22 Reasons Why Your Business or Blog Needs An iPhone App

I have noticed a lot more traffic coming from mobile platforms lately and it seems that the smartphone (or Internet in your hand) is something that can’t be ignored. The growth in the market share of the iPhone as well as the continual replacement of the traditional mobile phones with Internet enabled phones like the Android and the Blackberry are driving traffic to sites at an increasing rate.

Here are some numbers

• Comscore announced that 45.4 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones in an average month during the December to February period, 2010
• This is up 21 percent from the three months ending November 2009.
• Android phone app downloads to hit 800 Million in 2010
• The iPhone will continue to be the leading app platform, with a database of over 200,000 applications offering niche and localized content
• Apple iPhone downloads have exceeded 3 Billion at the start of 2010
• ABI Research reported that just under six billion mobile applications will be downloaded in 2010
• Smartphone OS-based phones will grow at more than a 30% compound annual growth rate for the next five years globally

I was attending CeBit this week and  there was a presentation by a “Mobile App” specialist Jeremy Samuel from AppsWiz.com and he opened my eyes to the increasingly omnipresent mobile market and how bloggers and corporate website owners cannot continue to ignore the smartphone app markets compelling growth.

One of the case studies mentioned was about the pizza  chain “Dominos” which after lanching its mobile app (read review here) drove over $2 million in sales to its stores in just 3 months.With the Domino’s Mobile App you can:

• View the full Domino’s menu
• See your current order
• Track your order
• View other information such as surcharges and the company’s privacy policy

So what is a “Mobile App”?

A mobile app is a small program that sits on your mobile phone and does something for you. With the power of today’s phones, apps can do some really great things – from letting you know what’s going on in your area, to calculating exchange rates, movie times, social media interactions, alerting you to traffic information, providing entertainment and letting you know about special offers. There are over 200,000 mobile applications out there today performing a huge range of tasks.

So what should you should keep in mind before ignoring the constant knocking on your door of an opportunity whose time has come.

1. If you do develop an App for mobile let everyone know about it through email, website, SMS  and Twitter
2. Add mobile value by including content and functionality that are location based or time sensitive
3. Just like social media don’t sell but provide content that adds value to people’s lives such as weather reports for bike riders that are location driven
4. Develop a Mobile App that becomes a part of a persons daily lives and hopefully becomes indispensable
5. Remember that with iPhone or mobile app your webiste or blog presence is just one or two slides or touches away on that persons phone anywhere anytime,
6. It’s about convenience
7. Mobile apps have broad reach  so develop apps that can viewed on as many mobile platforms as possible including, iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia and Android
8. You can use the App to drive traffic to your bricks and mortar store
9. Announce “Specials” to your readers (online shoppers love a bargain)
10. You can announce an “Event”
11. The mobile internet market is growing at a much faster rate than fixed internet
12. The developing world’s connection to the internet is much more mobile centric than the Western world’s fixed line communications infrastructure
13. 75% of our planet is still not connected to the Internet so the potential over the coming decades is substantial
14. It will differentiate you from your competition
15. You create deeper engagement
16. Drive more loyalty
17. You get to put your branding on your customers phones
18. Your business is provided with great feedback
19. It is going to drive more revenue and ultimately more profits
20. It enables easy sharing of your content between mobile users
21. Reduce costs to your business through automation
22. It could even stop you getting a speeding fine and keep your licence… Trapster.com app tells you when there is a speed camera nearby.

So what sort of “Mobile App” could you develop for your website or blog  that adds value to your readers, customers  or prospects?