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
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.
Mobile data global statistics for 2017-2022 declares that data traffic in 2020 will reach 77,5 exabytes per month for compound annual growth rate 46% worldwide.
Worldwide compound average annual devices and mobile data traffic growth rate from 2016 to 2021.
As it can be seen from schedule, average annual smartphones’ users quantity will grow to 13,1%, and data traffic turns to 54,3%.
74% of users study a product or offer on the Internet with the help of mobile phone. 93% of these users make a purchase then.
On the basis of the above data, it is possible to say that mobile revolution is taking place today. More and more users prefer handy gadgets to personal computers. We can understand it after studying statistic data or just having looked around.
It's the fastest growing manmade phenomenon ever - from zero to 7.2 billion in three decades" said Kevin Kimberlin, Chairman of Spencer Trask & Co
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 local app development companies 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.
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.
For 90% of business types correctly designed mobile application is an excellent marketing tool.
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.
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. For entrepreneur’s insurance Minimum Viable Product (MVP) development is necessary. MVP insures from final product’s redundancy, lost of the spent resources and provide with the base of users to gradually open new application features to.
Mobile site instead of mobile application.
Modern tools allow to create 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 operation 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 site’s mobile version - easier, quicker, cheaper.
Interesting facts:
IBM company in the USA claims that online shopping with mobile devices on the most important shopping day “Black Friday” made 57% of all traffic in 2015, whereas in 2014 this index was not bigger than 15%.
GSMA tracker numbers mobile devices 7,22 billion, while United States Bureau of Census declares that there are between 7,19 and 7,2 billion people approximately.
It shows that the phones are multiplied up to five times faster than humans.
How to create a mobile app
If you have decided to create an app for your business, but you are not aware of development process and possible difficulties that relate to a startup app, we recommend you to read this article: I have a great mobile app idea. What do I do next? If you are wondering about the app development cost, we’re ready to give you a rough estimate. You can get a free consultation and find out how to make an app for your business here.
