Meaningful mobile apps: Should I build an app for my business?

5 min readAug 10, 2020

Welcome! Today, I want to tell you from the beginning why I believe you should build an application for your business. I am going to present you with a series of arguments, market metrics and concrete examples of apps that can boost your business, or create a totally new one to provide an incredible service to the end user.

Which is the use of building an app?

Many businesses, companies and startups are investing in creating mobile applications to connect more with their current customers, even knowing that they have a responsive website (adaptable to mobiles and tablets). But why do you think they do it? And if so, what do they benefit from?

Let’s start with seeing the difference between a website that looks good on mobile and a mobile app, the benefits of an app, and how to know what type of app is suitable for you, in addition to understanding whether it is worth creating an app for you. business idea.

To start, we must tell you that your mobile-friendly website is the same version as your desktop website but adapted to smaller devices such as smartphones or tablets. This improves the quality of the user experience and in marketing perspective improves conversions: it is super necessary! On the other hand, a mobile app are portions of software that will be installed on smartphones, the apps will provide a specific function that cannot be performed efficiently and quickly with a web browser, be it using the camera, gps , video calls, push notifications, bluetooth among others …

But the key is in the user experience, because it is really impossible to compare the quality of the experience of an application versus a mobile-friendly website. If you are a user of your email application, social networks, imagine using these functionalities in a web browser on your phone … we can easily assume that we would not last more than a few seconds using it due to its flexibility. That is why we believe that an application is complementary to a mobile-friendly website, it does not replace it.

The recipe for success is, as in everything, balance. Generating a balance of both tools will be beneficial to you: having a responsive web and a mobile app.

5 benefits of creating an app

If you talk about technology, you always have to take the lead. Above all, if your brand aims to sell, show itself, generate customers, build loyalty, attract, etc.

So that you can understand why we say what we say, we are going to illustrate you with some concrete marketing data. Thus, having a mobile app, among other issues, serves to:

· Engage the customer more

· Loyalty: create a habit for the customer with your app, either because you improved their life by solving a question (such as homebanking for example), or because you created some point system, discounts, etc. for using your app.

· This results in a consequent increase in sales, since if you improve your service you will differentiate yourself from the competition, and at the same price or similar price the client will choose you for your good service.

· Depending on the type of company, it also improves productivity, reducing manual data load, indiscriminate handling of sending WhatsApp messages, Excel spreadsheets and impressions.

· Increase visibility and online traffic, because it differentiates you from the competition and improves the brand image.

· It helps to keep the brand in the user’s mind, since by having easy and direct access, we are generating a permanent memory and a much more fluid activity than if they entered the web. Simply because we take the cell phone everywhere!

Types of apps

Now that you have understood the importance of developing your own app, we are going to tell you that there are several types on the market, depending on the target user and the business model. Broadly speaking, we can subdivide the following groups:

· Internal corporate: these are apps to improve the productivity of the company itself, for example to control staff time

· Apps for the end user: which in turn are subdivided into B2B (Business to Business, businesses selling to end-users), or BTC (Business to Consumer, businesses selling to end consumers).

· There are also other subtypes such as startups

· New sales channel (when a company creates a new channel through an app)

· The typical app for an existing web app such as Booking, Despegar, among others.

Now back to the question at the beginning… so does it make sense to create a mobile app?

The truth is that not always. There are specific cases where it does make sense, and cases where it clearly does not. Remember that applications generally solve a specific problem that will not be efficiently resolved by web browsers. For example, if we have a website for our company, where we offer our work, who we are, services, contact, budget, portfolio … it is clearly not necessary to have an app for this, or if you detect that the users who use your website do not have a high volume of traffic from the mobile for whatever reason, basically you would have to ask yourself some questions:

Is there a specific problem to solve that cannot be solved in an attractive, efficient way and with a good user experience in a web browser?

Is there a market that will use that app? VERY IMPORTANT

Will the user install my app? (Let’s think about how many apps we install and how many we uninstall per week because they are not used).

Is the end user of the product on the street or in an office?

Will we need device functions such as camera, gps, push notifications, etc?

In summary, we recommend that you evaluate what the real need is, but if you answer everything and that leads you to consider creating an app, we encourage you to do so. It’s a one way way to takeoff!

Meaningful mobile apps: Should I build an app for my business?

Written by Javier Olivieri