Do All Businesses Need an App?

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“The number of internet mobile users is increasing at a tremendous speed each second.”

“Mobile apps marketing is the biggest deal in the world now!”

“Many businesses had already started creating their own mobile apps to take advantage of this billion dollar mobile internet users market. Have you?

This is perhaps one of the most common sales pitches many CMOs and marketing managers have heard about it from the mobile apps developing companies. We all know that the number of internet mobile users is booming, skyscraping, sonic-rocketing every single day.

But the question is, do all business need a mobile app?

How Useful is the Mobile App to the User?

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Log into your apps store and you will see millions of apps applicable in the market. No consumer would download everything in their mobile phones or tablets. Mobile users would only download a mobile app if it is useful for their daily activities, needs, wants and interests such as transportation, musics, shopping, food, travel, the latest news, games and entertainment.

If the purpose of creating a mobile app for the business, is just to satisfy the ego of the business owner and nothing else. Then, the app is just simply another white elephant in this saturated and competitive mobile app market.

Mobile App Cannot Be Just an Information Provider

If the consumers can only get information about the business from its mobile app such as contact info, pictures, advertisement, events and things about the company. Then the app is not useful at all. This is because the consumers can easily get those information from the business’ website or its social media platforms.

Therefore, it is important to put ourselves in the consumers shoes, whether the mobile app can provide additional services for them on top of providing information about the company. If the consumers can see the value in using your mobile app, then it will make sense in creating the app.

Gamify or Qualify?

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Now it comes to another important question, some businesses introduce games in their mobile apps – for one reason, to engage their consumers with interactive mobile friendly games.

So the question again is, do the consumers really bother about playing your games if what they want is your products and services?

The second question will be what is the brand image the companies want to portray from the app? The image of a gamemaster or an expert in your industry?

And of course, as mentioned earlier, the third question will be how useful the app is for the consumers.

If your brand has no relation in making games like the Angry Birds or Flappy Bird owners, then letting consumers play your games will not make sense.

In summary,

Although mobile apps marketing may be the talk of the town everywhere; business owners may still need to see whether by having their own apps, they can see an additional growth in the numbers of customers or simply nothing at all.

This is because the monies, efforts and resources invested on one’s mobile app creation, can be diverted into other useful means to increase the business revenue.

Dear readers, what would be your take on this?