There is no denying that mobile tech and more specifically mobile apps have completely changed the business landscape. By the end of 2025, the global number of mobile users is projected to reach 7.49 billion. All these people spend as much as 92.5% of their time with a mobile phone using mobile apps.
These numbers are impossible to ignore and, as time goes by, the smartphone apps will continue to build themselves right into the very core of the business landscape setting up the pace for the rest of the industry.
What does that mean for new startups that, faced with heavy competition, traditionally fight an uphill battle for building customer pools and establishing stable sources of revenue? How can startups benefit from putting their name on the home screen of their users’ phones?
Let us try to find out.
Opportunities for engaging the customers
One of the most obvious perks of mobile apps lies in the fact that they are present on the phone 24/7. If we look at this situation from a perspective of a marketer, we will see this simple setup allows you endless opportunities for engaging your clients and building mutual relationships through push notifications, chatbots, and customized content. At the same time, apps are equally as efficient in harvesting data and helping you understand the clients much better. When put together these two benefits make mobile apps one of the channels with the highest engagement potential out of the bunch.
Easy way to stand out from the crowd
Even though the Google Play app store at the moment counts almost 2.6 million different apps, branded business apps are still not that common, especially in the SMB sector where business owners often see this asset as a needless expense. However, as we have seen in the previous section, mobile apps are countless times more effective at engaging the mobile audience than even the best websites. According to a recent article by Inc.com as much as 90% of users prefer applications to mobile websites. Offering your customers the benefit of a mobile app can easily set you apart from the completion without one.
A platform for seamless mobile transactions
If your company is starting an online store, you will quickly notice that conducting multiple transactions at the same time is much easier if they are conducted through app infrastructure in which you have complete control over the environment and phone resources (e.g., you have access to phone location). This level of control does require a certain level of experience, but professional developers, like for instance, App Boxer will be able to create a platform that will offer a streamlined shopping experience. And the easier they are able to make the purchase, the more inclined the customers will feel to do so.
Excellent branding tool
In one of the previous sections, we have mentioned that not that many companies use branded mobile apps. Aside from offering your customers a more streamlined way of interacting with your brand, this sense of novelty also lends your company with a great deal of credibility and authenticity. After all, if your business has a mobile app, we are certainly talking about an established brand, right? Also, there is the fact that, unlike other marketing channels, apps give you complete control of every single stage of the branding process ranging from exposure to action which allows for countless branding opportunities.
Improvise as you go
Even when they are created by a third party, the development of mobile apps is completely under your control. They also give you instant feedback and great insight into the users’ behavior. That puts you in a very good position when you can easily observe, what’s trending and how your users respond to it and make quick adjustments trying to tap into these trends. If you are proven wrong, the feedback you constantly get from the users will allow you to make course corrections before the ship sails too far off the coast. Keeping in mind the pace of the current market this level of nimbleness is more than welcome.
Efficient customer service
Last but not least, we would like to quickly cover the topic of customer service that makes one of the pillars of the modern business world. According to a recent survey, 96% of consumers cite customer service as an important factor in defining their loyalty to a certain brand. With that in mind, it is good to know that mobile apps effectively make cumbersome FAQ pages, email inquiries, and waiting time a thing of the past. The users are in a position to interact with the brand any time of the day, and thanks to the simple infrastructure, the companies can gather that feedback and act upon it without any delay.
We hope these few examples will illustrate the overall importance of mobile apps in the context of the modern business world. But, even if we are to observe this issue in the most basic manner we will see that a growing number of consumers prefer to use their mobile phones as go-to entertainment and communication devices. Mobile apps make the simplest and the most intuitive way to reach out to them through that specific hardware. Don’t miss the opportunity to use this simple and obvious fact to your advantage.
