We live in the mobile era where a business without a mobile app will perish between corporate giants. In order to reassure the survival of your small or medium sized business, you need to make your presence clear in the market by reaching and exceeding your business goals. The only way to achieve this is by preparing for the future and developing a mobile app for your business.
With mobile apps’ revenue on the rise and customers significantly shifting to mobile shopping rather than walking into stores, it’s about time you joined the trend! Even if you have a mobile-friendly website, it’ll never give your customers the optimized experience a mobile app would. Now the myth that only big corporations like Target, WalMart, or Amazon have mobile apps is completely untrue. Small businesses steer clear from developing an app because of how expensive development costs are. However, there are many local development agencies that target these businesses, offering a cost-effective alternative to help you grow your business. So what exactly can a mobile app do for your business?
1- More Visibility to Customers:
With a mobile app, you have the chance to put your product/service in the customer’s hands every day! An average American spends from 2 to 5 hours on their mobile devices daily, 86% of that time is on mobile apps. So whether they’re randomly scrolling through their phones or doing anything else, they’re bound to see or use your app. Your customers are more likely to contact your business and utilize your services through an app than they are through a website.
2- Strengthen Your Brand Image:
Your app is a part of your business’s reputation and it needs to represent your business accordingly. You can do whatever you want with your app, use your logo colors, make it trendy and fashionable or slick and clean. Most importantly, your customers need to understand your brand and grow to love it. The more users interact with your app, the more recognition your brand will get. As the word goes around, so will downloads and customer interactions. With more interaction, come users encouraged to purchase your product/ service.
3- A New Marketing & Sales Channel:
A mobile app is just a more advanced way to showcase your products and get your customers up-to-date with all your latest news. You can use this app to draw customers towards your business. By developing a push notifications feature, you can keep them in the loop with all sales, offers, and events. This is a great marketing strategy to get your customers to come back to using your mobile app and have them engage with your business.
A mobile app is positive exposure for your business and can potentially lead to increasing your website traffic. So by efficiently optimizing your app, you can increase mobile and website sales.
4- Digitalize The Loyalty Program:
A tool as old as time used to gain revenue for your business is creating a loyalty program. This can either be giving points to customers each time they purchase something or creating a reward system for buying with a specific amount. By digitalizing your loyalty program and bringing the perks to mobile users, you’ll gain more customers and make more online sales. You can even create special offers and rewards for mobile users to gain app traffic.
5- Faster & Better User Experience:
You want your customers to have an enjoyable experience with your business, and what better way to do that than to give them the option to reach you at any time, from anywhere. A mobile app is another communication gate between you and your customers. By having a messaging feature or a help option, customers can easily reach out to you without needing to call.
SEE ALSO: How Long Does it Take to Develop a Mobile App?
Now you’re thinking this is something that you can do through your website, however, it won’t be as smooth of an experience. They’d easily be able to search their needs, navigate through your app, and easily purchase what they need, all through their phones. Your customers are more likely to reach you through the app than they are your website, email, or phone number.
6- Exclusive Customer Insight:
What better way to understand what your customers are thinking than to get answers from them directly? There are multiple features you can add to your mobile app to get your customers’ reviews and preferences. You can add a pop-up review/ rating feature, gather statistics from their searches and most purchases made, or ask for feedback from time to time. The options are endless!
Knowing what your customer’s like and dislike can be used as a motive to improve your service or product. You can also develop an email or social media login feature to promote your products through email, newsletters, and ads on social media.
7- Leverage Over Competitors:
Many businesses, especially startups or small businesses don’t have mobile apps and those that do fail to utilize it properly. However, we’re in the age of digitalization and if you don’t digitalize your business from its infrastructure to all its operations, your business won’t last long. Having a mobile app will take your business to the next level and put you in the lead among your competitors. Your customers will be impressed by this advantage and it’ll make your business stand out.
8- Increase Revenue & Sales:
According to a recent study done in the last quarter of 2017, mobile app purchases represent 66% of mobile sales in total. As for overall online shopping, app sales take first place with 44% followed by desktop sales at 33% and lastly, mobile web sales at 23%. So it is very clear that mobile sales are on the rise and will eventually dominate all e-commerce channels.
9- Gain Customer Loyalty:
Convenience and good service are two main factors that make customers stick with your business and give you loyalty. If your customers enjoy the mobile experience over dealing with slow loading websites, they’ll want to use your app again. When you offer unique privileges to your customers like convenience, easy communication, exclusive discounts, and simple navigation, there’s no doubt you’ll gain their loyalty.
10 – Introduces a New Market, New Audience:
A mobile app allows you to expand your business internationally, without being tied down to your company location or local market. With an app, there’s no limit to the countries you can reach because anyone with Google Play or Apple’s App store on their phone will easily be able to download it. You’ll also get the attention of a younger crowd, millennials, who spend most of their time on their smartphones and are accustomed to downloading apps.
And so, this won’t only expand your customer base, it’ll take your business to a global level.
SEE ALSO: The Essential Guide to Outsourcing Mobile App Development
What’s next?
Developing a mobile app for your business is the natural next step to take in order to grow your business. And if you’re concerned about cost, you can Request a Free Quote Now just by filling out a form describing your business and requirements.