When small businesses try to come up with a mobile strategy they have more reasons to make mistakes. They have too many constraints like small budget, fewer employees, less exposure and lack of experience. Naturally, they need to be more cautious to make mobile apps deliver business. The most alarming thing is, most small businesses just do not know what it takes to make their apps engage audience and convert business. As the competition in mobile app marketplaces is continuing to grow, they have no other choice but to concentrate on perfection. Before approaching any iPhone application company or Android development firm for your new app you need to ensure not repeating the floss commonly seen in majority of apps for small businesses.
Here we are going to introduce some of the most time tested and successfully tried mobile app development tips that small businesses can find helpful.
Make the basics perfect
Let’s start with the basics. For a mobile app the basics refer to Setting your objectives, long term goals and to know who are going to use your app. A groundbreaking app idea is just the very beginning and it should be supported by you proper objective about the particular app is going to benefit your business objectives. Is it going to strengthen your brand image and the digital identity of the business? Is your App going to drive sales for your business? Is the app going to be a crucial tool to initiate customer engagement and loyalty program for your business? With the app idea in place, you need to answer all these questions.
When the objective of your mobile app is decided upon, it is time to know who are going to use your app. Your mobile app must had some value to the life of the people who are going to use it. But the question is, for whom the particular app idea is valuable. At this stage you need to seek opinion from your existing customers in regard to the new app and try to figure out how the app actually going to help in the real life situations of these people. When you have a clear idea of how your app is going to add value to the life of your target audience, you are ready to build the app.
Design it to deliver business
You might have noticed that most successful apps are basically Simple in look and feel. Simplicity in mobile apps mostly rewarded with great customer engagement and business success just because it delivers quickly what it needs to do. Your mobile app should be designed to help your customers and in effect to serve your business goals. This is why it is important to focus on specific customer problems and priorities with your mobile app. instead of trying to solve too many problems you need to prioritise the particular elements your customers are looking for. Only a simple and straightforward design can help you deliver pinpointed solutions to particular customer problems. Make the design simple free of clutter and optimised for practical help. Here are some things to consider.
- Show the most relevant information above the fold in a prominent place.
- Make all the clickable links and buttons bigger and prominent ones.
- Create a sense of priority with appropriate colours and colour shades.
- Leave some white space around images and text content.
- Optimise on-page contents, specially images and media for quick loading.
Run the app like a self sustained business
A mobile app is not just a type of advertisement helping you to generate traffic for your regular business channels. But by its own right it is a Business channel itself, can generate potential revenue and can self sustain like a business. Naturally when building your own mobile app you need to have a monetization plan in place. The app should generate revenue to sustain a business on its own rather than depending on other channels for funding. If you are a restaurant, rather than making the app as a promotional tool to drive customers to your restaurant, it should take food orders from the app users directly.
If your mobile app is helping your users in a unique way you deserve a price for it. But to make them pay for downloading the app from the app store is the most ambitious way to monetize a mobile app. Most paid apps do not sell while a vast majority of successful apps at least offer him free version to their users. Even if you really think that your app deserves a premium, you need to ensure offering a free version along with the paid one.
Apart from tagging a price against a mobile app you have other effective ways to drive monetization and build revenue over a period of time. In-app purchases Is the most common and preferred monetization tactic remained hugely successful for most apps. Depending on the nature of your app you can also partner with other apps and run affiliate marketing campaigns. Renting out space for commercial advertisement within your app is another effectively to monetize your mobile app. Selling ad space can be successful and engaging if you can place your ads contextually and without distracting the user focus.
A mix of contents giving a feel of your brand
As mobile browsing experience continues to be richer and better, Mobile apps equally need to be optimised to compete with mobile web in respect of visual aesthetics and functional ease. Your mobile web experience should not be considered far better than the native mobile experience created by your new app. To make your existing web audience find the new mobile app Lucrative, you need to offer them a variety of contents including images, text, graphic visuals, animation, etc. The contents delivered through a native mobile app should be crisp, short, quickly scannable and should uphold your brand image.
To conclude, hey mobile apps developed to serve a small business should be designed to grab user attention as quickly have the audience lands on the app. You should instantly make it clear how the app is going to help and what it is all about. Last but not the least advice to make a new mobile app find the path of success is to pre launch campaign and promote the app across the channels long before it is actually submitted to the app stores.
