As more mobile apps become available, businesses must look beyond building high-quality products and consider how to leverage branding to stay competitive in today’s attention economy. The right mobile app branding strategies can set you up for success.
Key takeaways:
- Your brand voice significantly influences how users experience your app.
- It is reflected in your app’s logo, icon, name, keywords, slogan, and graphics.
- Keeping your mobile app branding consistent can help users complete tasks without obstructions.
The last few years have seen a proliferation of mobile apps as businesses seek to grow their online presence. As of November 2022, Google Play Store and Apple Store combined, had over 5 million apps available for download. The number is growing steadily.
This article looks at the importance of branding and outlines five ways to infuse brand voice in mobile app development for maximum growth, so you can avoid app development mistakes.
What is brand voice?
Brand voice is the personality businesses adopt in their communication with customers. It serves as a guide on how they interact with their target audience to influence their behavior and keep them using their products and services.
In mobile app development, brand voice is reflected in your app’s logo, icon, name, keywords, slogan, and graphics. Therefore, your communication across these elements should be consistent, unique, and reflect your company’s value.
Important considerations for mobile app branding
In a lot of ways, mobile app branding is similar to how you would brand a physical product or service. It’s also different in some respects.
Answering these questions before design and development start will ease the process and help you create a cohesive brand voice.
- Who is your target audience?
- What solutions does your app offer?
- What’s your app’s unique selling proposition? What motivates people to use your app instead of competitors’?
- What message does your app’s appearance convey?
- What do users feel when interacting with the app?
- Is the tone of voice formal, informal, friendly, humorous, or something else?
- What are the available channels of communication for getting information to users?
Remember to keep communication clear, concise, consistent, and empathetic so users can accomplish the tasks meant for your mobile app without obstructions to create a successful, immersive customer experience.
How to infuse your brand voice in mobile app development
Here are five tips for effective mobile app branding:
1. Choose the right name
Choosing a simple, unique, and memorable name for your app that’s consistent with your brand and describes what the app does can boost adoption and retention. It helps create a fairly accurate first impression (of what the app is about) that sticks in users’ minds.
A good example is WeChat. When people run across it on an app store, they expect it to be a messaging tool for communicating with friends, family, and colleagues – and that’s exactly what the app delivers.
Before settling on a name, however, you should check its availability on app stores and whether there are products with the same or similar name in different markets. Related considerations are necessary when choosing the domain name and landing page for your app.
2. Craft a catchy slogan and keep the style consistent
As you build your app, put some thought into crafting a snappy marketing tagline. Slogans are an excellent way to further infuse your brand voice and distinguish your app while communicating its benefits.
Keep in mind that you’ll mostly use the slogan on outer channels like email, landing pages, promo videos, and social networks, rather than within the app, because of the limited space for copy.
In addition, you should consider the copywriting style as it will set your app’s tone and voice and determine how users experience it. A casual style is ideal when you want users to feel like they’re interacting with a friend. A formal style may be more suitable for demonstrating professionalism or expertise.
Your brand’s voice and content should be relatively consistent across channels regardless of style choices.
3. Optimize your app for keywords
Creating a set of keywords for your mobile app and grouping them based on their roles can help you maintain brand consistency and discover the most valuable ones to target.
Generally, there are three types of keywords you should focus on – brand keywords, descriptor keywords, and brand-plus keywords.
- Brand keywords are the words people use when searching for your app, products, or services, and may include the app’s name as well as variants of its extension. Optimizing for these keywords can boost organic search, improve Search Engine Results Page (SERP) visibility, and boost your conversion rate. It can help people who are familiar with your brand find your app faster, while at the same time helping new users discover your products.
- Descriptor keywords most accurately describe what your brand is about. Is your app entertaining, helpful, funny? What feelings do you want to evoke when users interact with your app? Having a set of descriptor keywords can help align your brand voice across design and development, ensuring you have a cohesive product.
- Brand-plus keywords combine your brand name with other phrases and qualifying words to help with SEO and content creation. They perform a similar role as brand keywords in helping users find or discover your app.
4. Use a suitable logo/app icon
Your logo and app icon are equally important in your mobile app branding. There are various visual representations you can use to promote your brand – symbols, logotypes, lettermarks, combination marks, or emblems. However, some are more effective than others in mobile app branding. For example, because of space limitations of app icons, complex emblems or big wordmark logos are just not feasible visual representations – lettermarks and symbols are more suited to the task. In this case, it’s more effective to use the first letter of your brand name (presented creatively), or an image associated with your brand as the app icon.
Similarly, you can incorporate a mascot, or a combination of colors associated with your brand into your app icon to make it more easily recognizable.
5. Express originality with custom graphics
Whether your app offers something new or basic, it’s important that it attracts users’ attention and feels original. Stellar graphic content can add to your app’s aesthetic appeal while distinguishing it from others.
A good example is the language-learning app Duolingo. The app uses a vibrant green owl mascot, Duo, in different costumes as its unique symbol. Duo often acts emotionally invested in users’ learning journey and offers words of encouragement to them, making it fun to use the app.
With a little creativity, you too can create unique experiences that draw in people and keep them using your app for long periods.
Level up your mobile app branding with Shockoe
No matter how great your app is, it will likely go unnoticed without careful branding and clever marketing. Thus, it’s crucial to strike a balance between these two aspects to guarantee your app’s success.
Not sure where to start? Shockoe can help. With years of experience delivering digital solutions to companies in various industries, our experts can give you an edge and ensure your app effectively delivers its value.
Schedule a call today to learn more about how Shockoe can help infuse your brand voice in mobile app development.