Mobile apps have been a buzzword for the better part of the past decade. Since 2008, when the early smartphone apps appeared, the mobile market has witnessed a level of saturation that few other markets have seen. So, businesses are now wondering whether apps are even relevant to their target audiences anymore.

To be fair, there’s truth in that consideration. Smartphone apps are no more the single source of innovation to achieve explosive business growth. In fact, customers look for an omnichannel brand experience that’s consistent across multiple platforms – websites, physical stores, social media, phone calls, emails, and so on. And, mobile apps sit at the right, left, and center of brand experience.

Mobile apps engage users in ways that other channels can hardly match. They also give businesses more control over their users’ experience. So, does this all mean that you too, as a business, should launch your mobile app?

Not really!

Yes, mobile apps are important, but only when they offer you ample opportunities!

Creating a mobile app just because everyone else is doing it is a great way to burn through your precious resources – cash, manpower, time, and branding – with little impact on your bottom line.

The decision to launch an app or not should be based on sound business goals and available opportunities, not on conformism.

So, the right question to ask is: does a mobile app offer sufficient potential growth opportunities to your business? Let’s find out.

1.High Engagement

Smartphone usage dominates consumers’ screen time with an average of 3.9 hours every day. Mobile screen is the first thing people see when they wake up and the last thing they see before they sleep. Between these two events, they text each other, interact on social media, watch videos, send mails, and do so much more.

Smartphone usage has successfully overtaken TV hours. What’s more, 90% of the smartphone time is spent inside apps. Only 10% is spent outside apps. Clearly, apps offer deeply immersive experiences that keep pulling users back to them.

Now, if you can benefit from your users spending more time on your app, then a mobile app makes business sense for you.

2. Be On Top Of Their Mind

In a world of increasing choices, option paralysis is a real phenomenon. Your users are constantly considering the options available to them. Even when they are not considering you, they keep seeing your app on their screen as they look for other apps. This reminds them of your presence and the options available from you.

Eventually, all the mind space will work in your favor, compelling them to make a few more purchases with you than they’d have made otherwise.

3. Acquire Priceless Consumer Insights

Mobile apps are a goldmine of meta data. They help you identify the most profitable group of customers, untapped markets, ignored geographies, and target segments. They help you uncover new user needs, likes, preferences, and dislikes. By deep-diving into their app usage behavior, you can identify specific areas in your products or services that need improvement, and also obtain ideas for new features in demand.

In a nutshell, mobile apps help you understand your customers on an unprecedented level and give them precisely what they want from you. These insights help you fuel innovation within your organization and dominate the competition.

4. Offer Personalized Experiences

Mobile app experiences are addictive. They offer highly intuitive and immersive experiences that are hard to match for other platforms, including the web. One of the most pillars of this addictive engagement is personalization.

80% of the consumers are more likely to shop from a brand that offers personalized experiences.

This is highly relevant for every business, no matter the industry. For instance, retail consumers would be thrilled to get personalized product recommendations that meet their unique needs.

Likewise, B2B customers would love to get quick, automated responses from chatbots for simple queries related to their history with the business. For more complex queries, they can talk to customer support executives. This focus on speed and responsiveness can be a gamechanger for lean businesses who operate with minimum people.

5. Slip Into Their Social Platforms

Most smartphone users are avid social media users. They often share significant moments of their everyday life on social media – dinner, lunch, shopping spree, paintball game with friends, and so on. You can encourage them to share their in-app milestone events on their social media.

These events can be anything – a new high score, a purchase, savings milestone, personal workout milestones, or something else. As long as your app offers them an event that makes them happy, they’ll definitely consider sharing it on their social media. And, when they do, it’s free promotion for you.

Think of all the Farmville requests and Candy Crush high-scores that plagued our collective social media walls a few years ago. Imagine how much money the people behind those games saved, thanks to the free promotion generated by their very own users.

6. It’s Not Always About Customers

Enterprise apps are rapidly becoming the norm at medium and large enterprises. These apps allow employees, contractors, and vendors to perform their tasks and offer their services to the company remotely. It could be with IoT deployment at a job site for monitoring, remote installation, remote access to contextual data (sales, operations, etc.), or something else.

For instance, an on-road sales executive who is constantly meeting sales leads can pull relevant data on the leads from corporate servers effortlessly using the enterprise app. This data can prove invaluable in converting the lead into customer.

7. Set Up New Revenue Channels

Satisfying app experiences encourage mobile users to spend more time on your app. The more time they spend, the more they learn about your products, services, and add-ons. With personalized suggestions, combined with discounts and coupons, businesses can drive significant upsells over time.

So, that brings us to the all-important question: how much revenue potential is offered by mobile apps? Well, consider this: mobile uses spent over $380 billion in in-app purchases just last year!

Businesses have several other weapons in their app arsenal to tap into this potential – push notifications, in-app advertisements, dedicated “Promotions” section, and so on.

8. Leverage Native Features

Smartphone users have access to an array of native functionalities that are not available to website users – GPS tracking, motion tracking, proximity tracking, QR scanning, and many more. You can utilize these functionalities to offer highly useful and satisfying app experiences to users.

Fitness apps do a spectacular job of utilizing these features to collect vital workout information like distance travelled, path taken, steps, speed, inclination, and more. Check out the various native functionalities offered by iOS and Android devices, and think of ways you can utilize them to offer your users intuitive and satisfying app experiences. If there’s an opportunity there, grab it!

Conclusion

A great mobile app is one that delivers tangible benefits to your organization. The benefits it offers must outweigh its costs. Start by understanding your user needs; translate those needs (as many as you can) into app features; then, think of all the creative ways you can generate additional revenues with your mobile app.

Vitec GmbH employs a mix of design thinking, functionality hacks, and affordable app development methodologies to create high-impact apps that help businesses grow. To learn more about our approach to app development and how it can deliver outstanding value to your business, get in touch.