Microsoft’s Sprightly App Targets Mobile for Creating Content

By Evan Vuckovic

Microsoft recently introduced a mobile app it calls Sprightly. The Microsoft Sprightly app enables marketers of all levels to quickly design and market their catalogs, e-cards, price lists, and flyers—all on a mobile device.

As a marketer myself, I decided to give the Sprightly app a try to see what all the hype was about.

 

Sprightly: Android and Now iOS

Sprightly became available on the Android app store in February, and as of last week, iPhone users can download Microsoft’s Sprightly app for their iOS device.

This app comes in handy when marketers need to create a design on the go. Considering the time it can take to create and brand designs in Photoshop, this app can help marketers save time by streamlining their content creation process.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

Smaller companies who market consumer products can benefit from using Sprightly because it allows them to showcase their product by simply taking a picture, creating their template, and sharing their design.

This app is practical for when you need to quickly create a catalog, e-card, price list, or flyer. For the non-creative types, this app can also be of benefit. In addition, if users plan on marketing and selling consumer products or any other type of tangibles, this can be a quick and easy way to create designs that showcase their products.

    

 

A Marketer’s Take

After downloading the application and gathering material by taking screenshots of our website’s Pricing Plans page, I was able to create a price list with minimal effort and time that can be distributed to customers and on various channels.

I thought it was fairly easy to use and it didn’t take long to figure out what the app can and cannot do. Here’s how simple it was to create a quick and creative design of our pricing plans:

 

 

Sprightly Is Young, But Its Features Work Well

The app is still young and that’s fine, as most successful apps tend to grow and develop with their users. By starting with basic features that work well, apps enable their users to explore all of the parameters of the current version before they take user feedback into consideration and develop another version.

While in the Sprightly app, users can touch and modify elements in a fairly simple manner, but there are a few key elements missing in the current version from the iOS app store. The themes and color options are very limited and we can expect Microsoft to expand on these features for when this leaves the workbench.

Another element which I am on the fence about are the character limits for the phone number section. The Sprightly app for the time being limits the character count to ten, and adding spaces between your area code and your number will leave you a few numbers short. On the other hand, the title and name sections have a 25-character limit which is a fair amount to add your title and to get your point across. With these current features, small businesses shouldn’t wait for another version to come out.

If you like clarity, you can appreciate the sharpness of the designs provided by the Sprightly app; that said, users may find their uploads a bit grainy and as mentioned earlier, this is new to the iOS market and further iterations are expected.  

Bottom Line for Marketers

All-in-all, the Sprightly app for iOS can be of help for marketers today with limited resources and time. Download the app, create simple and useful deliverables, and go to the setting within the app and become your own critic by providing feedback.