Mobile apps, having deeply penetrated every sphere of business and personal life, became irreplaceable components in connecting the dots in the digital presence of companies. As a result, having a mobile presence is no longer just an optional choice, but it is an irreplaceable necessity for businesses across all niches.
Despite this increasingly rigorous role of mobile apps, most small businesses still consider them optional choices rather than necessities. But as app development is increasingly becoming affordable, startups and small businesses are taking advantage of the level playing field of mobile apps. In this respect, the app developers in India deserve a special mention as they continue to cater to small businesses with their low-budget and innovative app solutions.
Why are mobile apps not just choices but an indomitable necessity now? Well, let us mention here some benefits that explain this.
The Ultimate Digital Experience
For any business now, customer experience remains incomplete without a digital presence whether you have a brick-and-mortar store in your locality or a logistics business catering to other businesses or a fleet management company or a manufacturer of automobile parts, irrespective of the niche and size if your business, your business needs a digital footprint either through a website, a social media business page or a standalone app.
Websites are the most common digital branding option availed by most businesses. Opened through browsers and lacking continuous visibility, they are great for discovering a brand through a search engine. Still, they lack dedicated and quick access right from the mobile device screen. In addition, social media business pages are also not accessible without doing specific searches.
This is where mobile apps arrive as the front runner of digital platforms and a unified, comprehensive solution allowing instant access to the customers and users. While most customers and traffic visit a business website without any commitment or attachment to the brand, the brand’s loyal users or satisfied customers can decide to enjoy a more committed relationship with the business. For such an audience, a mobile app can offer a more personalized, flexible, sophisticated, and highly scalable user experience.
Whether through personalized notifications or in-app messaging or by leveraging advanced device capabilities or through chatbots, mobile apps in more ways than one ensure mist sophisticated and effortless digital experience. When a brand considers user experience vital to digital branding, mobile apps automatically stay on the top as a preferred choice for digital branding.
Mobile App as the Shopfront
Mobile apps are now the new shop fronts for retail merchants. People buying from online stores are preferring mobile e-commerce apps more than ever before. It is providing them the easiest way to browse and shop products and services. The fluid interface, offline access, and integrated mobile wallets all add to the ease of shopping.
Mobile e-commerce apps with innovative location sending technologies such as geofencing and beacons can also lure customers with instant offers notified through mobile notifications based upon their locations. In addition, mobile e-commerce apps also utilize advanced geotagging features to integrate offline and online shopping experiences. .,
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are also helping the app users experience a real-life-like shopping experience and feel of the products and store ambiance while shopping remotely. Lastly, mobile apps have extended the personalized shopping experience based on user behavior and device-specific inputs. From personalized notifications to personalized menu options, app users are now enjoying more individual-specific browsing and buying experience than ever before.
Mobile Chatbots for Customer Service and Marketing
Mobile apps also emerged as the leading tool for providing proactive customer service and support across many industry niches. For example, the so-called live chat function of business websites can be accessed through a mobile app. But the customer service provided through mobile apps works better now through chatbots.
The so-called rule-based chatbots functioning on the binary principle have already become obsolete, and more intelligent AI-driven chatbots have replaced them. In addition, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies have emerged as the effortless interactive way to address customer queries and issues based on individual data-driven insights, app behavior, and history.
Intelligent chatbots have also emerged as competent marketing tools. The AI chatbots can easily understand the customer intent by providing personalized recommendations based on the purchase history, demographic inputs, and customer behavior. Accordingly, they can suggest options that are likely to have more chances of being purchased than others.
Voice interactions and voice commands have further extended the capabilities of chatbots to offer a more personalized user experience than ever before. For example, a customer can now ask Siri or Google Assistant something on the go and get informed. Similarly, the queries made on the go to an app chatbot are answered instantly and with the least effort. Thus, the voice interaction with intelligent chatbot completely revolutionized customer support and personalized marketing.
Apps are Extremely Affordable Now
Now that we have mentioned the key ways mobile apps can connect customers better, ensure better customer service, facilitate more personalized marketing, generate more sales and boost profitability. No business can doubt the invincible necessity of having their own branded apps. But the next question that they ask is mobile apps affordable for all businesses?
Yes, thanks to the breathtaking speed of innovations on the tech front and the emergence of new approaches and tech stack, mobile apps can now be afforded even by a brick-and-mortar store in your locality. Thanks to cross-platform technologies like React Native and Flutter, they can build an app that runs on iOS, Android, web, and desktop while still maintaining a superb native user experience. Moreover, the reusability of maximum code will save them enormous resources and time.
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach is another way to keep the initial cost of development low while not sacrificing the intended vital features and user experience attributes. You can build a basic app with elementary features and, based upon user feedback, can further make value additions through future updates.
Conclusion
So, mobile apps are a necessity, and they are now highly affordable if you embrace the right development approach and technology stack. But for getting deeper into this, you need to consult experienced professionals and get onboard the development team who can shape your app idea into a success story.