Have mobile apps replaced dogs as man’s best friend? A recent study asked millennials and baby boomers to use their phone settings to record exactly how much time they dedicated every day to using mobile apps. The average of 5.4 hours surprised most of the study participants. Unexpectedly, boomers averaged only about one-half hour less time than younger adults, so apparently mobile devices have caught on with both younger and older adults.
Not only do people spend a lot of time using their phones. They spend the most time using apps and not browsing the internet or even talking on the phone. People rely upon mobile apps for information, communication, entertainment, and of course, business. Is your business missing out on the benefits of mobile app development? Find out how you can attract and retain more customers while improving your brand image with a business app.
Explore five key benefits of investing in mobile app development and their high-value business impact.
1. Visibility
You know that an increasing number of people turn to the internet when they want to find products and services. Your company probably invests time and money for optimizing your business site to get found in search. You may already have a responsive website, which is a plus for typical search engines. Still, you need an app to take advantage of the massive traffic enjoyed by the app stores. Mobile users downloaded apps over 200 billion times from Google Play, and that doesn’t account for the Apple App Store and other repositories. A website won’t get you listed in app stores, but a mobile app will.
Of course, you have an even better chance to boost your visibility after people already have your app. Once they download it, the app can serve as a constant and convenient reminder of your brand. Each app will have its own logo, and you can create one that reflects your logo or brand image. Every time the user swipes through their downloaded apps, they can see your image. In this way, mobile apps will increase your brand visibility and top-of-mind awareness immensely.
2. Sales Growth
Between 2018 and 2019, revenue from mobile apps grew from about $365 billion to more than $461 billion. You can use your mobile app as a powerful tool to grow your own company’s revenue as well. While the revenue stats mostly include direct revenue from sales inside apps, you can use your app to help your business increase sales even if you decide not directly sell from it.
For example:
You can have your app designed to help monitor customer behavior, so you can deliver a personalized experience. This information will help you serve customers online and in person.
Use your app to communicate directly with the public. For instance, you can use your app to open up a direct line to customer service, tech support, or even management. You can also offer useful information, such as FAQs and instructions, to could help answer questions and reduce calls to customer service and other departments.
Ask customers for feedback or conduct surveys. In this way, you can let customers know that you care about their opinions. Plus you’ll know what those opinions are, so you can design your business to better serve them. Many businesses even offer incentives to promote their services, like discounts, rewards points, or free shipping.
3. Customer Loyalty
Customer loyalty apps offer you a great way to motivate customers to return to your business. If you don’t have a loyalty program, it’s time to consider one. If you already have a customer loyalty program, that’s great because your base of members should grow. For instance, a recent Technology Advice survey of thousands of app users found that almost 60 percent said a mobile app would make them more likely to join a loyalty program. In turn, about 80 percent of the respondents said a loyalty program would motivate them to choose one business over another.
Customers mostly join these programs to save money. In any competitive and price-sensitive business, an app-driven, money-saving loyalty program should improve retention. Some consumers also enjoy special, non-monetary rewards that help connect them with the company. A couple of examples of these kinds of rewards could include early notification about sales or special access to events. In any case, the right incentives to join and use loyalty programs can increase your sales from existing customers. And since it’s almost always cheaper to retain past customers than to attract entirely new customers, you’re bound to increase profits.
4. Competitive Edge
When you get a customer or prospect to download your mobile app, it’s almost like you’ve gotten them to put a 24-7 ambassador to your company on their mobile device. When those people carry their phones around with them in their purses and pockets, your company goes with them. Instead of tying people to your physical location or even your online store, you’ve given them remote access that they can use anywhere. Your customers don’t have to find you because you’re always right there with them on their phones.
Furthermore, it’s no longer sufficient to only maintain a responsive website. A recent survey found that 85 percent of mobile device users prefer apps to mobile-friendly websites. Besides, remember that you can’t get your website listed in app stores. Even if you don’t have a loyalty program, you can expect more revenue from of your app users. For instance, consumers spent 18 times more money on the most popular mobile apps than they spent on the top 1,000 websites. Your app can help you bring in more revenue that just your website as well.
5. Marketing Value
Naturally, you will want to work with one of the best mobile app development companies to ensure that your app adds value. It’s easy to see the potential marketing value of a tool that you can use to gather consumer behavior information, provide a loyalty program, and accept feedback and even sales. At the same time, these benefits don’t even include all the value that the right app can offer your business. For example, many successful apps make it easy for users to share their activities with their social networking circles. This, in turn, can help bring in even more app users and of course, more customers.
Again, you don’t even need to directly sell anything to the public in order to gain marketing value. For example, Proctor and Gamble provides the public with a handy app that they named SitOrSquat. This popular app offers the very useful service of locating nearby public restrooms. People who use the app can also rate the restrooms and add new ones to help inform other users. In that way, the app also invites social sharing.
While people may not directly buy their Charmin toilet paper or other products through the app, it still gives the company plenty of room to advertise and keep their brand fresh in people’s minds. This is extremely important in such a competitive niche as consumer products. Of course, Proctor and Gamble does sell their merchandise through online and offline retailers. Even if you need to market a business that cannot sell directly to the public online, you can still offer them a valuable app that will help them remember your brand. You might consider this is you need to market a law firm, insurance agency, or similar product that’s often discussed offline.
Are Mobile App Development Companies All the Same?
In the past, you may have heard that mobile app development involved complex, expensive, and time-consuming projects. Not so long ago, mobile app development companies had to create different versions for different devices, such as Apple, Android, or Windows phones and tablets. This process did take time, and it also made maintenance troublesome. To make one change, developers would have to update and test several versions of the program.
As an innovative and experienced app development company, we employ sophisticated development platforms that can create apps targeted to all devices at one time. This greatly simplifies both development and maintenance, meaning that we can deliver the benefits of mobile app development better and faster. We’re also experienced with different kinds of mobile apps, so we can suit the requirements of any size or type of business. We’re interested in learning about your vision for a mobile app, so we can help you create the perfect solution for your customers and your company.
