It is not the first year when sales through smartphones and tablets are equal to those made through personal computers. Traffic of mobile Internet use is growing every day and many consider building mobile applications for businesses. Here and there people do shopping, order services and search for necessary information by means of phones. The obvious idea which comes to a business owner is to urgently create a mobile app!

To prove the words we have come up with some statistics as to why create mobile apps for business.

Why create an app for your business: Fast statistics

According to Forrester analytics mobile phone becomes a live analyst for business transformation and its adaptation for mobile devices. Telephone is no longer an additional tool, it is a necessary part of company strategy.

Today mobile app development for small business and a large one is necessary to expand the outreach. To help you discover mobile app business opportunities, here’s the list of pros and cons you need to consider before contacting us or any other offshore app development firms.

Advantages of mobile application development

Mobile application is a way to ensure additional, stable and constant channel for interaction with clients, as devices are always ready at hand! Modern users are used to ordering goods, paying bills, booking hotels and air tickets without using computer, since you can do it with one click even if you are not at your working place.

Companies have an opportunity to inform about events, news or additional services. Besides, your company logo will always be in front of consumer’s eyes.

If there is no direct use, you should come up with an additional one, which will make people open application regularly.

For example:

  • Fitness-club application, containing diary of trainings and collection of exercises, water counter;
  • Restaurant application includes recipes and discounts;
  • Beauty salon application with everyday make-up advice;
  • Food and drinks application with games, augmented reality or competitions to increase loyalty to a brand.

The most popular types of clients’ mobile applications:

1. Mobile loyalty program. Lately applications often substitute regular customer’s cards.

2. Applications to supplement company’s existing online-services:

  • mobile show-windows, Internet catalogues and shops;
  • booking applications for visits or service ordering;
  • applications for tickets purchase;
  • Internet-banking;
  • goods delivery status tracker;
  • activities/habits trackers;
  • reminders/diaries/organisers/etc.

Mobile phone is already something more than just a computer – it is always with the user, it is kind of personal space. That is why if you are determined to get loyal clients you need to take your application as a new tool, which will be useful not only for you, but also for a user.

The direct indicator of mobile application’s redundancy is impossibility or difficulty to count the efficiency of its development.

By means of mobile application you boost clients’ loyalty to a brand, making them your long-term customers. Many countries face Internet problems. Users claim that wire Internet is expensive, lines are not everywhere and connection is not stable enough for online shopping. In such cases mobile phones are the solution for electronic commerce, attracting more and more new clients.

Disadvantages of mobile application development

Expensive development and timely updates.

Cost of creating a mobile app starts from $10 000 to support at least iOS and Android platforms, plus regular updates. In Google Play and AppStore, there is a huge number of “dead apps”. They were launched (with money and time spent on them), they worked and served clients, and then creators stopped updating and lost them. Absence of fixes and updates, ignoring users’ wishes, delay of actual information receipt – all that results to deleting the application from a client’s smartphone and additionally rises negative attitude towards the brand.

Not always relevant content.

As we have defined, telephone is people’s personal space. Frequent superfluous notifications lead to application delete. And to make notifications useful, in the right time and place is not an easy task. What is more, you will only have one chance to get the permission for notifications sending. That is why it is so important to spend your time and effort on this.

Active users retention.

Another important factor is users retention (the number of users who will use the application after installation in a week, month, etc.). It is really difficult to achieve this index indicators. About 26% of users delete application right after the first launch, so to retain a half of users during the first month is a good result.

To retain a user it is necessary to systematically carry out functionality updates, even insignificant ones. The interest will make users open application and try innovations.

Mobile site instead of mobile application.

Modern tools allow creating site’s mobile version being much cheaper without conceding the application. Mobile web-site demands less of long-term maintenance reducing the general cost.

Coverage of all popular mobile operating systems at once is an evident plus.

It is easier to attract traffic to a mobile site by means of advertising than to make users download an application.

That is why you should consider investment in the site’s mobile version – easier, quicker, cheaper.

Confined your business needs a mobile app created? Ask 123 Internet for a quote today.