With the rapid rise in the sales of smartphones and their ability to access high-speed internet, more people than ever before are surfing the web or using apps to do a large variety of tasks, right from information search to paying bills, carrying out banking transactions, checking traffic conditions, and much more. According to Statista, internet traffic from mobiles accounted for around half of the total worldwide web traffic. This is expected to take a big leap once the 5G achieves its planned penetration. It is this kind of scenario that usually prompts businesses to consider investing time and money to develop a mobile app. However, before committing yourself to the investment, it is necessary to ask some important questions to find out if you require the app at all, and what it should be capable of doing.
Is There A Customer Demand for A Mobile App?
If your research reveals that an increasing number of customers are looking to get the convenience of a mobile app, it is time to quickly swing into action and develop it using agile development techniques. If you find that there’s no strong demand for it, but you want to make it more convenient for your users, you should identify all the bottlenecks that can be resolved with an app. However, since the investment can be substantial, it is always better to conduct test marketing to see if it received well and how you can capitalize on the concept.
Will A Mobile App Help in Increasing Your Reach?
A mobile app that has been designed properly can engage users effectively. It also enables the use of their device functionalities like camera, push notifications, and location services more productively. Today, mobile apps allow many more devices like smartwatches, digital assistants, and even medical monitoring equipment to join in an internet-connected ecosystem. For many businesses, the adoption of smartphone and mobile apps is essential for customer acquisition and retention. If the exercise is planned and executed well, it can have a multiplier effect on your reach.
Is There A Good Fit with The Nature of The Product You Sell?
Whether your business needs a mobile app has everything to do with your customer requirements and expectations and the nature of the product. In case, your business is of a kind that does not need customers to interact much with you, it is quite likely that your expenditure on developing a mobile app is a waste. On the other hand, if your customers require interacting intensively with your company on an ongoing basis due to the nature of your products or services, it can be a good idea to develop a mobile app to make life easier for them, according to a Big Drop mobile app consultant.
What Scope Should the Mobile App Include?
Even though every B2C business possibly requires a mobile app to make things convenient for its customers, the trick in getting an app that serves its purpose is to get its scope right. A common mistake made by companies is to include everything that the desktop app can do in its mobile app; however, closer scrutiny will reveal that many of the functionalities and features are not required in the mobile app. The best method of getting the scope right is to think long and hard about what it is that the customer wants to do on the fly and then research the concept to establish its veracity. Include only the functionalities that are deemed essential to design and launch a minimum viable product (MVP) and get feedback from the customers and other users to improve on it, and gradually add secondary features that may be desirable but not essential.
Does the App Have the Potential of Becoming a Part of the Consumer’s Routine?
For many businesses, developing a mobile app can be critical to enable easy access to services by the consumer. While the mobile app need not be as complex as the business website, it does need to deliver up-to-date information on demand. If the information required is critical for customers to function efficiently, the developed app has the potential for becoming integral to the customer’s routine.
What Do the Customers Need?
For companies considering the development of an app, one of the most basic questions they should ask themselves is what their customers need, followed by what they want. The point is to develop a mobile app solution that can satisfactorily address the existing pain points to make life easier for customers. If the kind of business you are engaged in requires customers to interact with you only occasionally, a fully-featured website should be adequate, however, if customers need to interact with you regularly, there is a definite need for a mobile app to make their lives easier. According to experts, businesses should get hung up on the technical aspects but rather try to focus on resolving customer concerns and making their lives easier.
Do You Need an App for Employees to Be More Functional?
Mobile phones, especially smartphones, have become ubiquitous, and today almost everyone carries one with them all the time. While most companies build apps to make lives more convenient for their customers, they can also think of making a mobile app for their employees so that they can access information on the go and update data even when they are traveling. By not restricting them to come to the office for filing reports or having to use laptops and desktops for updating the status of their jobs, they can spend more time on the job and become more productive.
Conclusion
For the investment to pay off, the mobile app should be able to create genuine value for its users. Typically, mobile apps become worthwhile if they offer added convenience, superior personalization of services, are location-specific, and can leverage the built-in features of the mobile phone to drive user experience. According to experts, unless you can list out at least three different uses that can only be done through the mobile app, it is better not to waste time, effort, and money in app development.
