If having a mobile presence meant solid competitive advantage for businesses just a few years ago, nowadays it is an absolute must for every company that has the ambition to become successful, and to position itself as a leader within its industry. Today, the need to build a mobile presence has become more prevalent than ever – and it is now considered the norm rather than the exception.
Having said this, companies that aren’t capable of adapting to the new norms will quickly remain behind their competitors.
To highlight how important it is to build a mobile presence for your business, we decided to compile a list of powerful reasons that will convince you to capitalize on the growing trend of users that prefer mobile devices for their digital activities. In addition, we will show you a way to create your first app for a single day and without any coding skills needed.
So, without wasting any more time, let’s jump right into this article, and the top reasons to build a mobile presence today:
Reason 1: Increase your potential Market Reach
According to Statista, the global smartphone penetration rate is projected to pass the 40% mark by the end of 2020 for the first time ever. With a total number of 3.2 billion smartphone users worldwide (out of a 7.7 billion global population), it is no surprise that mobile devices have become an essential part of our daily lives.
Considering these numbers, and the fact that mobile penetration has been increasing steadily over the past few years with no signs of slowing down, there is no doubt that one of the most important places in which you will allocate your target audience will be on their mobile devices. This means that, if your website and services aren’t adapted for an easy access and use through smartphones, you could be losing on a huge chunk of important traffic.
Reason 2: Leverage the importance of mobile traffic
Since the beginning of 2017, mobile traffic has been hovering around the 50% percent mark of the total global web traffic. Today, it accounts for 51.7% – which means that more than half of the world’s total website visits are happening from mobile devices!
Put simply, all these numbers mean that people are increasingly preferring the use of their mobile devices to browse the Internet and perform their search activity. For businesses, this means that they will have to build a mobile presence not only for capturing this traffic, but also for retaining it.
Many companies invest a lot of money and efforts into bringing new visitors to their website. However, if users are coming from their mobile devices, they are expecting a smooth mobile experience that will keep them on the website for longer, and will make their stay enjoyable.
What would happen if they encounter a website that is not mobile friendly, and lacks any kind of responsiveness? That’s right – they will leave as fast as they came, and they will go to a website that is actually making effort in establishing a great mobile presence.
Looking at the statistics above, imagine that 51% of all your website visitors are coming from mobile, and you are not capable of retaining them because you are not adapting yourself to the current customer behavior and preferences.
Many businesses turn to app developers in order to build a mobile app to cater to the above-mentioned mobile traffic, but the truth is, today’s users are expecting much more than an app that they will have to download on their phones. Besides, in order to download the app, they will usually have to pass through a website to discover about its existence in the first place.
And if this website is not mobile-friendly, this could have a very negative impact on your metrics and your overall domain authority in the long run. Luckily, there is something that covers your mobile presence both in terms of an app and a mobile friendly website – progressive web apps, but we will see them in detail in a few minutes.
3. Establish a better and faster communication with your audience
The next reason why you need to build a mobile presence for your business is so that you can have a better, faster, and more direct communication with your audience.
Having a mobile app, or even better – a progressive web app, allows you to leverage some of the best tools for delivering your messages right at the doorstep of your audience – for example, push notifications. Push notifications, which are the messages that pop up on the screen of a user’s mobile device, are great for improving customer engagement and conversion rates.
They allow you to send product updates, new feature announcements, existing offers and promotions, relevant content, and so much more. And because they have less competition for the user’s attention compared to other digital channels, they are significantly more effective.
4. Deliver insightful and relevant content
While consuming content on desktop might be more comfortable for many users due to the bigger size of the screen, the fact is that most web traffic and content searches are coming from mobile – just as we saw from all of the statistics above. For businesses, this means that they will have to build a mobile presence that is capable of catering to the current consumer preferences.
In fact, even the leading search engine Google announced back in 2015 that for the first time ever, searches on mobile have surpassed desktop searches on a global scale. In 2019, this tendency still remained true – with mobile accounting for 50.7% of the searches coming from Google, desktop dropping down to 45.53%, and the remaining 4-5% being from tablets.
All this means that consumers are increasingly consuming more content on mobile, and this is a huge opportunity for businesses that want to deliver insightful and relevant content to their audience.
Additionally, if you create your app with a progressive web app builder such as Beezer, you will also be able to update your content in real time. And what’s even better, one of the biggest benefits of progressive web apps is that they also work offline. Which means that users will be able to access your app with all its articles and insights at any time, even with an unstable or non-existing desktop connection.
5. Be visible to customers at all times
Let’s be honest: if you don’t have a mobile responsive website or an app, and you are lacking any mobile presence whatsoever, this means that you are only visible to half of your potential target audience.
