From shopping to travelling, tracking fitness to personal finances, reading books to finding a partner, mobile apps are eventually making everything possible with just a few taps on our mobile screens!
If you ask out anyone, what are the first five necessities that they cannot stay without, smartphone is one of them? Mobile phones surfaced in no time as a basic life ingredient and apps are the fuel behind it. While statistics underpinned the phenomenal rise in mobile phone usages that surpassed desktops, mobile apps development has altered forever the way businesses/brand interact with customers. As stated by Thomas Husson, Vice-President at Forrester Research,
“Mobile is becoming not only the new digital hub but also the bridge to the physical world. That’s why mobile will affect more than just your digital operations — it will transform your entire business.”
On one hand, most businesses are waking up fast to the opportunity provided by mobile apps technology, on the other hand, startups are emerging in the apps province for providing convenience to people in daily life activities. One by one, there evolved hundreds of thousands of apps that absolutely disrupted the way businesses operate and how people comfort their lives. Here’s a take on the most prominent fields where apps are becoming a deep-seated aspect to showcase how they are reshaping lives and businesses.
# Rides/Travel
Mobile apps presented a great way for people to hire on-demand travelling services from reliable transport agencies from their desired locations. Needless to say, local travel agencies or cab services got real scope to be on the forefront by bringing out their own customised app to let people reach for their services in just a click. On the other way, round people got an uber convenient way to track down nearby cabs and hire them. While on-demand app services are still creating a lot of buzzes, travel agencies are first of the kind to embrace it.
While one on-the-go pick and drop facilities offered through apps helped people in a big way in commuting, it left a stellar impact on the travel companies providing them with unlimited business opportunities.
With a high degree of personalisation, they acquired a large number of customers with schemes like discounted rides, localised offer, free referral rides, advance bookings, scheduling repeat rides and many more. All in all, travel businesses helped people to shove aside the thought of owning personal cars. Thus, the majority of travel agencies at present are trying to shape up their business with a far-fetching app and score more customers.
Popular apps:
Uber: Operating across 200 countries in the world, Uber is one of the big favourite allowing people to get a private cab and even share a ride with others.
Gett: A popular black car service popular in several international cities is popular for its reasonable pricing and did not have any surge rates during peak hours.
Lyft: Another big rideshare app and a great Uber competitor, it is known for its own distinct premium services, ride credits, and other in-app features.
Others big names are Sidecar, Juno, Flywheel, Curb, Way2Ride, Ola, Arro.
#Dining
Dining or food restaurant businesses witnesses a breakthrough in the way they dispense takeaways or offer table reservations because of mobile applications. Mobile apps interfered in food-restaurant chains to help owners in taking advance booking, to reduce the hassles they go through while dealing with phone call bookings. Simultaneously, lots of apps surfaced as the medium for restaurants to serve localised takeaway services to their customers, thus helping the latter to order delicacies from their favourite local restaurants anytime from anywhere.
Restaurants are fast embracing apps to provide better customer services and enhance operational efficiencies.
Visiting a restaurant every time you feel hungry or making a phone call to the restaurant for ordering lunch or dinner is old school. People now open apps in their mobiles that have enlisted all restaurants, small eateries and cafeterias, view each of their menus and pick their favorite dishes and that’s all! In no time, they get their food delivered by an executive at their doorsteps. But this is not the end. Such apps go much beyond just picking and delivering orders. Customers can literally know how far their food is processed by the restaurant and check where the delivery executive is, avail promotional coupons/discounts on orders, get notified on new restaurant offer/openings in the locality and even make cashless payments.
Popular apps:
Grubhub: This simplified the food order to the best. Users just need to enter their location and it displays them all nearby food outlets and scroll through their menus.
Open Table: Those wishing to visit a fine dining place for a great meal with friends or family, Open Table is a great option. It lets users reserve a table in advance at free of cost after exploring hundreds of popular restaurants.
Menulog: It is one of the most popular of its kind in Australia, used by a majority of cuisine lovers. It supports a massive catalogue of all famous restaurants, from small street outlets to big dine-ins.
Other famous app names are Deliveroo, Skip, Foodora, UberEats, Urban Spoon, Tasteful, Doordash, Seamless.
# Retail/Shopping
Shopping for groceries, clothing and other miscellaneous households become super swift, simple and effortless. The retailer started building apps of their own kind through which they allowed customers to view the product collections, filter the search for a particular product, and get them delivered at their location.
Apps are predominantly the “future of retail” and the emergence of apps to facilitate online as well as in-store apps, manifest that.
While they are a powerful ally for people to get anything and everything at their doorstep, they pushed retailers to offer highly personalised services to win loyal customers like free deliveries, product recommendation, wishlist reminders, notification alerts on new arrivals, seasonal discounts. Further, with the integration of beacons technology in their apps that specifies a digital perimeter around an outlet, store owners send away targeted offers to customers within that perimeter that raises the footfall significantly.
