Mobile app usage has skyrocketed over the last decade all over the world. There were approximately 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide by the end of 2020, with an estimated 1.4 billion smartphones sold in that year alone. As a result, most large firms and businesses have increased their demand for mobile apps.
Aside from providing services and goods to their customers, business mobile app development owners use apps to increase their Return on Investment in various ways. There's almost no limit to how much utility you can get from them, from brand promotion to learn more about your customer base.
This article contains some of the most important points to consider to learn how much your business and customers can benefit from a mobile app experience.
- What You Can Do With Your App
There are numerous benefits of having an app, and let's take a look at some of them. With an app, you can:
- Provide More Value to Your Customers
The business landscape has changed dramatically over the last decade or so. Business owners now rely heavily on technology to initiate and complete transactions with customers. Consumer expectations rise in tandem with the rate of technological advancement. Mobile apps are frequently an excellent channel for meeting these expectations. Retail shopping, for example, is one of the key business types that benefits the most from the use of mobile apps.
Convenience is a top priority for modern consumers, and apps put it at their fingertips. Customers use a personalized mobile experience to make faster and more informed purchase decisions, in addition to being able to search for products and create and track orders from the comfort of their rooms. This trend is supported by a study that found that more than half of mobile app users rely on these apps to fulfill their shopping needs.
- Build a Stronger Brand
The more value you provide your customers, the more interested they are in your brand. However, it is impossible to achieve a deep brand experience without deliberate branding efforts. This is where branded mobile apps come into play. Branded apps have proven to be more effective in recent years than traditional brand marketing options such as TV or outdoor advertising.
Marketing firms utilize mobile apps to increase brand awareness and maintain a flourishing relationship with their customers. Mobile devices are now an extremely important part of our daily lives, with a high usage time. App owners can use this channel to benefit their brand. The more branding elements (logos, color schemes, etc.) you get right within your app, the better your brand marketing results can expect. You can also use the data gathered by this app to understand your target audience better and improve your brand marketing strategy.
- Improve Customer Loyalty
A high customer retention rate is an essential component of almost every successful business. It is frequently possible to maintain a high retention rate by providing excellent value to your customers and ensuring they are always satisfied.
On the other hand, loyalty programs are an excellent way to take things a step further. While running a loyalty program is a great idea, business owners frequently miss the mark and create a program that is difficult to join.
Loyalty programs on mobile apps can assist you in avoiding this common blunder. Here are some simple ways to integrate loyalty programs into your mobile app experience:
- 1. Provide app users with immediate rewards. You can, among other things, implement a point (cashback) system that rewards buyers with a percentage of their purchase. They can then use these points to make additional purchases.
- 2. Make personalized product recommendations on time. This will necessitate careful examination of user sessions. You can then recommend products that will keep them coming back.
- 3. Encourage people to share socially. Use social media buttons to encourage app users to share their brand experience and raise awareness.
Loyal customers are useful not only for direct revenue generation but also as marketing channels, and they aid in the acquisition of new customers.
- Have a Competitive Edge in Your Niche
Keeping up with the competition in today's digital marketing world can be difficult. Even though numerous variables are to consider, a mobile app provides you with a significant competitive advantage, according to research into the role of mobile apps in businesses.
The demand for instant communication and increased reliance on mobile devices appear to be the primary factors driving this. As previously stated, communication speed is critical for customer satisfaction. Unlike traditional websites and other channels, mobile apps do a better job of meeting consumers 'need for speed.'
- Reach Higher Customer Engagement Level
Focusing on your engagement level is one of the most certain ways to increase brand loyalty and revenue generation. If you successfully increase the frequency with which customers interact with your brand, you will see an increase in customer lifetime value, Return on Investment, and other important metrics. Certain features in your app may be of interest to app owners looking to increase their engagement level.
One of the most important is segmented targeting. This entails categorizing users and controlling the type of content delivered to each user segment. User segmentation enables you to send personalized in-app messages, provide accurate user recommendations, and gain a better understanding of your typical customer's journey.
Similarly, you should pay close attention to fundamental features that influence the overall customer experience (CX). Regardless of how many great features an app has, it's difficult for users to stay engaged if the UI/UX design or accessibility is poor.
- Build a Direct and Personalized Marketing Channel
The marketing department is another area of your company that can greatly benefit from a custom mobile app. The first obvious benefit that digital marketers gain when businesses go mobile is direct access to user information. The information gleaned from user sessions and entry points into your app can be extremely beneficial for improving your marketing campaigns.
