In theory, mobile apps offer businesses lots of benefits.
Several of those benefits are unique – you just can’t get them with anything else.
However, in practice, not every business needs those benefits.
Case in point:
That’s a urinal, and without a doubt, it offers unique benefits.
Not every bathroom needs one!
If you’re a business owner, you need to understand the true benefits of having an app for your business, then decide if it’s worth your money,
So that’s what we’re sharing below: four unique benefits of mobile apps for businesses.
But first, a condition you need to meet:
Condition: Your Users Must be Highly Mobile
It sounds kind of obvious, but for your business to benefit at all from having a mobile app, it has to provide a mobile-viable solution.
We just made that term up, but what we mean is that your solution, service, or product has to be something people actually want to access on their phones.
Now that’s a whole different topic, and if you’re not sure whether yours is a mobile solution, check out how Upstack Studio decided on whether previous clients needed a mobile or web app.
Unique Benefits of Mobile Apps for Businesses
Keep in mind that the benefits of mobile apps for businesses go hand in hand with the benefits of mobile apps for customers.
Your app needs to add value to their lives before it can add value to yours.
That’s why every point below focuses on what it offers your users.
That said, let’s start with the most important one:
Instant Access
Not fast.
Not quick.
In – stant.
People expect to have things the moment they want them.
If it’s possible to meet that demand, someone will supply it; might as well let that someone be you.
This is in our opinion by far the most important benefit.
This alone makes it worth paying for a decent mobile app.
People always have their phones with them.
Here are some quick 2022 user stats:
- The average person spends 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phone each day
- 1 in 5 of these people spend over 4 and a half hours
- We check our phones 58 times per day
- And half those times, its during work hours
Having a mobile app means you can really compete for a slice of all that screen time
Wherever or whenever an employee or customer or reader wants to use your solution, it’s right there baby, just tap on the icon.
If there was no mobile app, they’d either have to use their phone’s web browser or wait til they got to a computer.
That extra step might just be enough to make them go “Nah, I’ll just stay on TikTok.”
Second benefit:
Mobile Apps Let YOU Go to Users
Two words: push notifications.
This is a goldmine for getting people to use your services.
It’s how you tell them about promotions.
About new videos or articles.
Send them reminders.
Wish them ‘happy birthday’ to make them feel loved (and remind them you exist).
You know what all this does?
It’s like a fisherman throwing away his fishing rod, getting a cast net, and pulling in a million fish.
That’s what push notifications can do for your business.
Amazing, amazing feature, and something you only get with mobile apps.
Third and closely related benefit:
User-to-user Interaction (Through You)
Push notifications and instant access are not just for you to spam your users.
It’s also a great way – and based on data, the best way -.to facilitate user-to-user interaction.
Social media is the obvious example here, and a very relevant one.
A whopping 98.5% of Facebook users access it through their phones.
But look at the explosion of mobile apps for the workplace.
Companies are using mobile apps for employee engagement, project management, onboarding, training and upskilling, basically every part of Human Resource management.
It’s because they know that all tasks involve collaboration between team members and that parts of these tasks can be done from a mobile interface, especially as phones get more powerful.
It’s kind of devious, but what this also means is that because our phones are with us 24/7, the company is with us 24/7.
And having all that traffic allows you, the app owner, to monetize your app in a myriad of ways.
Just to demonstrate how much of a difference this makes:
Imagine if Whatsapp didn’t have push notifications, and there was no mobile app to check instantly.
You just have to check randomly, and you have to use your phone’s browser.
You know what you get? The original Microsoft Outlook.
Final benefit that matters:
Best Access to Phone Hardware
By hardware, we’re talking about things like the camera, GPS, and Bluetooth.
Sometimes, a solution you want to provide will need to access them.
A web app could do it, but for the smoothest experience, a mobile app is the way to go.
Take Google Maps – it needs constant access to your phone’s GPS.
That’s why there’s a mobile app for it. So that you have a nice, smooth user experience.
This point straddles the line between being an advantage and a necessity.
But either way, it helps you deliver value to customers that enhances your product or service, and on a phone, mobile apps do this the best.
Recap
- Instant access for phone users
- Push notifications (for you)
- Push notifications (for users)
- Smooth access to phone hardware
These four, in our opinion, are the truly unique value propositions of mobile apps for a business.
If you think having these features would help users access your solution better, you have a strong case, and your business would absolutely benefit from having its own quality mobile app.
But it’s gotta be a quality app. Not something you throw together in two weeks on a no-code app builder.
There are a few other unique benefits we think are nice to have, but shouldn’t be the main reason.
Secondary Benefits of Mobile Apps for Businesses
Offline Functionality
It’s a cool feature to have, but two reasons we don’t think it’s that big of a deal:
- People are online all the time
- The kinds of apps that can be used productively offline are kind of limited to things like games and self-productivity tools. Apps that use cloud-based databases can be opened offline, but they’re useless, as are apps that rely on user-to-user interaction.
Full Customization
Also a cool feature.
Also, something we think is often overhyped:
What do you want to customize so much? Security? User flow? Branding?
Is your solution really so unique that you need something completely custom?
Many of us like the idea of being able to do whatever we want, but honestly, we end up doing mostly the same things, with the same requirements.
Not identical, but similar enough.
And the last unique benefit, which is also the most useless thing on this list:
It’s Cool to Have One
We say this all the time: don’t build an app just cause you think it’s cool.
But that being said, it is pretty cool.
We’ve seen the look on clients’ faces when they see their app in the Play Store for the first time.
We, humans, like to own beautiful things, and a well-made mobile app is a thing of beauty.
It’s like owning a Ferrari – it’s definitely a car, but at the same time transcends being just a car – it’s a status symbol.
Apps can work that way too (only you attract other nerds instead of hot girls).
By itself, it’s a terrible reason to build one for your business.
But damn, it is pretty cool.
Benefits Of Mobile Apps: Conclusion and Takeaways
As business owners, we can’t be human sometimes.
We need to be objective, like a machine:
Remember these four benefits:
- Instant access for phone users
- Push notifications for owner promotion
- Push notifications for social interaction
- Smooth access to phone hardware
Those are the benefits you should be after.
Everything else is secondary.
If you’re thinking, yes, my business is in a position to take full advantage of a mobile app, the next step is to understand money and time costs.
It’s expensive, but it’s expensive for a reason.
We cover these reasons in our app development cost breakdown article, where we explain how developers like us charge per hour, and the total number of hours needed.
That’s it from us this time, cheers!
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