Every small business owner knows they can’t opt for the investment-intensive outdoor ads and traditional marketing campaigns that have always been the strongholds of global corporations and leading brands. Thanks to the ease of reaching out to a broader audience and making quick inroads into the market, small businesses now prefer mobile websites, social media campaigns, and mobile apps.
Well, mobile apps, apart from allowing businesses to connect to their audience, are also playing a significant role in easing out their internal operation and the business processes. Custom enterprise solutions built by mobile app developers in more ways than one is helping to make small business operations smarter.
Let us explain some of the critical ways mobile apps are helping enterprises to become smarter.
Personalization of Content and UX
Users are very much self-centered and self-conscious these days. Unlike earlier times, customers now can access any alternative solution with the flick of an eye, and that is precisely why the enterprises need to capture their interest and engage them at the earliest. Moreover, users always like to be addressed personally and in a way that gives importance to their intent and preferences. This is the personalization of the content, and app features play so vital a role in mobile apps of today.
Personalized content creation based upon different types of user preferences and user intent is already popular across mobile apps. Personalized UI design elements and user experience also plays a vital role in engaging users and driving business conversion. For example, a banking app, instead of cluttering the user interface with all the menu options, can help the customer choose his or her preferred menu options and the favorite options for quick access. Such personalization with UI elements will not only help customers access their needs faster but will also help to clear the clutter from the user interface.
Faster Online and Offline Access
Faster loading time and access to content is something no enterprise with digital and mobile presence can undermine. A native mobile app allows the customers of the business to constantly stay in touch with every app update and new content as well as features. Faster loading time and instant accessibility are some of the critical advantages of native mobile apps that make them so important a tool in the digital scheme of things.
Apart from ensuring faster access, offline access to content is another key advantage of native apps. Thanks to the in-device storage option opted by many native apps, and users now can access content irrespective of the network availability and slowdown in loading speed. Offline access to content and mobile features helps apps to remain useful everywhere and at all times. This is particularly useful for the field staff and employees on the go who may need to access the app from any time and anywhere. While you can work on a native app while remaining offline, as soon as you become online, the app gets updated with the changes and new inputs.
Robust Customer Support
Small enterprises were always incapable of availing large scale customer service solutions like round the clock telephone support. While the large enterprises can only avail such customer service solutions, mobile apps through smart Chatbots and in-app messaging options can provide customer support to the customers whenever and wherever they need it.
While customer support through smart mobile apps is less expensive, they actually take less time to solve most of the common issues that make customers call customer service and seek help. As the Chatbots are increasingly becoming smarter thanks to advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning based algorithms and data-driven analytics, in the future, most enterprise mobile apps are likely to adopt Chatbot based customer support.
Context and Location-Aware User Experience
Context and location-aware user experience is another key selling point of enterprise apps. Mobile apps, by knowing the precise user location and getting data-driven insights about the particular user contexts can recommend products and services that are more likely to enjoy traction. By addressing the user context and the particular time and location of the user with the recommendations and suggestions, businesses can enjoy the far higher scope of engagement and traction.
Delivering context and location-aware user experience is further made easy through a host of advanced technologies such as geofencing, beacons, accelerometer, and other sensors and AI and Machine Learning based algorithms. All these technologies, by continuously grabbing different facets of user information, including user location, preferences, intent, and constraints, actually make it easier to address specific user contexts and needs in specific situations.
Improving by Learning from Users
Machine learning us continuing to transform the mobile app user experience. This technology, which is responsible for understanding user behavior and preferences, can help a business understand the specific and precise user buying intent and preferences. These learnings through user behavior and user data can also help apps improving the user experience, reduce frictions, and address specific triggers with in-app messages and notifications.
Conclusion
Mobile apps from allowing the automation of operations in enterprises to helping businesses address diverse user needs in a context-aware manner to easing out the variety of business processes like customer support, marketing, etc., mobile apps continue to play a massive role for enterprises. Mobile apps by helping small enterprises availing these technologies actually made way for a more level-playing field among enterprises of all sizes.
About the Author
Nathan McKinley is Business Development Manager at Cerdonis Technologies LLC – mobile app development company follows the authentic practices and strategic ways to design and develop mobile/web applications for small businesses to enterprise level. After spending 5+ years in the tech domain, he started writing on Mobile App, Enterprise, App Design & Development & Design, and Development Strategies with the insights of tech vulnerabilities.