Does my business really need a mobile app?
If this question lingers in your mind and you are looking for one clear answer, you have landed on the right post.
These days every business seems to be investing in a mobile app. From your beauty spa to shopping stores, everyone is making the most with mobile apps.
So don’t get shocked if your local food van guy also has a mobile app, or, planning to get one. Mobile apps are on the rise!
Data suggests Google play store accounts a total of 2.6 million apps. Also, more than 20,000 apps add in the list every month.
Numbers don’t lie!
There is a reason why every business is getting on a mobile app.
We will explore it one by one in this post. But wait that’s not the sole purpose of this post.
The idea is to help you decide whether your business really needs a mobile app or not.
And if yes, what real benefit it will give you in return for the dollars you will spend?
These are the real questions may come in your mind. Isn’t it?
So instead of simply listing 10 or 20 benefits of mobile apps, let's try and understand how building an app can help your business?
It’s a fact that a mobile app can help businesses grow in many ways.
But if you are like me who needs proof to believe, here you go!
We already know that mobile users have surpassed desktop users.
These increasing number of mobile users have downloaded 178 million apps in 2017 and the figure is still rising.
They aren’t just downloading but spending their most of the time too.
Data suggest your target audience 87% of the time is absorbed by apps.
More features, faster speed, high user experience, instant notifications have made people addicted to mobile apps.
The figures indicate why business owners should have a mobile app.
It's the best way to reach your potential customers.
It helps the business owners to try and achieve their goals.
This includes a few simple things: increase sales, boost efficiency of the business and build a loyal customer base who keeps coming back.
Business owners are working round the clock and invest all their resources to achieve this goal.
Today, with mobile apps into the picture, this task is achieved with lesser efforts and money.
Business owners have understood the ability of this platform to locate their customers and effectively engage them.
Because it's not enough to just produce goods and have a web presence.
You have to reach to your target customers and entice them to add the products in the cart too or show interest in your business services.
This is the purpose of mobile apps for every kind of business.
All you need is the right company to outsource your project. But wait how do you choose the right one when there are hundreds claiming to be "right"?
So here you go a complete checklist on how to hire an app development company.
Mobile apps are very important today if you still think mobile apps are for big brands like Walmart and dominos, you are wrong. If that would have been the case, the coffee shop at the corner of your area and the beauty spa at the downtown would not have their own apps. Right?
If you are still not sure whether building a mobile app is worth investing, here are the top reasons why you should go this path sooner than later.
Increasing sales and building a strong base of a loyal audience is on the top of every entrepreneur's list.
Business owners are always on the look for ways to get these two goals achieved. So how can you achieve both?
Well, research has suggested a dedicated campaign for loyalty program registers a 20% hike in sales compared to those without one. Result? Your business will register improved sales and loyal audience base.
The best part? Mobile apps can help you add a variety of loyalty programs.
The main purpose of the program is to bring back your customers to invest more time on your platform.
This can be done by giving rewards and prizes that entice the customers to make a decision.
So instead of using the old point collection card system, digitize the loyalty program through an app.
Rewards can be distributed at different levels, which boost your users to game up their level.
Let your customers collect their rewards via your app. Benefit? More downloads, higher visibility, increase sales and more return customers. Isn’t that what you want to get?
How loyalty incentives can be used in the mobile age?
We all know the percentage of mobile users is on the rise.
Data suggest US adults spend on average around 3 hours on the mobile.
In 2019, mobile users will surpass Television audiences attracting a lot of time of the US population.
While a lot of this time is consumed probably on gaming or social media apps, it doesn’t change the potential of this space.
By just being on their phone, a place that’s consuming a big chunk of their free time, you can be benefited.
After all, users now avoid going to a browser if they know there is an app for it.
How to Rank Your Mobile App and Increase Visibility?
Apps can help to fulfil many functions from booking forms to providing general information to search features and news feed, all at one place.
You can push all this information to your potential prospects with just one notification. What’s more?
You can remind them of the abandonment products in the cart with a price drop.
This is the best way to build a direct interaction with your audience and convert them into customers.
With just one push notification, apps send all the information to your audience's fingertips.
In short, creating an app for your business is like an advertising tool without spending hundreds of dollars.
It will allow you to use the platform and implement other marketing strategies.
For instance, you can send press releases, news, conduct surveys, polls and enable users to inform reporting errors.
This will increase the possibility of user feedback. Result? You develop trust and relationship with your potential prospects.
Building brand awareness through advertising can take a toll on your business capital.
Why? Because branding takes time and running advertisements over the same period means a big cost. This is the reason businesses have realized what role apps play.
Yes, apps can also be an expensive deal, but consider this: Your app will be there representing your business for years.
If done right it can help you attract the target audience and visitors much easily at a low cost when compared to advertisements doing the same.
