Category: Mobile App Development

5 Key Advantages of a Mobile App for Your Business

Just a decade ago many companies, and especially small, medium-sized and local businesses, need convincing about the importance of a website for getting found by prospects and for building customer loyalty. Now managers are asking, “Why do I need an app when my website’s optimised for mobile?” As a mobile app development consultant, I’d like to introduce you to the unique marketing opportunities which the applications for smartphones and tablets have to offer.

App Store Presence
Mobile users access Apple app store and Google Play with the push of a button and watch out for new offerings every day. This will give your business’s mobile app exposure to all smartphone owners in the UK, accounting for over three quarters of the adult population. This is a fantastic way to promote your company and products on some of the most powerful platforms at present.

Customer Engagement
Once an existing or prospective customer downloads your app, this person is already engaged with your business. You will have constant presence on their mobile device and this is the foundation for getting repeat purchases and building loyalty. The application practically gives you a shortcut to retaining customers which is one of the most challenging and money-consuming tasks in marketing. My team and I will ensure that you not only have a well-functioning mobile app, but that it is especially created to engage your target audience.

Push Notifications
These messages are delivered automatically even if the customer is not actively using your app at the moment. This is a valuable instrument for telling users about new products, special offers, app features, events, company news and anything else that you want. Do these really work? A recent study has shown that the average push notification opening rate is 65% while the peak one is 80%. A marketing expert will be able to create attractive messages with compelling call to action targeting your audience for achieving top results.

Offline Interaction
You can readily choose what app features to be accessible offline to increase the level of customer engagement. These could be product catalogues, posts, audio content and much more. Nowadays, people rarely go offline, but when they do, they actively search for something to fill the gap. Wouldn’t it be great to have customers checking your products or articles instead of magazines, newspapers and other content on long flights or while travelling in the London Underground? When they go online again, they can be ready to make a purchase or take another action.

Effective Management
The performance of a website depends on the speed of the internet connection and the browser’s loading speed. A mobile app is used directly and can offer great experience even offline, as pointed out just now. These are important factors for gaining solid presence on the mobile devices and minds of customers. Furthermore, when you have an application especially tailored to the needs of your business, you can derive accurate performance analytics directly and use it for giving your marketing strategy a further boost.
The latest forecasts show that in the second quarter of 2016, there will be 43.2 million mobile app users in the UK. Your business can secure a permanent spot on their devices.

If you consider a mobile app for your business, email me or send me a message.

Mobile App Deep Linking is Important

Understanding Mobile Deep Linking
Mobile deep linking refers to using a URI for linking to specified locations or pages within mobile applications. There are various ways to use it such as SMS, email, notifications, social media, and so on. This directs users to relevant content not the apps home screen.

Types of Mobile Linking
• Standard Deep Linking – This directs your users to specified part of the app with the app URI. This will only work if the user has the app actually installed don their device or an error page will be displayed.
• Deferred deep linking – This type of linking directs users to specified content in your app if installed. If the app isn’t installed the user is directed to the app store listing of your app.
• Contextual deep linking – This serves the functions of both types of linking with the addition of being able to allow for better relevancy and precise tracking. Users and developers will find more use for this type of linking.

Mobile Deep Linking Matters
In the past, the adoption of deep linking was slow because of unclear benefits. You only benefited from standard deep lining if a user had the app installed on their device. Since we no have contextual and deferred linking, attitudes have changed towards deep linking. Companies now understand that deep linking has a lot of value for them as well as the end user.

User Experience is Enhanced by Mobile App Deep Linking
When users use deep links they have better access to content. You can direct the user to a specific screen and not your home page. If your linking to something in the app from some other page such as a social media account, the end user can be taken directly to that content.

Better Eengagement, Retention and Usage
With deep linking valuable usage metrics are improved. When a user is deep linked, there’s double the retention rate, double the activation rate, and the app is visited twice as frequently when compared to those that are not deep linked.

User Onboarding in Improved
The onboarding experience is improved with deep linking. When you use contextual deep linking for example, personalised app invites, offers or other incentives can be used.

Users are Re-engaged with Deep Linking
When you have an app that’s been inactive for some time, deep linking can be used to direct the end user to content which encourages then to use the app. A push notification for example, can be used to offer the user a new feature, exclusive deal or some other offer to get them back to your app.

