Creating mobile apps for your business offer an effective promotion and sales tool for just about any business.
The adoption of mobile devices is occurring at a rate faster than any technology before it and already a third of visitors to traditional websites are coming from mobile devices and those sites that don’t have a mobile optimised display are already seeing those visitors spend less time on their websites.
Industry analysts, Gartner predict that there will be an additional 1 billion iPad users in the next three years in addition to the 2.5 billion smartphone owners they expect by 2015 so mobile devices are here to stay and all businesses will need to cater to mobile devices in some way or another if they are to be noticed.
Mobile apps provide an engaging and interactive platform that exceeds the capabilities of a mobile website and provides you with the opportunity to garner valuable screen space for your app icon if your users find your app useful and appealing.
Because of the limited space for icons on any users device (without getting lost in folders way down the back of the pile) any app needs to provide the user with a reason to retain it on their frequently viewed pages.
It is critical that your app is appealing in both functionality and design and is going to deliver a tangible benefit to its users and these critical factors need to be considered as a part of the design stage.
Obviously, your app should match your brand’s current design concepts for the logo, colours along with the general look and feel but then you need to consider what functionality you are going to include in your app.
Here are just a couple of features that could be considered when creating mobile apps for your business:
Video Integration & Marketing- Social Media Integration
- Bookings & Appointments
- Sales & Purchases
- Calendar Reminders
- Push Notifications
- GPS Mapping
There are obviously many more features, the list could go on for days but you should also resist the temptation to overload your app with useless features that don’t really serve a purpose.
In addition, when you are using features like Push Notifications in your app, you need to be considerate of the users expectations. While it might seem like a great opportunity to just bombard your users with messages, if they don’t serve a purpose they will eventually become annoying resulting in the user disabling them in the app or worse, deleting your app altogether.
With so many new apps coming onto the marketplace day by day they need to be impressive and serve a valuable purpose for the user in order to retain that valuable front-of-mind space on the users device.
Keep these things in mind when developing your app and ensure you come up with a clear plan during the design phase of your development.