Popular apps:
Amazon: Very popular in its kind, Amazon app is the mobile version of the giant American based online retail company Amazon.com. Just like its online store, it brings in massive categories of products from household items to office stationeries and support COD/electronic cards/ wallet payments to help people delve in seamless shopping.
Grocery IQ: It offers users facilities to create shopping lists, sync them from any product database and even make voice searches.
Coles: Users can scan over a hundred thousand products, browse week’s special items and write lists using barcode scanners.
Aldi, Out of Milk, Buy Me a Pie!, GrocerEaze, Mona, Grocer Pal, JackThreads, Touch of Modern, etc. are other notable shopping apps trending now.
#Beauty
Like many business areas embracing on-demand apps to grow their customer base, beauty salons, parlour and spas too are pitching in for the same. From offering on-the-go appointments for salons to sending away beauticians and hair stylists to customers homes, Salon apps are doing it all!
In one hand, it helped small and medium parlours/salons to get recognised as a big brand in their locality by making their services available on demand. The other way, such apps provided brilliant opportunities to the commoners and all kind of fashionistas to get stylised look readily and even sometimes sitting on their bed.
Popular apps:
Stylisted: Customers can book appointments, choose the specific services (style, artist, or looks) they want.
The Glam App: With just a tap, it delivers professional style experts to customers on their doors. It also acts as a tool for beauty specialists to maintain their appointments and build loyal clientele as freelancers.
LUXit: Being an award-winning app in Australia in the beauty sector, it offers premium salon and spa treatments straight to people’s door including makeup, spray tans, hair styling, blow drys, men’s grooming, etc.
Other names in the same platform are Glamazon, Vaniday, Pretty Quick, BeGlammed, Beauro, Dial A Style, etc.
#Fitness
With health and fitness being the top priority of people and gyms/fitness experts playing a dominant role in their lives, countless fitness apps are vying in the market to help them fulfil their quest for a healthier life. They empowered users to track their health progress accurately by quantifying health parameters like heart rate, sugar level, cholesterol etc.
From yoga session to spinning classes, nutrition guide to pocket trainers, apps came up for everything. In the healthcare front too, apps came up helping patients to get doctors appointments, and doctors to schedule their patient visits, view patient’s medical records, keep track of the treatment methods and so forth.
Popular apps:
Endomondo: Allows users to map out workouts, have exact statistics of their workout sessions and get full log of personal training.
FitBit: Popular in about more than 50 countries in the world, it serves users the purpose of every part of their day. From viewing all-day activities, calculating sleep time to amounting the calories burnt, it does all.
Other apps in the same line: Spotify, MyFitnessPal, RunKeeper, Sworkit, Cyclemeter, and so on.
#Banking/ Finances
Apps made trailblazing advancements in the banking and finance sector too, the mainstay pillars of every commercial economy. There has been a whopping rise in the number of financial institutions offering mobile and net banking services through apps.
Apps came as a great ally for them to maximise their customer base and strengthen their bond with the customer. Unlike other sectors, mobile apps revolutionised many aspects of the financial sector.
From mobile banking service that helped users to save bank accounts to transact and spend, apps also aided them in a big way to pay bills for different utilities like electricity and phone bills, loans, etc. On the other hand, some apps surfaced as personal mentors/ financial advisors to help users plan and allocate budget judiciously, keep track of their monthly/weekly expenditures and estimate savings.
Popular apps:
PayPal: One of the most popular in the finance space, this app best serves the users with secure payments, connects them to their accounts and keep detailed records of all transactions.
Expensify: It is specifically geared to help users manage their customary expenses in real-time besides allowing saving and scanning of receipts. It spectacularly automates everything about expense reporting.
Pocketbook: One of the best known in the category of money management apps in Australia, it is actually a budgeting tool with which users can track month’s spendings so that they do not stick out of their budget.
Other popular banking apps trending in the same line are Commbank app, TrackMyGoals, Splitwise, ATM Hunter, Qapital, Budget Boss.
The revolution of mobile apps surely does not stop here! There are lots more spheres where it is observed as an ever-evolving phenomenon. Communications, Entertainment, Reading, GPS Navigation, Tourism and Dating and what not! Apps technology are rigorously altering all these. Now, we open up the Google Maps in our phones instead of asking a bystander or calling up someone to get to a particular spot. Booking concerts/movie tickets, listening to music online, streaming live videos, reading books and news, people are doing it all from their mobile devices. From engaging in textual conversions in Facebook Messenger, making video/voice calls with WhatsApp to catching up with a love partner from Tinder, there are apps for all. Thus, the way we live, talk, eat, walk, read and entertain ourselves are directed and manipulated by apps.
Undeniably, the mobile apps era is going to exist for an undefined time span and so, every business and startups need to grab this technology in every way to be the game-changer in their respective fields.
