Tuesday, November 20, 2012

5 Great Tips for Developing an Enterprise Mobil APP

This past Friday, Mayer Anadkat shared 5 Mobile Application Success Stories for CRM.com. Mr. Anadkat prefaces the article with this sub-head "A pretty app is nice, but the key is giving customers a reason to come back." I couldn't agree more. The most important part of developing a enterprise mobile app is taking the time to ensure it will provide real benefit so your customers will not only download it, but use it, among all of their other previously downloaded apps regularly.

To reinforce the important of mobile apps, Mr. Anadkat offered these statistics. "The United Nations recently announced that there are as many mobile phones as there are people in the world—6 billion to be exact. To support these billions of devices, there are more than 1.2 million mobile apps in existence, and those are just the ones in the Apple App Store and Google Play store."

Mr. Anadkat reinforces his concern about the speed of some retail app development by making this statement. "Even companies that typically have security and risk concerns, like banks, are charging full steam ahead with mobile app development and innovation. In their haste, many companies are simply designing the latest "me too" app to have a place to send customers." 

That is why it is so valuable to use Snappii 2.0 to build your application. All of your development team can work together to build your App using Snappii's Drag, Drop and Configuration modules in a visual WYSIWYG Editor. When you feel what you've built may be ready, your development team can use the Snappii LiveBuild Preview App to have Development, QA, Sales & Marketing, and IT Security staff sit together to do the usability testing together. All without paying exorbitant fees to hire outside app specific developers who have no understanding of your business and its customer's needs.

Here are Mr. Anadkat's  five simple tips for anyone building a transformative enterprise mobile app.

1. Declare your long-term goals. What happens after you've got a loyal customer base on your app? How 

does it help your business? Is your objective to drive attention, innovation, or revenue; cut costs; or offer the 

best service possible? By clearly stating the goals of the app, you can provide an experience more suitable to 

the customers.Is your objective to drive attention, innovation, or revenue; cut costs; or offer the best service 

possible? By clearly stating the goals of the app, you can provide an experience more suitable to your 

customers.
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2. Connect the app to service. Not doing this is the biggest mistake that most brands make. Don't dead-end 

the experience. You've made the investment in creating the app. Now take that one last step and make 

customer service easily accessible—and simply providing an 800 number isn't enough.


3. Leverage alerts and notifications. Mobile alerts allow for a new way of sharing that has been 

unprecedented in the communication between enterprises and their customers. While we saw the beginning 

of this with social, mobile allows businesses to directly communicate value to their individual customers like 

never before, on their terms.


4. Present dynamic in-app information. Brands have a unique opportunity to connect with customers in a 

way they never have before. A smartphone is a personal device, and by providing personally relevant 

information to a customer, a brand is able to make a connection that may not otherwise be possible on other

channels. It is important for a brand to keep the customer wanting more.

5. Continue the conversation. Many interactions between customers and companies have become more fluid; they cross channels and no longer fit into clean little resolution codes or help tickets. These types of positive interactions create long-lasting impressions. In order to continue the fluid conversation, use the customer data you have at each touchpoint. 

I'd like to close this post with Mr. Anadkat's challenge to every company seeking to build an app or has one currently available that may desire to review their app after considering these 5 points. "Ultimately, the apps that succeed in the marketplace will provide a compelling utility, not just to download but to use repeatedly."

Alex

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