By 
A mobile app for personal use or a mobile app for business is specifically to run on mobile devices such as a phone, tablet, and watch designed by a mobile app development company via an app builder. The new generation’s demand and excellent adaptability have become a dominant form of digital communication over the decade. However, the customers are on the leap already and as once Steve Jobs said:
“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”
So what else could you offer to your customers other than the closeness and excess information availability of your small business- which a mobile application is capable of providing all?
In this article, we have discussed how mobile apps are the present and the future of the world, and how it can be beneficial to your small business.
Table of Contents
Let’s be frank. Whether your business is small or large, you aim to grow your audience, brand awareness, sales, and revenue generation over the period. In addition, living in an era where smartphones are an essential part of our daily life, having an offline business, or even having websites is just not enough.
Tell me when did your small business website informs you of the customer’s name? Was your customer in a position to take a picture of your product on a website? Or could it give you the impression that your customer had looked at your product?
See, there’s a reason why we name our mobile devices a smartphone as it is incredibly capable of providing all opportunity in one place in the form of mobile applications. From increasing brand awareness for your base audience using social media to host the product. From the investment road in the industries, to get effective reviews and feedback on your product. So, having a mobile application in business is an advantage.
Not to forget, it has become easier only due to the high accessibility of mobile apps be it android phone apps or iOS apps (Apple apps). And we realize people use business apps more now than ever before. Not lakhs, millions, but in billion numbers. Don’t you believe me? Just look at these incredible numbers once!
Statistics of the Mobile App World
Smartphone Users:
There are more than 3 billion smartphone users worldwide and several hundred million are expected to grow further in the coming years.
Source: Statista
The countries with the highest number of smartphone users are China, India, and the United States. However, along with the leading country – the United States – it is easily exceeding the 100 million user mark every year. The smartphone market is at a high growth potential as it continued to increase over the last few years.
Just think, where else would you, as small business owners, find such a large audience that could potentially be converted into your customer?
Apps Availability:
There are 2.8 million business apps available on the google play store worldwide and 2.2 million apps on the Apple app store for download including free apps and paid apps.
Source: Statista
As the chart suggests, on Google Play store 96.4 percent of applications are free, and just 3.6 percent of applications are charged. Likewise, 91.9 percent of Apple’s iOS applications are free opposed to 8.1 percent paid business apps.
Apart from that, there are advertisement apps, communication apps, Job listings apps – LinkedIn, health apps, payment apps – PayPal, file sharing apps – google drive and dropbox, restaurant apps, HR apps, expense managers apps such as Expensify for tracking business expenses, author apps, language apps, demographic apps, developers apps, QuickBooks apps, video apps, contacts for the team members, business email address, etc.
Apps Revenue:
The mobile apps for small business owners, or for entertainment purposes – including android phone apps and iOS apps are all set to raise the revenue of $189 billion by 2020.
Source: Statista
Talking about, the android app, alone gaming app coin master and candy crush saga generated the revenue of $91.28 million and $44.43 million, respectively, which is 87% of gross mobile app revenue in the google play store.
Source: Statista
App Downloads:
The increasing numbers in the total number of app downloads are 11 billion approx in 2019 whereas it was 192.45 billion app downloads by 2018.
It also indicates the usage of interactive networking applications and smartphones would increase more by a large margin over the coming years.
Source: Statista
The more encouraging news is that companies like yours can take interests to compete with this multi-billion dollar industry and claim your share by developing an app from an app builder for your small businesses.
However, while building a business app, figuring out the monetization strategy would be your main concern, but keep in mind that 98 percent of the app revenue comes from free apps be it apps for businessmen or apps for teams and individuals.
So before you find out more about mobile apps, including business apps, make sure to understand if your small businesses need mobile app solutions and why.
Want to automate your business with an app?
Do you have a suitable app idea in mind?
Why Does Your Business Need a Mobile App?
There are various factors that are responsible for your small businesses or large businesses to build a mobile app for the essential customer service as well as customer satisfaction that are as follows;
Develops the Availability
With a huge market and large analytics data of products, your competition is extreme. In that case, your small businesses must have a presence and unique availability to stand out effectively in the market. So in the context of navigating results, building a mobile app develops the option to get the availability of your online small businesses with a low price.
