Have you noticed how almost every major business in Canada has their own Mobile App these days? Have you ever wondered why these companies have invested the time, effort, and dollars to invest in building a custom Mobile App, especially when many of them already have websites? Well, this article is for you!
Research shows that Canadians spend 62% of their time online on their mobile devices. In fact, across the globe, mobile devices account for 60%+ of the total minutes a user spends online.
So how are these users spending their time on mobile devices? In Canada, 85% of online mobile time is spent in apps vs. the mobile web, a rate similar to the US (88%) and the UK (83%). Many countries even report app time shares in excess of 90%.
Most successful businesses have already jumped on the bandwagon and developed a custom mobile app to further their business goals. If you’re still on the fence about it, here are 5 ways your business can benefit from having a custom mobile app.
1. Boost Revenue And Sales Through Increased Personalization
A website may be a sound choice for reaching a broader audience and establishing initial awareness of your company and its products, but an app can create personalized user experiences that lead to greater customer retention. Across the globe, mobile app revenue is expected to reach $189 billion by 2020.
A mobile app can access device-specific features (camera, speech recognition, GPS location) to merge digital content into the user’s real-world environment, allowing customers more interactive ways to engage with your products. By using Augmented-Reality (AR) or Virtual-Reality (VR), companies can create immersive product catalogs offering tons of preview options to a customer. Fashion and cosmetic retailers can let customers to virtually try on products; architects and contractors can let clients preview a variety of designs before purchasing; vehicle and furnishing companies can let users determine how products will fit in their homes. AR apps can also make navigation in-store easy by providing the ease of creating shopping lists, supplying customers information about where to find the products they’re looking for, ultimately increasing the likelihood of a purchase.
If a mobile app delivers a great deal of personalized value to a user, they will return frequently, contributing to increased customer engagement and loyalty, which in turn, boosts sales.
2. Connect Better With Customers Through Improved Service
Customers can become your biggest advocates or most painful adversaries, depending on how you interact with them. Anticipating a customer’s needs and providing stellar customer service is the key to competitive advantage.
As mobile users spend more time on apps than the web, it only makes sense to be where the customers are to increase customer engagement. By having a custom mobile app that is intuitive and easy to navigate, businesses make shopping and payment convenient for their customers, available to them 24/7. Customers are also more likely to make repeat purchases and recommend your products to others if their in-app experience is stress-free and memorable.
3. Optimize Internal Business Processes
Mobile apps or IoT solutions don’t have to be only for your customer. Increasingly, businesses are location independent, with teams working across different countries and time zones. With an app or IoT solution for your business, you can streamline the exchange of files and aggregation of data between teams, monitor and manage different processes, and automate multiple tasks, regardless of your employees’ current locations.
4. Gain Valuable Customer Insights
You can gather a huge volume of customer information through your mobile app, which can provide valuable insights upon further analysis. For instance, with the data you’ve collected, you can identify which products are most purchased, which regions are most profitable, or which demographic segments make the most frequent purchases. You can also learn how much time they spend on the app, what search terms they use, or where your customers are dropping off.
By analyzing all this data and tracking the way customers use your app, you can make enhancements to your products and user experience, or even identify new business opportunities.
5. Increase Your Brand’s Value
A custom mobile app offers businesses a platform for both advertisement and assistance to the consumer, and also an opportunity to provide the customer a completely new and different user experience from the perspective of the brand. By publishing relevant user-centric content on your app, you can encourage regular app visits by the user. Through regular interaction on your app, your brand builds trust and recognition while speeding up the buying process. In addition, your brand is on the mind of the customer even when they’re offline or using other apps on their phone, because they will view your app icon on their list.
Other Benefits Of Having A Mobile App
There are a lot more reasons to consider developing a mobile app for your business, including but not limited to:
● Ability to work offline
● Accelerate product innovation
● Ability to use NFC (Near-Field Communications) for seamless payments
● Showcase new products
● Connect with social media platforms
If you’re looking to go mobile, Syncoria can help! We develop custom mobile apps for a variety of businesses and organizations. Click here for more information.
Are you ready to have your own custom mobile app developed specifically for your business? Get a free consultation with us today!