Which Mobile App Works Best For Your Small Business?

There’s a flourishing market in smartphone applications, or “apps”, and thousands available. But how do you know which ones are best for you?

Mobile applications or ‘apps’ have become an essential part of our daily lives from helping us to find our way to a meeting, to waking up in the morning or ordering our weekly groceries. They also offer a very useful way for brands and companies to attain key business objectives, from raising brand awareness to driving sales or streamlining procedures.

Make sure the app concept you have chosen matches your business objectives, if you are looking to drive sales, common sense dictates that there should be an easy and appealing way for people to purchase your products within the app. Similarly if you are looking to boost footfall, make sure you have included a store finder. Many companies have launched one-off games in the hope of engaging consumers and creating lasting ties with their brand, but there is little evidence as yet that this has translated to commercial benefit.

Equally important is to understand what kind of handsets your target audience is using. Thinking cross-platform is essential, but some platforms may be more relevant than others. For example BlackBerry, remain popular with a broad business audience, but they are now also prevalent among teenage girls as a result of reasonable tariffs and the surge in popularity of the BlackBerry Messenger app as a day-to-day mode of communication between friends. Nokia too is an important platform to consider – though their devices may not offer the most sophisticated or glossy user experience; they still boast by far the largest percentage market share and enable engagement with a mass market audience.

The app in itself is rarely enough. Far too many well-devised and executed campaigns have failed due to a lack of good media support. In the already crowded app market, promotion is crucial. Invest in a marketing strategy for your app, to ensure that it is both seen and more importantly downloaded.

Once your app is out there, use the analytic tools that are available to look at how people are engaging with it and which features they are using most. This will help you to refine the app or tailor future apps to suit the demands of your clients or customers. It is very unlikely a brand or business will get every aspect of an app development right first time, so it is imperative to keep watching and learning. Don’t be afraid of not getting it right first time and make sure you are agile enough to adapt to customer feedback and make improvements for the future.