The top 5 reasons to build a custom business app

Break your phone, and it’s almost as if a little piece of you dies. Sad, but true. However, it’s not the physical aspect of the phone being broken that gets you down; it’s the digital aspect of it. The stuff contained inside that phone is what’s important.

As an entrepreneur, business owner, or manager this thought should immediately get those gears spinning. If you really want to reach your consumers, then you need to find a way to get inside that phone. And the best way to do this is with a custom business app.

Building a smartphone app from the ground up for your business has its perks. You can make it all about you, make it as secure as you need it to be, and also make sure it’s easy to tweak and adjust as your business grows. However, the biggest perk of a custom-built app for your business is that you make your consumer’s happy in a way that benefits you. Here are a few reasons why.

Scheduling

Say part of your business involves scheduling appointments. This could be applicable for a doctor, dentist, lawyer, hairstylist, mechanic, and even a teacher who needs to schedule parent/teacher conferences from time to time. How much easier would it be for a consumer to hop on his or her phone and schedule an appointment through an app…? How much easier would it be for you…?

In both instances, it would be significantly easier. It would save time and hassle for both parties, and for you, more specifically, it could allow you to dedicate internal resources to other tasks. Instead of scheduling and rescheduling appointments, your staff can spend that time focusing on new opportunities.

Reminders

How often do people forget about appointments? How often do loyal consumers not know about upcoming events or promos? And how often do you have a need to push something out quickly but lack the means with which to do so? If you’re like most SMBs, then these situations occur frequently. However, an app can provide your business with the quick remediation it needs.

When you have the ability to push out reminders through an app, then what you really have is the ability to stay visible. These reminders come through as notifications that may even appear directly on a person’s lock screen. That right there is like gold to a business owner. If you send a reminder a day before an appointment, event, or promo, then you’ll likely increase the odds that your consumers will actually show up.  

Loyalty

There are many businesses that use apps to spark loyalty programs. Unlike a card that you have to swipe every time you go somewhere, an app makes things simpler, slightly more automatic, and a thousand times more engaging.

For example, some businesses will ask you to input a phone number when you pay for an item. After doing so, the app will take notice of your visit, tally up your new totals, and send you a push notification detailing how far away you are from your next reward. In some instances, the app will even send you reminders regarding your loyalty status and upcoming rewards. At this point, the loyalty program has become engaging for the consumer and nearly reminiscent of a game. As far as loyalty programs are concerned, that’s like hitting the lotto.   

Targeting

With a custom-built smartphone application for your business, your capabilities expand greatly. One of these capabilities could include the ability to geo-target your consumers. And that is the closest to magic your business will ever get.

With geo-targeting, you can send targeted messages to people who are within a certain distance from your business. For example, if you combine geo-targeting with your loyalty program, you can make that your opportunity to remind members nearby that they have an unused reward or that they’re only one visit away from their next one. This reminder could be the only push they need to stop by and visit your business.  

Customer Service

Think about how much smoother it would be for a consumer if the only thing they had to do to contact your business was open up an app. Instead of tracking down your contact information, calling up your business, and then jumping through multiple hoops to track down the right person, they simply open an app and start communicating.

Whether this communication happens through messaging, a quick email, or a tap-to-call feature, it works to minimize the hassle it requires to find contact information and start a conversation. In the process, you could also minimize other things, like the internal resources you need to have dedicated to customer service and the overall time it requires to initiate and finish a conversation.  

How can we help you?

At Immense Networks, we have decades of combined experience building custom apps for our partners. These apps help our partners accomplish a variety of goals within a handful of industries. If you want to know more about our services or if you simply want to learn more about custom-built apps for business, then give us a call today. We’d love to talk.