How Many Small Business Websites Are Not Mobile Friendly?

A recent report released from a company BaseKit surveyed over 500 Small Businesses and a shocking 91% said their websites are not optimized for mobile users. This report covered a poll of small and medium sized businesses and questioned them about a variety of technology related topics, including the functionality of their website and more.

Out of this poll, only 2/3 said they managed and updated their websites & 2/3 of those business owners used social media to help with online marketing.

There is a missing gap between business owners & consumers. More customers than ever before are accessing the web via Mobile Phones & Tablets. 

Slowly but surely, small businesses are starting to understand the magnitude of this mobile movement and are picking up on this optimized trend. Recent numbers are showing that 50% of new traffic to the web comes from smartphones. We can also back this with a client of ours, read this article to see the mobile traffic numbers from their Google Analytics report.

There is no doubt in our mind that mobile is not just a movement, but it is a lifestyle shift. Users are unplugging from the wall of tangled cords into freely roaming the streets on mobile devices, accessing apps & the web. It does not take detailed reports to see the trend, just look around at all of the people who own smartphones & tablets. Mobile is here and it is here to stay for quite some time. There is still huge opportunity for the early adopter business owners to get mobile and gain competitive advantage over their slowly advancing competitors.

But for those business owners ready, contact Grand Apps today to learn how we can help!

Recent Study on Hotel Mobile Apps

It should be no surprise to you by now that hotels everywhere are going mobile. They are now understanding the importance of a mobile app for their customers. Apps make the booking process hassle free, streamline the process and provide overall more efficiency for travelers, after all that is what mobile apps are meant to do. 

MCD has recently polled 1,000 domestic travelers who owned smartphones last fall 2013. They released their numbers in November 2013. Travelers utilized mobile apps quite frequently while staying at the hotel but the biggest feature they used was maps of the area in which they were staying, with 83% of family travelers using maps. Business travelers (71%) used features like bill-paying, ordering room service and transportation arrangements. 68% of the total travelers liked seeing concierge tips (push notes) in their mobile apps providing them with tips about the places they were visiting.

Easy Integration

Based on the study above, Grand Apps offers a full suite of app features that would benefit each hotel and their visitors from this study.

Maps
We offer an around us tab allowing you to put in geo coordinates of places. Users can click on that pinpoint to get more information about that particular location or even get one touch directions. You can easily add points in minutes with our amazing app builder.

Room Service
We have a food ordering app feature that allows app users to order their favorite dishes. The hotel will be notified via email & a print out receipt via Google Cloud technologies. (basically your standard wifi printer). This is very easy to integrate and majority of our restaurant clients take advantage of this feature.

Concierge Tips
This would be a great opportunity for hotels everywhere to utilize our Geo Fencing technologies. They can setup geo fences around the hotel so when travelers come back, they will get tips about the hotel. They can setup fences around the city at favorite restaurants with messages about the food they should try. Hotels can ever partner with certain restaurants, setup a geo fence and when users enter it will say "show us your hotel app for a discounted meal price or $5 off).

The possibilities are endless when it comes to marketing your mobile app for your hotel but based on the recent study, these are the top 3 features that people use frequently while staying at a hotel. Grand Apps is capable of helping hotels everywhere get their mobile app off of the ground. Contact us today to get going on yours.

New Mobile App User Interfaces

We are pretty excited for our new feature update that is coming soon and wanted to give you another sneak peak for our "more" navigation tab. Designing an easy to use user interface is not easy and making it simple, yet effective can be very challenging. Our apps have come a long way since we first launch Grand Apps in 2012 and our UI have improved drastically. If you have used some of our apps at your favorite local business, you will know that majority of our apps have a "more" button. This more button has all of the remaining app features in there.

More Button Changes
We are now changing the way this looks in our apps. The app screenshot above is a fitness app and notice how it has a "more" button. When you click that button you will be taken to the more page. Checkout below the before and after pictures of our newly designed more page.

Before

After

Users can now swipe to the left to get to the "more" screen with all of the app features. 

What's Changing In Mobile? Types of Mobile Marketing Tips

Mobile apps, mobile phones, mobile screens, mobile and more mobile. The word mobile is a hot word in 2014 and you are probably hearing or seeing it everywhere. What's changing in mobile this year? Well, you must read on.

1.4 Billion
This is the number of smartphones in use in 2013. That is approximately 1 in 7 people worldwide.

57% 
This is the percent of users who won't recommend companies with a poor mobile site. You read that right, they WON'T recommend business your way if your website is not optimized or you have a weak mobile marketing strategy.

1in4
That is how many online searches that are conducted on mobile devices. This means 25% of searches are coming from mobile. Again, this is average. We are working with clients and seeing numbers closer to 40-50% of searches coming from mobile.

57,293 hours
The average American spends almost 2 hours per day on a mobile device which adds up to 57,293 hours over a lifetime. Two whole hours every single day staring at their mobile smartphone.

$400 Billion
By 2015, it is expected that mobile marketing in the U.S. will generate $400 billion compared to $139 billion in 2012.

Just looking at some of the numbers above,  you get the picture how important mobile marketing is. We now wanted to break down some different types of mobile marketing for you during this changing mobile environment. As a business owner, you realize there are millions of ways you can possibly do marketing for your business but we are shedding light on the mobile marketing game and some ways to begin.

Mobile Apps
You can definitely get a mobile app for your business and begin promoting that. About 45% of US mobile marketing campaigns employ app downloads. At Grand Apps, we strictly develop for businesses and pack our app with useful features that will drive traffic and help your business out with an app. Even a mobile app has many ways to begin your mobile marketing campaign, but just getting an app is a great start.

