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Home / Corporate Blog / Why Your Business Needs a Mobile Application

Why Your Business Needs a Mobile Application

Published: October 13, 2022
Categories: Industries, Mobile Development

Today, any business that strives to remain successful in the market considers the possibility to build a custom mobile app that is entirely adapted to their needs. That’s because mobile apps are seen as an effective tool that helps reach more customers and enhance their marketing efforts.

There are many ways how businesses could improve their operation, positioning, and interaction with customers. On the other hand, building a mobile app is never cheap. That’s why, before starting the creation of a custom mobile app, business owners have to carefully consider which goals they want to pursue with the developed solution.

In this article, we’ll look into the types of mobile apps companies can develop and their advantages for any business.

Types of Apps for Business

The mobile app development industry is booming today. According to Statista, the number of mobile app downloads has risen by 37.55 billion worldwide in just 4 years, rising from 192.45 billion in 2018 to 230 in 2021.

Meanwhile, the diversity of the proposed apps is also growing quickly. Although, there is no fixed set of mobile app types, let’s have a look at the most frequently developed.

  • Lifestyle mobile apps – this type of app defines the lifestyles of different users and can include apps related to fitness, food, music, dating, travel, and more.
  • Communication apps – at the time of their inception, social media platforms were mostly web-based. Today, they actively move into users’ smartphones, providing them with the opportunity to spend more time there. Apart from social media platforms, messengers also play a significant role for mobile users, being used for personal as well as business communication.
  • Utility mobile apps – these apps offer various functions and often aren’t perceived by users as standalone apps because they are built natively for iOS or Android. They usually include such functions as reminders, calculators, flashlights, and weather. Although, these can be more specific solutions like data search and analysis, data protection, data processing, memo pad apps, and more.
  • Entertainment mobile apps – mobile games is a massively developing niche in the mobile app development sphere. These apps work great for monetization. They retain large numbers of users in the game for a long time, nudge users to buy in-game items as well as watch ads for their game progress.
  • Office productivity apps – these apps contribute to employees’ performance, allowing them to work with various files more effectively. For example, these can be collaborative tools where employees work in various spreadsheets and documents, edit videos, create music, etc. Some apps are dedicated to schedules and business process execution and tracking. They can be tax calculators, project management tools, schedulers, document readers, and more.
  • Enterprise-level mobile apps – these are the mobile apps that were designed for specific business needs. They can include expense tracking apps, accounting mobile applications, ERP systems with integrated mobile apps, salesforce automation apps, customer support apps, and more.
  • Mobile payment apps – mobile payment apps are a convenient tool used by many users today. The apps allow paying with a smartphone at stores, making purchases online, performing P2P transactions, and much more. Often, banking and financial organizations include a mobile payment feature in their more complex solutions.

Benefits of Mobile Apps for Business

While there is a great diversity of apps that companies can develop, they should clearly understand how the requested solution can enhance their business performance and development. Here are some examples of how companies can benefit from building their own mobile apps.

New Sales Opportunities

People always have a smartphone at their hands which is a perfect opportunity for businesses to offer their products and services. Very often people do online shopping spontaneously: while waiting for a friend, staying in a traffic jam, or having lunch at work. Such moments are the right time to encourage them to shop or arouse interest in them and later stimulate them to make a purchase.

For example, you can use push notifications about new deals to re-engage with buyers. When they see a notification like that, they may want to open your web store to learn more about the deal. By giving your customers the possibility to shop whenever and wherever they want you can significantly increase sales.

Higher Retention Rates

Deep customer engagement in marketing activities and spending more time in-app results in increased customer loyalty and, therefore, better retention rates. It’s much easier to achieve higher customer engagement via a mobile app than via a website today. The reason is simple – mobile apps are easy to reach and follow. Businesses can send offering and brand updates to their customers at any time and make sure that they will be quickly checked, virtually staying in touch with their followers 24/7.

Moreover, running smart marketing campaigns for mobile apps, helps businesses make their customers stay in-app longer than usual and participate in engaging activities. BusinessOfApps states that 90% of users who visit a mobile app at least once a week are more likely to convert into long-term users.

Rich Data for Analysis

Mobile apps are increasingly being used for product search and browsing, sending notifications for new products, or making purchases and payments. By collecting and analyzing customer behavior, you can uncover unique buying patterns that can help you create more effective marketing campaigns.

Mobile functionality allows you to monitor user interaction and gives you valuable insights about your customers, such as audience composition, session length, responsiveness to specific features and content,  feedback, etc. This can help make beneficial changes and updates, provide a personalized experience, and create an advanced marketing plan and successful promotional campaigns.

Better Connectivity with Customers

A well-established communication with customers is one of the ways to improve customer satisfaction. The information should be quick and simple to access, therefore, having solid customer support and providing timely customer updates is essential.

Many companies include customer support and push notification features in the requested apps thereby improving their customer communication effectiveness many times. Let’s compare the engagement rates of push notifications with traditional email marketing.

According to a study made by Xtify, 30% to 60% of users open a push notification, compared to