The number of desktop users has reduced significantly in recent years giving way to mobile devices. 90% of the time spent by consumers on their mobile devices is on apps. Thus today mobile applications dominate the ways in which people consume digital information and your marketing efforts should take this into consideration. As web applications are no longer sufficient to run a business successfully mobile app as a marketing tool seems to be the right choice for your marketing strategy. IOS application development services will be of help when it comes to the design of the consumer-centric application to market your goods or services. Developing a perfect application is a tightrope walk. A successful app is an excellent combination of what a consumer needs, business goals, and technology. The question left is how to go about it! Here are the key steps to make if you have opted for the development of mobile apps that you want to be beneficial to both your company and your customers.
- Step 1. Define your goal. Everything starts with identifying a goal and revolves around working towards it. First of all you need to get a clear understanding of what your target market is and what value the users get from the mobile application. After that you need to decide whether your goal is to attract new customers with this app or provide information to existing ones; whether it will be a promotional or an informational app. Remember that many companies treat their apps as advertisements and that’s where the secret of good digital relation with your customer is lost. A perfect app must offer value to the customer and only subtly market itself. A good example of such can be the Brew Guru app from the American Homebrewers Association. Providing value to the customer means different things for different businesses. It includes educating, entertaining, helping save time and /or money, speeding up delivery of goods and /or services and many other things. Another question to answer is if it will be e-commerce or something in between. Also, you must define what part of your website can fit into the mobile application.
- Step 2. Do the research on competition. Existing companies will always opt for apps. Knowing what your competitors are up to will help you understand what your customers expect and the functionality of the mobile app. This information is invaluable for the mobile app development as it can be used by the developers to make your app stand out from the competition.
- Step 3. Choose the development platform. While choosing the development platform it is important to consider how reliable, secure and flexible they are in terms of your priorities and capabilities. A mobile app can offer you an extremely personal communication with your customers. Encouraging your customers to connect to your mobile app through their favorite social platforms and to share their app activities on these platforms will make your application conspicuous in your customer’s network.
- Step 4. Don’t forget about the devices. During the development of mobile applications, many developers concentrate on the software and neglect the hardware of users. It is of paramount importance to remember that the mobile app should work on most devices. Thus integrating app functionality of various devices in your mobile application is not to be overlooked.
- Step 5. Test it. Testing your mobile app by real users will allow you to refine and optimize it. A/B testing will let you get a clearer picture of what users like and discover which of the functions drive engagement and conversions.
So, now your mobile application is fully optimized and ready to work with. Remember to make use of loyalty programs and push notifications to boost the traffic. But don’t forget that too many of them may become a nuisance and disturb your customers.
The benefits of using mobile applications are vast and if everything goes well and the mobile app really provides value to the customer it will help to extend your brand globally and make it recognizable, increase your customer base, boost customer engagement, strengthen customer loyalty by offering good support, stand out from your competitors.