Marketing Can Be Strengthened with Deep Linking
You can increase sales with deep linking depending upon your monetization strategies. You might offer a push campaign for example, with a percentage off to target your users so they can buy immediately from your app screen.

App Discoverability Can Be Improved
Mobile app deep links are indexed by Google. The content in the app can show up in the Google search results just like a webpage. You may get more users to the app through Google searches.

You Get More Insight into Campaign Effectiveness with Deep Linking
You can pass data with deep linking so you get more accuracy when examining the success of your campaigns. You can see if it’s SMS, email or deep linked ads, referrals, or social media which are driving downloads or users to your app.

Best Practices for Deep Linking
You need to present information in the best way with deep linking because it puts users on a different page than what they may expect.

You have to look at the architecture, information hierarchy, and app logic when deep linking. There may be other steps required for functionalities or features to work properly. If these aren’t corrected, the user would be sent to a page which doesn’t work the way it should. For seamless integration you have to avoid login pages and take the user directly to the content. If you don’t think about how the links should work, then the end user may have a poor experience.

Quality products are now using deep linking as an essential component for their mobile apps. App discoverability, enhanced user experience, more downloads, increased sales, and retention of users are the main reasons mobile deep linking is being used more often. Deep linking is valuable for both the user and a developer.

Going Mobile for Better Marketing and Higher Sales

Just five years ago, a business website was perfectly sufficient for a company to carry out its marketing strategy over the internet and to generate more leads and boost its sales. Now, if you are not on mobile devices, you may not even get found by a large number of consumers, who are actually looking for your product or service. According to Deloitte, 76% of adults in Britain have a smartphone and these gadgets are used for much more than making calls. Now is the time for businesses to take advantage of the mobile revolution.
Source: http://www.deloitte.co.uk/mobileuk/#feature

Endless Opportunities
With responsive design, the website of your business can offer the same kind of user experience on smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs. You will be able to sell products directly via mobile devices or have your brick-and-mortar business more easily found through integration with map applications. With just one tap on your phone number, the user will be able to call you via their phone. A mobile app, on the other hand, gives you constant presence on the mobile devices of your customers. You can exploit this for more effective marketing through push notifications. It is also possible for the app to collect valuable marketing data.
Going mobile will make it much easier for you to carry out promotional campaigns and to achieve better results with them, especially using the most popular channels at present – the social networks. According to the “Digital, Social and Mobile 2015 Report” of the We Are Social agency, 32 million people in the UK access their social media accounts via their mobile devices.
Source: http://wearesocial.sg/blog/2015/01/digital-social-mobile-2015/

Huge Market Potential
Consumers are actively using their mobile devices to find products and retailers and to make purchases. Statistical data from comScore shows that 31.7% of smartphone users in the United Kingdom rely on their devices to locate shops while 29.3% purchase goods and services via them. Over 23% of all users use their mobile to compare product prices and features. These factors establish mobile applications and websites as powerful marketing tools.
Mobile sales continue to grow. In Q4 of 2014, 40% of all online sales in the UK were completed via smartphones and tablets, according to research of IMRG and Capgemini. This is 3% higher compared to the same quarter of 2014.
Source: http://www.imrg.org/index.php?catalog=1769

By 2024, the annual spending via mobile devices will reach £53.6 billion, according to Barclays. The value of all sales influenced by a mobile channel is predicted to reach £112 billion. They will make up nearly half of all retail sales made in the country.
Source: https://www.barclayscorporate.com/content/dam/corppublic/corporate/Documents/research/Future-of-m-commerce.pdf

Staying Competitive
What is the competition doing? Businesses focus on solidifying and diversifying their presence on mobile devices. In a survey conducted by Econsultancy among 1,412 companies in the UK, 58% of respondents said that they had employed responsive website design as part of optimising for mobile devices. Another 49% shared that they have employed mobile applications. The competition for the minds and hearts of consumers is moving towards the mobile field and it is paramount for companies to act quickly.
Source: https://econsultancy.com/blog/66543-50-fascinating-stats-about-mobile-commerce-in-the-uk-2015/

If you want to gain larger exposure, to be more competitive and to get higher returns from your marketing efforts, mobile is the answer. My role as a digital consultant is to provide assistance with the development of a complete strategy for achieving top results.

If you are ready to go mobile, get in touch. You can send me an email or call my office at Whiz and seek Philip Philipov.