Consumer Android App Development for the Smart Business

Looking at the widespread popularity of mobile apps, it’s no surprise that business owners have been asking themselves how mobile apps might help their business. The solutions they’ve come up with vary as widely as the businesses themselves, and some are more successful at leveraging consumer mobile technology than others. Let’s take a look at a few great examples of consumer android apps to see how smart businesses can leverage mobility.

For these examples, we are going to focus on Android for two reasons:

1. Android has a wider audience around the globe, and;
2. Android is more open in a few areas, allowing greater flexibility

Banking

Here’s a super-popular example to help set the stage: Chase Mobile is the premier banking app on the market. It offers a plethora of features for bank and credit card users to manage their accounts on the go. Simply packaging many common customer needs into a mobile app produced an incredibly valuable experience for users.

The benefit to Chase is that the resulting app is so good that it serves as one of the prime selling points for attracting new customers. People join Chase just to get the benefits of using their mobile app, and users remain loyal to the bank because leaving would mean giving up the stellar mobile service they rely on.  

Brick and Mortar Retail

There are many different examples in this category, all providing basically similar services, through different retailers may serve wildly different audiences. For example, the Safeway official Android app offers consumers a way to make lists, view promotions and sales, and find locations. All of these services are meant to get people through the doors, because Safeway makes its money on people buying groceries. Similarly, the Best Buy offers a selection of features suited to it’s wares, again focused on bringing people into the store. Browse products, locate stores, find deals, etc. These apps serve to provide simple, but convenient services to customers, while serving as a great marketing tool for the retail stores.  

mCommerce

Some retail businesses go a different route with mobile devices. Rather than bring people into your existing store, the app can serve as a mobile storefront. Online sellers already have infrastructure for shipping products, but brick-and-mortar stores can easily adapt to such an arrangement. An app serves as a capable tool for closing sales by enabling customer orders no matter where the customer happens to be when the need strikes them. This immediacy is a big advantage over other sales (whether online or in-store). The Amazon Shopping app is the undisputed leader when it comes to mCommerce, but you don’t have to be a behemoth like Amazon to succeed with a similar strategy.  

Other Services

Common business sectors like transportation, insurance, dining, etc. can all benefit from successful mobile app development by extending services to users on the go!

To break down those examples:

• Taxi companies of all sizes can make it easier to schedule rides or calculate fares, bringing them above the competition. For example, the Taxi Cab app was built by Innovins for a local Silicon Valley company.

• Progressive has a popular app for managing insurance, which improves customer satisfaction and loyalty, much like Chase Banking.

• Countless restaurants have apps for making reservations, ordering for pick-up/delivery or simply browsing a convenient menu while you plan your night.

The key is to find the services your customers want and offer them in a more convenient, mobile package. Here’s an example that’s a bit outside of the box, which reveals how flexible apps can be for consumers:  

DAMECO is an app that streamlines real estate appraisals. When financing or refinancing a home, the borrower must apply for a loan, which means the lender needs to get a report on the property from a licensed residential appraiser; but in order to ensure impartiality during this process, it’s illegal for the lender to have any communication with the appraiser—which is where appraisal management steps in to act as an intermediary. DAMECO realized that there was an  opportunity here to steam line that process by moving it onto a digital platform through a mobile app. Take a look at our stunning portfolio of leading apps that can give you ideas for your business.