Do Consumers Download Small Business Apps?

Will Customers download my Small Business Mobile App? Not many

Business owners who are looking to bring their business online will most certainly be considering how to engage with their customers when they are on their mobile phones. With over 8.6 billion (Statista 2022) mobile subscriptions worldwide, being a mobile first business is critical. According to eMarketeer, USA users spend on average 4 hours 11 mins on their phone each day and over 88% of that time is on Mobile Apps and is increasing year on year. So, it makes sense that Mobile Apps are popular way to engage customers? Not really, lets investigate this some more.  

Mobile App Downloads and impacts for Small Business?

The Mobile App economy was worth $6.3 trillion in 2021 according to App Annie, with 2.59 million Apps on the Android Play store and 3.6 million Apps on the Apple App Store. With over 230 billion app downloads in 2021 (Statista) this is a strategy that works for many businesses and why the number of Apps keeps increasing every year.

When considering a Mobile App for your Business and for it to be successful, your customers need to first download your Mobile App and secondly, they must use your Mobile App or else they will uninstall it after a few weeks. Just because you have developed a Mobile App, for it to be downloaded by customers you will need to advertise and market the mobile app. There are paid strategies here or advertising your mobile app on social media or from your website can help. Another strategy is to engage in App Store Optimization, as over 65% of apps are discovered from a search in the App stores directly. But this is not a simple task for a small business where there is not dedicated app marketing teams and users do not like downloading apps and clogging up their phones.

“91% of consumers dislike installing an App in order to do business” Source Market Study Mobile Customer Experience Issues by heady.io

If you are lucky enough to get a user to download your Mobile App, the next challenge is to get users to keep their app on their phone. The average user has over 80 Apps (TechJury) installed on their phone, however only nine of those Apps are used daily or thirty of those Apps used every month. That means over 62% of Apps on user’s phones are not used and will eventually be uninstalled when the users unclog their phone.  

‘71% of app users churn within the first 90 days of downloading an app.’ Source Upland, Mobile App Retention Rate: What’s a Good Retention Rate?

The considerations for small business then when developing a mobile app go beyond the cost of developing and maintaining their mobile app. Marketing to users to download your app and then keep the app on their phone is not an easy challenge for big businesses, let alone small businesses with no dedicated marketing teams.  An alternative is to avoid this issue and look to leverage the Messaging App that is on everyone’s phone like WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and use those for your business. This avoids the download issue and retention issue where retention is not an issue.

Messaging Apps as Business Apps for Small Business?

At Message My Customer we enable Messenger Apps for Business, and we focus on the needs of Small Businesses. Through a Messaging App interface, we provide Customer Relationship Management, eCommerce Store, Loyalty, and Digital Payments. For service industry we also enable Appointment bookings and handover to Customer Support, all without ever leaving the Messaging App. Every Business is provided a local Mobile Number (separate from their business number) that can be advertised on the Facebook business account or online such as Google business. We also provide Businesses with QR code(s) that make it simple for your customers to engage through a Messenger App with your Business.  

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Sounds Interesting – Get in touch now.

We would love to chat with you about how your business could benefit from OMNI channel messaging and WhatsApp business platform. Get in touch with us at sales@payemoji.com and we will schedule a call.

So go ahead and join the conversation by taking advantage of the 23 hours that consumers spend per week on their Messaging Apps and use that to grow your Business.

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