How to Build Customer Trust and Loyalty by Offering Privacy Features
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Let’s discuss about how to build customer trust and loyalty….
In the modern era highly influenced by the digital world and high-tech gadgets, it isn’t easy to steer a user’s attention to a perfectly secure mobile application. Today’s users tend to be more inclined towards anything and everything that looks relatively shinier or offers something different that excites them. Most mobile app development companies are trying to satisfy this need of users by developing such mobile apps. But the matter of concern here is to ensure whether the mobile app is secure enough for the users to risk their data?
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Well, mobile phones are one of the most portable, personal, and the closest gadget to any person. With these parameters, there has to be an addition of security or else it will become a threat.
As a mobile app development company, you need to make sure that any application that deals with the users’ personal and financial data should be made robust enough to keep their data secure from any threat or misuse.
Security Risks in Mobile Apps
Before understanding how to protect customer data and provide data transparency, it is important to understand the security risks in different mobile apps. Here are a few risks that need to be considered during Android app development or iPhone app development.
Android
- When the developer does not follow the standard practices for establishing communication between the OS and apps, then there might be the biggest risk of Insecure Platform Usage by the hackers to snoop through the mobile app into the device and steal personal information.
- Reverse Engineering is the second biggest threat. Android applications are developed in Java and can be easily reversed with various tools that can reverse the bytecode and all the details such as login credentials, etc. can be easily obtained.
- When the users Ignore Updates, they are not accepting the latest security patches and thus the data is vulnerable.
iOS
- There are only a few security risks in iOS, but hackers are able to compromise the touch ID and so there is a User Authentication risk in iOS as well.
- Jailbreaking is one of the most common risks in iOS and so it makes the entire phone vulnerable. This is becoming a nightmare during the iOS app development process.
- Data is stored in cookies, SQL databases, common texts, etc. and all of these are vulnerable to attacks. So, insecure data storage is another big risk.
How to Build Customer Trust and Loyalty With Privacy Features in Mobile Apps
Accommodating privacy feature by focusing on the interactive design aspect as well is quite a task, and so here are a few effective tactics to know how to build customer trust and loyalty with various privacy features in your mobile app,
Keep Mobile Advertisements in the Back Seat
You don’t want to crowd your mobile app with advertisements as soon as the user opens the app. Not just because it can ruin the design and annoy the users, but also because it can act as a threat to the users.
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When you are incorporating ads in the app, it is a great source of monetization but you need to make sure that all the ads are tracked. You have to also manage the type of ads, placements of the button, etc. to create a positive user experience.
Don’t Make Signup Mandatory
Yes, you need user details to retain them for a longer period of time and it can act as an integral part of your marketing strategy. But, you should not force the users to share their details by making it compulsory to sign up.
Keep it optional as sign-up forms are becoming scary for the users owing to multiple reasons such as fear of information being shared on social media, less willingness to share their details by filling forms, etc. Keeping it optional can build a factor of trust.
Watch the In-App Permissions
In-app permissions are kind of scary for some as they create an untrustworthy vibe to the UI, on the other hand, they are the best way to secure a user’s personal information by giving them its knowledge.
So, you need to watch out which kind of permissions are requested and give them a reason as to why you are asking for those permissions. For instance, if you are asking for permission to use the microphone, then tell them the reason for it. As simple as that.
Give Complete Sharing Control to the Users
Sharing on social media as a part of the social media marketing strategy for your mobile app is a perfect way to increase your brand awareness, but you need to ensure that it is not done at the cost of the user’s privacy.
You have to keep complete transparency with the users about what they are sharing and on which platform. So, give users complete control of their sharing options, along with the necessary details.
Current Scenarios Depicting the Need for Privacy Features in App
To help you understand more about the need for the privacy feature and its consequences when you lack it, here are some of the real times examples,
Security issue: Data breach and privacy compromised
The recent controversy of Whatsapp has led users to doubt their data’s privacy even with such a giant company. According to reports, cybersecurity experts found that the invite links of various private groups and member profiles were available in the Google search engine.
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This has led to many CEOs and giants to instruct their employees to quit Whatsapp and use other similar applications. Thus, one security breach and the brand has stooped down. Though they have fixed the bug, people still have the feeling of doubt in their minds about trusting the app.
Security issue: No security in features of the web application
Facebook has been a target of hackers for many years and is still attacked constantly over various breaches. For instance, once it was fined for storing hundreds of millions of passwords in the text format, in another case, the “View As”, a feature of the web app was used by the hackers to give complete access to the accounts, etc.
They keep solving the bugs, and due to the huge number of functions that it provides, it keeps inviting hackers.
Walgreens
Security issue: Customer’s messages visible to each other
The US’s pharmacy giant declared a huge data-breach when their mobile apps allowed users to view each other’s messages.
This breach included the visibility of the user’s personal information, messages exchanged, medication names, prescriptions, addresses, etc. All these caused just due to a simple error in their mobile application.
Under Armour
Security issue: Data breach
Under Armour is the parent of the famous MyFitnessPal app. It announced the data breach of over 150 million users as their passwords were not encrypted with a complex algorithm and resulted in this breach.
Later, all the stolen data was available on the darknet and was available for sale after a year.
Sum and Substance
There may be a need for marketing strategy, whether it is on social media or elsewhere, but it all boils down to the need for data security and nothing else. The mobile app development companies as well as the owners of the app should realize the importance of data privacy and security and how to build customer trust and loyalty online. To get a fully-secure and reliable app developed for your business, share your ideas now!!
