Jumpstart Your Business with a Mobile App

When the University of Kentucky wanted to push the school’s sports content beyond the walls of its Blue Nation Blog and Kentucky Kernel (the student daily), it decided to do what hundreds of other businesses have done: create a mobile app. But, instead of approaching an expensive development team for handling the programming chores, UK recruited iSites, a low-cost app development company that currently builds mobile programs for the Android and iPhone platforms.

UK learned quickly that a well designed app, when specifically catering to the needs of a particular demographic, can reap tremendous benefits. Its Blue Nation Blog app (which had been available for download for approximately eight weeks as of press time) has tripled the traffic to their content. As a result, it caught the attention of marketers looking to expand their brands to rabid Kentucky fans, inspiring a few to place ads directly into the app. “We sold a sponsorship to a local energy drink company for a year,” said Kentucky’s David Stephenson, the university’s photojournalism advisor. “Nike also approached us, as well as Hertz.”

Is Your Business App-Worthy?

Not every company will experience this type of business boom; just because you can build an app doesn’t mean you should. Although apps can play an important role in business, companies need to be certain that having one on a given platform is appropriate for their base, and realize that it won’t expand their reach overnight. BlackBerry users, for example, are concerned primarily with productivity, while iPhone users generally focus on entertainment. More importantly, apps need to be compelling.

“Mom and Pop stores with an online shop may not be something that the App Store likes,” said PJ Gurumohan, founder and CEO of Genwi, iSite’s parent company. “It’s static and doesn’t change; a good app needs to have fresh content on a regular basis, and rich interaction.”

Then there’s the critical mass problem; with the thousands and thousands of apps available in the Apple App Store itself, yours could easily get lost in the shuffle. The University of Kentucky benefits from the fact that when people search for apps based on the school’s sports teams, its app ranks high in search results. In addition, UK actively promotes its app by displaying an ad for it on Kykernel.com.

The Importance Of Having An App

If your company has a genuine need for a mobile app, the time to dive in is now. As is true of all gold rushes, you don’t have to be a multimillion dollar powerhouse to take advantage of the mobile apps explosion. You can easily roll up your sleeves and start panning for eyeballs, revenue, and added loyalty. A well designed app may generate buzz, enhance branding, and help you sell products. In fact, the app market has become so big (there’s more than 150,000 in the iTunes App Store, 20,000 in the Android Market, and 5,000 in BlackBerry App World) that they are often viewed as essential elements for survival in today’s economy.

“It’s right up there with having your own website,” said Jeff Orr, senior analyst for ABI Research. “Businesses have been in a rush to develop and publish apps because they feel they’re missing out.”

Fortunately, small and medium businesses don’t have to miss the app bandwagon. If you don’t lack thousands of dollars to spend, several companies provide web-based, template-driven solutions that make mobile apps available to businesses of all sizes.

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