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Know why creating apps is highly important for small scale businesses

Mobile apps are ruling globally and also shaping the world around us. We have become more reliant on mobile devices than ever, and apps have become our go to solution for fulfilling the daily needs or accomplishing any special task.

Mobile apps have become especially important for online businesses and brands that depend on the netizens to grow and amplify. In fact, it is the true digital age where even physical store owners are leveraging the digital infrastructure to expand their brand on the web and tap into the eCommerce industry.

For instance, many retail outlet owners are creating WordPress websites or WordPress mobile apps to go online and serve the online shoppers and consumers. However, this transition or expansion from physical to digital has been somewhat daunting for small scale businesses.

In fact, brands have gotten so intimidated with the roaring and rapidly evolving web infrastructure that it has started making them nervous. Additionally, the nuances and demands of custom app development has confused them further.

As a result, it has become a common misconception that apps are not meant for or needed by small businesses. Stay tuned with us and read this blog till the end as we demystify some of these myths and help you understand how and why apps are essential, especially for small scale businesses.

Importance of mobile apps for small scale businesses

Mobile apps have become the catalysts of change for online brands and businesses. Here, we have discussed the various aspects of the significance of apps including its infrastructural importance, financial importance, and more.

Let us unravel the five points and their different aspects one by one, and get a clearer understanding of the significance of mobile apps.

#1: Infrastructural importance

The digital infrastructure of your business determines the smooth and robust functioning of your brand in the online space. Learn how apps benefit your digital infrastructural set-up and smoothen the experience for your customers:

Leverage smart-device friendly set up

Smartphones and smart-devices have become an indispensable part of our lives. Most of your potential customers could be smartphone owners. People are spending a huge amount of their time on their smart gadgets and devices.

These smart devices are powered by apps. Therefore, to claim space on your user’s smartphones and to be a part of this smart-device friendly business circuit, you will need an app that performs well and caters to the need of mobile-friendly customers.

Ensure easy access and availability

This is the best and the most unique selling point of mobile apps that keeps them ahead of websites or mobile sites. Mobile apps can be easily accessed by any user at the click of a button. Also, users are spending most of their time on their smartphones.

This makes the buyers easily available for the business, and the brand easily available for the consumers. Hence, it becomes easy for business owners to connect with their audiences, and even easier for customers to avail the benefits of their brand at any time.

Offer smooth user experience

Mobile phones have changed the dynamics of the online industry. If you can bring it within the reach of the thumb, you are more likely to sell it. The ease of usage of apps inspires users to take more actions as their experience becomes far more frictionless and smoother.

As a small store owner, keeping your existing customers happy and working towards the betterment of their experience should be your prime goal and a huge chunk of this battle can alone be won with a native and feature rich mobile app.

Enable effortless navigation

Navigation can become a bliss if you offer the best UI and UX to your users. An app that intuitively guides users to the next steps, can easily make them move further ahead in the purchase funnel, thereby enhancing the experience for them and increasing the profits for the sellers.

This can be easily achieved with native apps that come with a smart menu and easily navigable design. As everything comes within the access of the thumb, the users can explore your store easily and make purchases with their preferred payment options.

Utilize the device resources

Mobile apps gain immense control and access when it comes to utilizing the resources of the users’ devices. For instance, with an app you can get access to the location of the device, microphone, access to other apps on the device, and a lot more.

You can utilize these device resources to enhance the experience of the users, personalize your content and marketing campaigns, make business decisions based on recorded information, and more.

Tap into the on-demand eco-system

On-demand apps are the new best thing in the online sphere. People love their desired products and services delivered at their door and hence, the on-demand eco-system is flourishing like never before. If you have a similar business, store, service, etc., you can join the league and be a part of it without much effort.

For instance, let’s say you have a small dairy business where you sell milk and other dairy products. Without an app, you will only be able to cater to the people lining up at your door. However, with apps you can take online orders, ensure door step delivery and also cut the queue at your shop or outlet. This can increase your chances of growth manifold!

