Modern businesses across virtually all industries have been in a tailwind with regards to digital strategising over the past few years. The lasting economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent acceleration of digital transformation, has created a modern economic landscape that innately requires business owners to invest in digital development and accrue both web and mobile assets to ensure that they can keep up with their competitors.
If you are a business owner yourself, chances are you’ve been looking over your company books these past few years wondering exactly where your money has gone. And it’s a fair question: does the price of app development justify the profits generated by this digital project?
When conducted correctly, digital strategising can help propel your business into the stratosphere by showcasing your company’s services and other unique offerings to a global audience. But even though investing in mobile is undoubtedly crucial to the longevity of any company in the digital age, bankrolling a business mobile app just for the sake of it won’t be likely to deliver the results you’re looking for. The emphasis has to be on strategising.
So how do you build a good digital strategy that utilises the affordances of mobile devices and applications? We’ll be outlining just some of the key factors that business owners should consider when investing in mobile in 2023.
The Growth of M-Commerce
It’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic saw a steep climb in eCommerce sales and digital consumer spending. After all, there’s not much else to do in a lockdown environment except shop online. In this sense, the lockdowns provided business owners with a unique opportunity to gain and hold their audience’s attention and in doing so, inspire sales all the way through what was essentially an economic standstill.
But how have these eCommerce trends fared months after our final days in lockdown? There are still more digital consumers now than ever before, but the way that they’re making purchases online has changed substantially.
eCommerce market analysts have unearthed that more consumers are making purchases with mobile devices over their personal computers, prompting economists to use the term ‘m-commerce’ or mobile commerce. Alongside this, the number of digital wallet holders has also increased, with projections that 4.8 billion people will hold mobile wallets by the end of 2025. This points to the growing popularity of mobile payments and mobile banking.
With more consumers making payments with their phones and through mobile web access, it only makes sense for modern businesses to continue investing in their own digital infrastructure for mobile users. This means developing a business app wherever one may be applicable, as well as ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly and caters to additional means of payment like GPay and other digital wallet and mobile payment services that have become a pillar of m-commerce.
Accommodating BNPL payment services
As we briefly touched upon earlier, m-commerce has revolutionised due in part to the diversification of payment options available to mobile consumers. The freedom of choice to spend your money however (and whenever) suits you best, is a powerful motivator for making purchases online and through the use of mobile devices.
But the diversification of payment options doesn’t just stop at the digital wallets. BNPL (or ‘buy now, pay later’) payment services are providing mobile consumers with even more freedom of choice, but eliminating the need to ‘pay’ altogether when looking to make a purchase online. As a result, modern business owners have a lot to gain from integrating BNPL payment options to their brick and mortar stores, their websites and better still, their business apps.
As many BNPL services utilise apps themselves, applying to become a vendor with these services provides the perfect opportunity to redirect your digital consumers from BNPL apps straight to your website or business mobile app. From there, all you need to do is provide additional incentives for your consumers to make purchases through these platforms. If you’re able to complete this customer journey, you can then grow an email list and drive revenue by remarketing, prompting consumers to visit your business’ digital assets once again during sales and other promotional activities. In other words, let your marketing team handle it from here!
Mobile Tech Trends to Utilise in 2023
As m-commerce continues to grow, so too do the capabilities of mobile applications. There are a number of emerging tech trends in and around mobile that present some highly lucrative opportunities for a range of modern industries.
One particular tech trend that more business mobile apps are likely to use in 2023 is augmented reality (or ‘AR’). AR technologies allow mobile apps to overlay interactive digital elements not just on top of but also into real-world settings. Although some avid mobile users may already be familiar with some of the capabilities of AR technology in the form of mobile gaming apps like Pokemon Go and on social media, the commercial potential of AR truly does go deeper than we may be able to imagine.
Currently, AR is being adopted by a wide range of industries, including fashion and home decor producers, as well as the consumer tech sector. Some great examples include IKEA’s Place app that allows users to virtually place IKEA products into their own home through AR, and the introduction of Apple’s AirTags and its new features to the Find My app.
Other mobile tech trends that you’ll want to keep an eye out for in 2023 include:
- -Advanced analytics – Spotify is a great example here, with the company finding new ways to offer their users value by simply organising and presenting their own user data.
- IoT technologies – ‘Internet of Things’ technologies (like smart home tech) can allow consumers to enjoy additional features and functionalities for physical hardware and home/work amenities by simply connecting these devices to their phones. IoT devices work through connected mobile apps, making this another potential avenue for businesses looking to expand into the digital in 2023.
- Cybersecurity innovations – as more consumers are making purchases online, protecting sensitive user information is becoming a greater concern. Because of this, companies who are able to provide users with secure shopping platforms are more likely to generate revenue online. Innovations like multi-factor authentication and TLS encryption will likely become more important for emerging generations of tech-savvy digital consumers.
With all these considerations made, all that’s left to do is create a highly effective digital strategy to help your modern business take full commercial advantage of all things mobile. Whether this means developing a mobile-friendly app or going all out and creating your own dedicated business mobile app is entirely up to you and your stakeholders.
Just keep in mind that although the digital sphere thrives on rapid-fire developments, this doesn’t necessarily mean that your own investments in digital should take on an ‘all or nothing’ approach. Incremental investments in mobile are still sure to make for monumental progress, and it is a fool’s errand to try and ‘keep up’ with any of these evolving tech trends. Even Apple can’t do it!
