An Incisive app checklist

The Problem

Like many AOP member businesses, you’re managing a media company with a wide variety of different titles and verticals, and you’re being assailed on all sides by teams clamouring for apps for their brands on iPhone/iPad/Android/Honeycomb/<latest gadget here>.

But, with your limited tech resources, how to balance the strain of developing all these products? Is there a way of sorting the Angry Birds from the Sim Staplers, to prioritise the right projects?

The Solution

Speaking at the Media Briefing’s Mobile Conference earlier this month, Incisive Media MD of Digital Strategy & Development John Barnes unveiled a useful checklist the b2b publisher is using for this very purpose.

Before even thinking app, you'll need a mobile site in place, a scaled-down design specifically for mobile devices*.

This should allow you to start to get an accurate view of your mobile audience, what devices most of them use, their behaviour and the types of content they favour.

Then, ask the team to pitch their app idea:

• What is the content
• Who is the audience
• What is the add to the brand
• What is the device/OS
• What is the cost
• Who is the build partner
• What are the estimated revenues

Finally, borrowing an idea from Amazon, Barnes said you should ask the team to write a press release for their app - when you see the finished article, this turns out to be a particularly useful way of determining whether the pitch in question should be given the green light.

* Except for tablets, which JB said were being directed to the regular website, rather than the m. mobile sites.