This also helps your small businesses to expand because it offers the client a medium for comprehensive awareness of the company by the efficient availability on various social media accounts.
Brand Acknowledgement
All your small business needs better brand awareness to improve user traffic and engagement. And people invest generally two to three hours of his time per day on his phone according to the research, be it an android phone or iOS phone.
Thus, as a marketer, the advertising course on the hands of a mobile app also will drive more traffic to your brand name, logo, and pictures and there is a decent chance of the target audience to convert into your potential customer base as per their need.
Gain Customer Loyalty
In comparison to social media management, email marketing (Mailchimp), and roadside banners, in-app purchase is more effective when it comes to gain your customers’ trust. Because it provides a direct connection and communication with customers. It helps to evolve customer loyalty for the long term.
By loyalty programs such as creating alternative exclusive deals and offering varieties of rewards to your customers and applicants via mobile applications, providers can win their loyalty for years or even for a lifetime.
Organ for Marketing
Gone are those days where you used to distribute a bunch of pamphlets, brochures, and many other advertising hoardings for connectivity and wait for days and months to reach out to the particular person or target audience. More than the time, it takes your money and blood to target the right audience if your business is still small.
However, a well developed mobile app works as an organ for your small businesses if you as a business owner utilize and strategize your goals, plans and the best services to offer people. Whether it is advertising the product via email templates to create a master itinerary or blog posts, providing various offers, discounts, booking, newsfeeds, mobile payment through credit cards, card reader, or delivering services. All in one place – in your pocket in the form of a mobile device.
Enhance the Ease of Access
The mobile app has capabilities of getting all customized and in one location, that allows things easy for the consumer to navigate and access. Which is, basically, not possible without a mobile application. Without the time and energy and long processes, a mobile website can’t access everything.
Your business, however, can often offer better visibility at a time on various mobile devices and manage candidates. In the accounts, send your consumer push alerts to enable them to visit your business app at the right time on a mobile device and get success as an open source platform.
Greater Revenues
As they say, “Success and profitability are the outcomes of focusing on customers and employees, not objectives.” and it couldn’t be more true when it’s already proven by mobile devices.
Your mobile device app can help to focus on the customers’ needs and preferences as you can collect the analytics data, various information, a fact and knowledge related to your small businesses. The mobile app solutions can increase customer satisfaction, and that further helps to increase sales. Hence, the higher the sale, the greater the revenue.
Excellent Customer Service
Online customer care concerns have been the latest norm of helping consumers and addressing their issues for several years now. The account provides greater value as it increases the customer base.
A mobile app for your small business can also help to decrease employee hiring needs, reporting, statements, job boards as well as create an excellent endorsement through customer services.
How? With mobility, your customer is more likely to provide reviews and recommendations to their friends, family, and colleagues due to excellent customer service experience. Eventually, creating mobile apps for business outpaces your competitors in sales and operating tasks.
So, these all are the reasons behind why mobile apps are important for your business. Next, let’s know the benefits of mobile app over a website.
Benefits of Mobile App Over a Mobile Website
Compared with mobile apps, even the largest website platform can struggle to offer the best service. The mobile device is much more than websites, computer desktop platforms, pcs on the other hand, not in one or two places but in too many regions. For instance,
Better Personalization
Personalization tools are nothing but providing consumers with tailor-made contact focused on their parts of preferences, interface, workflow, directions, place, and user experience.
When relating to mobile apps, providing consumers with customized interfaces isn’t easy on mobile websites.
A mobile app can allow your customers to enter the preferences, and the app’s analytics options can customize the content according to behavior. In addition, mobile apps can track and observe the engagement and can offer personalized recommendations on a timely basis. So for any business, customization is a must across the demographics.
Easy to Send Notification
There are two kinds of notification tools. Push notifications and in-app notifications.
Both are instant ways to connect with your app users at the right time and may have a more organized impact on your client’s relationship with your small businesses.
