Specially designed apps are a dream to some company or brands, but it is feasible, nonetheless. This article should enlighten you on how many brands can create an app for specific user or needs, but still able to expand its market.
As mentioned in the previous article, you can infiltrate the market easily if your self-developed app provides a certain benefits or usefulness to the audience. There is no concession that “benefit” must appear in the form of price-cut or early-consumer special; it can range to whole lot of options if you put your mind and research, as well as creativity, in the process.
Here are a few user specific app ideas we dare to put on a pedestal:
1. iFood Assistant
User can browse over than 7.000 recipes that are categorized by certain aspects, such as keyword, ingredients, time or healthy living. The app provides how-to video and daily meal suggestions, AND also equipped with grocery store locator and allows you to create a shopping list for the recipes available in the app. What kind of brand would create such useful, handy and brilliant app, you say? It’s Kraft. Yes, their product can be mixed in many types of dishes, and no, not every recipe contains Kraft product in the list of ingredients. Branding process is really slick, but the usefulness will get to you soon enough.
2. Trailhead
As a well known outdoor apparel retailer, The North Face have been living up to the test, and improve it with this app. Trailhead is a tool to share and find interesting routes to hike, ski, fly-fish, mountaineering, geocaching and more. User can search for desired keywords, and view or share photos to the app. It is a 2.0 mobile platform, integrated to major social networking sites, very social and useful; both for the user and the brand. Not to mention its advantage of documented heavy trails for search and rescue purpose.
3. ColorSmart
You’re thinking about changing the colors of your home, and while you visit a cozy coffee shop, you realize that they’re using your desired color. Pull out your phone, snap a pic and see if the ColorSmart app provides that certain color. Second scenario, you don’t know what tone would fit the room best; take a snapshot, insert it to the app and color the room inside the app to give you a glimpse of how the chosen color would affect the room. Third scenario, you don’t want to buy too much or less paint for the room. Here’s what you do; insert the dimension of the room and put them in the paint calculator. Those above are the features provided by Behr, a paint brand from Pasadena, California. Pretty neat, huh?
4. Virtual Zippo Lighter
Smoking is hazardous. So why anyone would download an app provided by Zippo, without its capability of lighting one up? Zippo offered a plot twist to its mobile app branding; it’s not a cigarette lighter, it’s a mellow concert accessory. The brilliance of simplicity applied correctly, resulting in the app as one of the most downloaded app ever. It may not be useful as the three points above, but it sure is safer to bring at concert, it is cute and shareable, and allow Zippo to dodge any association with cigarette brands, while swiftly enters the world of live music coolnes and continues to preserve its brand image.
5. Aviary
As an editing platform, Aviary provides wide selection of features, filters, and add-ons. The best part of Aviary is; it is available on various interfaces. Big or small screens, if your currently developed project is considering a simple photo editing tools, go for Aviary. The app is available and synchronized between mobile and the web app, allowing user to keep updating their editing activity. Made for developers with strong retouch and filters for photograph, Aviary shared API and the pricing options to eliminate Aviary’s branding.
6. Skype
Communication is everything; therefore a multiplatform media is required. Come along Skype, a cross-device interface to help you communicate anything at anytime. From desktops, notebooks, to handheld and tablets, Skype delivers your words with low cast calls (even free Skype to Skype calls). If you are in the telecommunication business, you need to top this innovation, or tap it with you.
The examples given above may be only six, but the marketing possibilities in each and every one of them are endless. Hope it helps you to reconsider and to be sure of what kind of app you wish to build; when today’s tech trend may lead you to mobile, your customer might expect a web app from your company. Always be sure to remember the following formula: research, plan, drop a hint of creativity, and execute your app away!
Images from apple(dot)com, mashable(dot)com, everytrail(dot)com