Technology is part and parcel a part of the business world; in fact, it’s integral these days. Smartphones play a phenomenal role in ensuring anybody and everybody around the world can access your business anywhere and at any time. This is why creating a mobile app for your business could be the difference between a negative quarter and a record-breaking quarter.
Marketing companies can sometimes struggle with making an app that’s just right for your business and the key issue is the individuality. But before anything can be implemented, you’ve got to know what the best option for your target audience is. It’s more important to build an application that can fulfil the needs of your users than it is to just use a pre-existing design as the template for your app.
So, let’s get started…
The platform that’s right for you
Before you even begin creating an application, before you even set down the blueprint, you must decide which platform will work best for your application. Basically, are you going to target Android or iOS? You need to figure out where your users mainly are, and then you can target the other platform once your first efforts are a success.
Social sharing
It more than likely goes without saying, but don’t forget to add a social media sharing button to allow users to share your app among their friend circle. Incorporate a feature in the app that allows them to share an article, a scoreboard and/or a user rating. This is perhaps the most effective way for your app to begin journeying across the world without you having to spend large amounts of money on marketing doing this.
Marketing your app and incorporating SEO
Your app needs to be part of your bigger marketing strategy. A lot of people worry that SEO is going to be too expensive for their business. How much is SEO? Well, how long is a piece of string? It really does depend! However, choose wisely and SEO should pay for itself. This is because SEO is all about improving your ROI and bringing more money into your business.
The last thing you want to do is spend a lot of time and resources on the creation of an app only for no one to download it. This is why marketing and advertising are of huge importance.
Free or paid?
The big question…
Whether you’re making an app purely as a tool to expand the audience of your brand or using it as a revenue-increasing tool, it all depends on what your motivation is to make the app in the first place.
If you would rather having your business name soar higher than ever before with newly found wings, then you should go with offering your app for free.
If you’re well established or your analytics team has shown you figures that suggest the consistent popularity of your business, then you could take a risk and demand a price for the application before potential customers can download it.
Some apps have shown themselves to be multi-million dollar profit machines and others have flopped; you’ll have to keep your finger on the pulse to figure out if your decision was the right one.
It’s not a silver bullet
It’s crucial you don’t see an application as a way to solve all your marketing problems, as generally, most designs won’t be able to give the customers every little bit of information about your business; that’s what websites and blogs are for.
You’ll need to condense down the most important factors of your business, purely in an effort to showcase the services you offer and why you’re the best option.
Don’t think that this is an excuse to neglect other areas of your online presence. You still need to create a modern website, which you can do using a tool like this Wix website builder, and you still need to invest time into search engine optimisation.
Updates
Updates are incredibly important to maximising the platform you’re on and in terms of staying relevant in your field. No one wants to be stale and pale, so update the app regularly with new products and system changes to keep your consumer base in the loop.
It also shows you care, and you’re a constant flowing business, always trying to better yourself. You can employ an automatic system, which takes the information you’ve updated on the website, to channel directly through as an update showing on the app.
Maintain and entice
One of the golden rules in any business is to maintain contact with the customer. The longer you’re in their daily lives, the more you stay in their minds; so never undervalue communication.
Users are more than willing to provide you with constructive criticism and helpful suggestions to improve usability. Make sure you listen to the most polite customer and note down what they like, as well as the most foul-mouthed disgruntled user. Any and all feedback is good feedback.
For this, you should have a rating and comment system. The key to getting feedback is to make the process simple. An app is mainly used on the go, so the process shouldn’t have to take more than 30 seconds. A quick shortcut that could save people time is a simple up or down voting system.
Final words…
You might be asking, is the hassle and time worth it? For the answer to that, you must ask, what price can you put on loyalty? An application on a customer’s smartphone is a window into their life and buying habits. If you’re always in the mind’s eye, you’re never but a short touchscreen tap away from selling your product or service.
The effectiveness is all up to your theme, usability, reliability and your niche selling point. Remember that apps take up space in a smartphone, so you’ve got to offer consumers a reason to not just download your app, but to keep it on their phone indefinitely.