Push alerts in mobile apps are such updates they receive irrespective of what action your user performs on their mobile device or even if their phone is locked.
In-app notifications your user receives when an app is open.
The notification feature, however, is so attractive that it is one of the key reasons why your small business needs a mobile app. When it is employed effectively, it also works as a marketing strategy on a mobile device.
Ability to Enable Offline
The greatest amount of the advantage of a mobile app is the offline availability. Your user doesn’t need the part of internet connection functionality to access the business app or at least can access the basic content and features unlike mobile websites (although, there are exceptions as an entrepreneur may provide mobile apps that can be accessed through the internet only).
Better Designing
There are a number of efficiency drawbacks even for simple functions, no matter how much you invest on desktops. It has to rely largely on and windows and browsers like Linux to operate even on an equal basis with their desktops sites.
Whereas a mobile app is designed with a lot of technological advanced features like ‘tap’, ‘swipe’, ‘hold’, ‘drag’, ‘like’, ‘comment’, ‘scan’, ‘scroll’, ‘move’, ‘shake’, ‘click-to-call or calls’, ‘SMS or Text’ and many more available using just fingertips. For example, Fuze, it is in the trend and is an innovative video conferencing tool that offers a beautiful experience to users through dozens of branding, designing and marketing campaigns packages.
Excess Availability of Users on Apps
As we discussed, 90% of the mobile time spent on business apps in comparison to websites, this is one of the biggest benefits for your business.
Also, the average amount of time spent by candidates on mobile apps functionality is increasing as the day goes by. So the salesforce through the excess involvement of app users can also be increased with a timely approach and strategy of small businesses by organizing your finances.
Interactivity
Just think of a game app and social network mobile apps. It needs a high degree of integration for interaction, communication, and participation which fits well in open source mobile applications as opposed to mobile websites because there is a ton of overlap in the performance.
The mobile app such as LinkedIn provides an option for better results of interactions and opportunities as it has advanced features and takes less navigating time on mobile devices. Meeting with the advanced technology, has it made possible for a mobile app to further customize and function better than mobile websites and other authority.
Unique Customer Experience
A mobile app helps to break the monotony for small businesses as the website is already a well-thought strategy for every businessman to reach out to the customers worldwide. It gives a new experience to users and creates a unique impact on your brand value. In addition, the company can carry out different experiments in a timely manner in the mobile app such as Evernote. An entrepreneur can take the business to the next level in terms of CRM, designs, update alerts, or changes via files, attachments, folders and schedule notes, call, offers, invoices, charges, requirements of product sales, and much more on the virtual shop as opposed to mobile websites.
Strong Conversion
How many times have you scrolled down something on your feed, and ignored it?
Many times!
Because conversions take a lot of time, assistance, and effort. Frequent reminders and effective strategies only can convince your user to be your customer without a loss.
A website, however, is less likely to convince your viewers to take action for the first time. But a mobile app can remind your users frequently via notifications and attractive deals on the mobile device.
Thus, the more number of times you target your user, the rate of conversations becomes stronger and more effective.
Time-saving
The framework of mobile is also five times faster than mobile websites because,
- Mobile apps are more personalized and specific.
- Mobile apps further can save your team data locally and no need to enter the details again and again for presentations.
- Mobile apps also can help you to remember your preferences, unlike websites.
Hence, mobile application software can save your time, expenses, and efforts.
Want to ease out on your in-house operations, communications, and reduce costs?
Build an app and get a seamless organizational process.
Now, when you are aware of the benefits of mobile apps for business, here is the list of best fit mobile apps for small business owners, vendors, contractors, influencers, and partners. Take an instant look at it!
