For years now, your customers have been spending more and more time on their smartphones and other handheld devices than engaging brands on desktop or laptop computers. And this trend is just as true for B2B and B2C companies.
For instance, in 2021, time spent using shopping apps reached over 100 billion hours, which increased 18% year-over-year. Moreover, with the rapid rise of remote workers in the previous few years, more employees are using mobile apps to improve productivity from anywhere they work, says ServiceNow.
Additionally, IDC predicts a 47% rise in corporate IT budgets going to mobile application development platforms and tools in 2022. By some accounts, up to 42% of small businesses employ mobile applications. Yes, mobile apps have become more critical than ever in developing your business’s digital strategy.
Mobile Applications: The Blocking and Tackling of Digital Strategy
Mobile apps are essential for meeting your customers where they’re at, so you probably won’t find them sitting at a desk at home or in an office. To borrow a sports metaphor, we consider mobile applications the blocking and tackling of your digital strategy. Every business needs it!
The principal reason mobile apps have become so indispensable to a digital strategy is they improve your customers’ total experience. Gartner views total experience as one of 2022’s trends that are affecting the future of digital strategies. The company says, “total-experience is a business strategy that integrates employee experience, customer experience, user experience and multi-experience across multiple touchpoints to accelerate growth.” Additionally, “Total experience can drive greater customer and employee confidence, satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy through holistic management of stakeholder experiences.”
If you’re a B2C business, at a minimum, you need to be investing in digital transformation and digital product development with a mobile-first mindset. Further, because mobile applications have the ability to capture user data, you’ll have the information you need to understand how your customers interact with your digital platforms.
The Datafication of Digital Platforms
Mobile apps and other digital platforms capture massive amounts of data that can be used to improve engagement and user experience. Forbes says, “Data has become the number one business asset for every organization. We can use data to better understand our customers, research key trends, and get insight into what’s working inside our organizations.”
Modern Logic has helped clients gain a better understanding of their customers through data science and asking deep questions like “why do I have fewer accounts than I have downloads and why do I have people going to the website and not signing up for a newsletter?” Without data to inform your decision-making, you’re flying blind.
The good news is most mobile apps provide you with features that allow you to conduct data-backed experiments. With an app for a client in the (X) industry, for instance, we have been iterating for six months with two-week experiments to make the application more engaging, or “sticky.” By using an A/B testing methodology you can test scores of feature variations and possibilities. Real-time testing often reveals issues that introduce “friction” into the user experience like confusion over how to contact a person for help and having to call support to complete what should be a simple transaction.
Moving Your Zettabytes of Data to the Cloud
The increased reliance on data to help you improve your digital products and capture relevant customer information that helps you foster customer loyalty, drive revenue and improve customer service can generate oceans of data. In fact, the industry even refers to these zettabytes of data as data oceans, or data lakes. That’s also why companies move data to the cloud and off of on-premise data centers.
According to AWS, “A data lake is a centralized repository that allows you to store all your structured and unstructured data at any scale. You can store your data as-is, without having to first structure the data, and run different types of analytics — from dashboards and visualizations to big data processing, real-time analytics, and machine learning to guide better decisions.” What’s more, companies that established data lakes were able to grow the business faster by attracting more customers, boosting productivity and making more informed decisions.
Engage Your Customers Where They Work and Play
Whether you’re running a B2B or B2C startup or established company, your digital strategy should include a mobile app to meet your customers wherever they work and play. We also recommend you move your mission-critical data to the cloud — a transition that will allow you to use powerful tools to analyze and improve a broad range of business performance measures.