11 NON-OBVIOUS REASONS WHY EXISTING BUSINESSES NEED MOBILE APPS

11 NON-OBVIOUS REASONS WHY EXISTING BUSINESSES NEED MOBILE APPS

Thinking about mobile apps, the main thing to remember is that any product or tool should solve specific problems and contribute to the company’s development. Keeping this in mind, it is necessary to define the format of mobile presence, plan the work and compile a list of necessary features.

In current times almost all companies need least need to optimize their website for mobile devices. Especially, B2C companies since their customers are primarily discovering their websites in their free time using smartphones. Since about half the website traffic comes from mobile devices.

There are 6 main ways to expand your presence to mobile:

Responsive web design

Progressive Web App (PWA)

Web to App Converter

Apache Cordova (hybrid mobile development)

React Native (hybrid mobile development)

Native app development

Check the material to discover which of these 6 ways suits you most. Now let’s talk about the reasons and at the same time benefits of building mobile apps for businesses.

Well-known reasons to develop mobile apps for businesses

It improves customer loyalty. Promote loyalty programs to customers via mobile apps and offer great deals or bonuses. You can employ personalized push notifications about new promotions and discounts. You can offer users with the app on their phones exclusive offers and special bonuses.

Increased customer engagement. Mobile apps for businesses act like gentle reminders that pull your customers back to your business.

Significant marketing channel. Mobile apps open a new great area for marketing campaigns. You can easier reach them with notifications about news and press releases and get their feedback easier through polls, surveys, enabling users to report errors.

Increased sales. With better user experience mobile apps for businesses make the purchasing process more convenient, intuitive, and simple, which ultimately positively impacts revenue. In some cases, mobile apps can be monetized in a new way for a business thus providing a company with additional revenue.

Better service and support. If customers have some troubles with your solution it is more convenient to use a mobile app to message the help desk.

Remain competitive. Mobile apps provide businesses with the opportunity to stand out from their competitors, by offering a visually appealing and interactive website.

Competitors from your industry might have not leveraged mobile apps yet, so by building an app for mobile devices you can get a competitive edge. If they have had it is even more vital for businesses to build mobile apps.

Non-obvious reasons to develop mobile apps for businesses

Optimization and automation of business processes.Such mobile apps are built for management and assigning tasks on the go regardless of employees’ locations. The apps might include features as exchanging files and data, aggregating certain statistics, an opportunity to monitor all financial transactions.

Highly interactive mobile apps can boost productivity growth for your business.

24/7 business.By developing mobile apps for businesses, you will be able to reach your customers 24/7, since they can take their mobile devices everywhere. Certain businesses (example: eCommerce) lose a lot of profit because they are inaccessible on mobile devices.

Also, people can always find any information about your company or products and services that you offer on the go 24/7 via your mobile apps.

Reaching a new audience.For example, you understand that your product or service might be useful for a certain audience (let’s say, younger demographics) that is more comfortable with mobile devices rather than laptops.

Increased visibility.Your business’ visibility increases at the moment every new user downloads your app for a business. How?

They will regularly see your icon on their smartphones menu.

Apart from this, the user can observe your company name and logo each time they visit your app. They will be able to connect your service/product with your brand by seeing it on the login screen.

Tracking and analyzing consumer behavior.You can gather valuable data about the audience, such as their location, demographics, interests, and many other metrics.

By tracking the way people interact with your app, you can understand how you can improve your product or service to provide a better solution. Furthermore, you are able to customize the app content and features based on how active your users have been with what you offer. Understanding your customers is the key to success in any business niche.

Improved SEO.Having a mobile app could be used to improve your business SEO (Search engine optimization). In comparison with websites without apps, web pages with app content will get additional points during indexing and appear higher in search results on mobile devices.

Interactivity. Mobile apps are more technical. Since they integrate with a mobile device, they are able to employ all the available hardware and software: photo camera, microphone, accelerometer, notifications, location, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.

A great example is an augmented reality which can help customers experience a product in 3D. The app displays the printed design on top of a camera-shot image to enable users to see the proportions and true scale.

More social sharing from your customers.The majority of people use mobile phones for social networks. Having your solution on their devices, they are more likely to share information about you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

It’s a good idea for developers to integrate social sharing into their app so clients have an opportunity to let their friends know about any new product or service you add.

Act as a social platform.Besides providing their service through mobile apps some businesses can become a social network itself. You can add to your mobile apps such features as messaging, allow the user to like, share or comment on the products. It will lead to higher user engagement.

Performance.If you need to perform calculations or data manipulations, those are accomplished faster on mobile apps than on the web. If data manipulations are complicated, it’s up to engineers to decide whether or not to execute them on the back end.

Reach customers offline.Mobile apps can work with limited or lack of an internet connection. Users could use your app during flights, in gyms, trains, forests, caves, etc. There are a number of solutions to implement date cashing and synchronization when the app is connected to the internet. Options for synchronizing big data chunks on a wifi network are easily implemented.

It’s possible to implement some date cashing, and synchronization mechanism in the app, so data is updated and precached when the internet connection is stable. The option to synchronize big data chunks on a wifi network could be easily implemented. Thus, the user avoids additional charges in roaming or charges due to overusing mobile data plans. The user avoids extra charges while abroad or overusing their data plan.

When your solution caters mostly to offline aficionados, then it’s much better to develop an app.

Summing up

1. Think twice about whether it is reasonable to go into mobile app development for your business.

2. Choose the most appropriate format.

3. Leverage all the benefits of a mobile app for a business.

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