Have you walked around a busy pedestrian area lately? Chances are you’ll see a lot of people using their phones. Looking up directions, texting friends, finding a great place to grab lunch.
Consumer habits are changing as mobile devices become more and more important in our lives. More people now spend more time accessing information via touch devices than through personal computers. At Apptitude, we strongly believe that companies should focus their future efforts on mobile apps to better communicate with their customers, clients, and fans. This is especially true for New Orleans businesses, and will become increasingly important everywhere else as time goes on.
Here are three good reasons why you should choose to build a mobile app to engage and communicate with your customers:
1. Changing demographics.
Forbes recently ranked New Orleans as the 3rd Best City for Tech Job Growth, ranked only behind San Jose and San Francisco. Bloomberg also named it the2nd Best Boomtown in America, ranked only behind Austin, Texas. No matter what statistics and magazines you subscribe to, it’s clear that New Orleans’ population, job market, and economy are rapidly growing.
This population surge is creating new opportunities for all sorts of New Orleans businesses, large and small. Our city is becoming more diverse, more educated, and more people ages 25-40 are choosing to make New Orleans their new home than most other American cities.
Can you blame them?
This young population is interacting, learning, and shopping through apps on smartphones and tablets far more frequently than websites. And while New Orleans has a significant digital divide, with less than 50% of the population having internet access in their homes, many more citizens have access to the web via their phone. So you’ll be reaching more potential customers with an app than with a website.
2. Mobile lifestyles.
Festivals, Mardi Gras, the Saints, religion, sports, dining out, volunteering, second lining, streetcar riding, working, spending time with the family…the average New Orleanian lives an active lifestyle in and outside of the home. Businesses can maximize visibility in a person’s busy lifestyle by creating mobile apps to reach their customers even if they’re already out the door. New Orleanians and our visitors know the value in having information readily available, in a format you can pull up quickly on the go. Apps fulfill these needs in ways websites simply cannot.
3. Thriving tourism.
In 2012 the City of New Orleans hosted more than 9 million visitors and saw approximately $6 billion spent through tourism. Tourists utilize their smartphones and apps to shop, learn more about their surroundings, and find out where to go next. A recent study conducted by Temple University shows that smartphones and apps are quickly becoming integral tools for the traveller, influencing experiences, solving problems, and helping tourists process their memories.
In New Orleans’ thriving tourism industry, local companies can create tools to engage with tourists that help set them apart from their competition. A well-designed smartphone app can help you harness all of this momentum and drive customers towards your business, instead of away from it. Apptitude can help you bring that well-designed app to market on a smaller budget, in less time than you would think. All you need to bring is your idea, and we’ll handle the rest!