What are the Benefits of Having a Mobile App for Your Business?
As a business owner, you might assume that owning a mobile app is solely for big brands, or that owning a mobile app for your business will cost you a fortune. On the contrary, it is quite easy to own a mobile app for your business. Businesses that own a mobile app tend to perform better because they have the advantage of using customers data they gather to execute behavioral targeting amongst other ways to boost sales and customer retention. Find out more about the advantages a mobile app gives your business over your competitors.
Why is it Beneficial to Have a Mobile App for your Business?
Let’s be honest, a lot of people spend more time on their smartphones than they do on their PCs. There is even a very high chance that you are reading this article on your smartphone.
In other words, most customers will prefer to have a smooth and easy-to-navigate smartphone experience of your ecommerce. One of the best ways to give smartphone users the best experience of your ecommerce is with a mobile app. Below are a couple of benefits a mobile app will bring to your business.
1. Increase Brand Awareness
According to statistics, an average smartphone user has between 30 and 60 apps on their device. And spends about 3 hours on mobile applications. And with more ecommerce websites than there are mobile apps, any way you can make your brand stand out is always an advantage. One way to increase brand awareness is with a mobile app.
When your customers install your mobile app, they are more likely to patronize you because every time they unlock their phone, the logo is going to be on their screen. Then there is also the push notification feature you can use to trigger customers to keep opening your app.
You can even dig deeper, discover, and combine some ecommerce trends that can blend into your mobile app strategy.
2. Track and Analyze Customers’ Behavior
Unlike ecommerce websites, a mobile app makes it easy to collect data about users’ behavior and preferences. This data can then be used to analyze customers’ behavior which can, in turn, be used to evaluate and improve your business performance. With mobile apps, you can track users' data like location, OS, pages or views, and so on.
A mobile app also makes it easy to check engagement and conversion levels. Let’s say if your customers make use of one feature more than others, you can use that as a guide when launching new features amongst several other advantages. And with several modern analytic tools available now, you can get further insight into what is going on with your customers.
3. Boost Customer Engagement and Loyalty
While focusing on your advertising campaigns and all, investing in building a great mobile app for your business can help boost customer engagement and loyalty. With a mobile app, customers' experience with your business will be much smoother. Such an experience will stick in the memory of your customers thus keeping them coming back.
And for every purchase a customer makes through your mobile app, you can reward them with a certain discount. Take Starbucks for example, they have been able to build a lot of loyalty by rewarding customers with a free drink when they have purchased a certain number of drinks through the app.
So, your mobile app sales may even be able to overtake sales from your website which will offset the cost of building an app, which is not very high, to begin with.
4. Adopt Behavior Targeting and Personalization
When it comes to collecting users’ data, mobile apps are more efficient than websites. As such, if you want to use behavioral targeting to increase sales, then owning a mobile app will help. Behavioral targeting is all about using your customers’ information to strengthen your advertising campaigns.
With the information you gather, you can display what is more relevant to a specific user. For example, if you own a fashion store, on the feed page on your mobile app, if a customer often buys male items, then you can use this behavior to your advantage by displaying more male items.
The demography of a user can also be used to personalize the type of content you display to the content.
5. Improve the Usability and Accessibility
Another benefit of a mobile app for your business is that it makes it easy for your customers to patronize you. Having a mobile ecommerce store can be nice and all, as clients with a smartphone can easily access your business. But let’s face it, you can’t compare the usability and accessibility of a native mobile app with an ecommerce that’s compatible with mobile devices.
A native mobile app gives you better usability and accessibility. You can even integrate more features in a native mobile app than you will in a mobile ecommerce website. In addition to this, a native mobile app delivers an intuitive interface that feels seamless when you operate. Offering this convenience to customers will pose your brand as professional and better.
6. New Marketing Channel
Every business shares a common goal of boosting sales by increasing its market reach. To achieve this, the business needs to find a way to get its products or services to where the customers are. Today, most customers spend a significant amount of time on their smartphones.
In other words, making it easy for users to purchase your products or services through their smartphones can help you penetrate a new market of mobile phone users. A mobile application for your business will open the door to this new market channel, thus giving you a competitive edge, especially when your competitors don’t have a mobile application.
By adopting upselling strategies you can target your audience and drive more revenue.
What Kind of Business can Benefit from Having a Mobile App?
Whether you sell a product or you offer a service, you can benefit from the advantages of owning a mobile app. Below are examples of some businesses that can benefit from having a mobile app.
Pharmaceutical Industry
A pharmacy having a mobile app can help take purchasing drugs into a whole new realm. With the app, patients can easily look up the side effects of a medicine, find the closest emergency room to them, amongst several other functions.
And the best part is that several pharmaceutical businesses are taking advantage of this trend. Examples of pharmaceutical brands that use mobile apps include iPharmacy, Drugs.com, EMDEX, and so on.
Fashion Industry
In the fashion industry, there are a generous number of brands across the world that update and refurbish their fashion lines daily. The shopping industry depends on these brands launching new clothes, shoes, and other accessories.
To keep everyone updated on the latest, fashion brands have started using mobile apps to send real-time beacon notifications to their clients to lure them into a sale. Examples of fashion brands using mobile apps include Puma, Nike, Jordan, Adidas, and so on.
Tourism and Travel Industry
The tourism and travel industry can also take advantage of the comfort of mobile applications to help travelers. For example, a report claims that about 30% of smartphone users use their phones to search for the best deals on hotels and flights. This makes travel-related apps the seventh most downloaded apps on mobile devices.
Users can also use a travel-related app to get a sneak peek of their travel destination, watch videos, read reviews from other tourists, and make better decisions and arrangements. Examples of tourism and travel brands using mobile apps include Tripadvisor, Wego, Expedia, and so on.
Conclusion
If there is one thing you should not forget about owning a mobile application for your business is that it creates a better connection between you and your customer. With this, the sky is your limit, as those customers can also refer other customers to your brand thus increasing revenue.
After all, at the end of the day, every business aims to solve problems and make money in the process.