In today’s blog, we’ll be looking at the 11 key benefits of having a mobile app for your business.
Mubasshir Pawle, the author of this blog has delivered hundreds of e-commerce applications. He has compiled this list based on his industrial knowledge. He has also explained the topic in detail and how a well-designed app can be a game changer when it comes to engaging customers, streaming company operations, driving business growth and more.
Remember the days when people had to use telephones and directories to reach out to someone? With the advent of mobiles and technology, that has changed. In fact, today’s smartphones offer a lot of premium functionalities that people couldn’t even imagine in the last few decades.
From retail shopping, social media, and online games, to booming metaverse technology, smartphones have brought a 360-degree change in almost every sphere of our life.
The last few years have seen real growth in the number of smartphone users worldwide. Today, more than 6 billion people from every corner of the globe are using smartphones.
That said, it’s safe to say that smartphones are here to stay!
As the demand for smartphones is increasing, the demand for mobile apps is also growing. Why? Because people’s expectations of their devices are growing. They are always on the lookout for apps that can ease their lives. Earlier, people could order food, and do online shopping, with mobile apps. However, now, there are apps for ordering medicines, fitness tracking, news and entertainment, audiobooks, meditation, and whatnot.
Businesses across the globe have realised the potential of mobile apps and are leveraging the same for their benefit. Mobile apps are helping them to connect with customers, offer quality goods and services, and boost their ROI. Further, it is helping them in brand promotion, monitoring business relationships, and more.
If you’re struggling to understand how much your business and customers can benefit from a mobile app, you’re in the right spot.
Read on to know more!
1. Offer More Value To Customers
The advent of the internet and technology has brought a significant shift in the ways businesses function.
Today, businesses give more importance to having an online presence than to physical shops. Why? Because being online allows them to cater to a large group of customers and generate better sales and profit.
Similarly, customers’ preferences, as well as shopping journeys, have changed. Now, people prefer everything to be available at the swipe of their fingertips.
Mobile apps bring your business to your customer’s screens and make it easily accessible. That means, your business is just a one-tap away from your customers and they can connect with it anytime and anywhere. Isn’t it amazing?
But, just creating a mobile app is not enough. Customers will feel the urge to connect with your business only when you’re offering value to them.
So, how do you offer value to customers?
Let’s take an example here. Tata 1mg is a leading online medicine delivery app in India. However, apart from just offering medicines, it offers additional details about the medicine such as when to use, how to use, side effects, precautions and so much more. It further lists the cheaper alternatives that customers can choose from.
By offering additional details, a comprehensive inventory, discounts, and other benefits, you can impact the decisions of your customers.
2. Connect With Your Customers in a Jiffy
If there’s one thing that significantly impacts customers’ satisfaction, it’s how quickly your business responds.
Since websites work on servers, if the load on the server increases or if the server is down, your entire business will come to a standstill. However, that’s not the case with mobile apps. You can optimise an app so that some of the functionalities are available even offline.
For instance, in the case of an eCommerce app, you can allow your customers to browse, wish list or add to cart the products. However, for placing the order and payment, you might make a sound internet connection mandatory.
Mobile apps act as key facilitators of communication between businesses and customers. Earlier, to get information about customers, businesses had to conduct surveys and research. But today, with the help of mobile apps, you can get ratings and customer feedback within no time.
Further, with a dedicated in-app chat support system, you can solve customers’ queries and guide their course of action.
For instance, BYJU’s, one of the leading ed-tech platforms in the country, offers a 24/7 chat support system. Here, customers can ask for any queries related to the courses they offer, exam preparation, career guidance and so much more.
3. Attract Your Customers With Push Notifications
When it comes to mobile apps, the power of push notifications can never be denied. Push notifications remind customers of your business’s existence and further tempt them to come back for more.
With push notifications, you can alert customers about upcoming deals, coupons, sales, discounts, etc. You can create personalised and creative notifications to grab the attention of the reader and further draw them to take the next step.
Push notifications that are personalized, creative, and have a clear CTA are likely to get a higher click-through rate than the average push notification.
4. Take Customer Engagement to The Next Level
Customer engagement level is a key metric that can help you leaps and bounds in boosting brand loyalty and increasing revenue. It tells you how frequently customers visit your platform, where they spend the most time, what are the pain points that are driving customers away, etc. Based on the analysis, you can make sound business decisions.
To boost your business engagement on your app, you must try segmented targeting. Basically, it involves creating multiple user categories in your system and controlling the type of content delivered to each segment.
For instance, segment ‘A’ consists of diabetes patients and segment ‘B’ consists of patients with blood pressure. You can offer a discount on diabetes medicines, glucometers, and sugar-free health drinks to customers in segment A. Further, you can offer informative blogs, videos and infographics to educate people on the dos and don’ts while dealing with diabetes. Similarly, for people in category B, you can offer BP monitoring devices at discounted rates, tips and tricks for care, etc.
This way, by segmenting the users, you can offer the desired products and services to them. It ensures higher engagement and conversion.
