Brief:
- Bank of America, the financial services giant with 24 million mobile users, is the first organization recognized by market research firm J.D. Power for providing customers with a mobile app experience that meets today's consumer expectations, according to a press release. The researcher started its J.D. Power Mobile App Certification Program to recognize brands with noteworthy mobile apps.
- Brands that want to be considered for the certification must rank among the top performers in the most recent J.D. Power North American Mobile App Satisfaction Index, which is based on customer satisfaction with the mobile app experience for 259 brands among 11 industries.
- J.D. Power lets a certified brand mention the achievement for 12 months with a trophy, online marketing collateral and in-store merchandise displays. Certified brands also are listed on jdpower.com for consumers to search while shopping.
Insight:
For brands with apps, the new certification program could support their marketing efforts as they look to drive downloads in an increasingly competitive space. J.D. Power, which established its reputation for measuring customer satisfaction in the automotive industry, is now recognizing how consumers feel about a variety of mobile apps across nearly a dozen industries. Recognizing apps is another sign of their growing importance in the everyday lives of consumers over the past several years.
The mobile app industry could use more standardized insights from companies like J.D. Power aside from customer's ratings and reviews that appear in app stores. People are generally more inclined to complain about a bad consumer experience than to take time to compliment the merits of any product or service, which could skew app store reviews toward negative comments.
J.D. Power said its mobile app certification program includes a rigorous evaluation conducted with Centric Digital. The 250 criteria of mobile app experiences are part of a system that classifies more than 3,000 digital best practices to benchmark digital performance. The evaluation considers navigability, design, messaging and notifications, mobile channel management, app store performance, user interface design and digital process and governance, among other features.
