Although users can still access the internet from a desktop computer, mobile applications have become an increasingly popular way to communicate online.
While not necessary for every small to medium-sized firm, mobile apps might be beneficial in some circumstances. If SMBs keep in contact with their consumers or business partners, mobile apps can be extremely helpful in monitoring business connections and fostering brand loyalty. Additionally, they can enhance customer analytics, promote promotions, and make online buying easier. To find out if an app could aid in the expansion of their company, business executives should research the advantages of mobile apps.
Let’s now take a look at some of the roles that mobile apps play in mobile commerce.
1. Customer loyalty
Businesses that operate in highly competitive market verticals must put in extra work to cultivate customer loyalty. Mobile apps can offer them an advantage, as they can increase their repeat business opportunities and improve referral rates. They can also boost new product and service adoption rates.
Mobile apps offer convenient one- and two-way communication between SMBs and their customers. Convenient communication leads to continued engagement, which helps businesses monitor customer behaviors over time and adjust their strategies based on those behaviors. In this sense, mobile apps can improve customer satisfaction at a low cost.
When a business has a loyal customer base, it can more easily forecast short- and long-term growth. Enhanced forecasting lets businesses fine-tune their offerings and create products and services that their bases want. Businesses can boost customer loyalty with loyalty card programs, which customers can acquire and track on the app. Loyalty programs can help SMBs capture repeat customer business.
2. Marketing programs
Marketing efforts help businesses tell new and existing customers about new products and services. Mobile apps enhance marketing and promotional activities because they require prospective customers to actively seek out and install the app. In other words, apps draw valuable leads into a business’s marketing reach. Marketing teams can then monitor app usage and employ promotional strategies to target specific users based on their actions in the app.
Mobile apps also help SMBs launch marketing campaigns and quickly pivot between multiple campaigns. Advertising on an app requires less capital than traditional methods, such as paid radio, TV and print advertising, which can benefit SMBs with small budgets. Marketers can also use app promotions to target specific groups, which creates rapid demand and market momentum.
3. Convenient online shopping
In the digital world, customers demand flexibility when they select and order products and services. Organizations can design mobile apps to inform and conduct in-app purchases.
Businesses began to let customers place orders on mobile apps in the early 2010s. Prior to this time, customers hesitated to place product orders — especially expensive ones — on apps. However, as users grew comfortable making purchases on their smartphones, many of them began to prefer this channel. In fact, product orders through mobile devices increased over 20% between the third quarter of 2020 and the third quarter of 2021, according to a Statista report.
4. Enables an omnichannel approach
Businesses can use an omnichannel sales approach to give customers a seamless shopping experience across devices. Omnichannel access lets customers make purchases from any location. SMBs can improve their omnichannel experiences with a mobile app because it lets customers shop and make purchases from their smartphones.
5. Customer relationship monitoring
Many businesses struggle to understand their customers’ mindsets. Businesses have long relied on customer surveys to monitor customer relationships, but with the proliferation of mobile devices they can also glean information from apps. For instance, SMBs can monitor how often customers use the app, determine what promotions they might have interest in and review solicited and unsolicited feedback. This information can help build and maintain positive customer relationships.
6. Brand awareness
Mobile apps that use push notifications can help keep customers and clients engaged over time. SMBs can reach all or subsets of users with notifications about product news and promotions through the apps. They can also perform granular targeting with information like location and past engagement history.
With the proper settings and configurations, app notifications can help businesses keep their brand or products in the front of customers’ minds. Strong brand awareness can help businesses drive digital traffic, outperform their competitors and increase revenue.
7. Data mining
Mobile apps offer fantastic data mining opportunities. SMBs can analyze collected data to identify customer patterns and responses to marketing tactics. Also, businesses can combine data from the mobile app with data from other sources, such as social media platforms and direct customer interactions. Businesses can merge and analyze this information to better understand customer interests and buying trends.
The Benefits of Mobile Apps
Even though your company’s website has to be mobile-friendly, an app’s experience still wins out. For mobile users, apps are speedier, less distracting, and include helpful features like push notifications and geotargeting. If you’re unsure whether or not to develop a mobile app for your company, consider these advantages to help you make the investment of time and money necessary.
Read Also: The Importance of Mobile-friendly Design in Mobile Commerce
Mobile apps have a lot of advantages for organizations, including:
1. Build a stronger brand
Creating a mobile app can help your business build a stronger brand. Through design and the right communication strategy, a mobile app serves as an always-on brand ambassador. It also provides the right service to the customer at the right time, which helps your company consistently deliver on its brand promise.
Aside from strengthening your brand on the customer side, a mobile app can also help you learn more about your users. You can use data from the app to understand your target audience better and improve your brand in response. For example, if app users frequently post about the same issue in your app’s customer forum, you can use that information to improve the quality of your product or service.
2. Connect with customers better
Mobile apps allow you to connect with customers while they’re on the go. You can send push notifications to users about promotions, sales, and more to engage with them. This is one of the best ways to keep your business top of mind when users aren’t necessarily thinking about your brand. Thanks to features like geotargeting, you can even interact with customers when they’re within a certain distance of your brick-and-mortar location (if you have one).
