You’ve been told this before – your business needs an app. You know it too, the many perfectly logical reasons to build an app. Yet, there’s an inner skeptic that asks you if you really stand to draw any tangible benefits from building an app for your startup? Well yes. And to prove it to you, here are 5 data-backed stats recorded over the past year that go on to show why your startup needs an app. So read on.

1. Users Spent $100 Billion in Apps In 2018

And close to $120 billion in 2019 and counting. Clearly, users across the globe are spending a lot of money on apps and that gives any startup a great revenue stream to tap into. Even though we tend to use apps day in and day out like a regular routine and don’t see them as things that cost us money (much money at least), statistics obviously prove otherwise. This shows that apps are a rather fertile ground for harvesting revenue as users pay small but continuous amounts of money to apps quite readily and for an app that can garner any more than a few hundred thousand users, even a dollar’s revenue per person can add up quite remarkably. As you can tell, $100 billion in 2018 alone is a significant number and with a staunch mobile app strategy, you too can poise your business for higher revenue figures.

With the growth in mobile wallets and other tech, the friction in making digital purchases is going down and people are more readily paying up as long as they get immediate value from their purchases. If you develop your app to offer value to the customer, they’d be happy to pay the right price for it.

2. At a cost of $2.89 per User Install, an App Is the Most Efficient Advertising Medium

Undoubtedly one of the biggest costs to a business is advertising. All the various forms of paid advertising such as social media, native advertising, and display ads run up a high tab and require continuous reinforcements of cash. In the case of mobile apps, on the other hand, it takes an average of just $2.89 to make a user install an app. Moreover, once a user has installed your app, they can interact with your business every day and eventually bring in more recurring revenue without any further advertising required. As long as you have a well-built app and a sound value proposition, merely push notifications will get the job done, without extra expenditure needed or marketing and retargeting. That is why startups with a sound mobile app strategy to succeed at making a better connection with their customers and pulling off better ROIs than those that don’t.

3. 83% of People Consider a Seamless Experience Across All Devices Very Important

One of the most crucial things your customers want is the ability to interact with your business from any device at any time without having to restart the session. They want to be able to view a product on their desktop and finish buying it on their mobile. You did a good job grabbing their attention on the website. But if it was time for the user to shut down the desktop and head out, you not having a mobile app could mean the end of user attention and the user might forget and never come back. If you have a mobile app, the user could continue interacting with you on the app or you could even send a push notification to reel them back in.

More importantly, if a user wants to interact with you on the phone but can’t, they might never do business with you again, as in a survey conducted, it was found that to 83% of users, seamless experience across devices is paramount to their satisfaction. For a startup, user satisfaction is the Holy Grail and that means you cannot skip having a formidable mobile presence. 

4. The Average Smartphone User Has 80 Apps on Their Phone and Uses About 40 Each Month

How much time do you spend on apps every day? Do you ever go to Gmail’s website? Or YouTube? I’m guessing you don’t, because these services offer an unbeatable experience on their apps and hence, we use the apps all the time. That happens to be true for the majority of people across the world as a study by App Annie found that the average smartphone user has 80 apps installed on their devices and uses about 40 of them every month. That means 40 different businesses they interact with every month just on their smartphones.

The user-friendliness and on-the-go quality of apps coupled with their immersive user experiences make them an irresistible force, inviting users to interact with them no matter where they are. Due to these attributes, mobile apps have soared in popularity over the last decade, making users extremely comfortable with the idea of making purchases and spending money on apps. You can tap into this by creating an app that makes it easy for users to interact with your brand and bring in revenue. Even in businesses that don’t need an app for direct revenue, apps provide the most dependable channel for customer interaction and service, helping users have a great experience with your brand and become more loyal, spending customers.

5. 90% People Who Enjoyed A Brand’s Mobile Interaction Will Buy From That Brand Again

Seeing as how mobile apps have become such an important part of users’ daily lives, it also follows that these app experiences greatly influence their impressions and decisions. App Annie found that 90% of the people who enjoyed an app interaction with a company will continue to buy from that company again. The same report also states that 62% of people who happened to have a bad experience on a mobile may never buy from that brand again. So it’s an equation that works both ways actually. The consensus is that to make your customers come back for repeat business, having a good mobile app can make a world of difference.

Wrapping Up

I could give you several other reasons to build a mobile app for your startup, but statistics speak louder than opinions and that’s why you have it – 5 data-backed reasons why your startup needs to invest in a mobile app. Despite it being a heavily crowded app market, your customers will always need a dependable way to interact with your brand and a mobile app perfectly fits the bill.