On a recent trip to the bookstore, I came across this Angry Birds end-cap display, with everything from plush dolls, calendars and books. With Angry Birds passing half a billion downloads this past November, it’s no wonder they are seeing such success with marketing tie-ins. However, an unintended consequence of this brand proliferation is that it anchors our expectations of what “success”, in terms of launching a mobile app looks like.

The reality is that not every app can see Angry Birds’ level of widespread adoption, and in fact, very few other apps (and even less in non-gaming categories) ever will. Does that mean you can’t have a successful mobile application, and shouldn’t even bother trying? Of course not. In fact, depending on your mobile strategy and objectives for the mobile channel, you may not need this type of broad appeal to achieve your goals.

Before stressing about how many downloads your app has from a specific app store, think back to what you wanted to achieve with mobile. Is mobile this simply a “me too“ offering, where mobile is just a checkbox on your to-do list, or did you want to accomplish specific goals such as:

  • Brand Extension
  • Customer Service
  • Revenue Generation
  • Improve Processes and/or reduce costs?

Now consider how you will measure success against those goals. If brand extension was your objective, then yes, the number of downloads is important, but a more effective metric might be total customer engagement. No matter how many people download your app, if they try it once and then forget about it, you probably haven’t done much to reinforce your brand with those customers. However, if you get a dedicated subset of your potential user base, who is enthusiastic about using your app, and are talking positively about it and your brand (to friends, across social media, etc.), then you’ve probably been successful.

If you are aiming for customer self service, success may be measured if you are driving high cost transactions to a lower cost channel? In retail banking, for example, this meant encouraging customers to check a balance or to see if a deposit has cleared via online or mobile instead of calling customer service, which is a much more expensive transaction. One caveat though, make sure you’ve considered if a live contact with your customer presents an opportunity to up-sell or otherwise grow the value of that customer relationship. In that case, while mobile adoption may be a success, you haven’t necessarily achieved your broader goals.

The point is that mobile success depends on your mobile strategy and the business case for your applications. You will want to craft a marketing and adoption plan specific to your objectives. Moreover, you need to avoid the temptation to look at a single app store metric, whether it’s the number of downloads, user ratings, or otherwise. Seldom does a single statistic tell the whole story.