Mobile is king. Concentrate on mobile. Make mobile your first priority. These and similar tips and suggestions can be heard throughout the business Internet; but how exactly does one use mobile to one’s greatest advantage? This is where things become a little bit vague – so let’s do our best and analyze the most practical tips on using mobile technology to improve your sales, make your business more visible and attract new clients.
#1. Add Mobile Payment Options
The use of mobile technology can transform your entire way of doing business. For example, using tablets to accept payments with credit cards at points of sale can considerably improve customer convenience – which is especially important for businesses that are mobile themselves.
#2. Create an App for Your Business
It is much easier than it may sound. Today there are hundreds of companies, teams and individual developers creating apps for all conceivable operating systems working in all price ranges and specializing in any particular type of apps you may be interested in. If your business doesn’t have anything to do with IT, it is still not a reason to forgo creating an app – virtually any business can benefit from having an app of its own.
What your app is going to do is limited only by your own ingenuity – it can be anything from marketing directly to customers to making their dealings with your business more convenient and streamlined.
#3. Make Your App Visible
Whether you write your own code or hire somebody to do it for you, the first rule of app creation is simplicity – your potential clients shouldn’t have any problems figuring out how everything works. Therefore, you should do a lot of testing before you set your app at large. Even the coolest feature won’t be of any use if the app has an annoying interface, a ton of confusing options and takes half an hour to load.
Secondly, you should take care of making your app visible to potential clients. Here, anything goes: from submitting it to aggregators of useful apps like TheBestForIOS to offering discounts to those who deal with you via this app.
#4. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
More than a half of all Internet surfing nowadays is done via mobile devices – which means that if you don’t do your best to make the website of your business as mobile-friendly as possible, then you are seriously behind times.
There are two basic ways to achieve this: either to simplify your web design so that it can be viewed without problem on smaller screens or to create its separate version for mobile devices. It also may be a good idea to learn a bit about responsive design. Responsive web design isn’t created with any particular format in mind but rather adapts to whatever device it is used by resizing its elements. In the long run, it is the most efficient and flexible solution.
#5. Use QR Codes to Engage Customers
The easiness of getting in touch with your business is everything when it comes to dealing with modern customers, spoiled by comfort. QR codes provide exactly this – virtually everybody has a mobile device today, and a handy QR code offering to download your app or leading to your online store can considerably expand your client base. A QR code may be located anywhere: from ad flyers to merchandise.
#6. Use Mobile Apps for Management Tasks
There are literally thousands upon thousands of apps created with a specific purpose of making the process of running a business an easier, more comfortable and efficient task. Among the tasks that can be done with the help of mobile apps are such diverse activities as time management, scheduling, customer support, invoicing, accounting, GPS and much, much more. In other words, you should make use of the fact that most people own smartphones and other mobiles devices and create a selection of management and efficiency apps to be used by all your employees.
#7. Increase Mobility and Flexibility, Decrease Expenses
When all is said and done, the greatest advantage of mobile technology is its, well, mobility. When everyone has an access to the World Wide Web in their pocket, when any information can be instantly shared with any number of people via email, messaging services, cloud storages and social media, the mobility, agility and flexibility of your entire organization can achieve amazing levels. Therefore, you should do your best to capitalize on it: try to eliminate paper and paperwork from the dealings of your business entirely, and make the flow of information between employees and clients as easy as possible.
In addition to that, going paperless can considerably decrease your expenses. When you don’t have to worry about stationery, rent or buy printers and copiers, or take pains to send physical copies of documents and invoices, life suddenly gets much easier.
#8. Track how Efficient Your Use of Apps Is
Just like with any other aspect of business, it is a good idea to track the impact of the apps you use on the efficiency of your company. This will allow you to see what works, what doesn’t work and what can be changed or improved. You may estimate the quality of your app and its promotion by the number of downloads and, what is more important, track its impact on sales. To do so, you may want to attach a coupon or a promotion code to the app so that you can tell apart the sales it generates.
Mobile technology may be incredibly powerful when properly used – or completely useless if you approach the task of implementing it in a half-hearted or bungling manner. If you want to use it to any great effect, you should carefully study the examples of others who’ve done it before, decide beforehand what you are going to achieve and make sure you have a clear-cut plan of action before you start. If you manage to prepare properly, mobile tech can be a great helper.
Images: ”Mobile phone in a woman’s hand, night, city ??of Light background, sms, message, e-mail/Shutterstock.com“
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