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With more and more businesses building digital products and mobile apps, the playing field has changed. If you want to grow your business to the next level, you need a great mobile app to get there. At the very least, you will void falling behind the competition.

Here’s the thing: like all businesses, your business is faced with a common challenge: how to build a business that customers love and will come back to over and over again.

There are several ways to earn their loyalty, and you’ve probably tried them all (or, almost all).

Improving your products or services, expanding marketing, reducing prices…

…they work okay, but your business still hasn’t hit that next level.

That’s where a great mobile app can help you. It could be the missing piece between you and your long-term business objectives.

Here are some ways that a great mobile app can skyrocket your business.

Increases your customer engagement

A mobile app allows you to build relationships with your audience. It’s a different experience than email and social media can offer, so it helps you stand out in the mind of your customers. You can bypass email spam and junk folders, and send notifications directly to the app.

It provides a new medium for you to connect with customers—through your app, they can send you praise and give valuable feedback, and you can quickly respond to their needs.

When you sync your app with social media, your customers can easily share content and promote your business to their friends.

Put simply, customers can actually connect with your business on a personal level when they interact with your app on their mobile phones. The app enables your business to be available at all times, and offers on-the-go access.

Boosts your brand and mobile traffic

Your company’s logo will always be available on your customers’ mobile screens. This is tremendously valuable real estate. It allows you to stay on your customers’ minds—just one click away at any time. In fact, according to a recent report, 61% of people have a better opinion of a brand when it offers a good mobile experience. With a mobile app, you pave the way for increasing your brand recognition.

Adds to the bottom line

One of the greatest benefits of a mobile app is that it can generate revenue for your business. Do you have a retail store? Comscore found that 4 out of 5 smartphone users in the USA use their device to shop. But these users aren’t just using the mobile browser—app usage accounts for 80% of mobile usage.

With a mobile app, consumers can easily access your inventory and check if their desired product is in stock. You can also send them special notifications about discounts and promotions.

Even if you don’t have a retail store, there are plenty of ways you can monetize your mobile app—in-app advertising, in-app purchases, selling data, subscriptions, and more.

As your customer engagement increases and you boost your brand, you’ll have significant potential to generate more revenue and add to the bottom line.

Gives you a free marketing tool

Because business apps are uploaded to stores such as Google Play and the Apple App Store (both which have global distribution), your app expands the reach of your business. It immediately has the potential to be seen by millions of eyes across the world. Plus, using push notification, you can instantly send upcoming promotions and special events to your customers. And, as we mentioned before, when your app is on their home screen, it’s like a free advertisement every time they scroll through their mobile phones.

Acquires more users

Today’s users are constantly on the move, and they’re addicted to their mobile devices. Often times, websites can’t cut through the noise—but a great mobile app catches their attention. If you have a high quality app that adds value to users, many will act as brand advocates and refer you to their friends and family.

Increase your employee engagement (internally)

You’re mobile application doesn’t necessarily have to be for the consumer to have a huge affect on your business. You can also build internal apps for your employees to help increase efficiency and productivity, and improve overall employee satisfaction. You can use apps to track inventory, schedule staff, take payments, manage clients, and handle many other functions.

Conclusion

There’s a good chance mobile apps are the websites of this decade. If you don’t have one, you will fall behind the competition. But if you have a great mobile app, it can skyrocket your business.

It’s the best way to earn your customers’ loyalty and trust, so they come back again and again.

Not only does a great mobile app help you generate revenue, it also builds your brand, increases customer engagement, and allows you to easily market your products and services. It can also help you increase employee engagement and satisfaction.

The only real question left is, why haven’t you started building your mobile app? If you haven’t started yet, the best time is now.

Do you want to build a digital product and grow your business to the next level? What’s been holding you back?

Talk to me.

Or shoot me an email at [email protected] and let us know!

Want more great tips to help you build a successful application? Subscribe below!

So, how can a design and development agency make the most of that money to help better serve their clients? By better applications at a faster pace. Here at Koombea, an international web and mobile design and development agency, our project managers have put together five tips for success for your next digital project.

1. Watch Out for Grey Areas in App Prototyping

Checking for the grey areas before starting the project is the most important thing you can do for your client, designers, and developers. It saves a lot of headaches and confusion from the start. For some clients, figuring out exactly what is in their head isn’t easy and isn't 100% clear in the documentation.

We call this mind-reading. One common client example is a login feature. When clients list their requirements, they might just say “Login”. For you, it could mean an email and password, but for the client maybe it means that he/she wants Google+ or Facebook connect. Even a small feature can COMPLETELY change the timeline/estimate of the project.

2. Speak the Industry Language

Don’t give a client "tech mumbo jumbo". What’s more important for them is for you to understand their specific industry. With Protrakr, a web and mobile responsive application for construction managers to track their supplies and construction process, we originally didn’t know about the construction industry. At all.

What can you do to better understand their industry? A creative brief and these three questions:

Who is the user that is going to handle this? How many types of users do you have? For a particular feature, is it going to be the admin, consumer, or the client? For example, ProTrakr's users were the admin and construction managers rather than a large, broad market.

What does your client want? What is their objective? Focus on this BEFORE the functionality. For example, Protrakr’s dashboard needed key insights from the construction sites weekly. The data shown in the front panel is important for the construction managers to know how much they are spending on supplies and the amount of time their team is taking on the project daily.

Why? This is the most important question. It lets you know if that particular item or functionality is even necessary or is just something “cool” to have. This is a common difficulty PMs and clients face. They want to be trendy, but is it really something your user NEEDS? We need to be mindful for projects who have a limited budget.

