Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
LinkedIn
Share on whatsapp
WhatsApp

Mobile APP for Business

Do I Need A Mobile App for My Business? Find ‘Your’ Answer To The Most Common Question.

“The ‘mobile-only’ buzz is only an antic to disseminate a notion of crisis among businesses. This gibberish is marked by the antics of marketers & corporate honchos. It doesn’t stick a chance.”

Have you been bleakly influenced by this thought? If yes, you should find clarity. Remember, we said clarity, not a word more or less.

When every single opportunity is exhausted, it’s obvious to brainstorm ideas. The belief of expert marketers that technology & innovation is the key to attract any consumer isn’t vague.

But, does that mean we forget logic? Shall we invest/spend on a commodity that isn’t going to be of any use to us? Can we get past our competitors following the mobile-only strategy?

There’s no iota of doubt that mobile-friendliness on the web matches the need of the present & future. Any business cannot afford to forego the prized traffic of mobile users. Just it is a prominent truth that there’s no way to ignore or hide.

Crucial Role of Mobile-friendliness

Mobile-friendly is the nature of a website or application that enables seamless access on any device – be it Desktop PC, Smartphone, Tablet, etc.

Developers & designers industriously design a web app to provide such unspoiled performance across all platforms accessed by the user. Unkempt or shabby designs scarcely attract the users, pushing/irritating a chunk of traffic in aghast.

A plethora of businesses has both web-congregation and mobile-users for communication. If your audience or prospects have a good reason to download an app – they will, but only if you have benefits for them in-store. Otherwise, they have a pertinent reason to not focus on you – anymore.

Apple Company has an elaborate explanation for this. The IT giant had rejected 40% of App Store submissions for failing to comply with the guidelines. Some of the common faux pas includes:

  • Substandard UI
  • Limited Web Interactions
  • Misleading Users
  • Serving Small Niche Market
  • Crashes & Bugs
  • Incomplete Information

Businesses attuning to the trending antics don’t augur well. Mobile-friendliness can happen anywhere – Native Mobile Applications or Web. However, if the user doesn’t need the functionality of a mobile app, then it’s utterly useless.

For example, Uber users find it convenient to book their rides on a mobile application rather than visiting their website. They’re always on-the-go and require brisk services.

Similarly, if you have an audience who just needs information about a product/service, you don’t possess a valued reason to download an app. Yes, the very app that would consume their phone memories and distributed runtime.

Here, the core idea lies in the benefit a user will enjoy, not just your business. You’d be repatriating them if only focused on that ‘profitable’ side of yours. Customers will find this as rude and selfish attributes of your business.

Meanwhile, a modern mobile web design laced with responsiveness & the latest technologies has everything to deliver a user, irrespective of the device they have. A fair majority of businesses handle their customers from there – they just love it.

Grasping to a second thought, the benefits of having a mobile app doesn’t also recede. As a business owner, the pivotal role of mobile apps should thrust on exploring possibilities, needs, advantages, and collective benefits. Follow this trail for an enlightening perspective.

Benefits of Owning a Mobile App –
A Checklist for Consideration

The exponential growth of mobile apps (for both Android and iOS) is discernible. According to Statista, “Business” accounts 10.12% share of available apps for most popular Apple App Store categories, while “Games” lead with a significant 22.37%.

Owning a mobile exposes a business to a suite of benefits. This 10-point checklist underscores the vitality of mobile app for a business & its prospects in the long-term.

1. Customer loyalty count

Do you have an evolving number of customer count or a solid one? Customer loyalty records itself as proof for subscribing to a business product or service. In-app communication through ads, loyalty benefits, promotions, customer programs, etc. engage customers & help in assessing their behavior for creating better solutions.

One of the popular examples is that of Starbucks Rewards program from the Starbucks Coffee Company that helps loyal customers earn free food & drinks, get free refills on tea & coffee, free bakery items, and more. Additionally, it facilitates the convenience of skipping the line to grab their favorite beverage before arrival.

2. Enhanced Brand Recognition

In a multi-pronged approach, a focal point of attracting the audience never fizzes out. Most of the world-class brands learned inimitable ways of boosting familiarity among their prospects. A mobile app permits a platform for extensively creating awareness about the brand, its products/services, discount offers, etc. The benefits include:

  • Better brand recognition
  • Continuity in communications
  • Feedback collection
  • In-app promotions
  • Customer recalls
  • Increased sales

You can trounce the competitors in your niche by broadly classifying your brand as the only answer to a particular demand of product or service. Some brands directly resonate or reverberate at the mention of a product. For instance, Coca-Cola is synonymous to a cold drink.

3. Direct Marketing Platform

Billboards, advertisements, pamphlets, hoardings, etc. are traditional ways of direct marketing for a business. But, mobile applications encompass all of the modern methods for businesses to market a product or service, create awareness, highlight benefits & advantages, and so on.

