Have you considered that a mobile app might be the first time that a customer interacts with your brand?
We all know that mobile devices are ubiquitous. For most of us, our mobile phone is our only phone and for some, the mobile phone is the only device. More than ever, your brand is being judged by the mobile app your company has produced. With a purpose-built mobile app built for iOS or Android, you can improve your brand awareness and customer loyalty, increase credibility and expand the reach of your customer engagement.
It’s worthwhile for every business to invest in mobile app development. Here are the top seven reasons why you should invest in mobile application development.
Your customers are mobile first. We all carry our phones with us everywhere, all the time, and the world isn’t going back. We use our phones as our alarm clock, we look at our phones first thing in the morning, and typically as one of the last things at night (in spite of what sleep experts tell us). Of the six hours we spend on average daily on various digital channels, 51% of the time is spent on mobile, 42% on desktop/laptops and 7% on tablets. If your customers are just like you—and you know they are–your business strategy must account for these trends.
Mobile apps boost interest in your brand. When your company develops a mobile app, your customers and potential customers get a window into your brand. An app provides a simple, frictionless way to showcase your products or services to them. If your app is designed correctly, customers and prospective customers will want to come back to your app on a regular basis.
You can capture and use data. Your mobile app makes it simple to capture data about customer preferences and the actions that they take. With enough events in your database, you can make this data actionable and learn additional information about your customers, allowing you to build models that will improve the effectiveness of all of your efforts. A well-architected mobile application will save you and your company the hassle of collecting and analyzing data. More than that, you can use the data you’ve captured to get customers what they want faster and easier.
Customers will appreciate how convenient your app is. Mobile apps, by their nature, are built with experience in mind. Customers have been conditioned to expect things to be more convenient. If designed correctly with a strong focus on user experience (UX) and user interaction (UI), a good mobile app is easier to use than a website. Your custom mobile application can be built to address specific customer needs, to create interactions that further your goals, and to continue to build engagement. If your customers can easily reach your team for support about your company or can learn more about things that matter to them, they’ll appreciate it. If they can have a problem or pain point solved, they’ll be happier.
An app will enable your support team to excel. Mobile apps are perfect tools for support teams. When your customers have a dedicated app, focused on the things that your customers really want, everyone’s life is a little bit easier. Beyond the obvious benefit of having a more cost-effective customer service program, a mobile app will increase the lifetime value of your customers and will enable upselling if the mobile app is purpose-built with this in mind.
You can stay relevant. A vast majority of millennials have smartphones—by some estimates more than 80% of them. They grew up with mobile phones and they’ve almost always been “smart”. Even though the concept of an app store isn’t even a decade old, millennials can’t imagine a world where it didn’t exist. (And as new generations enter the market, their expectations will change also.) A mobile app provides access to this younger group, especially when old, “tried and true” marketing channels can’t get to them. For many younger customers, a mobile phone is the primary device. It’s how they communicate with each other and with your competitors.
An app will increase customer engagement. In a world where the lifetime value of customers is maybe the most important KPI, we should take any opportunity possible to increase engagement with our customers. Providing an app that helps solve a customer problem creates a tool for that user. If you provide someone with a tool to make their lives either you will end up with higher user engagement which will create more loyal customers. Your company can literally be in the palm of your customer’s hand. Because a mobile app is always on and always available—and there are tools to make it even more relevant based on location and data—your customers will feel more in touch with your brand.
Mobile application development is a great marketing tool which will help set you apart from your competition. If your mobile app project is stalled, still on the drawing board, or ready for a refresh, we’d love to talk to you about how Level Up Development can help.
