Customer experience for mobile has become very important to any business as the technology shift is taking place rapidly. Nowadays, we can find a mobile app for almost everything such as shopping, travel booking, dating, trading, music, gaming and even payments are done through native mobile apps recently. Mobile phones have become a part and parcel of everyone’s life as most of our day-to-day activities have become highly dependent on them.
Also, nowadays customers expect to be able to do business using their Smart phones rather than going for online websites. A few years back, customers preferred to do shopping online through e-commerce websites and book their tickets through e-booking websites. But nowadays, the consumer behaviour has shifted from using conventional websites to Mobile devices as it is much faster and can be done from anywhere at any time.
Native Mobile Apps are smartphone applications which are coded for specific mobile operating systems like Android or iOS and offer high degree of reliability with superior performance. Every business has started to develop their own Native Mobile Apps to promote and expand their business further as consumers have started adopting Mobile devices for all their activities.
If we consider travel booking as an example, people were previously using booking websites like Expedia.com, booking.com, TripAdvisor.com, MakemyTrip.com and various other websites to make their reservations online. Online booking was the most preferred method by users a few years back but now everyone likes to make their bookings instantly from their Mobile devices. Hence all these businesses have created Native Mobile Apps to expand their business and increase their consumer base. For example, if you look at TripAdvisor App, it has been downloaded by more than 100 Million users and is used extensively to view reviews about various hotels and make bookings online. Similarly, Expedia also has their own Android App which has been downloaded by more than 10 Million users from Google Play. All these booking websites have now shifted to native apps which are very user-friendly and faster than online booking.
Similarly, if you consider the example of online payments, people were using various online payment solutions like PayPal, Web Money, Visa, and Xoom etc. to transfer money to their friends and relatives or to pay for any online purchases. But even these payment websites have started developing customized Native Mobile Apps to attract their customers. PayPal Mobile is now used by customers to instantly transfer money to anyone across the globe. People now prefer using Mobile wallets to pay their utility bills or to do their ticket bookings. Also, all the retailers have started accepting Mobile payments in order to make it easier for customers to go cashless.
Similarly, trading is also being preferably done through mobile apps rather than conventional online mediums as investors like to place their trades any time even when they are travelling, at work or at home. Aggressive transition of users of trading platforms such as Tradehero , anyoption among others (both have crossed five hundred thousand downloads on Play store) gives a solid evidence of the growing preference of native mobile apps over desktop or even mobile versions of websites, even for conventional businesses such as Trading.
Going forward, Native Mobile Apps will become an absolute necessity for any business to reach out to their target customers. Though it can be time-consuming and expensive for small businesses to develop their own Mobile Apps, it’s still essential for any business to seamlessly interact with their customers. Mobile Apps can help businesses to simplify their processes and enhance the level of accessibility that their customers have to them.
Author bio
Prashant Sharma is a Delhi based Entrepreneur who spent most of his college days polishing his marketing skills and went for his first business venture at 19. Besides being a Digital Marketing Pro, he leads the charge at TechPluto.com, a platform for bringing emerging startups to the limelight.
