How to leverage Mobile Apps to grow your online or offline businesses

It’s not hidden mobile phones are taking over the world. Mobile phone users are expected to reach 4.6 billion in number by 2019. Also, most of the online businesses are seeing a rapid increase in mobile traffic. More than 70% of the users now connect to the internet through their mobile devices.

This exponential growth of mobile usage could be attributed to cheaper price of the mobile devices as well the amazing ecosystems like iOS and Android. iOS since its introduction in 2007 has started a new era of smartphones. With the in-built apps in smartphones, you can almost do anything; book cabs, order food, setup meetings and even find love through multiple dating apps.

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"If businesses have to keep up with the changing environment, they shouldn’t miss this era of mobile apps” explains Kartik Sharma, CEO of an app marketing agency. He says one of his clients, saw “400% increase in customers” after releasing a mobile app for their business. “Mobile users tend to have better retention as businesses can reach them anytime through push notifications” (internal messaging system built in smartphones). “Also, it’s easier for users to process payments through their mobile devices” explains kartik.

Both offline as well online businesses can benefit from a mobile app. According to a study, a US adult on an average spends 3 hours 35 mins glued to the mobile device. This opens up new avenues for businesses as they can reach their users more conveniently. McDonalds & Dominoes now have their offerings on mobile apps and they have seen a rapid increase of traffic coming from there. In 2017, 80% of the orders that amazon processed were ordered through a mobile device.

Although it is evident that businesses can grow faster by improving their mobile presence, not all of them need a mobile app. Many of the businesses can serve their customers by making a mobile responsive website. It can be argued that the experience is not as good as the mobile app but it does opens up the business to the mobile audience.

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In this world of ever changing technology, the smartest decision is to keep up with your audience. The businesses who will miss the technology curve will face a huge difficulty relating to their audience in the future. Uber &lyft which are ride-hailing apps have captured more than 70% of the taxi market leaving taxi and rental car companies fighting over a mere 30%. In Q1 2014, ride-hailing was merely 8% of the taxi market, with rental cars and taxi companies constituting more than 90% of the share.

It’s still not too late to jump on the mobile app bandwagon, markets are still growing. More than 2 billion of the mobile population has still not upgraded to smartphones. Businesses should start preparing for the coming era and see how they can leverage the influx of users who will be looking for mobile apps to cater to their every need.