The importance of product management that understands mobile

Yet the Mobile Product Manager role is all too often underplayed, along with the role of Product Owner.  Having specialists that understand the nuances of connectivity, speed, size of screen, and user journeys, as well as the data that can be utilised to personalise and drive specific user behaviour, makes a huge difference to the final product. 

In this edition of Mobile Done Right, a series of articles looking at how to deliver mobile experiences that make maximum impact, I will explore the value of product management that truly understands mobile.

Mobile isn’t just another platform

Mobile is intimate. It’s interruptible, and therefore, demands immediacy. It isn’t just another platform, it’s the device in your customer’s pocket that’s always on, always connected (until it isn’t). A user might drop your app mid-journey because a notification came in, the train arrived, or they lost signal.

Good mobile solutions cater for this reality; prioritising speed, simplifying journeys, enabling safe states, and making it easy for users to pick up where they left off, reminding them of that interrupted journey.

Mobile is more personal than any other channel. It’s data-rich, location-aware, and deeply tied to behaviour. Used well, that data allows apps to be genuinely useful, timely, and even enjoyable. Used badly, it leads to irrelevant experiences, low engagement, and fast uninstalls.

To do this well, you need joined-up data across systems, and most crucially, you need the mobile app to be smart enough to act on it. This is where mobile product managers come into their own.

Why the mobile product manager role matters

Mobile specialist product management understand the nuances that can make or break an app experience:

• Connectivity: Designing around offline states, patchy coverage, and background refresh.

• Performance: Speed isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the difference between conversion and churn.

• Screen real estate: Making every feature, function, button and call to action work harder, with journeys designed for tap, swipe, and scroll.

• Personalisation: Knowing how to harness behavioural, transactional, and contextual data to deliver meaningful interactions.

When these nuances are overlooked, the results suffer. But when they’re embraced, mobile Product Managers can unlock serious business impact.

From web reskin to mobile-first 

We saw this first-hand with a leading wellness brand we partnered with to transform their mobile roadmap. Their strategy, essentially, involved copying and pasting web features into their app without consideration for mobile-first design and development.

Customer engagement was low; users didn’t see the app as valuable, because it wasn’t built with their experience as a mobile user in mind.

By adding Apdami’s mobile product experts to the team, we were able to work together to reshape their backlog around mobile use cases. By also layering in personalisation triggers, we completely transformed the trajectory of their mobile product. We saw a 40% increase in daily active users and a 25% uplift in basket size.

The lesson? Copying your web isn’t the right approach. Mobile deserves its own strategy, with a dedicated mobile specialist product function to lead it.

The business case for mobile-first product management

When brands invest in proper mobile product management, the payoffs are significant:

• Higher engagement: users return more often to apps that feel seamless and genuinely useful.

• Increased revenue: driven by personalised journeys that convert better.

• Improved loyalty: naturally, customers return to apps that become part of their routines and lives, whether that be re-ordering a prescription, doing their grocery shopping, purchasing holiday extras or budgeting for their week ahead.

It’s the difference between an app that simply does a job, and one that earns a permanent spot on their home screen and regular tap to open.

Getting it right

Mobile product management really isn’t web product management, but on a smaller screen. This is a complex discipline in its own right, and getting it right requires technical understanding, behavioural insight and creative problem-solving.

Once you do get that right, whether that be through upskilling, hiring or partnering with a mobile specialist, you’ll unlock new value with mobile experiences that users love, and your business results will reflect this. 

I would love to talk to you more about this - if you would like to come to one of our product meetups or just grab a coffee, get in touch.