Experts say that mobile apps will generate over $935 billion in revenue by 2023, with 21% of millennials opening an app more than 50 times each day and 49% of all customers using apps more than 11 times a day.
In an age where consumers are constantly connected to their smartphones, apps offer a way for companies to engage, inform, and entertain potential leads and clients.
The biggest challenge for most business leaders and app developers is figuring out which features to add to their apps. While push notifications can help keep your customer’s attention and quick checkout processes simplify transactions, the key to true success is finding the capabilities that matter most to your users.
Today, we’re going to explore some of the most significant business app features you can leverage to delight your audience and improve brand loyalty.
Personal Accounts and Order Tracking
Have you ever placed an order with a company and then had a terrible time trying to figure out where your items were, or remembering what kind of delivery option you chose, or even how much you spent?
Searching for transactional emails in your inbox to answer common purchasing questions can be a real headache. Fortunately, business apps can overcome this issue.
Give your customers the chance to make their own accounts with your company where they can track their orders and get information fast. If you already have an inventory, fulfillment, and logistics tracking system in place within your business, you should be able to add order tracking to your apps quite easily.
Giving your customers an account within your app to track useful information is a great way to earn their trust. With personal accounts, you can also build deeper relationships with your audience by allowing them to:
- Create a wish list of products they might want to buy later within your app.
- Save their cart so they can come back to it after doing some product research.
- Set up automatic orders whenever they’re likely to run out of a product.
- Access VIP coupon codes and check all their vouchers in one place.
- Get involved with loyalty programs and earn points for every purchase.
There’s a whole world of options you can leverage with a solution like that.
Easy, Flexible Checkout Options
A simplified checkout experience is crucial if you want customers to purchase products and services through your app. The shopping cart needs to be easy to find within the app, with a large, clear button customers can tap on. Once your customers tap through to their shopping bag, reduce the number of steps to payment by:
- Offering multiple payment options: Allowing customers to pay via credit card, voucher code, or tools like PayPal will make it easier to convert.
- Supporting guest checkout: Give new customers the option to skip signing up for an account to speed up their purchase. Ask for their email address so you can send a receipt, and you can always encourage the customer to make an account later.
- Securely saved payment details: Support customers with an account in saving their payment details (securely) so they don’t have to enter them again later.
- Allowing social login: Give customers the option to log in with their social media account credentials so they can save time on getting through the checkout.
Following basic best practices for a good checkout, experience is crucial here too. Make sure you have multiple language options for clients if you’re serving customers around the world. Keep form fields to a minimum and make it easy for your customers to edit their shopping cart on the check-out page where necessary.
The faster and easier it is for your consumers to make a purchase, the less likely they’ll change their minds about buying something.
Excellent User Experience
This might seem like an obvious feature for any business app, but simplicity is something many companies overlook. In a quest to implement as many advanced features as possible, like voice search or AI product suggestions, companies can easily make their apps too cluttered and complex.
Though clients might like what you’re trying to do with your app when you start implementing new features, they’ll only stick around and keep using the service if it’s simple and straightforward.
Ensure everything from finding products in your category pages to sending a support request is as simple as possible. Ideally, you’ll want to remove anything unnecessary from your app, to avoid overwhelming your audience.
When you do add new features to your business app, conduct extensive tests to determine how usability has been affected. It’s helpful to give your customers a way to leave feedback and reviews, so you can use that information to update your app in the future.
Chat Functionality
Finally, great customer experience is probably the most important factor any customer considers when deciding which business to work with or buy from. While the option to phone your service team or send a support ticket within an app is great, you can differentiate your brand even further with live chat. Around 50% of mobile users expect to access live chat when communicating with a business.
A chat option allows customers to access quick solutions to their problems without the headache of calling a team and being put on hold for hours. If your support team isn’t always available to respond to chat requests, you can create and implement a simple bot to answer common questions. This gives your clients a self-service solution, so they don’t have to wait too long for an answer.
Having a chat system in place also helps you to collect a lot of valuable information about your customers, which you can use to optimize your app later.
Choosing the Right Features for Your App
The right feature can be the key to success or catastrophe with your business app. Remember, acquiring new customers is always more expensive than selling to existing clients.
The better the experience you can give with your app, the more likely customers will continue to buy from your brand for years to come.
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Michelle Laurey works as a VA for small businesses. She loves talking about business and sharing her experience with others. Outside her keyboard, she spends time with her Kindle library or binge-watching Billions. Her superpower? Vinyasa flow! Talk to her on Twitter @michelle_laurey.
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