I have upwards of 150 apps on my iPhone. Only 20 can fit on my home screen. I populate it with the apps I use the most.
Today I realized that this prime real estate illustrates (and also influences) the single most important goal for the vast majority of startups: top-of-mind.
There are only so many hours in a day. In order for your app to be successful potential users will ultimately need to carve out some time from their busy schedules for your product. But why would they?
Here is my iOS home screen:
All of these apps are (basically) single-purpose utilities. They can all be described in one or two words. From left-to-right, top-to-bottom: local search, music, directions, group chat, video, calendar, books, photos, contacts, check-ins, notes, (short-form) news, voice search, (long-form) news, to-do's, phone, email, sms, browser. They all do something basic and useful.
I rarely use apps other than these 19. Of course there are some context-specific apps that I'll use every few days or weeks, namely travel apps (like Hipmunk, FlightTrack, etc.), games, some business tools, movie times, etc., but the home-screen 19 represent 95%+ of my phone usage.
Another thing to notice is that there is virtually no overlap. There is one winner in each category. I chose one synchronized note-taking tool (Simplenote edged out Evernote and Dropbox), one to-do list (Flow over Things, for now), one music player (the ol' iPod still beats Rdio and Pandora for me), one photo-sharing app (sorry Path), one group chat product (GroupMe, although I've been playing with Convore) , etc.
In the moment, when a user has a particularl itch, only one app will be the first thing to pop into their minds. In fact, oftentimes no app will occur to a user, even if there exists such an app, and even if they've downloaded it. How can that be? Well, it's difficult to develop new habits. It requires a lot of effort to incorporate a new behavior into your muscle memory. Plus, these apps not only vie for attention with each other (think to-do's vs. notes vs. emails), but they also compete with offline options (vs. post-its vs. a whiteboard). That's steep competition for a new productivity tool.
So how do you become top-of-mind? How will users think of your app when they have a particular problem? Well, to start with, and although this may sound obvious, most startups doom themselves by overlooking this simple point: solve a real problem.
If your app doesn't solve a real problem that I have, I will never user it. Never. There may be apps on my home screen that you think don't solve a basic problem, but I assure you, they all do. Foursquare, for instance? Location bookmarking. Hashable? Contact management. Twitter? News discovery. I don't care how cool/sophisticated/well-designed/fast your app is if it doesn't solve a basic problem. All of the apps on my home screen do, so that's the bar.
And there's only two ways for your app to join them:
1) Do what one of them does much, much better (enough to justify the switching costs)
or
2) Solve a daily problem that none of them currently solve
One last thing: I guess it goes without saying, but if you're unfamiliar with any of these apps you should definitely check them out. They're all awesome.
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