Despite the rise of mobile traffic, only 28 percent of businesses have a mobile app. Here are five big reasons why you need to buck the trend and create an app for your company.

People Spend More Time on Mobile Apps

You may be shocked to learn that mobile users spend 89 percent of their time using mobile media in apps. This translates to about 29.5 hours per month for men and nearly 31 hours for women. This leaves just 11 percent for browsing the mobile web. It raises the question of why many businesses have mobile-optimized websites but haven’t thought about creating an app. If you lack an app, it’s likely that people are not engaging with your business when they grab their smartphones.

It’s clear when you see that a huge 85 percent of people in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, France, India, and Japan favor mobile apps over mobile websites. These business applications are widely liked because they are simpler to use, more responsive, and more convenient. It’s no surprise that an estimated 4.4 billion mobile users will be using apps by 2017.

Apps Help you Build Relationships with Customers and Brand Loyalty

Mobile users often visit a website and never give it a second thought. However, when they make the effort to download an app they’re already engaged with a brand. You can capitalise on this engagement and develop a real relationship and brand loyalty through your app. Include an easy way for customers to offer feedback on the app, your business, and their experiences interacting with your firm. Listening to people’s likes and dislikes gives a valuable insight into what you’re doing right and what you need to do better.

Sending targeted, personalised communication to your app users will make them feel special and drive sales. You can also use these engaged consumers for research about new products and developments.

Apps Generate New Leads

Most businesses think of apps as a great way to connect with their existing customers, but they’re overlooking their lead-generating potential. One of the most popular app stores sees customers downloading more than 800 apps every second. This rapid uptake points to the public’s insatiable app appetite.

Connected individuals love browsing through app stores and seeing what’s new. If your app offers users real value, people will want to use it, even if they were previously unfamiliar with your brand. In this way a well-designed app can actually introduce a mobile user to your company and turn someone unfamiliar with your firm into a loyal fan.

Mobile Shopping is On the Way Up

Ever since the rise of the smartphone in the late-2000s, the market penetration and demand for mobile devices has skyrocketed. Approximately one in five people around the world own a smartphone. That’s an estimated 22 percent of the global population. And with flexible mobile plans available from companies like businessmobiles.co.uk, that number is only expected to increase.

Sales from smartphones and tablets in the United Kingdom increased 18 percent last year and experts predict these numbers will continue to rise. The mobile sector is now worth £11.1 billion, so you really can’t afford to miss out on a piece of the pie.

Half of all shoppers say they’ve used an app to make a purchase, and the majority of these are young people. If your company looks to appeal to youthful consumers, it’s worth noting that almost half of Generation Y say they prefer making in-app purchases to using web-based shops.

It’s not just people who’d prefer to shop in their pyjamas driving the mobile shopping trend either. About a quarter of online orders are collected, rather than shipped, thanks to the rise of click-and-collect.

It Gives You an Edge Over Your Competition

As we learned earlier, more than seven out of every ten businesses don’t have a mobile app. If you do, you’re offering potential customers and loyal patrons something that your competitors aren’t.

Differentiating yourself in your business sector has always been one of the most effective ways to unseat your rivals. Creating an app is a great way to appear more tech savvy and give your company the competitive edge it’s been looking for, especially if you’re attempting to appeal to an ever-connected demographic of youthful consumers.

These are just some of the compelling reasons why your business needs a company app.