I recently traveled to El Salvador by car, and since I wasn’t familiar with the city, I used the Waze app. I was amazed by how easy it was to navigate using this tool. All I had to do was input the destination, and the app provided the route along with the estimated travel time, plus real-time traffic updates. To me, Waze is technology turned into art; it’s the integration of many applied sciences, from geolocation and text-to-speech translation to route optimization, social data collection, and marketing. One question that comes to mind is: how do these types of applications make money if they are free for users? In Waze’s specific case, one way is by selling advertising based on the user’s GPS location.
With thousands of apps available in Playstore and Appstore, many of them free and delivering excellent results, why would my clients choose to use the app I develop? Does my business really need an app? This is an interesting question, but I believe the focus should shift to: Does my company have a customer-oriented digital strategy? How can I increase revenue or sales? How can I improve customer service or reduce customer service costs? Do I know how to measure the return on investment (ROI) for building an app? Do I have the right incentives in place to encourage customers to download the app to their phones?
After answering these questions, it’s crucial to verify whether an app is truly the appropriate digital strategy because customers need a compelling reason to install our app and use their bandwidth.
For instance, bank apps are excellent for improving customer service while simultaneously reducing costs. The transaction cost at a physical bank branch can be up to 10 times higher than with a mobile app. Under this cost reduction and customer service improvement strategy, a mobile app is highly effective. Additionally, in the case of banks, it can also create new sales opportunities.
In summary, the first step is to define the business’s strategic objective, and then decide if an app is the right tactic. This approach will lead to a faster return on investment (ROI) since the technology will be aligned with the strategy.