Mobile apps are the best way to educate the audience about your products and services easily.
The more often customers will interact with your app, the more likely they will buy your products.
In the world of advertising, this method is called an effective frequency. As per which seeing or hearing about your brand approximately more than 20 times will boost sales.
6 Amazing Tips to Build Brand Awareness through Mobile Apps.
Customer engagement is the key, regardless of the type of business you deal.
So no matter whether you offer food, sell flowers or offer beauty spa services, your target audience would look for ways to reach out to them.
Make this task easier for them with the app. How?
Consider this, if you run a restaurant and your customers want to reach to you, what would they pick?
Booking a table in a few clicks on their phone or communicate with you via text on phone?
Can you see how an app can make a difference while communicating with your audiences?
Better communication with your audience, the higher the rewards you will get.
While evaluating whether you should invest in a mobile app or not, it's good to see what your competitors are doing.
Check whether your competitors have a mobile app or not. Not many businesses take complete advantage of their website itself, leave the app alone.
This can work in favour of your business as the competition in this domain is low.
By offering a mobile app to your target audiences you can strengthen your position.
But what if your competitors are offering a mobile app?
In that case, check the insights available from app stores.
See how your competitor's app is received by the audience. Check the reviews, a number of downloads and other valuable insights to evaluate your strategy.
If the app is getting traction, you need to drive strategy to offer your customers similar or better functionality. Else you will be left behind.
Competitive advantages of mobile apps for customers, employees.
If you know what made your prospect leave the product in the cart, wouldn’t you rectify that issue?
Indeed you will! The mobile app can give you a lot of such data that can be used for further analysis.
For instance, you can know how much time your users are visiting on the app, which products they are buying the most.
Also which functions are used more or less.. Utilize the data related to demographic, geographic, interest, audience behaviour and develop strategies to take advantage.
High user experience can improve conversion and sales. When user experience improves.
Benefits of mobile analytics in app development strategy.
Mobile apps offer undeniable features to expand the sales of any business. One of the themes is the use of geo-targeting.
Being able to share your location with a click has seen the most important feature of mobile apps.
If your business deals in booking cabs, mobile apps with the geo-targeting feature is the backbone of your business.
But what if you don’t deal in renting cab services? Well, even then integrating the geotargeting feature into your mobile can help you with increased sales?
Mobile apps can send notifications with location-specific and time-sensitive messages to target the right audience.
Also once you combine geofencing with the text messages, you can instantly reach to the customers who are close to the conversion.
Geolocation is not just used to attract the new targeted audience but also to reward existing customers. This can be used to launch a successful loyalty campaign. We have seen the perks of loyal customers to the business.
But it is difficult to keep the existing users interested and entice them to keep coming back to the site.
This can be done with geolocation. The feature allows to see the check-ins & reward them once you identify your loyal customers.
You can send a text about a sale, price drop or any special sales that are curated just for them.
This will entice them to grab the offer due to its exclusivity and rarity. As a result, they are more likely to grab the offer.
Geolocation apps help you to try some unique tricks too in your business.
How? Consider this: say you run a restaurant which registers no sales post the lunch hour. Creating a small discount on refreshment on snacks can help you boost the sale.
This is a good strategy that you can apply with the help of geo-targeting. Fetch the data and send the notification to the people near your restaurant.
This is a profitable feature that no business owner would want to go. By developing a mobile app with the geo-targeting feature, your business gets an edge.
Once done right, this feature can build loyalty programs, target the right audiences and increase conversions.
Hire developers from Codify Indi for scalable and robust mobile application and software.
While the benefits of mobile apps are undeniable, but whether to invest in a mobile app or a mobile site, is still a big question for many.
Many of my clients come to me to ask, Mobile apps or mobile websites: which one is better for my business?
This is a debate that has started some time back and is still going on.
Many people believe there is no need for an app if you have a mobile website. Others think, today, having an app is crucial for the success of the business. Who is right?
Well, data suggests, people prefer mobile apps over mobile websites. This gives us a strong reason to spend time and money on mobile apps.
Having a responsive website is not enough to increase user engagement and boost your productivity.
Businesses need to invest in building a mobile app to top up the game.
There are many reasons that show why apps are better than websites.
Here are the top 10 compelling reasons to know what real benefits apps add over mobile websites.
Do you know apps are approx 1.5 times faster than mobile websites?
This is the reason they perform actions much faster than websites. Is it any wonder then that why users prefer mobile apps over websites.
But what makes apps superior to websites?
Here are a few facts: Mobile apps store the data on your devices. Result? Data retrieval happens in no time.
But in the case of websites, data is fetched from web servers. Result? Data retrieval can take even minutes depending upon, speed, network or package.
Also, websites use javascript to perform actions but apps do the same work on frameworks which are more faster and superior. Result? The tasks are performed 5 times faster on mobile apps compared to mobile sites.
