Mobile Apps: Necessary Evil or Luxury?

With the super continuing upward trajectory in popularity of smartphone devices and mobile apps, there has been a new, fresh rise to a whole unique level of marketing channel.

As more and more people are owning smartphones, right from just keeping in touch to accessing information instantly, has now become a concern of course. This first-rate amplification on smartphones has enticed great attention from marketers and various businesses around the globe are now finding ways of taking advantage of this little, handy device as a tool for offering information, attracting new customers, and retaining the existing ones.

Currently, mobile apps are nearly considered as the “New website” for a few businesses and several well-known companies have already triumphantly launched their own mobile apps which place them at them cutting edge of their market, while assisting them in maintaining customer loyalty and enhance the quantity and quality of the customer leads they produce.

Usually, for B2B organizations, mobile apps are greatly becoming prevalent since they let their users achieve their routine business operations seamlessly without having to carry their laptops all the time, such as checking the status of the outsourced projects, giving a demo on new products, etc.

According to a survey, nearly 355 US small business owners were a part of this study. The survey says that enhanced customer service was one of the major reasons for SMBs behind developing an app for their business.

What should a typical mobile app offer?

The very thing to consider in mobile app development is that it shouldn’t be a copy-paste of your business website. The user experience of mobile app greatly varies than that from a typical, conventional desktop app. With the hope of making things a little bit simpler, more accessible, and optimizing processes while on the go, customers prefer mobile apps over traditional web apps.

So a good mobile app needs to provide solutions for all the problems that users usually encounter while accessing desktop apps. Whether it is to help sales team in producing quality leads or assist customers in ordering new products quickly, mobile apps need to simplify the whole process and provide a unique touch point moment for B2B businesses.

However, building a mobile app for your business is not an easy thing. It requires a good amount of time and funds. Right from keeping your mobile app updated with the current operating systems of smartphones to introducing your new products and services to your clients and customers, there is a lot that you need to keep tabs on.

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The upsides of building a mobile app

• A very good percentage of the global population is utilizing smartphone devices and tech savvy.
• Mobile apps can you give you an edge over your peers anytime, anywhere.
• Mobile apps assist in improving customer loyalty and retention since they are always at hand.
• Mobile apps normally load quicker than desktop apps or websites.
• Mobile apps are easy to use; self-demonstrative.
• Smartphone users tend to spend more time on apps than traditional websites.
• Mobile apps can be particularly targeted to various users like customers, employees, dealers, etc.
• Mobile apps are environmentally friendly. They offer less need for any sort of transactions that involve paper.

The downsides of mobile apps

• Mobile apps need to be built to suit all major smartphones OSs so that they can perform effortlessly on each and every platform (iOS and Android app development).
• Mobile app needs a continuous care both in terms of new content and tech updates.
• They are not as easy to simplify as a traditional website.
• Mobile apps can be a bit pricey especially if they include too many functionalities.

Apart from the above-mentioned upsides and downsides of mobile apps, if you own a website that is working great for you with powerful visitor numbers and producing a decent crop of leads then the mobile app could be just redundant or excess for your business.

Of course, mobile apps do strengthen and increase customer services quality beyond anticipation. With the smartphone browser still the handiest app in the neighbourhood, it makes sense to simplify its utilization when it comes to accomplishing B2B mobile marketing success rate. By ensuring your business website has the best responsive design, working effortlessly across all platforms, and shows the right info and correctly in various mobile browsers, your consumers and clients will have a great user experience even without the requirement to download the mobile app.