Today, mobile apps are becoming the major medium of digital interaction between you and your customers. Therefore, in this article, you will look at the top 12 essential mobile app features that every business must have to hold its existing and new customers.
30-second summary:
- We all know, today the growth of mobile phones has been increasing tremendously. It means mobile phones became a vital part of human life.
- So, regardless of what your business is, having a mobile application makes it possible in getting and retaining your customers.
- However, just developing a mobile app doesn’t pay you off. It must have some essential mobile app features that your customers want.
- So, in this article, we will cover the top 12 essential features of mobile applications that help you to drive and retain customers.
Mobile Application:
In the current digital era, mobile apps have changed the way the human feels and experiences computing.
A few years ago, people should have a PC or need to go to the browsing center to check their personal mail, book train tickets, or access the internet, but now, all such computing is done via mobile phones.
At present, there are millions and billions of mobile apps available in the market such as online shopping apps, ticket booking apps, food delivery apps, taxi service apps, banking apps, education apps, and so on. All these upgrade the lifestyle and provide comfort to human life.
Being such a vital part of human life, how businesses can neglect the benefits of having a mobile application with essential features that customers need.
Importance To Have an Amazing Mobile app features for Business:
According to the recent study, it is predicted that,
- 29 percent of users will immediately abandon a mobile app if they don’t find it valuable. (Source)
- 70 percent of users abandon a mobile app if it takes too long to load. (Source)
- 65 percent of users say a poor mobile experience negatively impacts their opinion of the brand.
Furthermore, it is said that by 2022 annual mobile app downloads are projected to reach 258 billion. That’s a 45 percent increase from 178 billion downloads in 2017. So, to win the customer’s heart, it is important to have a mobile application with stunning features. That helps your business to,
- Improve Customers Loyalty
- Improve Customer Service experience
- Increases Sales
- Improve brand awareness
- Increases Accessibility to Customers
- Improves Efficiency
12 Must-Have Mobile App Features for Every Business to Win Customer’s Heart:
Below are the 12 essential mobile features that every business must consider while developing a mobile application.
- Fast Loading Speed
- Simple Menu structure
- Allow Customization
- Security
- Include Advanced Analytics
- Payment Gateway Integration
- Social Integration
- Push notifications
- Eliminate Clicks
- Offline App Usage
- Customer Feedback and Support
- Flexibility
1. Fast Loading Speed:
From the above-mentioned stats, it comes to know the majority of the mobile app abandon is due to the slow loading content and images. So, one of the most important mobile app features is- fast loading screen.
Users always expect an app to load quickly. So, if you provide an app with quick load times that allows the customers to use your apps more often and from more places.
Therefore, the developers must have the goal to develop a high-quality mobile app that is speed, not extraneous animations.
2. Simple Menu Structure:
People always have short attention spans. Hence it is vital to develop a mobile app with simple mobile app features that are easy to use and navigate.
If it is difficult to navigate, then the internet connection gets slow and customers cannot access their information quickly and easily.
It naturally tends them to end up becoming frustrated and do it another way – possibly starts using your competitor’s app.
Therefore, make sure you have a clear mobile app design that reflects users’ desire for simplicity. Furthermore, to improve the ease of use, you should research to find exactly what your consumers need and how to deliver those basic needs in the most streamlined way without any complications.
3. Allow Customization:
The other important mobile application feature tailored to meet user’s needs is to allow customization.
Allowing the user to customize the app the way like it improves user experience. For example, making themselves customize content, layout, colors, font, and system functionality enables the users to feel safe and comfortable using your app.
Most importantly if it happens to be a social application, allow them to get a strong hand on the privacy settings. This way it gives users the opportunity to alter the application to the way they like it.
4. Security:
Internet security is becoming an ever-increasing problem and the same applies to your mobile application too.
With a number of applications that store personal or sensitive information like credit and debit card details, security is a must-have mobile app feature.
Hackers may attempt to:
- Place malware into apps and onto devices where it can access data and steal screen lock passcodes
- Intercept sensitive information traveling over the network
- Steal customer data for identity theft or fraud.
- Get hold of private business assets
So, it is important to choose the reputed mobile application development company that provides the security feature which in turn increases the trust upon you.
5. Include Advanced Analytics:
Including advanced analytics is an important mobile app feature. Implementing this helps in tracking and identifying a user’s actions and experiences.
Particularly, for small businesses, it is an ultimate requirement, and it is achieved by integrating a system of analytics into your mobile application.
Hence, don’t forget to include advanced analytics in a mobile application that helps you to gather relevant data. This, in turn, encourages better updates and functionality.
6. Payment Gateway Integration:
Mobile applications are another source to increase revenue for the business. In such a point, integrating mobile apps with payment gateway is an essential feature.
Accepting payments is vital in eCommerce and extra marketing. Furthermore, it is a highly advantageous feature to increase sales, and thus companies’ market share.
This mobile app feature is applied for checking the user’s information validation, ensuring an appropriate amount of money for making a purchase is.
7. Social media Integration:
For every mobile application to improve online visibility & brand awareness, it is essential to integrate social media.
Integrating with social channels makes the signing up process simple by retrieving information from the channel.
On the other hand, it allows the users to share posts about various events and makes the users remain engaged with your application.
8. Push notifications:
To have direct communication with your customers on what they love, it is important to have a push notification feature.
It helps to send promotional offers in the form of text, graphic, or in both forms that drive engagement and monetization opportunities.
While notifying users, try to send relevant and personalized push messaging other than unsolicited messages, because here you aimed solely at the particular user and their interest. This helps you to drive customers frequently to your app.
9. Eliminate Clicks:
Users become frustrated, once you require a lot of clicks to reach a particular page or what they need.
So, once you develop a mobile application, make sure your user stays. So, it is essential to eliminate every unnecessary click or tap from your application.
Remember to ask only the important information rather than asking for unnecessary details from the user. It is because often the hassle of detailed signing diverts their interest of the user for what they came in.
You only have a small window to engage the user, and if they felt a poor experience for the first time, they are definitely not going to try again.
10. Offline App Usage:
One of the must-have mobile app features is the ability to use the application even in offline mode. This, in turn, enables them to engage and use your app without worrying about data limits.
Moreover, if you’re into the travel industry, developing a travel offline app is considered to be very useful for users to use while traveling if there is no wifi or poor data connection.
For example, TripAdvisor’s app allows users to scour reviews, maps, and photos of more than 300 cities, all totally offline.
11. Customer Feedback and Support:
Getting feedback from the user has proved to be an efficient method to improve business.
Hence, having a customer feedback and support feature in your mobile app is the best way to well connect & understand what the user actually expects in your app.
Secondly, it acts as the easiest way and simplest way to get suggestions and criticism from the users which will help you to shape the future of your application.
12. Flexibility:
Your mobile app should have the flexibility to operate at three main mobile operating systems – iOS, Android, and Windows.
So, when it comes to android apps, it is very easy to upload to the PlayStore, while iOS apps need to be tried and tested by Apple before they are launched to the App Store.
But don’t worry, you don’t need to write any different coding to operate at different platforms. You only want to test and make sure whether it works perfectly on both systems, different screen sizes, and resolutions before uploading.
Conclusion:
In the end, you got a clear idea about what are the essential mobile app features your business must have to retain customers.
Another thing to consider is if your business is not having a mobile app or with the right features so far, you’re actually losing profit in the digital age.
So, whatever the business – big or small – it is important to develop a mobile app with essential mobile app features to allow customers to reach them from wherever they are.