An agency that builds apps saying most businesses should not build one is unusual. It also happens to be true, and the test for whether you are the exception is simple.
We build mobile apps. We also talk a fair number of people out of building one, because an app that nobody opens is the most expensive thing a small business can own.
The question is not whether an app would be nice. It is whether your customers have a reason to come back.
The question that decides it
How often does the same person buy from you?
An app lives on a home screen. That is its whole advantage over a website: it is already there, it can send a notification, and it remembers who somebody is. Every one of those advantages is about the second visit and the twentieth.
If your customer buys from you once every four years, an app has nothing to offer them and they will delete it. A roofer does not need an app. A moving company does not need an app. If, on the other hand, the same people come back weekly or monthly, an app can change the economics of the business.
Where an app genuinely pays
Four patterns, and they overlap.
- Ordering. Food, coffee, collection. The saving is not convenience, it is commission. A business taking orders through a delivery marketplace is handing over a meaningful slice of every order, and an app that moves even a third of regulars off that platform pays for itself quickly.
- Loyalty. A card in a wallet gets lost. A stamp card on a phone gets used, and it tells you who your best customers are, which a paper card never did.
- Bookings. Salons, clinics, studios, classes. Rebooking is one tap and a reminder notification cuts no shows.
- Membership. Gyms, clubs, subscriptions. The app is where the thing people pay for actually lives.
Outside those four, be skeptical. Especially of “our customers would love an app”, which is a sentence that has never once survived contact with the download numbers.
What it costs after it is built
This is the part that gets left out of proposals. Building it is a one off. Owning it is not.
- Apple and Google both charge an annual developer fee.
- Both push operating system updates every year, and an app that is not maintained will eventually stop working or be removed from the store.
- Every change, including a price change or a new menu item, has to go through a review process unless the app was built to pull that content from somewhere you control.
- Somebody has to answer the reviews and the support emails.
- And you have to give people a reason to install it, which is a marketing job in itself.
None of that is a reason not to build one. It is a reason to know the number before you start.
The middle road most businesses should take first
Before an app, get the website to behave like one. A fast site that works properly on a phone, remembers a returning customer, takes a booking or an order in three taps and can be saved to a home screen covers a surprising amount of what people think they want an app for, at a fraction of the cost and with nothing to install.
Do that first. If the numbers then say people are coming back often enough that the notification and the home screen icon would earn their keep, you have evidence rather than a hunch, and the app you build will be the right one. Our piece on what a slow website costs covers the groundwork.
If you do build one, build one thing well
The most common way a small business app fails is not technical. It is that it tried to be the website, the loyalty card, the booking system, the newsletter and the store all at once, and did none of them well enough to be worth opening.
Pick the one action your best customers take most often. Make that action take two taps. Ship it. Add the rest later, once people are actually using it.
How to decide this afternoon
- Work out how many times a year your average customer buys from you. Under three, stop here.
- Work out what you pay in commission or in no shows each month. That is the app’s budget.
- Name the one action the app exists for, in a single sentence.
- Ask twenty regulars whether they would install it. Their faces will tell you more than their answers.
- If it still holds up, build the one action and nothing else.
If you want a straight answer on which side of that line you fall, that is a conversation rather than a proposal. Tell us what you sell and how often people come back, and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth it. Our app work is there if it is.