Scringo, an innovative, B2D startup that offers curated features for mobile app developers in one centralized location, today launched its solution after several months of closed beta testing. By signing up for Scringo’s service, mobile developers can quickly and easily access the industry’s very first “Developer Zone”, a centralized location where they can instantly load up on key features that directly address the “3Rs” of reach (distribution), retention (user engagement) and revenue (monetization). Free to developers, Scringo’s new platform-agnostic offering currently supports both iOS and Android; over one thousand developers have already signed up for the service, offering more than 250 apps that collectively support more than one million end users.
Ran Avrahamy, Scringo’s Co-founder, stated “We founded Scringo with the goal of helping developers bypass the time-consuming and costly process of creating comprehensive functionality themselves, so they can instead focus on their core app features and monetization. As evidenced by the strong metrics from our beta program and the number of developers already using Scringo, our solution has been overwhelmingly successful in achieving these objectives. We’re excited to now offer Scringo broadly to iOS and Android developers everywhere.”
Mobile Developer Pain On Multiple Fronts With more than 1.5 million iOS or Android apps currently available to users, competition for user attention is intense, creating an urgent need for developers to facilitate discovery of their apps. Retaining app users is also a major challenge: despite the roughly 500 APIs, SDKs, components and cross platform tools currently available to mobile app developers, less than 50% of people who download a mobile app use it more than once. In addition, developers face formidable obstacles in monetizing mobile apps, with existing monetization strategies such as mobile advertising, in-app purchasing, and paid apps typically deficient in generating meaningful revenue.
Currently, few app developers have the tools or knowledge to successfully distribute their apps, engage casual users, or convert them into repeat, paying customers. According a 2012 Vision Mobile survey, only 24% of developers surveyed – regardless of their experience or proficiency – plan their apps based on user feedback. This finding highlights a major flaw in the prevailing “build it and they will come” approach and suggests a lack of customer understanding in app development, a process that instead requires an informed, multi-pronged strategy to make an app truly user-ready. If developers had more insight into users’ needs and behavior, they could increase offerings, loyalty and monetization, a dynamic that signifies a promising market opportunity for any company that helps accomplish this.
Scringo’s Developer Zone Offers Free, Developer-Branded Features To Enhance Mobile “App Appeal” Scringo provides developers with a “Developer Zone”, a first-of-its-kind, centralized repository of app features and functionality. Managed through Scringo’s user-friendly and customizable dashboard, developers can use a simple drag-and-drop interface to cherry-pick which Scringo features to include and make available to users without requiring them to upgrade their app. Users interact with the features by swiping either left or right on an in-app sidebar, an unobtrusive interface that affords them maximum flexibility while conserving valuable in-app real estate for developers to use how they wish. Notably, Scringo’s SDK doesn’t interfere with the app’s UI, providing developers with full control over how their apps are branded (including the use and placement of Scringo’s icon), and allowing them add their own features and icon to Scringo’s sidebar.
Key app features available to developers using Scringo include:
• Activity Feed: Scringo enables developers to add a live activity feed to their apps to help create an in-app social network and increase user engagement. Developers can add automated events and activities such as images, videos and user actions directly into their Activity feed, and can also include a “Like” button whose usage can loop back into the feed, enabling users to stay abreast of what’s happening inside the app. Users can also message each other from inside the activity feed. Such functionality is especially useful for content-rich apps where users passionate about the content like to engage with other users, helping create and maintain user loyalty to the app and app community.
• App Discovery: Using a contextual, content-related algorithm, Scringo gives developers the option to suggest other relevant apps based on user variables such as gender, age, location, etc., facilitating mutual app discovery among developers.
• Community Builder: With Scringo, users can log into apps via their Facebook and/or Twitter accounts to create a personal app profile, control their social connections, and discover new ones based on common interests. Users can also find and invite friends to use the app, and developers can suggest users they can follow. Scringo also gives users the ability to discover and interact with others near their geographic location. With all features subject to clear and transparent user privacy controls, developers can help create a loyal community of app users by offering Scringo.
• Messaging: Scringo’s messaging functionality centralizes three in-app messaging functions and conversation threads in one convenient place.
User-to-User Messaging: A rare feature for mobile apps, Scringo facilitates direct communication between users via IM, helping create a dynamic, internal social network that drives user retention and recurring app sessions.
User-to-Developer-to-User Messaging: Whereas popular app stores block developers from communicating directly with users, Scringo provides a frictionless, two-way feedback channel between the two. Rather than forcing developers to create and manage apps in a vacuum or rely solely on analytics as a proxy for user feedback, developers can directly communicate with users, who can quickly and easily send feedback, report bugs, request a feature, and more.
System Messaging: Developers can create rich text push notifications to increase user engagement. In addition, when users send 5-star feedback to a developer, the developer can create a pop-up encouraging the user to rate the app on the App store or Google Play and/or share it on Twitter or Facebook, a strategy that aids in app discovery and distribution.
Scringo Boosts User Engagement & Monetization, Slashes Developer Resources Needed for New Features Data analytics from Scringo’s beta program show that adding the company’s SDK to an app will increase the average user time spent on the app by 97%, and increase the average number of recurring sessions by 89%. The reason for such dramatic increases lies in Scringo’s ability to give users a dynamic experience that contains more things to do, more engagement with other users, and more reasons to return.
Developers can also enjoy a number of other benefits from using Scringo. By offering free functionality to create full-blown social networks with rich features such as push notifications, analytics, and dashboards, Scringo enables anyone to present a polished, big budget appearance with limited resources. Scringo’s ready-to-use functionality also enables developers to provide users with a unique and personal experience out of the box so the developers can focus on building their core features.
While Scringo built its current set of available features, the company is already starting to partner with developers and third parties such as other mobile companies to create an ecosystem where developers can offer new features to other developers via Scringo’s Developer Zone.
To watch a demo showcasing how developers and users benefit from Scringo’s offering, please visit https://vimeo.com/scringo/scringo.