5 Best Mobile Apps for Small Business
| Name of App | Number of downloads | Review | Available platform | Download Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time Tracker & Hours Tracker | Positive | 3.7 | App Store |  |
| Use: Time Tracker & Hours Tracker is a hassle-free offline way of taking daily attendance of staff workers, employees and team members while they are at remote locations. Maintain the attendance record of students, Polaris office employees, or events site employees. | ||||
| Snag | Positive | 3.4 | App Store | |
| Use: Snag is an Easy Site Audit activity that starts from anyone to create, cloud storage, organize and share customized site audit reports, from anywhere and at any time. Record the issue(s) chat, capture a photo or images, videos to prepare a meticulous site audit report. | ||||
| Expense TRACK by Flextrack | Positive | 3.0 | App Store | |
| Use: ExpenseTrack makes capturing applicant receipts of purchases, tracking time clock, rest time, mileage, business travel, payroll and creating business expense reports quick and easy as pie. | ||||
| Asana | One Million+ | 4.6 | Google Play Store & App store |  |
| Use: Asana helps to quickly capture tasks, subtasks to-dos, reminders, and ideas of your organization. Asana adds tasks to projects to break down your iwork in a list or board layout. | ||||
| Slack | Ten million+ | 4.2 | Google Play Store | |
| Use: Slack brings someone or team members communication, meetings and collaboration into one place so you can get more work done, whether you belong to a large enterprise or a small business. | ||||
FAQ
How do I create a mobile app for my business?
Creating a mobile app with great features nowadays is easy. In fact, it can be created with or without coding for your small business or even for an individual. You can create a business app within minutes without coding in three simple steps.
- Type a business name and pick a category for your small business app that uses creative design documents and register without a fee charge and taxes.
- Add features such as in-app purchases and loyalty cards for project management.
- Then, there comes a publication of your business app on a mobile device and open a business bank account to handle the purchase and run the business smoothly.
However, making a business app with codes has more impact on your potential customers as it offers more personalization and features. It also adds value and credits to your business operations.
How is mobile app development important?
The development of the mobile app is a method of programming development for mobile phones. The main concern for the development of mobile apps is less traced back to audiences, portability, and user-friendliness. It is extremely important as the usability of the mobile app is easy for project management. Mobile apps are flexible to forward information and data to people using notification and can connect with the audience directly. The payment portals for business cards or credit card payments are also secure and flexible along with brand visibility.
Why do companies want you to use their app?
As we all know, mobile is personalized and more efficient, it opens up all kinds of possibilities for a small business owner from creating space to overtaking the competitors. The business app with great features can help the business bottom line to connect your contact information as well as maintain security on a mobile device.
More than that,
- Companies can increase user engagement as the business app provides the icon on the home screen.
- 24/7 support is easily made possible on mobile apps rather than websites.
- A business app can create a lot of unique ways for promotion such as frequent notifications including push notifications, emails, surveys, and loyalty programs.
- Monetization is simpler in a business app.
Why are mobile apps important for business?
A well developed mobile app for a mobile device can help to resolve the customer queries, the plan offers various discounts, and makes people aware of it. It creates a platform to directly interact with your potential customers and to everyone in groups in terms of helping to grow companies.
There’s more to it though,
- Social media integration
- In-app payment plans solutions
- Simplicity and productivity
- Quick loading time and hiring file access
- User feedback, metrics, surveys, blog post and reviews
Do I need a mobile app for my business?
Yes. If small business owners want to sustain in a target market and create a long term impact on your customer, the business must have an addition of the mobile app. It gives detailed information and data about your small business to the audience and attracts them to convert into your customer. Not only this, but it also helps your business thrive and encourages the consumer to better interact with the business through loyalty programs, social media engagements, business email newsletters, and direct phone calls. And finally, it increases the brand value and adds success to your business companies more than your competitors.
What are the businesses that need apps?
Generally, a mobile application is always a great idea. But to be precise, if your small businesses fall under the industry categories of gaming, real estate, education, restaurants, healthcare, fashion, retail, finance team, IT industry, and construction, then you must develop an app for your business. Not only does it cater to progress and the clients but it also offers extremely competitive sources, resources and a choice for small business owners.
Conclusion
A mobile application for a small business is not only a glorious present but a future as well. Whether you go to own a startup, enterprise, an established business, or you are a frequent market player, a mobile app can get your profit graph level higher.
So are you yet to build a project management app for your business?
If you hummed ‘yes’, contact an award-winning app development company right now and get the best business app designs, layouts, and features as suitable for your company from a professional app builder as it’s time to grow as a virtual voice.
