Can you really build a sticky app? We think you can. How do we know this? From our many years of experience helping higher education organizations like yours build campus apps their digital native students love and use daily.
So, how do you build a sticky app?
Tip 1: Design With Your Digital Native Students in Mind
Start with the basics: design your app around your users. Your students are unlike any other generation before them. Most own a smartphone (93% of them, to be exact). They spend an enormous amount of time on them (an average of 8 to 10 hours daily). And about 51% of them do their homework on their mobile devices.
You might say your students can’t function without their phones.
Because they are so dependent on their devices, their expectations are high. They expect the apps they use to be accessible from anywhere and have incredible performance. They also expect content to be up-to-date, receive notifications ASAP for the things that matter to them (please, no email), and have control over what they see and subscribe to. That means having hyper-personalization to address each type of user and each user’s needs.
Things to consider: Create a few primary personas for your users. For each, create a day-in-the-life scenario to give you a better understanding of the systems and apps they need to access daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly/semester. When you plot their journey, consider their challenges. (Yes, this is very much a Joseph Campbell/MCU hero’s journey.) Your students are the heroes, and you are the incredible wizard guide who always bails the heroes out of any challenges they might face.
Once you plot the journey, you will find that hyper-personalization and app/systems selection gets easier.
What to include: Look at all aspects of your students’ lives: academic, personal, social, and wellness. College is supposed to build social bonds that last a lifetime, so include things like:
- In-campus events
- Affinity groups
- In-campus wellness programs
- Study groups opportunities
Along with the basic things like access to:
- Student information system (SIS)
- Learning management systems (LMS)
- Scheduling meetings with advisors
- Lab schedules and booking
- Libraries
- Campus news
- Special events, like student orientation and graduation
- Classroom finder and campus map with
- Dining options
- Transit options and bus schedules
- Help desk
And personal things like:
- In-campus laundry options
- Marketplace
- Gym class reservations
- Group conversations
Remember to include polls, surveys, and a way for your students to provide feedback. This information will help you understand what your students most want from the app and school.
Tip 2: Make Your App Easy to Use
Your campus app should be the super-app for everything campus related. That said, make it easy for your users to access and navigate.
Things to consider: Create a simple, visual Home Screen that lets users quickly find what they need. Better yet, make the Home Screen customizable by the individual user.
You can take one of two approaches:
- Group all tools into categories, like “Academics,” “Campus Life,” “The Path Forward,” and “My University.”
- Or, create icons for each tool and start with the most popular ones as the default.
What to include:
- Digital ID
- Campus maps
- Dining (a favorite with students)
- Transit Schedules
- Calendar
- Notifications
Inspiration:
- Penn State Go app (icons)
- Connecticut College campus app (categories)
- Northern Arizona University (digital ID)
Tip 3: Build Communities with News, Events, and Social Features
This generation was born practically online and on social media. There is no better way to get your students engaged than keeping them up-to-date on your school’s events and news and providing information they will find both relevant and timely.
Things to consider: Make in-campus events exclusive. Get people to register only through the app. Give students opportunities to share pictures, videos, and messages within the app. Allow them to create social groups.
What to include:
- Geotargeted announcements about activities, events, and last-minute opportunities, like a concert reminder or available free pizza.
- Push notifications
- Student photo album
- Social media
- Events and agenda
- Proximity alerts
- Gamification
Inspiration:
Tip 4: Connect App Content to Students’ Lives
College years are academically formative but also about building relationships that will last a lifetime. Make it easier for students to connect and stay plugged into campus activities, like concerts and sporting events.
Things to consider: Use the app as the unifying experience for your students’ academic, social, and personal lives and well-being. Introduce a personalized student dashboard as the command center for all aspects of their lives.
What to include:
- Dashboard
- Alerts and updates
- Campus calendars
- Events and AGENDAS
- Social media
- Event check-in
- Personalized notifications
- Advisor scheduling
- Dining and menus
Inspiration:
Tip 5: Continually Optimize and Enhance the Campus App Experience
The key to keeping a sticky app sticky is updating it often with relevant content. You can use Modo’s sophisticated metrics to measure and track app usage to learn what users like, what they don’t, what works, and what doesn’t.
Things to consider: Use quick, in-app surveys and polls to gauge your students’ needs and wants. Review your app analytic data to track the use of features and tools to make informed decisions for future enhancements.
What to include:
- Polls and surveys
- Analytics
- Crowdsourced content
With a bit of research, attention to your students’ needs, and great content that is relevant and timely, you can build a sticky app and keep it sticky.
Interested in building a sticky student app for your school? Request a demo of Modo Campus.