5 Reasons Why Mobile App is More Than a 'Nice to Have' for Small Businesses 70per cent of consumers expects a personalized experience from brands and a mobile app is the perfect way to personalize communications with your customers

If you're a small business owner and think that having a basic website or a Facebook page is enough to attract new customers, then you're wrong!

In fact, businesses who limit their presence to a website risk the buy and bye scenario. Picture this, for example. - a customer finds you on mobile search, makes a purchase, and disappears (maybe forever).

On the other hand, businesses with their own mobile app can retain customers far easily while it is extremely difficult to retain a customer through a mobile website.

The point is, mobile apps have become a necessity for small businesses to survive. In fact, more and more small business owners are starting to realize the benefits of having a mobile app.

According to a report, 42per cent of small businesses have already invested in their own mobile app development and 30per cent have planned to invest in building one.

Now, when it comes to developing a mobile app for a small business, many business owners consider it an expensive & unnecessary investment. But in reality, mobile apps have actually proven to help small businesses in attracting new customers and increasing sales.

And as far as the cost of mobile app development is concerned, you can always avail affordable mobile app development services to get your mobile app developed within a limited budget.

Here are the top 5 reasons why your small business should invest in mobile application development.

1 - Boost Customer Engagement

With all the noise out there, small businesses can easily lose their impact on customers. This is where mobile applications come to the rescue.

A mobile app is a great strategy to keep customers continuously engaged with your brand. It can help to retain existing customers and also widen the reach in the market.

Here's how: a mobile app basically provides a convenient way to interact with a brand or business. That means, your brand is right there in the pocket of your customers. So, all you'll need to do is send gentle reminders from time to time that pulls customers back to your business.

Remember, the more often you can get your customers to interact and engage with your mobile app, the higher the chances they'll buy your products.

2 - Personalized Marketing Channel

70per cent of consumers expects personalized experience from brands. And a mobile app is the perfect way to personalize communications with your customers.

With a mobile app, businesses have the opportunity to engage their customers in real-time and develop strong relationships. Through push notifications, businesses can easily remind customers about services and products at an optimal time.

Furthermore, businesses can also leverage users' information and location to personalize those push notifications to send relevant updates to users. As a result, this level of personalization not only creates far better experiences for customers, but they also help in fostering deeper relationships with your business.

3 - Build an On-Demand Marketplace

Ever since Uber, on-demand businesses have become quite the craze today. The best part is, consumers are enthusiastic about it as well. And the best way to create an on-demand marketplace is through a mobile app.

Though it doesn't mean you need to start an entirely new business in order to create an on-demand marketplace. It is, in fact, possible to create an on-demand marketplace for your existing small business.

One of the companies that did this is Rover. - Rover offers dog walking, dog daycare, and similar services. Before some time, they only had a website and were searching for new ways to expand their business.

Soon, they launched a mobile app, which helped them in expanding their reach to more than 11,000 cities so far. In addition to this expansion, they also witnessed a 200per cent increase in the user registration form which 90per cent of users booked a service with them through their mobile app.

The success of Rover clearly proves that having a mobile app is indeed the best way to expand an existing small business.

4 - Encourages Customer Loyalty

Easy access to your services or products is one of the great ways to increase customer loyalty. It helps to make a genuine connection with customers and builds brand loyalty. This is where mobile apps come into play.

Mobile apps provide a significant way to offer rewards to your customers through loyalty programs. It is a proven promotional strategy where businesses offer cashback & coupons to customers who have been using your mobile app for a long period of time.

Simply put, loyalty programs not only help in increasing customer loyalty but they also help in collecting valuable user data.

5 - Mobile is King!

Mobile is where all the action's at nowadays. Our lives practically revolve around our smartphones.

In fact, the average smartphone user has gone from spending just a couple of minutes on his device to spending around 3 hours every day since 2008.

In addition, out of those 3 hours, 90per cent is spent on interacting with apps, while just 10per cent is spent on browsing mobile websites.

But, what's more, important than these data is the fact that 79per cent of all smartphone users have made a purchase from mobile apps in the past 6 months.

These stats clearly prove that building a mobile app for your small business is promising.