The 3 Big Problems You Can Solve with a Mobile App
I’m not going to pretend like an app solves all the world’s problems, but there are some unique solutions an app can provide.
Let’s look at the 3 most common problems business owners face that only an app can solve well.
Problem 1: Click, wait. Click, wait. Click, wait. You’ve lost me.
If your website updates often, or you have community driven content, your users have a bunch of steps to go through to get to the content they want:
- Click to open their browser.
- Click a link, search, or enter your website url. Wait for your site to load.
- Click your menu, find the page they want, click. Wait for it to load.
- Scroll to find what they are looking for, maybe click another link and wait some more.
That’s too much effort, most people won’t bother. If even one of those pages takes 100 milliseconds to load you’re going to drop 7% of your users. A 2 second load time will can mean a 103% increase in bounce rates. For certain businesses, a website isn’t the most efficient way for your audience to get the information they want quickly.
A mobile app can get your customers what they want faster. Here’s what that same process above looks like in an app:
- Click on your app icon on their home screen
- Start consuming content, maybe one more click.
- Found it!
The app loads faster because the app files and content are already download to the device. Because it takes less time to get to what they want users they engage more.
When users find what they want quickly, engagement goes way up and an app can provide this experience.
Whether you have products, education, articles, member’s only content, or community interaction, an app increases engagement.
Posts in This Series
- Mobile is Not the Future (it’s the Present)
- The 3 Big Problems You Can Solve with a Mobile App
- 4 Steps to Making a Great Mobile App
- 3 Ways To Build An App Compared
- How Does AppPresser Work With My WordPress Plugins and Theme?
- Who is Using AppPresser? Customer Examples.
- Frequently Asked Questions about AppPresser
Problem 2: Your audience is overwhelmed and distracted. How do you get your message through?
Your customers are bombarded with emails, calls, and social media messages. How do you cut through the noise to get your message across? How do you show your customers the value you can bring?
Maybe you’re on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Unless you’re a rockstar like Gary V, you are probably getting terrible engagement rates.
Facebook engagement rates have dropped dramatically due to algorithm changes, it’s at a dismal .09%:
Facebook sucks for businesses
Twitter and Instagram aren’t much better at .048% and 1.6% respectively.
Ads have their place in any marketing campaign, but again we get a disheartening average click through rate of .05%. Can we do better?
I’m a huge fan of email. You should be building an email list, and make it the lifeblood of your business. However, the industry average open rate is 18.1%. The average click through rate is less than 2%.
Even if you get much higher than the average, let’s say 30% open rate and 5% click-through. That still leaves 70% of your list who didn’t open your message, and 95% who didn’t take action.
Social media, ads, and email are all important, but there is another way to get important messages across that many businesses ignore.
If you want to get more of your audience viewing your messages, there’s only 1 thing that is viewed almost 100% of the time: a push notification.
A push notification is like a text message, it’s almost impossible to ignore. Since most of us don’t text our customers, the best way to get a message onto their phone lock screen is a push notification.
Most of us carry our phones in our pockets and check them multiple times per day, so you can almost guarantee they are going to see your message.
It’s important to remember that sending push notifications is a privilege. Don’t abuse it! If your app isn’t providing useful content with its notifications customers will turn them off, or maybe even delete your app. If you use notifications properly then they can be a very intimate and useful way to connect with your audience.
Problem 3: You don’t own the most valuable piece of real estate…
An app gets you a piece of the most valuable real estate you could possibly own: a spot on your customer’s home screen.
Seeing that brand icon on their home screen keeps you top of mind, allows you to send them push notifications, and allows them to access your content quickly.
Being in the app stores makes sure that wherever your customers are, you are there also. When your customers search for you in the app stores, are you there?
You also get a piece of that “80% of device time” pie that you need so badly. (ICYMI: over 80% of device time is spent in mobile apps)
Now that we’ve established who needs an app and why, you may be wanting more specifics on your situation. What can the app do, how does it work, and how do you get it built?
We’ll be cover all of this and more in a future post all about how to build a killer mobile app for your customers.