Be it newsfeed, updates, offers, additional deals or any information – the customer directly receives the push notifications from the installed mobile app. As it helps to make awareness easy for businesses by leveraging on mobile platforms, the need for bulk SMS, e-mails, etc. reduce.

4. App-based Mobile Payments

How about a swift & secure payment gateway? Contactless payments via Smartphone instead of pulling out cash, credit/debit cards give an advantage to both buyers & sellers. App-based payments undertake a convenient checkout process for customers, improving their shopping journey and enhancing the participation of businesses in this development.

Actionable data collected through payments give valuable insights to the customer shopping behavior, patterns, demands, preferred payment methods, inventory information, and so on. Businesses tend to boost increase in sales & customer service quality through data-based decisions.

5. Social Media Integration

Brands unleash their inherent power through integrated social media. No, the word ‘integrated’ is no more a monotonous utterance in the IT glossary.

In one of the game-changing strategies, social media integration plays a compelling role in improving functionality, in-app social sharing, ease of access, enhancing visibility, higher usage, sales/revenue medium, data analysis, and improving forecast & suggestions.

Speaking of social media, online reputation plays a pivotal role in influencing consumer decisions. 85% of consumers trust online reviews given on multiple platforms like Google, Facebook, etc. 4-star ratings attract 49% of consumers for deciding to choose a business. Therefore, Online Reputation Management (ORM) is a quintessential practice of promoting a business to the higher echelons.

Mobile apps help staff members monitor online reviews, feedback, and issues in real-time. Since mobile push notifications elevate guest feedback to reach all staff members, they can handle emerging issues, interact with the customers, increase responsiveness, and add efficiency & flexibility. Delays, disruptions, & miscommunication eliminates while quick service delivery rules the roost.

6. eCommerce Advantages

eCommerce giants like Amazon, eBay, Flipkart, etc. set an unprecedented personalized experience for the users – the faster, the smoother, and the seamless one.

Customers can’t spend their whole time waiting for a mobile shopping site to retrieve information from the servers. Time is money. The eCommerce moguls realize how to value their customer’s time and that’s what makes them the kings & queens of the industry.

From instant online/offline access to interactive engagement, eCommerce apps habituate customers with in-app queries, grievances, product-based inquiries, and everything as a platform of convenience, quick problem-solving abilities, and instant solutions.

Apart from immersive experiences for customers, eCommerce mobile apps bolster productivity by 20-40% in employees, who are constantly in touch with the customers, learning their buying patterns, engaging conversations, and delivering accurate service. Graphical representations and tools can justify or reject all assumptions on buying decisions, cart abandonment, etc.

Sellers or businesses can utilize the same resources, along with social media integration, for expanding the social footprint across digital channels. This brings cost reduction, eliminates in-between obstacles, and productivity improvement.

7. Dropshipping Benefits

Wholesalers across the globe work hard to intensify their customer base via different means. Replacing odd formulas with mobile Dropshipping application adds tremendous efficiency and convenience in catering to wholesale customers.

For people engaged in dropshipping business, a superior quality mobile app helps to source the best and affordable products from across the world (US, UK, Europe, China, Asia, Africa, and more). By adding these products, the sales go on margins as high as 60-70% without depending on suppliers.

Mobile apps offer a versatile range of features, including adding an unlimited amount of products, chat, email, tiered pricing, etc. Drop shippers can get their stuff together instead of bothering themselves into both charted and uncharted deposits of difficulties.

8. Up-selling & Cross-selling Benefits

McDonald’s phrase “Would you like fries with that?” – A well-liked cross-selling tactic employed by the American fast food company to prop up sales through complementary product offerings. A restaurant business can thrive on these opportunities to sell an additional dish or beverage without confusing the shopper.

App-based platforms for food, electronics, groceries, etc. should stay natural and relevant when suggesting a shopper an item they might need during the closure of the transaction. Improved buying experiences for customers initiate regular transactions and optimal performance.

Similarly, when a seller has a higher-value product for a customer, they can simply push it through the mobile app for a consumer’s consideration. This favorite method of up-selling gratifies customer behavior into buying premium or enhanced versions of products.

9. Selling on Popular Platforms

Amazon – the eCommerce giant in the retail sector – brings immense credibility to its name. With new brands tying up, the edge is clean and sharp. The enhanced exposure of these popular eCommerce platforms does a commendable job in attracting customers and increasing sales footprint.

For businesses earnestly wanting to flourish in the app-sector, partnering with customer-loving apps like Amazon, Flipkart, etc. has clearly an advantage of pricing, advertising, better margins, profitability, and so on.