Suggested Read: Mobile app navigation: Best practices to enhance your UI and UX

#2: Role in business-consumer relationship

Apps enjoy extreme proximity that physical stores and websites fail to deliver. This makes mobile apps the true champion of business-consumer relationship, a vital ingredient for the success of small businesses. Read further and understand the role of apps based on this aspect:

Enable barrier-free communication

The best thing about a mobile app is that it bridges the gap between two entities and enables barrier free communication. Apps connect people with the click of an icon and the touch of a few screens and buttons, thereby facilitating easy communication.

There are many users in the world who find it difficult to hunt the web for what they need. However, getting on-board, accessing products and services, modifying language or other demographic settings, receiving, and reading notifications, making payments, etc., becomes easier for them with mobile apps. This becomes especially important for small businesses as they have limited means of communication.

Increase consumer engagement

When was the last time you went to a search engine and looked up for a website for your daily needs and requirements? We mostly end up downloading the apps for the things we regularly use and turn to those apps whenever we need anything done. Clearly, mobile apps are the true champion when it comes to ensuring higher rates of consumer engagement and conversions.

85% buyers prefer apps over mobile websites for online shopping. Clearly, having an app multiplies your chances of attracting customers and turning them into loyal consumers. Remember, converting returning customers can be more beneficial for small businesses that acquiring new ones.

Cultivate consumer trust

Whom do you think buyers are more likely to trust when it comes to online shopping? A website that they occasionally log in or an app that dwells in their phone and they feel they have full access to? We do not need a survey to prove that people trust apps they regularly use more than websites.

Besides, apps enjoy more proximity with users. This gives you ample space and opportunities to cultivate and earn the trust and confidence of your customers. Additionaly, when you offer customers a 360 degree solution with physical stores, a website, and an app, they are more likely to trust your brand than the ones limited to a few resources only.

Collect honest ratings & reviews

Websites often attract either no feedback at all, or gain feedback that is based on one time usage or a few sessions only. This often leads to impulsive reactions and customers end up giving more negative reviews.  However, the feedback cultivated and collected based on app experiences is more gradual.

You get ample time to work on your weaknesses and customer grievances. You can also ask your customers to drop reviews more often and therefore gain more positive reviews, ratings, and feedback. As websites attract unfiltered traffic and app reviews are mostly given by genuine app users, you are more likely to get accurate ratings, reviews and feedback that can help you grow.

Make the most of loyalty programs

Loyalty programs play a vital role into turning your new customers into returning buyers, increasing your existing customers’ loyalty and lifetime value, and also in increasing their average spending value. It makes your customers feel rewarded and welcomed.

As per CodeBroker’s 2018 Loyal Consumer and Survey Report, 75% participants indicated they’d be more likely to sign up for a rewards program if it were convenient to use from their mobile device. Clearly, if you have a loyalty and rewards program for your customers, having an app will make it more effective.

Suggested Read: Know how ratings and reviews can optimize the success of your mobile app

#3: Branding benefits

small scale business setup

The terms branding, marketing, packaging, etc., can intimidate any business person or brand owner. Especially in the case of small businesses, branding opportunities occur less frequently and come with budget constraints. Read and find out how apps can help small businesses in boosting their branding endeavors:

Enhance brand recognition

Having an app installed on your user’s phones is like having a 24×7 branding campaign going on. The app icon always remains in view and access of the users, thereby giving a boost to your brand recognition.

As a small business, this can have a huge impact on your brand awareness initiatives as customers will start identifying your brand and interacting with it. Their rate of interaction and responsiveness towards marketing and branding initiatives also increases in the case of apps.

Personalize branding & marketing

As discussed above, mobile apps enable you to leverage the device features and get access to crucial user information like location, personality traits, usage preferences, and more. Therefore, it becomes easier to collect more accurate data and use it to personalize the marketing tactics.

Utilize the benefits of direct marketing and promotions, and make the most of apps to expand your business. Create custom offers, deals and suggestions for your users. Based on the information collected through apps, you can also create and send personalized push notifications, emails, etc., and make each marketing initiative more effective and powerful.

Get edge over competitors

Statistics show that 40% customers are likely to abandon a brand and switch to a similar competitor if they fail to get a satisfactory mobile experience. Clearly, a brand that is ready to offer a smooth mobile experience, is more likely to get an edge over its competitors who fail to do so.

