Sales Strategy
Why You Should Build an App for Your Small Business | July 20, 2016 (0 comments)
New York, NY—In today’s smartphone driven and app-heavy market, web presence alone is no longer sufficient. No matter what the size or scale of your company, having your own app is a business essential. While many of the more well known apps available today come from big corporations, building your own app does not necessarily require a prohibitively big budget. Many small independent retailers have their own apps, built on a smaller scale reflective of their small business, but no less effective or essential to their business success. Whether you own a single store or a small chain of retail shops, developing an app for your company is a key marketing tool you should not bypass.
Today’s consumers rely heavily on their mobile devices, checking their phones at least once an hour and using their phones to execute many online tasks. Statistics additionally show that smartphone users spend most of their mobile phone time using apps. With online activity focused so heavily on mobile devices, any business that does not have its own app is massively undercutting its marketing capacity and customer reach.
Having an app for your business means gaining entry into a massive, pre-existing customer base, much larger than any client base a small business would find through more traditional means. Apps also increase user engagement, giving companies the ability to offer their customers online transaction options, loyalty programs, and online coupons and promotions.
App created by Fueled for luxury retailer Barneys New York, above, and for Porsche automobiles, below. Click here for more examples of apps the company designed.
In addition to boosting user engagement apps can further enhance customer experience by improving customer support. Apps allow for speedier response times, streamlined communication channels, and more personalized customer attention. With an app, your business becomes easily accessible on a platform that consumers already use multiple times a day, making the experience simple and easy for all parties involved.
Having an app also helps to increase brand visibility. In building an app, you create a smartphone icon for your brand, which then serves as a visually recognizable marker of your company. With a design that your customers can recognize, your brand becomes more prominent and relevant and boasts a stronger overall brand voice. Push notifications via your app can further bring your business name physically into the forefront, staking out valuable real estate on your customer’s smartphone screens.
With the development of software development kits that streamline and simplify the app building process, the costs of creating an app have been reduced dramatically, making it a feasible option for businesses of any size. Many of these software kits also allow for individuals without any coding knowledge to build their own apps, making it even easier and more accessible for any business to create an app. Building an app for your business has never been easier or more important, so waste no time and build your own app today.
After graduating from Bates College with a BA in Art and Visual Culture, Olga worked as a Product and Studio Manager at Buero New York, a boutique design agency. Now, Olga works in the editorial department of Fueled, a digital marketing start-up and app development agency where she enjoys writing about market trends in the technology industry.