6 reasons not to build a mobile application for your conference, event or meeting

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6 Reasons to Rethink Creating a Mobile App forYour Conference, Event, Meeting or Convention

(Not exactly the best way to engage attendees, is it?)

1. Only 28% of mobile users in theU.S. have smart phones.


What if 72% of your attendees couldn’t access your websiteor marketing materials. Would creating them be anacceptable use of time and money at your organization?

2. With literally hundreds ofthousands of apps in the app stores,mobile app discovery is growingmore difficult daily.


Even with developer confidencedeclining because of thefragmentation of mobile operatingsystems, there are about 2,000apps submitted to the Androidand iPhone app stores every day.

3. Nearly 3/4 of downloaded mobileapps are used less than 10 timesand 1/4 of mobile apps are usedonly once.


Quick Experiment: If you are a smartphone user, take a quick look at yourphone. How many apps do you see onthere that you were excited to downloadand then haven’t used again?

Maybe it’s no surprise to know free appsare used less than paid ones, but worthnoting.

4. To justify the cost, mobile appfeatures for conferences tend to beway more than anyone needs oruses.


Attendees using smart phones are already usingmany different apps to manage their travel, find localplaces to eat and figure out what’s causing buzz atthe show via Twitter and Foursquare.

Do attendees really need GPS-enabled mapdirections to exhibitor booths? Is there really a needto pay for development and then promote anotherservice for them to do this on?

5. Developing mobile apps is moreexpensive than you think.


We wrote a blog post about theexpense of creating an iPhoneapp, so I won’t go into it here, butpeople tend to think developingmobile apps for 3-5 differentmobile operating systems is fairlyinexpensive and doesn’t take alot of time, even on providersclaiming to use pre-packagedplatforms. It’s really not.

6. Notifications for alerts,announcements and changes onmobile apps are not an automaticfunction.


How much can you ask of your attendees?After you ask them to download the app,then you have to ask them to pushinformation or have to ask them to followtheir location. When you update or changeinformation on the app, attendees have toperform what's basically a re-download tosee the new info. What else might youhave to ask of them after they downloadyour mobile app?

So what is one to do?


If you love mobile apps or someone you work withinsists in them, we completely understand. We lovethem too and everyone here is a smart phone user.But we’re realistic about the fact that most mobileusers are not.

If you’re interested in hearing success stories ourclients have had using cost-effective and engagingtext messaging applications or mobile web solutions,contact us, or check out our mobile solutions forconferences, events and meetings, we can help.www.mosio.com

Use text messaging and the mobile web. Or just usetext messaging. It’s available on 99% of all mobilephones and 95% of all mobile phone subscribers in theU.S. have it as part of their monthly plans.


Contact Mosio

Web: www.mosio.comEmail: [email protected]: 877.667.4699Text: ASKMO to 66746

6 reasons not to build a mobile application for your conference, event or meeting

Technology