Besides, investing in apps will put you in a favorable position as compared to your contenders. It will help you gain 360 degree branding, offer one touch access to customers, and a lot more. As you go digital, you will be able to unlock many such opportunities.

Suggested Read: All you need to know about mobile app Push Notifications – A complete guide

#4: Promotional & financial significance

Mobile apps can have an instrumental role in amplifying your revenue, ROI (Return on Investment) and profits. It also increases a customer’s lifetime value and hence increases engagement and conversions. Read further and discover the financial significance of apps:

Implement monetization effortlessly

Mobile apps can help you earn the extra capital required for your business if you can monetize them the right way. Monetization initiatives like affiliate marketing, sponsored promotion, publishing paid content, etc., can gain more eyeballs and become more fruitful if you have an app.

Marketers and advertisers also prefer brands with apps as they appeal to users and make every initiative a success. Additionally, if you create apps with tools like AppMySite, you can get inbuilt monetization support for running ads from Google and earning revenue in an effortless manner. You can leverage the devices resources and place targeted ads based on your users’ activity and preferences.

Amplify your earnings and profits

All the various factors and benefits listed above boil down to the fact that apps can offer matchless shopping and browsing experience to your customers and make their journey super smooth and frictionless.

Apps can also help you in getting the most out of your communication, marketing, and branding endeavors, and therefore help you reap immense profits. In a nutshell, mobile apps can ultimately help you in increasing your return on investment and multiplying your revenue manifold.

Suggested Read: Paid vs Free Apps: Which mobile app monetization model should you choose

#5: Additional importance & benefits

The scope of mobile apps is unlimited. You can reap infinite benefits and scale your business to new heights. Keep reading and find out the additional benefits of mobile apps for a small-scale business and make the most of it:

Save time and resources

An app can streamline your business operations, decongest, and declutter piled up tasks and backlogs with organized infrastructure, cut the queue outside your stores, and help you save a lot of time and resources.

For instance, once you get an app, you can stop investing in pamphlets and brochures. Instead, you can ask your store investors to download your app and get all the latest updates, information, store tour, etc., through the app itself.

Mine significant data seamlessly

As discussed above, mobile apps can give you more authentic, accurate and detailed insights, data, statistics, and information as apps can access device features and are more proximate and available for users.

Therefore, you can use apps to mine crucial data related to users, their preferences, the high and low points of your business, success and failure causes of your campaigns, and a lot more. Using this data, you can become your own expert and make strong business decisions without investing a fortune in hiring specialized agencies to do the same for you.

Be ready for mobile-dominant future

Last but not the least, creating mobile apps for your small scale business is also important because the future demands it. Even if you have managed to run your store without an app till date, soon you will be left out if you fail to cater to the growing mobile-oriented digital infrastructure.

Therefore, you must be ready for the mobile-dominant future by complementing your business with a robust website and a feature rich mobile app. As your business grows, you can scale the app to incorporate new dynamics and offer the best mobile experience to your users.

Suggested Read: 10 statistics that show why you should create an app for your business

Build a premium app on an affordable budget!

build app

That was all about the importance of mobile apps for small businesses. The last blog suggested above also gives a statistical overview of the importance of mobile apps and its role in the growth and success of contemporary businesses.

However, you must remember that all this is just theoretical testament. In order to truly understand the power of mobile apps and leverage the power completely, you will have to build an app and launch it.

Do not worry about the budget and technical constraints. Creating apps has not just become important in this day and age, it has also become easier. You do not need to learn coding yourself or spend a fortune in order to get an app for your business.

AppMySite has democratized mobile app development with its DIY app builder platform and made mobile apps accessible and affordable for all. It enables anyone to create, customize, test, and launch premium Android and iOS apps for various kinds of websites.

The app builder by AppMySite comes with a robust infrastructure that takes the DIY app development experience several notches up. It allows even non-technical individuals to build feature-rich apps for their business that come packed with monetization and marketing tools as well.

There’s more to it. You get the best of services and tools under one roof and enjoy your end to end app building experience without any friction. Evidently. there is absolutely no reason or excuse to not create an app anymore.

So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and make your own app with AppMySite’s free app maker and test it for perfection. Proceed to publish the apps on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, and reach your mobile-friendly consumers in no time.

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