Considering that the average US adult spends almost 3 hours a day on their mobile device, and they are constantly accessing hundreds of websites and apps, not adapting to your mobile audience will only reduce your chances of gaining visibility for your brand. And consequently, of acquiring more leads and new customers in the long run.
For this reason, it is extremely important that you build a mobile presence that helps you get the visibility that your brand needs in order to position well in a competitive market. And in today’s increasingly globalized and digitalized world, competition is becoming fierce across practically all industries.
6. Distribute incentives more easily
Mobile platforms are an excellent way to incentivize web visits, purchases, and other forms of customer behavior. Considering the variety of powerful tools that native mobile apps and progressive web apps offer, such as push notifications and geo-location, you can distribute your promotions, offers, and other sorts of incentives in a quick and easy way.
Additionally, having a mobile presence is also an excellent opportunity to implement a loyalty program for retaining your customers. For example, Beezer just launched a feature that allows companies to create their own loyalty card in the matter of minutes, and with absolutely no coding.
Loyalty cards are a great tool for rewarding your customers for their purchase behavior, and boosting your product and brand awareness. And providing them in a digital format, which users can easily access from their mobile device at any time, is even better giving them the typical plastic card that ends up being lost somewhere.
So, getting a tool for incentivizing your customers is a great reason why you need to build a mobile presence today.
7. Gain a competitive advantage
Another reason why you need to build a mobile presence for your business is so you can gain a competitive advantage in front of your competitors.
In the beginning, we mentioned that having a mobile app or a mobile-friendly website has become the norm rather than the exception, and nowadays it’s just not enough to use it as a solid competitive advantage. Which is absolutely true.
However, just because a business has a mobile presence doesn’t mean that it has been established the right way. In fact, many companies are still struggling to create a light and efficient app that people would love to use, and the mobile responsiveness of many websites is still failing on so many levels that it ruins the whole mobile experience.
For you as a business, this means that if you build a mobile presence the right way, you will be able to develop a good competitive advantage that will make you stand out from the crowd. Just think about it – there are so many companies that people prefer to purchase from just because they provide the best mobile experience out of all competitors.
So, you still have the opportunity to shine with your app.
8. Improve customer engagement
Next on our list of reasons why you need to build a mobile presence for your business is so that you can improve your customer engagement.
As we already saw previously, apps are a great way to establish a more direct, efficient, and faster communication with your customers.
As a consequence, they will be more disposed to engage with your content from a mobile device, which will have a positive impact on the overall customer engagement of your business.
And if you decide to build a mobile presence with a progressive web app rather than a regular native app, you will also experience an additional increase in customer engagement by 50%.
In fact, companies switching from native apps to PWAs notice an increase between 20% by up to 250%, which is a significant difference that often translates to higher revenue.
The reason why progressive web apps register higher levels of engagement is very simple – since PWAs are essentially websites that have the look and feel of a native app, they can be easily accessed from every device at any time, and even in offline mode. Considering the fact that 65% of all users download zero apps on their phone every month, it is no surprise why engagement is much higher for progressive web apps.
9. Strengthen your Marketing strategy
Our list of reasons to build a mobile presence continues with something different – this time, from the perspective of Marketing.
Having an app is a great way to strengthen your Marketing strategy, and build a more direct channel so you can engage with your target audience in a way that is less intrusive for them.
Additonally, mobile advertising is significantly cheaper than traditional media. While buying ad space on newspapers, magazines, and TV can be really expensive – and the return on investment very difficult to measure – mobile ads still remain affordable for companies across many sectors.
To put this into perspective, the average CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions) for mobile ads is around 3 dollars. For TV, it can get up to 36 dollars in prime time!
Progressive web apps
Throughout the article, we mentioned multiple times about the importance of building your mobile presence the right way. At Beezer, we truly believe that the key to establish a sustainable, long-term presence on mobile is through progressive web apps.
As we already discussed, progressive web apps, also known as PWAs, are websites that have the look and feel of an app. However, they are also much more than that – compared to native mobile apps, they have multiple benefits for both businesses and customers, including:
- Better user experience;
- Faster loading speed;
- Improved customer engagement;
- Browser compatibility;
- Offline work mode;
- Live real-time updates;
And so much more. In addition, they are also extremely light in weight, and customers won’t need to delete other content on their phone to be able to download them and access them. They can be accessed via a single URL.
And the best part is, because an URL is all you need to open the app, users won’t have to visit the app store either. There are hundreds of benefits why progressive web apps are a great way to build a mobile presence that will go a long way.
Are you ready to start establishing your mobile presence today? Build your progressive web app in the matter of minutes and with absolutely no coding!
