As a small business owner, what are you most concerned about with running your business?
Write down your concerns on a plain sheet, now, compare your answer with what other business owners think is most important to them.
According to Statista, after interviewing over 600 small business owners about the essential concerns they have about their businesses. 11 percent responded attracting new customers, and targeting businesses and 16 percent replied hiring and retaining excellent staff. Give or take you have one of these two items on your list right?
I’d imagine you wondering, what has this got do with building a mobile app for your business.
A lot! Don’t worry I’ll get to that in a bit.
But first, building mobile apps has become so easy with business app builder that you can quickly roll out cross-platform apps with just one development; hence cutting the cost of development, shrinking the push to market time, and getting your app into the hands of your customers as fast as possible.
Having said that, here are some of the reasons why your business needs an app in 2018.
Target and retaining customers
To stay in business, you need buying customers, and you can’t attract new buyers without reaching out to them. Here’s where an app comes in – recent surveys have shown that Americans spend over five hours on their smartphones and most of this time is spent using apps on their device.
Once, your app is in the hands of the customer, there are several channels you can employ to engage and keep your brand top of the mind. Such features include the push notifications, gamified contents, and so on.
Implement responsive customer support
With a mobile app, it’s faster to respond to clients’ complaints in real time. Your support team can engage with can swiftly move into action to resolve any challenges clarify issues for your customers hence boosting your brand reputation and perception.
Improve your feedback process
One of the hallmarks of great brands is the ability to listen to their customers – and there’s only one way of doing that – by putting in place processes that encourage and make it easy for customers to leave a review, make suggestions, and complain about your services.
Part of what a mobile app brings to your business is the ability to seamlessly act as an interface between your business and the end user. It’s more convenient contacting support, leaving a review or rating your services from an app.
Nurture customer loyalty
This is what you want, to build a community of raving loyal customers? The marketing goal of every business is to leverage the power of word of mouth to spread the news about their business. A mobile app is right there, at the core of this movement.
With a simple tap by a customer they would be spreading the word about services; so make it easier for them by creating a business app.
Acts as a direct marketing channel
Several businesses leverage apps to sell their products/services, encourage event bookings, share relevant news, and do so much.
So, the app can enable you to get your offers at the fingertips of your customers, and you can also use the push notification to remind them.
Stay ahead of the competition
Though the idea of business app was previously the exclusive of big corporations, however, with the dominate presence of mobile in internet traffic, it’s ha become a matter of survival for small businesses to get in the game.
Developing an app, keeps you at the cutting edge of technology and one step ahead of your competition.
Broaden your market coverage
You might be missing out on a market segment if your business does not have an app. One easy way of determining whether you have a mobile-addicted market is by analyzing the traffic source on your website.
It’s commonsense that millennials prefer conducting online transaction using their mobile phone, and according to a recent study, the purchasing power of this demograph is expected to the US$47 billion in 2017, that’s a lot of money you’d be leaving on the table if you don’t have an app.
In summary, for small businesses that want to get a cut of the internet traffic pie in 2018, developing a mobile app is non-negotiable. We’re in the era of mobile first, and your customers expect to interact with you there.