Channels like social media, email, or your website can help you connect with customers, but an app gives you yet another avenue to explore. Since people use their phones more frequently than other channels, mobile apps can ensure they see your message. App notifications help you interact with your customers in an environment with fewer distractions — and less competition.
3. Provide value to customers
Businesses are competing for shoppers’ attention, which means you need to deliver value to your customers at every turn. Developing a mobile app can help you deliver value to shoppers in the form of unique mobile shopping experiences. Create virtual try-on augmented reality (AR) filters for your clothing line or make it easy for B2B customers to manage their SaaS subscriptions with just a few taps. By making your products or services more accessible to users, they’ll be more likely to support your business.
Keep in mind that business apps need to offer more than a simple contact form or product feed. Your current customers want convenience, but the app also needs to provide a unique benefit that they can’t get anywhere else. Evaluate your products and services to see how an app will benefit your consumers the most. For example, maybe you offer app-exclusive discounts or an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot to improve the shopper experience.
4. Improve customer engagement
Users spend seven times more time in mobile apps than they do in mobile browsers. Mobile apps are naturally more engaging than other experiences, which helps brands deepen customer engagement. Plus, it’s more likely that your target audience downloaded your app in the first place, which means you have more opportunities to engage with the right people at the right time.
Customers can engage with your brand in a variety of ways via an app. If you have a product feed, give customers more control with features like favorite products or shopping lists. You can also integrate your app with a review tool, which allows you to collect reviews easily from your most engaged customers.
5. Personalize a marketing channel
Nearly two-thirds of consumers expect brands to understand their needs — and 52% expect every offer to be customized. Your customers expect more personalization from you, and a mobile app can help you personalize their experience. With mobile-optimized targeting tools, businesses can customize marketing offers for every app user at scale.
Mobile apps allow for interactive personalization features like shopping history, customized discounts, and more. In addition to recommendation algorithms, your app can also include AR features, like color swapping or mix-and-match clothing. A mobile app can also make it easy to recognize important milestones in your customers’ lives, like anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, and more.
6. Improve customer interactions
Mobile ecommerce will account for 43.4% of all ecommerce sales in 2023, a significant increase over 2022. Thanks to the proliferation of mobile apps, shoppers aged 18 to 34 make the majority of mobile ecommerce purchases. These consumers want to interact with brands via apps because they simplify the purchasing process, holding a shopper’s favorite products and payment information to speed up the process.
A mobile app also offers more cross-channel marketing opportunities, which means shoppers can move from a social media ad to your app to make a purchase seamlessly. Of course, the quality of the app matters. The more user-friendly your app is, the better the customer experience — and the more likely you are to see conversions.
7. Capitalize on a niche
Regardless of your niche, you’re competing for customers’ business. A high-quality mobile app can help you earn a larger market share in your space. If you need a differentiator in a crowded niche, adding innovative communication features like a chatbot in your branded app could give you a much-needed edge. This is especially true if you’re in an industry where it’s less common for brands to create their own apps.
Consider that 85% of consumers prefer to shop in an app instead of a browser. If you’re in the ecommerce space, creating an app could give you a much-needed boost. Shoppers expect instant communication, reliability, and convenience. Mobile apps deliver in all of these areas, which can make it easier for brands to capitalize on their niche.
8. Utilize social media channels
One of the biggest benefits of mobile apps is their ability to connect to other online services, including social media. Since most social media is used on a mobile device, shoppers can connect more easily to an app than your website. Many social networks allow businesses to use their APIs, which allow you to create a seamless integrated social experience in your own app.
Social media can get the word out about your business and provide much-needed social proof, which is a big selling point for mobile apps. This is an easy way for brands to encourage user-generated content with a frictionless social-sharing experience. Shoppers can even request customer support via Twitter or Facebook Messenger through an in-app browser.
9. Improve customer loyalty
Loyalty programs are one of the best ways to incentivize customer loyalty. In fact, 84% of consumers say they’re more likely to be loyal to a company that offers a loyalty program, and 49% say they’ve spent more because of a loyalty program — so this is a clear way for businesses to boost revenue. Instead of relying on physical punch cards, many businesses create a mobile app as a straightforward way to track customer loyalty programs.
While your mobile app can perform several functions, offering a loyalty or rewards program within it will reward repeat orders and encourage shopper loyalty. Offer tangible rewards in exchange for these repeat purchases. Offer even more rewards, promotions, or discounts when users share your brand on social media. You can also use rewards program data to recommend more relevant products and foster return customers.
10. Boost profits
Mobile apps benefit businesses and consumers because they create a better experience, which often translates into higher profits. Since mobile apps improve the customer experience, you’re likely to see your marketing dollars go further. Through the power of engagement, loyalty programs, and greater perceived value, you’ll likely spend less on paid ads while generating more conversions.
Mobile apps allow businesses to learn more about their shoppers and create a hyper-personalized shopping experience. With the right targeting tools, businesses can use this information to generate more sales for less marketing spend. Since every $1 companies spend on improving the user experience yields as much as 100%, a mobile app can be a wise investment for your business.
Finally
Along with using their smartphones to make purchases, consumers use their mobile devices to research the companies they like. Most likely, a mobile app can improve the whole experience that customers have with your company while strengthening ties with them on a large scale.