Mobile Image Ads
You can also display ads and begin running mobile ads, you know like those annoying little pop ups you get while trying to exercise listening to your favorite Pandora station.

QR Codes
QR codes are a baby step into mobile marketing getting people engaged with their smart device and your business. You can post QR code specials, redirects and much more. QR codes, in our opinion are awesome, but highly underused in the US. Time will only tell if they begin to trend as more people purchase smartphones.

Mobile Website
We really didn't want to put this on here, because this should be a must. This is equivalent to making sure your pants are on before leaving the house. Mobile websites are critical with over 25% of searches coming from smart devices.

Summary...

Well, pretty much mobile is changing the marketing game. People are spending massive amounts of time on mobile and the numbers are changing to see even bigger increases. Having some type of mobile strategy in the future years is critical can we recommend you begin planning in 2014 if you have not already.

Mobile is not the future, it's the now.

Geofencing For Your Small Business, It's Coming!

Geofencing, what is it? Some of you might have already experienced it while others have no idea what we are talking about. Geofencing is exactly what is sounds like, a fence around a geographical area. Grand Apps will be launching a new feature update and it will be available to all clients early April 2014, to read more about that feature update and what we will be launching just visit this post. Geofencing will be apart of that new feature update.

Many of you know that we already offer all of our app clients the ability to send out push notifications to all of their app users. We are now taking this to the next level with adding Geofencing to our platform. Businesses can setup a fenced area on the map so when app users enter, a message will be sent to them.

How do I use Geofencing for my app? 

Many businesses love using the geofencing feature for notifying customers about special offers. But, there are many more ways to use it. Real Estate agents can fence around a house so when app users drive by they will receive more information about that house. Musicians and bands can geofence around a venue so when your followers pass by the venue they will receive more information about your upcoming show. As you can imagine, there are tons of ways to use this.

You're not limited to your own location!

You read that right, no geo limitations. You can set where you would like to fence. For example, you can fence around a competitor and when an app user enters that area, they will be reminded about your business. Law firms can geo fence around court houses and bail bonds locations.

Again, the opportunities to take your business to the next level are endless with the new geofencing opportunity.

Key considerations while using Geofencing

More does not equal better. Bombarding app users with messages all of the time will likely have them opt out of your messages or delete your app. Nobody wishes to constantly be interrupted. It's like that person who always interrupts you on a phone call, not allowing you to get a full sentence out. Instead it's about strategically using this to your advantage and using it as a resourceful marketing tool.

Don't think about using geofencing as another way to sell to your customers, but use it as an organic way to connect with them and add more value. Think about some of your favorite companies and if they were exploiting every marketing channel possible, you would get sick of them. But if they pop up here and there, most likely you don't mind.

Overall, geofencing should be used to improve your customers experience with your business and your businesses mobile app. Always remember if you want your geofencing programs to be a success, put your customers first always! Do this and your business will all fall into place.

Press Release | Grand Apps & Sysco Grand Rapids Partnership

Grand Apps is proud to announce a newly formed partnership with Sysco of Grand Rapids, MI. The Grand Rapids location serves over 5,000+ customers with food services, tabletop marketing, online presence and now mobile apps. Sysco is a global company serving 425,000 customers with sales of $44 billion in 2013. They started their company based on the principal of building strong relationships with customers and continues to do so in 2014. We are very excited to begin cultivating our relationship with them and are excited about possible future opportunities.

Grand Apps will offer all Sysco customers mobile app development & website design for a preferred discounted price. If you are a Sysco customer and have your customer ID, you will qualify for this discounted price.

We believe this will help the mobile movement tremendously by offering all of their customers mobile marketing strategies. This will also help expand Grand Apps reach as a company, putting our services for mobile app and mobile marketing in front of thousands of more small business owners looking to advance their strategies, while staying ahead of the competition. This is phase one of a small launch, which could lead to much bigger future opportunities.

Again, if you are a Sysco customer and would like to learn more, just email support@grandapps.com to obtain more information.

Grand Apps Company Update

Spring is almost here, which means spring cleaning. Grand Apps is actually doing a little pre-spring cleaning ourselves and wanted to give you a full company update about what we have been up too as we have not posted in a few weeks. 

New Website

We are in the process of redesigning a new website for Grand Apps, which is projected to launch Mid March. We will email everybody on our email newsletter when this is ready. 

New Feature Update | Grand Apps 4.0 Software Update

This is possibly our largest feature update in Grand Apps history and we are in the final stages of implementation of it. We are in final stages of testing and will be launching this sometime in Mid March as well. Again, all of our app clients & followers will get an early insight to this. 

Checkout our latest article for our Grand Apps 4.0 Software Update. 

New Partnerships

Restaurants, listen up! We are forming a new partnership with Sysco Grand Rapids and will be offering special discounts for Sysco Members for mobile apps, website and all services we offer. 

New Blog

We will be switching the blog to our website instead of Blogger, for all of our followers on here we will still keep posting on there but senselessly transition to our website.

Better Customer Support

Thank you for all the support. We are working hard to make your user experience the absolute best which is why we need a new website, new features and even better customer support.

We are integrating Live Chat to our website so you can actually chat with us during business hours 9-5 Monday - Friday.

Thank you again for your patience as we transition in this new direction and we look forward to serving you better very soon. If you have any questions please email support@grandapps.com