The Importance of Testing Your App Messaging

There are more mobile phones in the world than there are people. That brings 189 million apps being downloaded daily. Business is booming in the app industry! But an app with a poor mobile user experience will likely not be used or even worse, get deleted. As an app owner, the best way to avoid this is by testing.
 

Mobile message testing ensures that your user receives the best possible mobile app experience. Put simply, it makes your campaigns more likely to succeed.

We spoke to some industry experts about mobile experience and how the testing of key strategies in your app messages can affect it. For example, tone of voice, use of emojis, images, wording and humour.

Is it Important to Test Your App Messaging?

Ross Brown from Brown Bear Marketing deemed testing as “crucial”. Whilst it can be regarded as a time-consuming and expensive process, Tigran Hakobyan from Inapptics said;

“Every action in marketing and product development should be measured and analysed. It shouldn't be based on gut feeling.”

No one user is the same, so how they react to the same message will be different. With testing, your job is to figure out what types of message works best for a particular segment of your users. If carried out correctly you could see your open rates and click-through rates increase dramatically.  For example, CityCliq saw an 89% conversion increase with a simple message change from, “Businesses grow faster online!” to “Create a webpage for your business.” 

Different Users Require Different Communication

Every user is different! Just like the way you have to test to find out which of the communication platforms are right for your users, you need to test what types of messaging works for the different types of users. Just like Tigran mentions below.

“You can't communicate with everyone in the same way. Different apps have different users and personas, so they need to be communicated with in a different way. So the tone of the messaging, wording, use of images or humour are one of those things that need to be tested with your audience to see which works the best and drives higher results.”  Tigran Hakobyan, Inapptics

You Don't Have to Make Assumptions

With the right testing, you can then make the correct decisions in terms of who to send what. There are many decisions that you make in life based on your gut feeling, but app messaging is not one of them.

“You shouldn't trust your gut and assume that the users would respond to the same triggers that you would respond to yourself. Everything needs to be tested and refined to ensure the optimal approach that drives maximum user engagement.” Katerina Zolotareva, TheTool

As Katerina mentions you can’t assume that your users will respond to the same messages that you would yourself. Take Sony for an example, they created two variations of the original ad seen below. One message with full emphasis on customisability; the other advertised a promotion. They were all put against each other in an A/B/C test.

Image Source: TARGET INTERNET

The results were very interesting, the personalisation focused variant ad achieved the best results. Compared with the control version, it increased click-through by 6%, and shopping cart ads by 21.3%. This shows that promotions don’t always get a higher click-through rate which some would assume wouldn’t be the case. While this example is a website ad, it is a great example of how testing messaging can provide interesting, generative results and there are tools available to A/B test your mobile campaigns.

Go Where The Data Tells You

Trust your data! By trusting your own understanding or assuming you know the outcome, you are basing your campaign on a bias opinion. Andi Jarvis has it spot on here …

“the age of guesswork is over … Subject lines, copy, images, CTAs... leave your ego at the door and go where the data tells you.” Andi Jarvis, Eximo

No matter how neutral you think you are you will always sway one way or another based on your own views. This knowledge might be completely legitimate but it also might not be, therefore it’s best to make your decision based on the data. By using the data available to you to test it will support the configuration of a vital and key part of your marketing strategy, known as your brand voice. When it comes to brand voice it’s all about consistency. If your logo didn’t appear with your content, would your app users know the content was coming from your brand?
 

Testing Shapes Your Brand Voice

“Testing your messaging will definitely aid in shaping your overall brand voice, and tracking the success of your messaging is key in informing its evolution...” Megan Dean, Yodel Mobile

You will never know what works until you test it. Brand voice is something that is difficult to get right, but with testing, it will help you to understand what is working and what is not. For a seamless mobile experience, it is important that the brand tone of voice is the same across all channels from the app store to the website to social media channels and wider.

Consider All The Other Factors

“I am a strong believer in data, so the more we can test our messages the better. The challenge here is to identify the significance of results as test messages don't just have the tone/content as the only independent variables: timing of the day, day of the week, season, the audience can also affect results so it's sometimes difficult to identify the effect of a particular variable.”  Adrian Gradinaru, Sailo

As Adrian has mentioned, while the content and tone of the message are important, it’s not the only thing that testing takes into consideration. Other variables such as time of day, season or day of the week can affect the results. It is not a simple task, however, be comforted that if done correctly your campaigns are more likely to succeed.


Key Takeaways:

• Message testing can aid the shaping of your brand voice.
• Rely on the data, not on your own opinion.
• It’s not all about the content, other variables should be tested.
  
  

Conclusion

Testing out your app messages is vital if you want to receive the best results. With the right testing process in place, you can make better-informed decisions and stop basing this on a gut feeling. No one person is the same, no one time of the day works best for everyone, some people appreciate emojis, some people don't. But you can't know this information about your users until you test it. 

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