Creating A Mobile App For Your Business? 14 Ways To Keep Consumers Coming Back To It

To appeal to today’s on-the-go world, many businesses have considered the value in creating a branded mobile application for their customers. In theory, it’s a great idea—but app fatigue is very real, and if you don’t want users to delete your app after a few uses, you need to give them a good reason to keep coming back.

Many members of Young Entrepreneur Council have experience building and deploying successful business mobile apps, and they understand what it takes to create something engaging and long-lasting. To offer their insights, a panel of members shared some important steps businesses should take when building their mobile apps. Follow their tips to ensure your app becomes a regular habit for those who download and use it.

1. Offer Exclusive Content

Most people spend the majority of their time online on their phones, so having a mobile app can be a great way to engage with your key audience on the go. That said, no one wants a phone filled with apps they don’t use! To stand out, your app should be an extension of your brand or web platform but also offer timely content or opportunities that are exclusive to the mobile platform. – Jennifer Buonantony, Press Pass LA and PPLA Social + PR

2. Properly Leverage Notifications

Leverage proper and well-placed notifications, whether through email or push notifications. This can be easily abused, however, so be careful. Start with a limited number of notifications for the most important updates customers might want to know, such as making a new connection, having money in their account and anything else you think is important to them. – Andy Karuza, LitPic

3. Focus On Creating Convenience

Customers look for convenience when shopping or using a mobile app. Make your app user-friendly by offering easy payment methods, making it easy for people to navigate your content and remembering relevant information. The less work your app creates for users, the more they’ll come back to it. – Blair Williams, MemberPress

4. Design With Your User Persona In Mind

Companies should know their user persona before they develop and market any apps. The core objective is to discover who your target user is, what they value and the central pain point they experience that your product will address. It creates the foundation for user journey design and helps you customize every aspect of your mobile product. – Vikas Agrawal, Infobrandz

5. Create A Community

One important step to creating a business mobile app that consumers will want to come back to again and again is building a community. If users can interact with each other and create and share valuable information, then that will be a huge success. – Alfredo Atanacio, Uassist.ME

6. Solve A Pain Point

Create an app that offers value and solves a pain for your ideal clients and customers. If it’s just a fun thing that is an extension of your brand but doesn’t pique their interest or isn’t a value-add, you’ll lose them because there are far too many apps out there. – Diego Orjuela, Cables & Sensors

7. Truly Optimize It For A Mobile Experience

A lot of businesses will opt for the quick-and-dirty method of mobile app development, where they simply embed a mobile version of their website. If you want to actually keep users, it’s important to optimize your app from top to bottom with features that take full advantage of the mobile platform: infinite vertical scrolling, touch functionality and large text that doesn’t ruin your formatting. – Bryce Welker, CPA Exam Guy

8. Design Efficient, Intuitive Navigation

To create a business mobile app that attracts repeat visitors, make sure it comes with intuitive navigation. How users move from page to page within your app will determine its ease of use and how likely users are to return. – Jared Atchison, WPForms

9. Ensure It’s Compatible Across Operating Systems

Sometimes mobile apps that work on one phone can have design flaws on another. Any mobile developer worth their salt will be able to cater for this, but it is worth checking into yourself. App development can be expensive and mobile design is pointless if it isn’t malleable. – Ismael Wrixen, FE International

10. Invest In Quality App Development

A big mistake many businesses make is thinking that apps are a budget-friendly, quick-fix strategy to make them more accessible to their customers or are an automatic ticket to profitability. Apps can be a wonderful way to increase exposure and accessibility, but the caveat is that the app has to be excellent. Buggy apps can be worse for a brand than having no app at all. – Maria Thimothy, OneIMS

11. Make Sure It Meets A Need

For a mobile app that produces results and conversions, make sure you do your research on market demand. Even if you create a stellar product, it won’t matter if no consumers want it. So, you need to ensure that it meets your customers needs and serves a purpose so they’re inclined to purchase and keep returning. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms

12. Use Gamification To Build Habits

Create a habit-driven app, one where users are incentivized to come back every day to build on their habit. A good mobile app design will ‘gamify’ the UX so that users accrue points or unlock benefits or promotions by regularly engaging with the app. The power of habit cannot be understated, and instilling habit-forming behaviors with your app can ‘hook’ your users for the long haul. – Tyler Gallagher, Regal Assets

13. Give Users A Reason To Choose Mobile Over Desktop

Offer something that customers can’t get simply via the website. The app needs to be fast and offer something that is not available online, otherwise users will just use the website version. Speed can be a feature, and so can ease of access and automatic login. But also think about something that just makes the overall experience better than the web version. – Peter Boyd, PaperStreet Web Design

14. Make Sure The App Functions Seamlessly

One of the best ways to retain mobile app users is to ensure that your technology works seamlessly. This means ensuring there are no issues with downloading, there are no bugs and that all of the pages load in a timely manner. Oftentimes, users abandon apps that don’t work properly. – Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC