Having a mobile application is excellent for just about any business and can significantly increase its potential outreach. However, for small businesses, in particular, mobile apps are even more necessary. With this information in mind, the following are some of the many reasons your small family business should develop a mobile app.
More Mobile Usage
While many businesses have established an online web presence in today’s market, this is no longer proving to be enough, as online activities increasingly shift towards mobile phones. Another way to look at this is that smartphone applications have been marketing tools too essential to be ignored. Mobile phone usage has peaked recently, while almost three-quarters of Americans checking their smartphones at least once hourly, according to a poll done by Gallup. Of this, nearly all is spent on accessing mobile apps, according to the analysis. Americans look at their mobile devices and apps more than they watch television.
Mobile Marketing
The increased usage of mobile phones and apps demonstrates that mobile phone apps have grown to become a crucial marketing tool for businesses, both large and small. Such apps boost customer engagement exponentially through repeat visits and a variety of online transactions such as loyalty cards, e-commerce transactions, and push promotions. Furthermore, apps can send out coupons and announcements that can promote customer sales, accelerating company contact, and improving customer relationships in a marketplace wherein quick responsiveness is desired and even expected by customers. Also, the icons used by smartphone apps provide easily recognizable visual designs that help promote brand recognition.
Easier Than Ever
The final and perhaps most salient reason why a small family business should look into mobile apps is that it is probably more manageable than ever before. As mobile technology and marketplaces evolve rapidly, many small business owners fear falling behind in a generational race. They believe that mobile app development will be difficult and costly and that they will have to create many different apps for different platforms that customers may be using. They also have uncertainty about static or dynamic apps and their ability to generate a design for an app.
Furthermore, many small business owners lack the savvy or know-how needed to create their mobile apps. Many new companies have simplified the creating and testing process for mobile phone apps, pricing the tools reasonably within the range for small business owners, with companies such as Bizness Apps providing small companies with templates that enable them to build complete smartphone apps for Android as well as iOS within around an hour.
With a drag and drop system that lets business owners develop and host apps of their own as well as collect usage data fairly straightforwardly. Testing apps to make sure that they are free of bugs is important, as studies have shown that customers are more likely to delete apps upon encountering a bug.
Companies such as MyCrowd QA can help with this process in a few minutes and for a small fee by conducting a bug hunt on the app. Within a few hours, they will send a list of bugs found, and you need only pay for the approved bugs. As MyCrowd enlists over thirty thousand employees worldwide to hunt bugs, they have a faster and cheaper approach than their competitors.
Companies like MyCrowd and Bizness allow small businesses to take things to the next level and create and test mobile apps more quickly, cheaply, and efficiently than ever before. Even the smallest of these businesses can avail themselves of the tremendous benefits offered by a mobile app when bringing in customers, quickening sales, building a brand, and boosting recognition thereof. As a result, there is no need for small businesses and older generations to fear changes in technology and the marketplace, as cheap and effective resources exist abundantly to help create and test mobile apps on any platform and for any conceivable function.
Given how prevalent mobile devices’ usage has become, it is ever more imperative for all shapes’ businesses. It sizes to use smartphones and mobile apps to get themselves out there and indeed stay afloat in today’s ever-changing market place.
