What is the Correct Frequency of Updates for a Mobile App?

Customers often devote all their energy to developing the 1st version of their application and publishing it on the stores, which is quite normal, but quite often neglecting to think of an update strategy . Updating an application regularly and several times a year is important in several ways for:

- Referencing of the application.

- Adapt to OS updates (adaptive maintenance).

- The correction of bugs discovered once the application has been published (corrective maintenance).

- The addition of new functionalities, modifications of the UX… (evolutionary maintenance)

The referencing of the application:
Apple and Google rely on downloading an application over the past few days for its listing on the stores and an update is a download so the more updates are offered and downloaded, the better your application will rank on them. Want to build your own affiliate site regarding mobile phone comparison https://www.revglue.com/blog-detail/13-setup-free-uk-mobile-comparison-website

Obviously this is not the only parameter but it is a parameter that matters.

Adapt to OS updates (adaptive maintenance):

iOS and Android experience a major update each year announced on the occasion of WWDC events for Apple and Google I / O for Google and which quite often impact the operation of the application and many minor updates per year that have also from time to time consequences on its functioning .

Examples of update frequency for iOS:

iOS 9 was released on September 16, 2015. Versions 9.0.1 followed a few days later to fix some bugs. Followed after 9.0.2, 9.1, 9.2, 9.2.1, 9.3, 9.3.1, 9.3.2, 9.3.3, 9.3.4 and finally 9.3.5 on August 25, 2016.
iOS 10 was released on September 13, 2016. Versions 10.0.1 - 10.0.2 - 10.0.3 - 10.1 - 10.1.1 - 10.2 - 10.2.1 - 10.3 - 10.3.1 - 10.3.2 - 10.3.3 followed until July 19, 2017.
Examples of update frequency for Android:

Android version 5.x named Lollipop saw different versions: 5.0.0 - 5.0.1 - 5.0.2 - 5.1 - 5.1.1 between November 3, 2014 and February 2016.
The version 6.x of Android named Marshmallow has 2 minor versions: 6.0.0 and 6.0.1 between May 28, 2015 and September 9, 2016.
The correction of bugs discovered once the application beanyblogger.com/column/understanding-the-needs-of-a-mobile-app-project/ has been published (corrective maintenance):

Due to the fragmentation of versions of iOS but especially Android and the diversity of smartphone brands (see our previous article) and the quality of your tests before putting your application into production, it is always possible to detecting bugs and planning regular corrections and updates is often essential.

Your users are often a source of information to point out bugs on stores to you, but the best strategy for identifying bugs is to set up a crash reporting tool within your application.

Adding new features, modifications to the UX, etc. (progressive maintenance):

Once the application has been downloaded and used and if you have integrated user behavior analysis libraries such as Google Analytics or Flurry Analytics for example, it is possible to continuously improve the behavior of your application: the location of the buttons , call-to-action ...

You can also use feedback from your users on the App Store or Google Play to improve the way the app works or develop new features.

It is also possible to offer mini-surveys to your users on what could be improved in the application.

In summary, updating an application several times a year is very desirable. 1 update / month being the ideal, one update / quarter if not but one update / year, it is the strict minimum.

If this article has brought you useful information, that you want to think about an update strategy for your application, you can contact us through the website of our mobile application development agency