Being the product manager in any industry can be an exhausting undertaking.
Development meetings. Industry research. Managing your product’s backlog. Sprint planning sessions. Product demos. Talking with customers. Training your sales and customer teams. Product management isn’t for the lazy.
But when your product is software that needs to be updated frequently—and will often be viewed on a 5-inch screen by a person in an outdoor café—well, let’s just say you face an additional layer of product management challenges.
For example…
1. You’ve gotta cut, cut, cut!You’re working with several unique constraints as the product manager for a mobile app. You have the physical limitations of the size of your user’s screen, which means you’ve got to be ruthless in what features, text, onboarding messages, and other details you allow onto your mobile product roadmap, and what you don’t.
You also have the added limitations of user time and attention. When they fire up the desktop version of your software on their computer in the office or at home, your users are more likely to spend some real time with the app, and to give it at least a good portion of their attention.
But on a mobile device? They could be anywhere, doing anything, seeing anything, distracted by anything.
The best mobile experiences are the ones that let us, your users, cut right to the chase. And speaking of Chase…
Here’s an example of a business that gets this right. Here’s JP Morgan Chase’s standard consumer-banking website…
Image source: JP Morgan Chase
And here’s their mobile app…
Image source: JP Morgan Chase
An important part of your role as a mobile product manager will be to understand exactly why your customers are using your app, what they absolutely need it for, and what they can do without.
To make a successful mobile app, you’re going to have to unleash your inner-minimalist.
2. You’ve gotta be a portrait artist… and a landscaper.
Image source: Adobe Stock
When the product manager of a desktop app (or fitness equipment or just about any other type of product) launches her product into the market, she and her team have a lot of work to get the word out about it. This is usually a slow process, which is why most products don’t become mega-monster-super-duper successes right out of the gate.
When you release your mobile app, on the other hand, in addition to your own app rollout marketing you will have at least a little professional help—because you’ll be launching it through one or more of the app stores, and those platforms get zillions of searches every day.
And if your app goes viral on day one, but your team isn’t ready to support that kind of traffic and the user experience suffers as a result, you could be saying goodbye top—and even creating vocal critics out of—what could have been some of your best customers.
All of which is to say that when you’re launching a mobile app, assume it could be swamped with traffic in the first minutes after it hits the app stores. Now ask yourself, have we built the infrastructure (servers, customer support team, etc.) to handle that great news?
4. You’ve gotta budget additional resources for app-store submissions.Read more: feedproxy.google.com
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