Sizing up a proposed APP: mobile devices like iPhone are so popular that banks are rushing in to develop their own unique applications. But which apps are useful to customers and also represent an appropriate extension of the bank brand? Check out this evaluation guide.

• Author: Goddard, Matt

Could your bank benefit from introducing a smart phone application? After all, mobile technology is everywhere. More than 30 million iPhones have sold and nearly 100,000 applications are available online. Mobile platforms and the applications they run constitute a channel for brand-consumer interaction that cannot be ignored.

To determine whether or not the creation of a mobile app is right for your financial services institution, which type of app makes the most sense, and how to design a successful one, bank marketers must first consider a couple of key factors:

* Does your brand have highly sought after proprietary content?

* Can you extend your brand's promise or functionality to the mobile environment?

* How useful is your brand's proposed app?

Four types of applications

Here's a simple way to look at it: By plotting the usefulness of a potential application against your brand's content and value proposition, you will find that almost every type of app lands in one of four areas:

* Campaign-based.

* Popular gimmick.

* Straight utility.

* Branded utility.

By seeing which one of these four categories your application falls into, you can better gauge its likely success--and determine whether or not it is worth the investment to develop.

If the mobile app you are considering has sought after proprietary content and high brand value proposition, but little everyday usefulness, then it lands in the '"campaign-based" space of the quadrant. It is likely that any success these types of apps have would be short-lived, with most consumers opening them only a few times until the novelty wears off. Campaign-based apps may be worth investing in for short-term purposes, but don't expect to attract many repeat or new users after that.

If the mobile app on your drawing board is neither intrinsically useful nor has any brand value proposition, the likelihood of its success is very low--but not impossible. Enter: the "popular gimmick" app.

Recently, a well-known beer company launched an app resembling a pint of brew that poured out when the mobile device was tilted. While it was good for a few laughs and may have made a few mouths water, this app provided no real extended brand worth or usefulness to the user.

Popular gimmick apps like this can sometimes effectively support short-term campaigns or events, but often go totally unnoticed and usually become obsolete or forgotten after the campaign ends. Also, the popular gimmick app marketplace is heavily...