In a time of abundance of information, users prefer notifications of highly personalized content.
Businesses can convert the user into a loyal customer by carving highly tailored content for the users.
This personalization can be done using data based on demographics, interests, behaviour, geographic and etc.
With mobile apps, this process gets easy and simple.
The app allows users to set their preferences from the beginning using filters. Then they will be served with highly tailored user-based content.
That’s how apps allow you to cater personalized experience depending on filter updates.
This way users will come back to your app more often and hook to your services much faster.
The one feature that set mobile apps over the mobile website is the offline feature.
The mobile app allows users to tap on the data without an internet connection too.
Many apps offer features to download games, news and articles without an internet connection.
While you still need an internet connection to perform major tasks like payment and notifications.
But the basic content can be saved and accessed offline. The feature to work offline is the major difference between a mobile website and mobile app.
The ability to send instant updates to the user is a big reason why businesses should invest in mobile apps.
Mobile apps send users the latest update and information with push notifications features.
The user receives these notifications on the device regardless of his or her visit on the app.
This is the best way to bring your new product, services, blogs, and news in the notice. In short, push notifications help increase your audience base, conversions and sales too.
Mobile apps allow users to make use of mobile devices features.
This includes GPS, camera, QR code, compass, contact list, etc.
These mobile features when used with an app, enhance the user experience multifold times.
For instance, a user is filling an exam form online needs to submit a photograph for the form completion.
Now, the app can help the user to submit the photograph using the camera on their device.
Most websites don’t provide these features.
The few that allow also face technological constraints in using all the device features.
This is where an app gets an edge. As it can easily allow the user to use all the native features on the device. Making the user experience good and interactive.
Despite all the technological advancement, the website has to depend on many browsers functions.
For instance, back button, address section, refresh button and so on. Mobile websites depend on browsers to perform even such elementary features.
This is not in the case of mobile apps. They can be built by integrating a lot more elaborate features. For instance tap, swipe, hold and etc.
With these features, apps allow users to perform actions in seconds and efficiently. The user can go to the next page or the previous page using a swipe instead of pressing back or forward buttons.
In fact, the design of your platform determines user engagement. If you want users to naturally be drawn to your app, the trick is to work on the design part.
The focus should be to create a smooth design with simple navigation. An experienced UX consultant knows exactly what design elements will boost user engagement.
So a good way is to consult an experienced UX design company to get a robust user experience for your app.
This allows the user to perform any number of tasks seamlessly.
Mobile apps can be used strategically to target users specifically. Result? A high rate of conversion and leads.
This is where mobile apps again get a lead over websites.
Mobile apps are the perfect way to attract audiences and push them down in the conversion funnel.
For example, utility apps can be used to convert users in the top of the funnel into qualified leads. Apps like e-commerce, which are on the bottom of the funnel have a higher chance of conversions.
While websites reach out to a big set audience, apps, on the other hand, are more targeted in nature. With so many filters, features and data access, apps can be used to target different users in the funnel & increase the conversion rate.
We are living in a mobile era. Clearly, it's a perfect opportunity for businesses to use mobile channels for attracting customers.
No wonder why people are scaling their operations through mobile platforms. However, the confusion lies in selecting the right platform: mobile websites and mobile apps.
The choice between mobile websites and mobile apps depend on various factors. That's what this post will discuss next.
Developing a mobile website and mobile app can be a costly affair for your business. So you might want to choose the one depending on the budget and goals.
That's why most of my clients ask me "Are apps better than websites"?
While both platforms have their pros and cons, it's the apps that take the lead over websites in many cases.
All you need is an experienced company that has expertise in mobile app development services
Features like personalization, fastest speed, higher conversions and enhanced user experience are making mobile apps rule!
But still, the winner depends on the type of your business. For instance, a mobile website will win for a travel blogger while the app will win for a restaurant and e-commerce business.
This is one case, however, in most cases, it's the winner of both the combination.
Why not let your target audience access both the platforms: mobile website and app? So instead of one over other, focus on integrating both into your strategy if you want to beat your competition.
Mobile apps are on the rise.
Your customers will relate with your brand easily as it is placed on their phones now.
A solid team of developers can help you reap the fruits of a mobile app.
A robust mobile app and solid mobile marketing strategy, you can speed up your business and increase the revenue in 2019.
Hire Codify Indi mobile application development team and save up to 50% of the total project cost
Pramod Ary is the Co-founder & CTO at Justdev Infotech. He’s an entrepreneur, thought leader, and a problem solver. With more than 10 years of experience in the IT industry, he’s made it to a point where he can be called as a generalist who can contribute and lead in any technical discipline. He has significant experience and expertise in application, integration, and architecture.
Let us help you build custom software solutions that scale your business. Get in touch to book a free consultation now.
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