Mobile apps. Are they worth it?

I have been toying with a mobile app now for about 5 years! Originally we thought it was a gimmick, and not enough mobile traffic to warrant it.

Now I think we may have missed the boat and the market is saturated with apps.

There seems to be an app now for just about everything, but ones I've tried, such as the Facebook one and Google+ one I think are rubbish, and I prefer the mobile website versions.

The one thats blown me away and I think is superb and makes perfect sense, is the BBC weather app, that knows your location, and gives you an instant forecast.

But does an app for an average ecoomerce site, a tradesmens site, or even a professional services site make any sense for small businesses, who have minimal resources, and are unlikely to get much exposure and people interested in downloading it?

Don't mean to belittle apps, they are obviously a huge established market. But looking at them as a marketing tool/gimmick/customer interaction tool for a small business I'm not that convinced.

Anyone got an app for their site or experimented with apps?

I think there's always a place for an innovative app.

Yes, we've got lots of apps for everything, most of them are rubbish, actually.
In fact, many people try to design apps to compete with the well-known ones and they fail to get enough downloads on the saturated market.

However, my colleague from LA designed an app that enables users to record their thoughts about places they visit. Pretty simple, isn't it?

He's now getting hundreds of downloads and even some US celebrities using the app and tweeting about it!

I think it's always worth breathing some fresh air - if you've got an idea that is different and enough means to design and promote it well, the success is very possible

I agree with you that the market is saturated, but it full of useless apps, and this market will never be filled. It's like with websites, blogs, social networks: we will face new products again and again.

I think that rules have been changed, and modern app developers should solve problems of their clients by apps. Nowadays it's not a problem to find a company who make apps or websites, but sometimes it's difficult to find the right solution.

A lot of apps aren't good, but we can say the same about websites.
Custom business app developers work under NDA + full assignment (it's very popular in Ukraine). When they think about creating something for a showroom they make something simple like a timer, simple game or else etc. That's why stores are full of such useless apps (my suggestion ).
I don't use mobile versions of popular services, I prefer apps. I agree with your opinion on Google+ app. These guys haven't cared about UX+UI (comfort+visual appeal), until Android 4.4 Kit Kat, so I believe they will improve all their products soon. By the way, facebook has improved their app by changing its technology from html+javascript to native software development kit.


I understand your scepticism, and I know that a lot of business owners share that opinion. The reason why that happened is next: a lot of app developers just care about technical and visual parameters, but they don't work on key business problems of their customers.

Mobile app for small/mid business shouldn't be a standalone product. It should work with company's website, it should be useful for customers by bringing value to them. Small and mid-sized companies should concentrate on a certain problem, and apps could help to solve it.

I agree that high quality apps aren't cheap, but I would like to tell about collective business app development, which allows small companies to get expensive apps for low price:
It's like to gather in a community, discuss main problems of an industry, and invest some funds for problem solving.

For example, I decided to invent the solution for coffee shop owners. I described my solution in the article "Coffeepot: the 1st Effective Mobile App for Coffee Shops"

Such kind of solutions could be developed for lots of small and mid-sized companies.

I fully agree with you! Your friend's app is another evidence that apps could be surprisingly effective if they bring value to their audience.

for your friend's success!

As with everything, I think it very much depends on what you do and how well you do it.

I have salesmen try to charge me hundreds of pounds to be listed on some spurious app still in development, which would've been a complete waste of money.

Another company I worked for considered developing an app, but our initial research showed that actually the core/ideal customer base tended to use their smartphones for Facebook and weren't big app users.

But if I was an ambitious developer, designing my own high quality app would be something I'd look to do to showcase my talents, or if, say, I was developing the marketing for a national chain of restaurants or bars.

Absolutely!

About salesmen: these guys were looking for investors, but they didn't do the main thing- the research (ask people if they need it). They didn't validate their app idea properly, instead they invested in development own cash. After, they were trying to charge people for thing that they don't even need. It's venture business style

I think, your second company did the right way(I mean initial research), but sometimes it's worth to show your clients some sketches, mockups, because they don't know exactly what you are going to do. You don't know exactly if you want something until you see it.

My approach is that an app that you are going to develop must be approved by your potential clients.

Agree with you 100% on the first one.

With the second one, we were considering developing an app for ourselves, so once we saw there wasn't the appetite for it among the majority of our customers there wasn't much point doing anything else.

Research needs to be the bedrock of so much marketing activity but unfortunately sometimes it seems to get sidelined, especially by SMEs.

Now I got you

I've noticed that more and more SMEs start to use simple marketing research lately, because it becomes affordable. Especially guys from IT sphere are fans of it

By the way, this is not a secret that in the nearest future such things as laptops and desktops will be used only for work, meanwhile mobile platforms will replace them. Regular user will use two kind of apps: mobile and web apps.

Agree with you again! I can't believe it when I see business with new websites that aren't responsive or come across an e-commerce platform that doesn't have one!