The question worth asking honestly
Perhaps you're wondering right now whether your brand needs a mobile app. The key question is whether the potential benefits of having an app justify what is a significant investment. You have a solid website that works well on mobile. Your brand's social media profiles are well managed, and most of the content reaches users on mobile devices. For now, is that enough?
Let's look at the unique advantages an app provides — and you can decide how relevant they are to your business.
Big data = big money
A mobile app is a unique source of information about your customers. Through it, you can understand their purchasing behaviour, preferences, and even their tastes as consumers in depth. You can collect data about their location, mobility, shopping patterns, and life activities unrelated to your brand but important for categorisation.
This data should determine what message reaches which customer segment, and when. Consider how important consumer data is to your organisation, what it costs to acquire, and whether you can effectively use it to increase sales and ROI. In that context, the cost of a mobile app might not seem so high.
Loyalty programmes
If you have a loyalty programme, you absolutely need to build an app. Plastic cards and paper stamp booklets are not only outdated — they're less effective.
Beyond avoiding the 'dinosaur' label, a loyalty app gives you:
- More programme participants. According to CodeBroker research, 70% of customers prefer loyalty programmes with a mobile app.
- Immediate gratification and constant communication. Easy access means you always have a direct channel to your programme members.
- Social sharing. Encourage members to share programme benefits on social media — and acquire even more participants through word of mouth.
Learning from your competitors
If your direct competitors have mobile apps, you practically don't have a choice — you need one too. Without an app, you're not just losing on perception; you're offering a lower-quality, less convenient purchase, service, and loyalty experience.
You've missed the chance to be first. But you can learn from the market's experience and build a better app.
People buy on mobile when they have an app
It doesn't matter what you sell — if you sell online, sooner or later you need a mobile app. According to Google, 80% of customers begin and 60% complete their purchase journey on a mobile device. Meanwhile, 52% say that a poor mobile UX discourages them from further interaction.
An unmatched communication tool
A mobile app gives you the ability to send a personalised message to a customer at any moment — triggered by a specific behaviour, location, type of activity, or virtually any other parameter. No other channel allows such precise targeting and such a wide diversity of messaging.
And all of this without paying for ad inventory, clicks, or impressions. If your brand is an active advertiser, it's worth examining the cost and effectiveness of some of your current media activities against this benchmark. The cost of building an app might start to look very small by comparison.
The verdict
Apps are expensive to build — but the return on investment can come quickly, provided you deliver users a genuinely unique and valuable experience, and use the data collected for personalised communication and product presentation.