“Always understand the objective of the project first, never the functionality. When people go to Target and buy a drill what they really want to buy is a hole in a wall. If they could buy a hole they would buy the hole in the wall.” – Alvaro Insignares, Koombea Project Manager.

3. Update Your Standard User Flows into Working Prototypes

Sometimes it’s fun to be old school, but not when you’re working with a client budget and timeline. In the past, we used to send PDFs to our clients that gave them somewhat of a good idea on how the designs worked. The problem was that the screens weren’t linked, and the client didn’t understand the user flows.

Another issue? The screen size. Our UX designers use Sketch on large screens. With Protrakr, we were able to correct font we initially had on the Android screen by using InVision. We also used InVision's swipe gestures and linked screen shots together to show a new user's flow!

“The workflow tools provided me the necessary platform to seamlessly work and communicate with Koombea’s team. With InVision, my application came to life on my laptop screen and mobile device before a single line of code had been created." - Joseph Leiva, CEO Protrakr

4. Give Developers a Head Start

Don’t wait for the final designs for your back-end developers to get started building behind the scenes. Sure, there are some things you need to wait for, but having basic wireframes in the early stages allowed our developers to get a head start working with ProTrakr, inevitably leading to its fast MVP cycle.

“Knowing the business idea in general, having mock wireframes, and knowing how to make the user happy is imperative for the start of a great product.” –Javier Siado, Senior Back-End Developer

5. Use a Secret Formula of Project Management Tools

As a project manager, you have a variety of different responsibilities. You scope, you estimate, you lead a team of designers and developers, and of course you are the buffer for the client and agency. Protrakr was an MVP, 6-week success and used a perfect agency-client formula.

So the question is, what did they use to be successful?

Protrakr used our recommended formula of Google Hangout, InVision, Basecamp,Trello, and Dashable for workflow communication, prototyping, project feedback, project stages, and invoicing. We love to make our clients happy. That’s what it’s all about anyways... right? Using the right tools that our client wants and what we recommend makes a nicely cycled MVP.

“Using a combination of tools has helped us to stay in contact with Joseph, covering his needs and getting the right feedback to the right person in a fast and easy way.” -Luis Hernandez, Senior UX Designer, Koombea

Conclusion

By mapping out the grey areas, working on live prototypes, speaking the industry language, giving developers a head start, and using third-party PM tools, a project manager can make the entire process a smooth start to finish in enough time with plenty of room for iterations. Many questions arise in the early development process, and those conversations actually help clients, like ProTrakr, to build extraordinary apps.

Have more questions on building MVPs? Feel free to email Kate at [email protected]

Or subscribe below for bi-monthly updates!

Jonathan’s journey through entrepreneurship began with Koombea servicing small startups and now working with even larger Fortune 500 companies. “We've taken a big leap by moving from Silicon Valley Startups to Fortune 500 companies, which represents most of our work these days,” Jonathan states.

Other Koombea friends that made the list were Jairo Nieto, Alejandro Gonzalez, and Alexander Torrenegra,

What do you think? Were there any Colombia leaders missing on this year’s list? Tweet us or email us at [email protected].

We’re a proud Colombian company that builds MVPs, based in Barranquilla with offices in San Francisco and New York.

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Ellie has always been a part of the "Koombea Family" and is a product nerd at heart. Prior to Koombea, Ellie was the founder of a startup called ConsumerBell which used several Koombea built products. Listed as one of the "Top 7 Women in Tech to Follow" as well as being a Springboard Enterprises alum (She graduated in the Top 15), she's an active supporter of female founders worldwide and member of Women 2.0 and a Product-Market fit junkie. 

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In my last “Top 3 apps” blog I mostly discovered organization type apps for the entrepreneur. Now, I’m focusing on more of the things you need in your daily life to survive, save money, and build a future. These aren't the newest (I'll save that blog for another day) but they are all free!

  Zillow

Free- iOS, Android, & Web

Currently featured on the iPad Air App store.

  My friend told me about this app the other day at a Real Estate Seminar. Sounds boring, but this app actually knows everything about each house for sale, foreclosed, sold, or even ones NOT on the market. I was curious so I looked up my home, which is currently not for sale, and it actually knew when my house was built, bedroom/bathroom details, and even gave me an estimated price! I didn’t know it was worth that! Zillow knows everything. The audience for this app is for people searching to buy a home, or those who just want to fantasize about having their dream 5.9 million dollar house in the future. With unlimited amounts of pictures, you can browse through the kitchen of the house for sale next door and mark it as a favorite to spy on.

  Credit Karma

Free- iOS and Web

  You know how there are so many websites out there, they CLAIM to give you a “free credit score?” Well they only do on your first time, and the information they give you is limited. Credit Karma is beyond amazing and every U.S. citizen NEEDS to have this on their phone. It’s a life saver. It knows every credit card you’ve ever opened, loans you’ve taken out, morgages, auto loans, and in the end it grades your credit score (A-F), and wait for it, gives you the reasons WHY you are so high or so low. For people who don’t like to manage their credit score, don’t know much about it, or people who NEED to check it everyday and are really organized, this is the application for you.

  GoodRX

Free-iOS, Android, & Web

  MEDICATIONS ARE EXPENSIVE. Especially if you don’t have insurance or an insurance that  covers your prescriptions. This app is simple and doesn’t need much of an explanation. You simply type in the medication you need, and GoodRX finds the pharmacies around you that have it, then gives you the cheapest price, and finally, a coupon! I’ve personally saved over $40 USD with this application. It’s for the young and old. Sometimes you only trust your local pharmacy, but transferring a prescription over is as easy as a 4 minute phone call.