No small business now thinks that mobile apps are only to serve the interests of the big brands across the niches. Mobile apps are now very much parts of small business marketing. Actually, mobile apps helped create a level playing field for businesses and brands of all sizes and stature.
Thanks to the emergence of mobile apps as the primary face of a company, it is the user experience that determines customer engagement and customer satisfaction. This helped small businesses to compete with the big brands just by delivering a superb app user experience or mobile shopping experience.
There are too many reasons for any startup or small business brand to choose mobile apps as the most important tool to reach out to their customers. Let's explain some of these reasons here.
Omnipresent Customer Access
Unlike the traditional brick and mortar stores, digital storefronts are open round the clock and customers across the time zones can visit your store anytime, anywhere just through a web store or a mobile e-commerce app. Mobile apps have the edge over web stores as they remain accessible right on your fingertip that can be accessed on the go. So, with a mobile e-commerce app, your business becomes omnipresent.
People these days have the habit of shopping while on the go or while remaining busy in different activities. This is possible thanks to the native mobile apps right on their handheld devices. You can also give commands to your virtual assistant on the phone and get shopping done while doing something in the kitchen or doing the garden work.
Boost Customer Loyalty like Never Before
Since mobile apps are more interactive and easily accessible than the web stores, you can build straightforward relationships with your customers and boost their loyalty over time. Simply the ease of use, simple way to find and shop their needful and getting personalised attention, are some of the key aspects that customers love and the same makes them more loyal to the brand.
Apart from the user experience and personalised attention to customers, a mobile app can easily help by delivering rewards against purchases and boost customer loyalty in quick time. Through customer-centric and personalised notifications, you can always send them alerts about lucrative deals and bring them occasional joys through rewards against their shopping.
Many small businesses in Ireland, including small brick and mortar stores, are now experiencing a boost in customer engagement and a global outreach thanks to mobile apps. No wonder, any leading mobile app development company in Ireland regularly deals with small business app projects across the niches. In other countries in Europe or elsewhere, leading app developers have experienced an overwhelming increase in small business app projects.
Develop Branding
Irrespective of the status of your business as a new startup or a famous brand, a mobile app can always help your business do the best branding or rebranding exercise and build solid brand identity by using a mobile app. You can still create an app liked by your target audience and enjoy continuous traction. This sometimes works better than traditional outdoor and media ads.
The only thing that you must focus upon is engaging your audience with interesting app features and great user experience. Just consider offering features that are useful for your customers so that they frequently use the app, making it popular with a solid user base.
Enhance Customer Engagement
Your business website may find a fluctuating kind of audience engagement with unpredictable highs and lows. But when it comes to the app, the experience is quite different for most businesses. An app that offers a clear value proposition and gives users a solid reason to use the app get consistent customer engagement.
Moreover, mobile apps now open up the possibility of transferring your entire customer service and support desk to the app. You can offer a live chat function or provide intelligent Chatbots for customer interactions. A mobile app always remaining accessible on your device screen can handle customer queries faster than websites.
Key Features to Consider for Building a Great App
Now that we have explained the most important benefits small businesses can get through mobile apps, it is essential to consider the must-have features that they should consider for their apps. In this respect, it is advisable to opt for an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach to build a basic app with key features and leave options open for future value additions based upon user feedback.
Here we explain some must-have features and UX attributes for small business apps.
- Build a simple app with minimum features and seamless user experience.
- Ensure faster loading time and easy navigation to help customers easily access what they need.
- Make sure you have integrated social media platforms to allow instant communication and sharing.
- Provide a Chatbots function to help customers interact with your brand and register complaints and make queries.
- Integrate multiple in-app payment gateways and channels to help customers make payment. Ensure optimum flexibility by providing all leading payment options.
- Create a robust user feedback loop to help your customers make their opinions and share feedback regarding the app and business deliverables.
Conclusion
For small businesses, mobile apps have opened up the opportunities of global outreach and the level playing competitive scope. In the years to come, small businesses are likely to emerge as the dominant customer group for app development companies.
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