What’s Next After Having A Website? MOBILE APP!

When a business creates a website, its intended purpose is for customers to view it via their computers or laptops (basically large screens). As a customer, all we have to do is to type in the web-link (URL) and ‘TAH-DAH’, we’ll be brought to the website!

For businesses that want to build an online presence, the first step is none other than creating a website, but it doesn’t just stop there.

Nowadays, people are on their phone almost all the time. It was estimated that smartphone users in the United States spent around 3 hours on their phones each day and about 90% of mobile time is spent in mobile applications (app). In another survey, it was said that mobile users spent an average of 94 minutes per day on mobile apps as compare to 72 minutes on the internet.

Since people are on their phone most of the time, businesses should look at having their own unique mobile apps. It’s true that we could simply type in a URL on our phone browser and be brought to a website, however, consider aspects like web-page layout, convenience and user-experience.

Websites are designed to be viewed on larger screens. If we were to access it on our mobile phones, the layout may look over-sized, navigating on the web-page may be inconvenient and most importantly, these may lead to unsatisfactory user-experience.

Let me share with you some benefits of having your own unique mobile apps!

Optimizing Notification

We’re often prompt by either retail staff or websites’ notifications to sign up to the brands' newsletters. Let’s be honest, how many of us actually bother opening those newsletters in our email? Personally, I’m often too busy with other stuff and having to open an email is dreading! However, with push notification from mobile apps, users do not need to take any additional actions to view notifications. Since we’re on our phones so often, we can hardly miss out on notifications that popped out on our phones.

Leveraging on Mobile Device Features

Mobile apps are able to tap onto the features of our mobile phones, such as camera, gallery, GPS, NFC and contact list. These functions provide great convenience to users and at the same time makes the whole user-experience a much fun and interactive one.

For instance, to transfer money to someone or to access certain webpages, users can simply do so by scanning unique QR codes. Filling up personal particular can be quite a hassle, thus some apps allow users to simply scan their Identity Card (IC) and personal particulars will automatically be filled in. Some apparel apps take this to the next level by allowing users to search for similar clothing through selecting photos from their galleries. Do you know that we can top up our ez-link card via NFC simply by tapping it onto the back of our phones? All of these functions provide greater convenience and accessibility for users to get things done easily on-the-go.

Brand Presence

We’ve established the fact that nowadays, people are constantly on their phones. Even if they do not click into a particular app that they’ve downloaded on their phones, the apps will still be on their screens and they will still encounter the icons of the apps. This indirectly serves as a marketing tool as users are subconsciously reminded of the brands associated with the various apps.

With that said, these benefits of having a mobile app can only be achieved if the app is appealing, interesting and fun enough. Hence, brands have to really put in effort into customizing their apps such that they are user-friendly, convenient, fun and interactive. Most importantly, apps must be able to provide excellent user-experience.

Cheers,

Dayna.T