Back when Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone in the year 2007, while almost everyone was blown away by the device, a small group of people were more excited about the App ecosystem behind it. These people were software developers, who were till then, only building either desktop apps or websites.
Of course, mobile apps have been there even before the introduction of the iPhone and the App Store. For example, Nokia’s Symbian S60 OS was a prime example of a development platform built for low-powered, low-memory driven mobile devices.
However, the Symbian OS was not very developer friendly. Apple gave developers all the necessary tools to build and release their mobile apps. It also introduced the App Store, a centralized store where users can buy apps and games, while the developers (and Apple) would eventually earn billions of dollars in the forthcoming years.
As per Statista, mobile apps generated more than half of online traffic in the 2nd quarter of 2022, which amounted to 58.99% of the world’s web traffic.
The colossal Internet traffic from mobile devices indicates that mobile apps are here to stay and consumers are using them more as compared to websites. The Retail and E Commerce industry is one of the prime examples of how mobile apps have shaped consumer behavior. Almost every ecommerce retailer has a dedicated mobile app. In fact, some of them incentivize users if they make a purchase through mobile apps.
Why do you need a Mobile App?
A Forbes report says that 37 billion mobile apps have been installed globally in the first half of 2022, which is 11% higher than in 2021. This data proves that mobile applications are the best medium to connect to a wide range of audiences and grow your business.
Mobile app demand has helped both business owners and app development service providers. Apps boost business functions to gain customers’ trust and build loyal customer relationships. Apps are also helpful in promotions, better customer analytics, and gaining customer insights.
So, if you are a business owner planning to go for mobile app development, keep the below-mentioned points in mind before building a mobile app.
Interactive User Interface
As mentioned above, in 2022, more than 37 billion mobile apps have been downloaded; however, do you think all apps are successful?
Of course not. Only a few mobile apps are successful. This is because many businesses ignore the user interface, which is vital in making an app successful.
Before building a mobile app, you must research about the platforms on which your app will run. If it’s iOS, you should really consider reading Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines. If it’s Android, you should learn about Material Design Guidelines. Once you decide this, you can go for mobile app development service providers or hire a team of developers to make sure that you have full control over the app development process.
If you want the app to run on both iOS and Android (which we highly recommend), you should look for Flutter app developers. Flutter allows you to build beautiful, platform-agnostic apps.
No matter what platform you choose, you must target universal access and must focus on various factors like accessibility, user interface and experience and internationalization.
Loyalty Programs
Any business that competes in very competitive market segments must work harder to build a loyal consumer base. Since you are already building a mobile app, it’s a good idea to implement features to increase customer loyalty from the get go.
A loyal customer base will result in repeat business as well as in bringing more customers. There are many forms of loyalty programs like point collection and Special pricing for long-term customers.
Once you have implemented a loyalty system in your apps, you can better predict both short-term and long-term growth. You can also collect data about spending habits of your customers and change your inventory and marketing campaigns accordingly.
Data enriched Marketing
A lot of startups focus on building rather than marketing and selling their products. We suggest that you must understand the target audience, have a marketing plan ready BEFORE you begin the app development. Yes, marketing is as important as the app itself.
There are various marketing programs to bring organic customers to your mobile app, such as Social Media ad campaigns, email marketing, affiliate marketing, blogging, and many others. These marketing programs will definitely attract a lot of customers to your app. Once you get your organic audience, you can establish a success brand with the help of your app.
Such marketing programs coupled with data analytics techniques enable organizations to track customer habits over time and modify their marketing strategies accordingly.
Apps insights can be tracked by the marketing teams, which can subsequently utilize promotional techniques to target particular customer bases depending on their app usage.
Mobile app marketing programs are budget-friendly as compared to traditional methods of promotions. Both Apple App Store and Android Play Store allows you to do paid marketing events on their respective stores.
Make sure that your app is extremely well built and your app can be selected for awards like “App of the Year” by these app stores and you can get free marketing promotions.
Convenience
An app which does one thing well is far better than an app which does a lot of things in a mediocre way.
In the digital era, everyone prefers convenience; they all want easy and quick services at their fingertips. If you are a business owner or planning to start something new, you must prioritize your customers’ convenience.
The whole idea of building a mobile app for your business is to offer your customers easy ways to avail your services quickly. A prime example of this is Amazon’s one-click checkout system.
Amazon’s one-click checkout system was a game changer. It allowed customers to order any product with a single click. It used previously stored information about the customer like their last payment method, their address etc to place the order. One-click buying helps to alleviate shopping-cart abandonment – a major challenge for online retailers.
Another example would be the swipe-to-accept-reject interface of Tinder. Once again, this nifty convenient feature changed users’ habits and they kept looking for this in other dating apps.
Maintenance and Updates
Once the app is built and uploaded to the app store, your work is has not stopped. In fact, you now have a challenge to keep the app updated with the latest features.
You will have to monitor whether it is doing well among the users or not. If not, you will have to introspect and see what you are lacking. Once you know what you are lacking, you have to update the app as soon as possible.
Apart from this, you have to make sure that your app is compatible with the latest version of iOS and Android. These platforms are evolving at light speed. With growing demands of privacy enforcement, you have to make sure that your apps are always updated with the latest app store policies.
From our experience, we can say that a lot of apps are abandoned just because the time it will take to maintain and update them. Unless you are building only MVPs, we suggest that you keep the apps updated. They are a part of your business and brand, after all.
Final Thoughts
App development looks simple from first sight, but it takes a lot of effort to build an app which you can rely on to generate business.
Many businesses have benefited from app development, particularly in consumer centric industries like e-commerce. Once built, your app can literally launch your business and take it to new heights. Make sure that you follow the above things while building your app and you are good to go.If you are looking to build an app for your business or to build a remote team, look no further. We are here to help you. Reach out to us on sales@citrusleaf.in.