Mobilification of Business
The world is changing with the speed of light. Technology is leading the change and smartphones are facilitating this change. Every component of the business is responding to this inevitable change. Be it a cost center of an organization or the large-scale business itself, every single part of the business is either going digital or facilitating the digital platforms. From Sales to Customer Care, from HR to Finance, from Marketing to Admin and the Backend offices, every pillar of the business is seeking ways to facilitate internal operations, multiply sales, increase productivity and expand business through digital means. Digitalization not only ensures strong reach of the business to the local markets but also gives more opportunities for going global. Every business has to have its presence on a dedicated website, social media pages and through its customized app, simultaneously. However, apps are getting more traffic than the websites or even the social media pages. Technological revolution has brought the business to the app-age. This app-age revolves around the smartphones. And it is said that mobilification of the business is the need of the hour. A business that is not on mobile is already on the verge of elimination.
According to a research, “89% of consumers’ time is spent on apps and 11% on websites, especially for commercial usage and leisure time, gaming, entertainment and social networking sites taking 63% of the chunk. The number of available apps in the Google Play Store was most recently placed at 3.5 million apps in December 2017, after surpassing 1 million apps in July 2013. Google Play was originally launched in October 2008 under the name Android Market. There are more than 6 million apps available. The total number of mobile app downloads in 2017 – 197 billion and 352.9 billion is expected by the end of 2021 (Statista). The total number of iOS app downloads in 2016 – 25+ billion (Source: App Annie). The total number of Android app downloads in 2015 – 50 billion (Source: Benedict Evans). This statistic presents a forecast for the number of mobile app downloads worldwide in 2016, 2017 and 2021. In 2016, consumers downloaded 149.3 billion mobile apps to their connected devices. In 2021, this figure is projected to grow to 352.9 billion app downloads. The most-downloaded non-gaming app publishers in the Google Play Store in February 2017 were Facebook, WhatsApp and Google. Facebook ranked first with over 140 million monthly app downloads worldwide. Mobile games are also set to generate a large volume of app downloads to mobile devices - all of the leading gaming app publishers in the Google Play Store had double-digit download figures without any signs of slowing down.”
Mobilification of the business is as important as running the business itself however most of the organizations are mobilifying the business because “others” too are doing it. This is not the right reason to mobilify the business. You should do it to facilitate the buyer, simple. It answers the “why” part of the mobilification however how to mobilify remains a question.
Consumer behavior is what the organizations need to keep in mind while mobilifying the business. They need to engage their customer as soon as he starts using the app. People like to play games (as the research depicts), learn through the stories or relevant case studies and then convince themselves to understand figures. “What you give is the price and what you get is the value” as Warren Buffet said. This stands true for any business. To make customers understand the value of the product, you need to help them learn the benefits and that too by telling them a simple and short story. With mobilification, organizations have the opportunity to show them the story and the best way to do this, would be involving them so that they could feel that they too were the part of the process. For that, organizations need to gamify the product. Mobilification without gamification would remain unproductive. Organizations have to learn the art of going beyond TVCs that engages just a couple of senses of the customer. They have to involve their customers in a game that keeps them engaged until all of the benefits of the product are communicated. The most engaging but non-gaming apps like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Google have already taken the big chunk. Their business model allows them to stay non-gaming and remain productive at the same time however most of the businesses are not following the same model. They need to engage the customer first and then to convince him to place an order.
If “mobile games are also set to generate a large volume of apps downloads” is the truth of the day then why not to give same opportunity to the customers on the app you are establishing for your business.
Gamification will not only help the customers understand the product in a better way but will also help the organization buy customer’s time so that he could stay on the app for a longer frame of time, get himself educated about different products by exploring more options and purchase the right one. It will convert a wanderer into a loyal customer, earn customer satisfaction, and above all, create positive word of mouth which will become a reason to generate new and repeat business for the organization.
The article has been published in Daily The Nation on April 23, 2018.