Gone are the days when the consumer had to accept what they were given and get on with it. Across all sectors, businesses bend over backwards to provide their users with personalised, picture perfect services. Apps are the epitome of this, continually updating, forever fixing bugs and without fail improving their offering to their customers. Below we’ve put together a selection of five apps from a variety of markets which have continually raised the bar and put users first. So let’s take a look at what they do and how they keep their app users onside!
- Strava
Strava is a must for any fitness enthusiast. Whether running, riding or swimming, Strava tracks your pace, calorie burn, distance and pretty much everything that’s worth knowing. But here’s the best bit, although you might train on your own you can share your efforts with your mates, rivals and, if you really want to, the world. The app will also recommend running routes in whichever area you happen to be – particularly useful if you’re away on business or just moved to a new area. Key to Strava’s app is accuracy, whether you’re running in the countryside or rowing the Atlantic you want to know what your pace is in real time!
- Sky Sports
Since investing thousands of millions of pounds into English football from the early 1990s, Sky Sports have brought live sport and expert analysis into living rooms and pubs. Although this hasn’t been welcomed by a lot of purists, there can be no doubt that there has never been so much football or sport in general on the TV. But here’s where the app took their users to the next level. You could now watch the Ashes in Australia from under the covers on your iPhone at 4am in December without waking up your partner or indeed even stepping out of bed yourself. The Sky Go app has taken sport from the screen to wherever you want it – literally anywhere!
- Casumo
The Casumo iOS app is simply fantastic. Considering Casumo was only founded in 2012, this online casino has wasted no time in getting itself into illustrious company. The beauty of arriving on the scene when they did is that they have no baggage from a bygone era where tech was a scary term and mobiles were only for successful real estate brokers in the movies. Their app has retained the company mission ‘to create the world’s first casino adventure’ and delivers fun wherever you turn. With beautiful graphics, a huge selection of games and a pretty generous win ratio, what more would a user want?
- Netflix
Talking of fun and revolutionising an industry, who remembers a world without Netflix? Ah yes I do, when you were restricted to watching films and TV series at the time the schedulers decided. Even worse, if a series was 12x parts you’d be waiting 1x week in between episodes and 3x months for the series to conclude. The fact that you can watch what you want when you want and binge your way through a whole series in 1x day is as mad as putting a man on the moon in the 1950s. The fact that you can download and watch these series whilst travelling to the moon is just incredible. Well priced, a great selection of shows, as a user you are well and truly in control.
- Nandos
So you’ve been for a long run, watched the goals from the game, played at the casino and caught up on your favourite series… but you’ve forgotten to eat and you’ve got nothing in the fridge. Not to worry as your favourite chicken meal is a few taps away! The Nandos app received initial criticism but they have put their users first and reaped the rewards. It incorporates their great loyalty scheme (keep accumulating those chillies!) and can help you find your nearest Nandos restaurant just in case you want to go and be waited on this time or next!
So there you have it, every business worth its salt has an app nowadays in the way that everyone had a website a decade ago. Apps need to work and progress or else their users will within seconds download a competitors. For that reason, we salute the five apps above for continually putting their users first.