10. Digital Marketing Strategies

In-app digital marketing for existing and new customers invigorates profitability. Brands can focus on their demographic – age, lifestyle, buying/spending habits, recreational habits, and any other factor for designing excellent digital marketing strategies.

From researching the audience to understanding competition, optimizing to influencing and advertising to monitoring, digital marketing on mobile applications provide a cutting-edge to businesses. When brands gain traction with this approach, they thrive to deliver high-quality outcomes for consumers.

In 2020, most of the social engagement tools allow an ability to plan better, bigger, and accurately for engaging users on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube. Also, infographics, statistics, key performance indicators (KPIs), images, descriptions, etc. are provided on a dashboard of controls.

Entering a new stratum of response for users’ requests, the world tames the new and advanced technologies to derive colossal results. Let’s pave way for that.  

Progressive Web App (PWA) v/s Mobile App

Just like the regular websites or web pages, the PW Applications function normally, only offering a UI of native mobile applications. Some PWAs have witnessed a whopping 68% increase of mobile traffic and 137% engagement raise. Isn’t that outstanding?

The competition leaves no one untouched. It won’t be wrong to say that innovation & technology, together, make the cornerstone for an upward, higher, and advanced way to encourage sales & profits.

Asking all businesses to have a mobile app is a folly. We don’t recommend such intrusive ideas. If a brand has decided a course of action based on the consumer-type, business category, and related factors, they should step ahead in the same alignment.

On the other hand, PWAs as an alternative solution to mobile apps have a bright future ahead. The intertwined product of web technologies and mobile applications offer easy deployment and maintenance.

A PWA eliminates the need for searching, downloading, installing, and updating – all steps that are usually carried out for using an app. The users can directly enjoy using the PWA minus the complications enlisted in a mobile app.

A curious user directly accesses PWAs safely without depending on connectivity (offline favorites will be delighted to know this!) and that too on any device. The mobile-similar platform delivers a more intimate experience to the users and presents freshly brewed content from the Internet.

The Decisive Benefits of PWAs

Given the rising popularity of PWAs, businesses can rethink their strategies for utilizing this alternative and pouch impeccable benefits out of it. Here’s a sneak peek:

  • App-like Look and Feel

With an attractive interface, mobile app-level speed & responsiveness, the PWAs deliver the scrumptious combination of best website performance and look-and-feel of mobile apps – a favorable impact on advancing user experience, page views, and visitor traffic.

  • Independent Availability

Do refer to the Apple guidelines we mentioned it much above! Mobile apps that allegedly don’t qualify guidelines of app stores may get trashed easily. This isn’t possible in PWAs. Producers can have their way to provide the relevant content for the end-users without limitations.

  • Seamless Performance

Counted as the top-notch positive features of PWAs – fast installation, better functionality, and seamless offline operations and enhanced security stimulate exceptional performance. No one can negate these factors when it comes to users’ perspective.

  • Low Costs for Development

Oft times it takes a few privileged marketers to embarrass businesses for their ‘small’ budgets. “Invest loads, you’ll get the unparalleled outcomes,” they say.

Nevertheless, intelligent marketers suggest feasible solutions like progressive web apps that cost less than a quarter of a mobile app. All touch-points secured without insipid costs for development.

Don’t stall your decisions on what people say. Analyze your requirements!

The Decision on Mobile Strategy

Revisiting the 10-point checklist throws light on the cause and needs of your business. On checking with what’s necessary or relevant to your business, you have the break to get the desired results.

Entrepreneurs, leaders, and business people – you can take the following questions into account and consider the answers for making a decision on choosing a mobile app.

  • Does a native application offer a better, original, and unique experience?
  • Can our business afford the complexity of tasks attached to building a mobile app or pay for it?
  • Does my business draw more audience from mobile apps than the mobile-optimized website?
  • Can I deliver high-quality performance and service to the users on an App?
  • Will our revenues witness a spurt of growth from incorporating mobile app strategy?

Additional queries may also resolve the issues with high transparency & consistency. An inquisitive questionnaire pushes for an apparent answer(s).

The prime and universal nature of mobile access through smartphones/tablets or any other device compels businesses to ask this prominent set of questions. By having said that, not all businesses, palpably, depend on mobile applications for achieving their ultimate goals or score tangible benefits.

The scope & scalability of a business (small, medium, or large) define an approach. The notion of small-business-can’t-do-it is preposterous and poorly believed. Any business that happens to see a blooming future through mobile app development should seek plausible solutions.

Weighing in on advantages & disadvantages of some or other modular format, you have the opportunity to see through the sea of challenges overcoming or not. Just when it’s pertinent to have a solution and you don’t gather assurance to round on one – refer to an expert!

Facebook
Twitter
Linkedin
Instagram

RECENT blogs >>>