An app allows you to deliver content to your users more effectively than other traditional marketing channels once your marketers have all the data they require. Whatever your marketing strategy or goals are, going mobile allows you to put the best deals right at the consumer's fingertips.
Here are some examples of how mobile features enable this direct approach to marketing:
- Push notifications: The power of push notifications on mobile is undeniable. According to a Pushwoosh article, push notifications have an average opt-in rate of 70%. The difference is clear when compared to email marketing's 5%.
- Clickthrough rates in-app: Within apps, ads, calls to action (CTA), and any other business-related element will always have a higher clickthrough rate. This also applies to push notifications.
- Response time: Because users simply want to get to their intended action, they will always engage with your offers or prompts as soon as possible. In the case of emails, you may have to wait up to six hours on average.
While we can't advise you to focus all of your marketing efforts on mobile, you don't want to miss out on the channel's benefits.
- Utilize Social Media Channels
There is no better option than social media when it comes to driving engagement. However, to effectively integrate your app with social media channels, you may want to consider promoting it on these platforms as your first port of call.
You'll need a good social media campaign for this. Running social media campaigns on popular platforms like Facebook and YouTube is a great way to get your app the attention it deserves right away. Encourage new users to sign up with their social media accounts once they've received the much-needed downloads. This way, social media sharing will be seamless in the future.
Likewise, you should include social media buttons and other shareable CTAs in your app. You may need to incentivize app users with specific rewards to get them to use them. Challenges and other enjoyable avenues are the most compelling reasons for some users to share in-app content. In addition to sharing buttons, you can increase user engagement by integrating the app with social media feeds. The majority of application development companies provide this as an optional feature.
- Offer Instant, Better Customer Service
As previously stated, instant communication with your customer is critical for a positive customer experience. According to studies in the customer service industry, most customers now seek assistance via mobile.
Mobile customer service provides significant benefits to both the business owner and the customer.
- Customers are allowed to serve themselves. Including an intelligent, user-friendly help center in your app is a smart way to help your customers find answers to their questions as quickly as possible.
- Customer service representatives are asked fewer questions. With rising customer service expectations, a mobile app can alleviate your employees' significant amount of stress.
- You can improve your overall customer experience. Most of the time, the best way to provide the best customer service is to ensure that there are few or no problems. Data from your app can help you identify potential problems or questions before they arise for your customers.
In any case, a well-executed mobile app is always good news for customer service.
- Have More Control
Having your own branded app gives you a lot of power over how you run your business. There are several areas where you can take advantage of your extensive control, and let's take a look at some of these topics.
- Branding:When it comes to how customers perceive your brand, the design of your app is critical to achieving the desired effect. From the logo and transition effects to all other animations, your mobile app is an excellent way to fine-tune your branding strategy as your company grows.
- Security: The foundation of doing business successfully online is security. Using a multi-vendor app or any other channel, on the other hand, may give you less control over how secure your business transactions are.
- Scalability: In general, new businesses require a limited number of resources. When your company grows, mobile apps generally allow you to add more power to the mix. However, this may vary depending on the development technologies or agency used.
- Engagement and Customer Interaction:
Mobile apps are also excellent for establishing and strengthening long-term customer relationships. You can nurture these relationships by regularly sending personalized updates about your products and services.
Finally, all of this control gives you a lot more leeway to vastly improve your business processes.
- Have an Avenue for Customer Feedback
Interfaces and mechanisms for capturing user feedback are never lacking in mobile apps. Each of these interfaces has advantages and disadvantages depending on the purpose of the feedback.
Let's take a look at some of these customer feedback mechanisms in more detail:
- Widgets: They are great for generating open-ended responses about a specific aspect of your brand and are arguably the most commonly used method for collecting feedback within an app.
- Surveys: Similarly, you can incorporate brief surveys into your app. To increase response rates, make sure that the survey is relevant to the context of your app and that it appears only when it is convenient.
- 'Rate my app' prompts: This is now available on almost all mobile apps. App ratings provide information about customer satisfaction and help your app's reputation in the app store.
In a nutshell, mobile feedback mechanisms frequently have higher response rates, are available 24 hours a day, and require little maintenance.
- Conclusion
Do you want to improve your business processes and increase your profitability significantly? A mobile app could be the missing link. Mobile devices now power the majority of online traffic. Having a mobile app development service for your business puts you in a good position to capitalize on this trend. From branding to customer service and marketing, a few departments in your company will not benefit from incorporating a mobile app.
