For many businesses, apps are an essential platform that provides direct engagement with customers. But if your organisation has yet to take the plunge, what factors should tip the balance in favour of developing an app ?
Reframing the question
If you are asking whether or not you need an app, cast your mind back a couple of decades and consider the point at which many businesses were wondering whether or not a website was an entirely necessary investment.
Today, the answer is obvious; a good site created by a professional web development company in London is vital for any firm that wants to be competitive. Back then, it was not as clear cut, but history has shown that those who invested early had a head start.
Seeing the potential
A website remains essential, but there are many things that can only be achieved via a standalone app. A site is a storefront and calling card for your business, but an app is a bespoke experience for customers that will build loyalty and generate interactions which go much deeper.
Apps can be used to alert customers to new products and services, notify them of time-limited offers, give them access to exclusive content not found anywhere else, afford them location-based benefits when they are in close proximity to one of your real-world locations and much more besides. Furthermore, apps are still money-making machines, with revenues up by more than a third last year.
First steps
Of course, not all apps need to be intricate, advanced multimedia experiences with expensive bells and whistles. You might just want to build a platform that showcases your existing web content more effectively.
There are plenty of agencies that can help with this process. Red Snapper are a long established professional web development company in London and can tweak your site so that it looks great on all devices and also meshes well with whatever app ambitions you might have.
Apps are also surprisingly flexible and future-proof, since as time passes and you want to add new features, you can roll out updates and remind customers about the benefits they are getting from having your software installed on their device of choice. It is definitely a balancing act, but one which most businesses should consider attempting in the mobile era.