeaway from this: you are never making a mistake by investing in mobile app maintenance. It sets you up for both short and long-term success. You get to make positive changes to the application to ensure quality, high performance, compliance, and competitiveness.

Benefits of Mobile App Maintenance

With consistent mobile app maintenance, you are certainly going to invest a significant chunk of your company’s budget into keeping your app alive and running. So, what’s in it for you? Let’s take a look at some of the top benefits of investing in mobile app maintenance.

#1 Enhanced User Experience

Much of your customer base is going to rely on the app to successfully connect with you. In other words, the effectiveness of your mobile strategy will impact the strength of your business-customer relationships. Customers will simply open the app and make purchases or place service requests—a process that will take them through different steps.

With an app maintenance strategy in place, companies can steer clear of any bugs or performance issues that will adversely impact the effectiveness of the application. Regular app maintenance will ensure customers face no difficulty while purchasing products or making transactions on the app. This consistency will go a long way in enhancing the user experience.

#2 Increased User Retention

Name a brand that succeeded without achieving customers’ trust. There aren’t any. Businesses are built on loyal customers, and to achieve that loyalty, you will have to gain their trust. One of the best ways to make that happen is to show that you are inclined to improve customers’ experience on the app.

Releasing regular updates and consistently maintaining the application demonstrates that you want your customers to have a positive experience on the app. Once you gain their trust, it will be easier to retain them over a long period, thereby improving your customer retention. Did you know acquiring a new customer costs five times more than retaining one? Food for thought for sure.

#3 Maintained Brand Reputation

Back in 2017, American Airlines stumbled upon a bug in their internal holiday scheduling software. The bug allowed many pilots to book time off during the Christmas holidays, resulting in almost 15,000 flights on the ground with no one to fly them.

What ensued was a major PR fallout for the airline as thousands of passengers were stranded in airports. Had the airline maintained its software application, the story wouldn’t have hit the news headlines and caused major reputational damage. One of the major benefits of consistent app maintenance is a positive brand reputation.

#4 Financial Impact

The financial impact of extending poorly maintained applications to customers can be catastrophic. A public announcement of a software glitch can make a company lose customers and shareholder value.

At the same time, a well-maintained mobile application ensures an excellent and consistent user experience, helping boost the ROI of regular app maintenance. Since a significant percentage of customers prefer making purchases online, chances your, you can count on them to use your app.

If customers trust your mobile application, they will come back to make more purchases through it. This is why investing in mobile application maintenance is vital to significant and long-term business success.

Think of it like this: your mobile app is essentially a bridge between your brand and its customers. A strong bridge will ensure strong communication, making it easier for customers to feel closer to their favorite brands.

Embrace App Maintenance 

Even when it might be a challenge to adopt all types of app maintenance, it’s well worth the effort.

App maintenance gives you the opportunity to embrace the challenges of keeping up with constantly changing customer behavior and expectations and the advancements introduced in the world of smartphone technology.

FAQ

Do I need a dedicated team for app maintenance?

It’s advisable to have a dedicated team or resources for mobile app maintenance because mobile apps require ongoing attention and expertise.

Can I outsource mobile app maintenance to a third-party provider?

You can always outsource maintenance of mobile apps and other software to a trusted third-party provider. This often lowers the overall mobile app maintenance cost, particularly if you don’t have an in-house team.

What is the cost of mobile app maintenance?

The cost of mobile app maintenance will depend on the complexity of your app, the frequency of updates, the team size, and whether the team is in-house or outsourced. It’s typically an ongoing operational cost.

How do I prioritize mobile app maintenance tasks?

Prioritize mobile app maintenance tasks based on user feedback, critical bug fixes, security vulnerabilities, and strategic goals of the app.