Our Wireless Media Lab team is undertaking focus groups and design ideation sessions this week in London on the subject of Enhanced Mobile Messaging.  Listening to the discussion last night, what I found especially interesting was to hear the heavy messengers we had recruited explain why they use messaging applications such as WhatsApp, BBM and even basic SMS.

It seems that increasingly, messaging is not just about communicating information.  The participants all said that the ability to communicate via sending pictures, links and voice attachments is becoming more and more important to them.  Beyond this, they frequently told us that their messaging apps are an important way to keep up with what friends are doing and even a way to handle boredom by reviewing what others have sent or posted.  To them, the lines between one-to-one and one-to-many messaging are becoming increasingly blurred.

When we asked these users to come up with new ideas for messaging services, many of their concepts expressed some key themes:

• the desire for more control over presence and status
• the ability to message via voice and switch between voice/text
• the desire for intelligence and context awareness (especially related to location), and
• the importance of small group communications (e.g. on the basis of shared interests with particular friends)

However, despite all of the advanced communications tools and capabilities that these consumers have at their fingertips, when asked which messaging service they would keep if they could choose only one, every person said SMS.  Why? Because it is the only truly ubiquitous mobile messaging protocol – i.e. capable of reaching everyone.

Our report on the motivations, needs and behaviors of mobile messaging users will be available to Wireless Media Lab clients in due course.

- Kevin Nolan

Update: 3 October 2011 - The full report, Mobile Messaging: Consumer Behaviors around Text Messaging and Over-The-Top Messaging Applications, is now available for WML clients or to purchase.  Paul Brown

With the total number of mobile applications downloaded set to exceed 21 billion in 2016, and with global market revenue reaching $32.6 billion, there will be many new players vying for a share of both downloads and revenue. To successfully compete in this market, it will be critical for application store providers to have an app store that is useful and usable, as well as providing compelling features.

In order to understand how to create a superior application store user experience, our Wireless Media Lab has recently undertaken user experience evaluations of a number of leading application stores in the US and UK. The stores evaluated by current Smartphone owners were Android Market, Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World, GetJar, Nokia Ovi Store (UK only) and Windows MarketPlace.

Drawing upon these user experience evaluations (as well as previous application store best practices), we have identified 21 best practice guidelines across the application store process which contribute to a superior user experience. These can be broken down into five main categories, with a selection of best practices highlight:

App Store Structure & Layout

- The homepage of application stores should be clear and simple, and provide direct access to the core sections of a store which should be: categories, search, top lists and users downloads/updates.

- Core sections of the store should always be accessible within one click.

App Discovery & Search

- The search feature should be accessible in one-click no matter where a user is within the store.

 App Description & Overview

- Each app should have a detailed description, including price, ratings, reviews and screenshots. The app overview should be no longer than one page.

 Price & Purchasing

- The price of an application should be clear at all steps in the purchase process - not just when a user chooses the app from a list or search.

- Users like to have an option to preview or trial an app before purchasing it.

Downloading

- Users want the ability to re-download apps they have purchased if they change their phone.

The full set of guidelines are available within the report Mobile Application Stores: Best Practices and User Evaluations, along with in-depth analysis of each application store. (Available to Strategy Analytics' WML clients or for purchase).

- Paul Brown

We are half way through our study benchmarking the user experience of mobile application stores. Our consumer research in London, UK has already thrown up some interesting findings. After reviewing offerings from Apple, Android, Windows, GetJar, BlackBerry and Nokia/Ovi, we asked participants to tell us what they think makes for the best store.

Neither the total number of applications, nor the total number of free applications was considered to be particularly important. As you can see from the list below, the critical factors for these users were all about application discoverability - i.e. how to find the apps they want and how to determine which of the apps available are most relevant and useful to them. The figure in brackets represents the number of times that each factor was mentioned.

• Simple layout, easy to navigate, clean visual appearance (21)
• Detailed descriptions of each app (incl. number of downloads, ratings, reviews, screenshots etc.) (11)
• Powerful, accurate search (9)
• Good categorization (clear, mutually exclusive categories) (8)
• Easy payment process (e.g. ability to choose billing mechanism, enter card details once only) (7)
• Easily identify familiar/official branded apps (5)
• Nice design, professional style graphics, modern color scheme (5)
• Previews and trials (e.g. “try before you buy”, beta testing new trial apps) (5)
• Clear pricing (e.g. clear labelling of whether paid/free) (5)
• Lots of apps - esp. free apps (5)
• Recommendations, featured reviews (4)
• Not too much advertising (2)
• Behavioral profiling (1)
• Most popular apps listed on homescreen (1)
• Secure payment (1)

Among the other things we learned from these consumers were the following recommendations for app stores:

• They prefer a light, elegant, but bright design. Ovi feels more modern in design than many of the other stores.
• They want online backup of apps and the ability to re-download apps they have purchased if they change their phone.
• Since they care about their privacy and data security, it is very useful to tell them the features and personal data that an app needs to access before they choose to download it.
• They would like to be able to sort apps lists and search results in multiple ways (e.g. by popularity, alphabetically etc.)
• Before they download an app, they like to see what similar offerings are available so that they can compare and choose the one that best meets their needs.

We will be repeating this research next week in the USA and the full results (including a performance comparison of the main stores) will be available to clients in January.