Moreover, to boost engagement, you can offer trails, subscription plans, discounts, coupon codes, and more.
For instance, Storytel, a leading audiobooks platform, offers a 30-days free trial to its first-time customers. Later, users can purchase their subscription plan to enjoy the audio learning experience.
5. Get Valuable Customer Insights
The role of mobile apps in gathering customer insights is undeniable. Your app can offer you real-time, reliable and valuable customer data that can be useful while creating marketing strategies.
For instance, you can collect users’ names, phone numbers and emails during the login process itself. Further, for creating a profile on your app, you can ask users to add their address, gender, occupation, etc as needed. This way, you can segment them based on demographics and create specific marketing strategies.
You can even track customer retention rates on your app, daily, weekly or monthly users, downloads and installs, etc with the help of analytics tools.
Moreover, you can ask users to fill out surveys and questionnaires. Once you’ve collected the data, evaluate and put it into use so as to minimise the pain points and offer maximum satisfaction to users.
6. Improve Customer Loyalty
A higher audience retention rate is the key indicator of a successful business. To keep your customers hooked, you can offer quality content on the app in either verbal, audio, or visual format. However, you can offer loyalty programs to take things to the next level.
Loyalty programs can help in boosting engagement with your users and lower the cost of customer acquisition.
Here’s what a rewarding loyalty program looks like:
- You can reward customers with coins/points every time they make a purchase on your platform. Later, they can use these points for redeeming other benefits on your app. For instance, Flipkart offers super coins every time you make a purchase on the platform. Later, you can use these coins while making the purchase in future.
- You can also offer timely and personalised recommendations of products and services. For instance, during Diwali, you can offer discounts on ethnic wear and notify your customers about the same.
- Encourage people to share the word of your business amongst their social circle by offering rewards such as points, coins, cashback and more.
7. Stand Apart From The Crowd
In today’s digital sphere, keeping up with the competition has become a difficult task. However, with the help of mobile apps, you can speed up the communication process. A mobile app allows you to instantly reach your customers and alert them about upcoming deals, events, etc.
By being quick and adaptable, you can stay way ahead of your competitors in the industry.
8. Make Productive Use of Social Media
If you want to drive engagement and attract new customers, there’s nothing better than social media.
Start by building up your social media presence on popular platforms. You can do this by posting content regularly, engaging with your audience in the comments section, etc. Also, you can conduct polls, surveys, challenges and more to drive engagement on your profile. Later, invest in social media marketing to spread the word about your business and persuade viewers to download your mobile app.
Further, you can allow customers to sign up on your app with their social media accounts. This way, sharing your app on social media in future would be quick and seamless.
Similarly, integrate your business’s social profiles on the key pages of your mobile app.
Also, encourage the users to refer your app to their friends and family by offering them incentives and rewards in return. For instance, you can offer quizzes and games on your app and ask your users to share them in their social circles. This will help you a lot in boosting your brand’s awareness.
9. Build a Direct Marketing Channel
A mobile app offers a plethora of benefits to businesses, including the edge to create personalised marketing campaigns.
A custom mobile app offers first-hand access to customers’ data. Later on, businesses can use this data to optimise their app and create effective marketing campaigns.
Further, an app also allows marketers to implement their marketing techniques and see the fruits of their efforts.
For instance, push notifications alert customers about trending deals and allow them to hop onto the app within a click. Similarly, in-app ads and other elements in the app with clear CTAs invoke curiosity in viewers and guide their course of action.
10. Personalised Avenue for Customer Feedback
Mobile apps offer a bunch of interfaces and mechanisms to capture customers’ feedback.
Here are a few examples of customer feedback mechanisms offered by a mobile app:
- ‘Rate my app’ prompts: Nowadays, almost every mobile app offers this feature. It helps you to gain insight into whether your customers are enjoying using your app or not. Further, it also helps in boosting the app’s reputation on the app store.
- Surveys: Simple and concise surveys can help you in generating customer feedback within the app. To ensure many people respond to your surveys, keep your survey questions relevant and pop up only when it’s convenient.
- Widgets: They are one of the most used means of collecting customer feedback. It can help in generating open-ended responses about a specific element of your brand.
11. Offer Unique Features to Your Customers
To stay ahead of the competition, you must offer unique and premium features on your app. This will make your app more interactive and desirable amongst your customers.
For instance, you can integrate GPS tracking, access contact list, camera, gallery, etc. By accessing the camera, customers can click product photos, scan barcodes, and more. Similarly, they can upload pictures through the gallery in the reviews section and share their experience.
PharmEasy has set an example by offering a unique feature to its customers. A doctor’s prescription is mandatory for ordering prescription medicines on the app. However, in case somebody doesn’t have it, the app will schedule a call with a doctor who’ll listen to your concerns and approve the order.
This way, you can always go a step further to make your customer’s experience more satisfactory.
Bottom Line
Thinking to develop a mobile app to take your business to the next level? We’ve got your back! Eiosys is a leading app development company in BKC that delivers robust & customized app solutions for your growing business. Get in touch with our in-house app development experts now!
