#186: The best and worst mobile user experiences with Eric Futoran, Co-Founder of Embrace

Business of Apps Podcast

User experience. This term has become so widespread and significant for business because we all use so many products and services and if you think about it - your interaction with those products and services can make your day or ruin it.

Our smartphones and mobile apps have become our life companions and chances are your first thought in a morning can be about your experience with a mobile game the previous evening or watching something cool on Netflix or chatting with ChatGPT-4 on the OpenAI app and going philosophical about something. And if those apps worked flawlessly you had a great user experience, if they were buggy - you know what it feels like.

In this episode, Eric will tell about common technical issues apps have, the evolution of users’ expectations for app experiences over the years, unique challenges for mobile product and engineering teams, and more.

Today’s Topics Include:

• Eric Futoran's background
• What is Embrace
• The most common app tech issues developers encounter
• The evolution of app users' expectations for app experiences over the years
• Unique challenges mobile product and engineering teams face
• App categories that have the biggest problems with app quality
• The impact of unresolved app performance issues on app marketing metrics
• What Eric would like to change about mobile tech the most
• Android or iOS?
• Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Eric miss most?
• What features he would like to see added to his smartphone?

Links and Resources:

• Eric Futoran on LinkedIn
• Embrace website
• Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry

Quotes from Eric Futoran:

"One of our customers actually got threatened recently. A voice-to-chat app, which has millions of users got threatened recently that their app would be pulled by Google because they were below or above the threshold that you would see in the Google Play console. We help with all those things, and then we help you prioritize."

"And then they're throwing an alert which is really reactive. It's too late on mobile, your users are gone. And then because the release cycles, you're waiting a week, two weeks to a month.

And then you're trying to get an approval cycle from Apple or Google, which is getting faster. That's not perfect. But you're still waiting. And like, even a week is too long for a lot of these issues, even the smaller ones that you seemingly don't think that are a big issue, but they can pile and so the pain is getting all these pieces to work together, but also getting your teams to talk a common language."

Host

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012