How to Improve Your App Development Business

The use of apps has become so popular it is now essential for businesses to have one created for their customers and clients to use. Whether it’s an app that allows customers to manage their bookings at restaurants or beauty salons or to purchase products from retailers, there is always a useful app for people to use. However, while this has been excellent for app developers, this has also meant there is a lot of competition in the market for them, which is why you need to make your app development business stand out. If you want to see your client-base grow and sales increase, here are a few things to look out for to help you make that happen.

Ask for Employee Feedback

If you run a company that has a team of developers rather than working as a freelancer, asking your employees for feedback could help you improve business operations. It could be that they require better software to help them collaborate more efficiently, such as DevOps or other streamlining services. This open source on-prem slack software is a great example of this, so if your software needs updating, check out their services or find a similar provider. Additionally, your staff might be more productive if they are offered flexible working hours or the opportunity to work remotely part of the week. Hold a meeting with your teams to get their feedback, or send out an employee survey that they can fill out asking what they need from you to make things better in the office.

Ask for Client Feedback

As well as speaking with your employees, you need to also ask your clients for feedback. They are the ones that will be either recommending you to others or telling people not to work with you. This is why customer relationship management is key, and asking for their thoughts on your performance is how you can improve on this. Ask about how they felt working with you at every step of the project, from preliminary discussions to the final delivery. Did they feel like your teams were listening to what they wanted? Were they happy with the finished app? Did the app get delivered to them on time? Finally, how did they feel they were treated as customers by your team? Sending a survey out to clients once their app is completed is a good way to gather this information, but you should also allow them to leave reviews on your website.

Update Your Portfolio

Potential clients want to be able to see what you can do as developers, so keeping your portfolio updated is essential. Use your company’s website to showcase the work you and your teams put together, but do this via social media as well to reach a wider audience. Having a wide selection of things to show clients is good, but equally, you don’t want to saturate your website with every single project you have worked on (if there have been a lot). Choose up to 10 samples of work that your company is most proud of and upload them to your website. If interested parties get in touch and what to see more of your work, you can show them more examples privately.

Keep Up to Date with Market Research

Marketing is essential to making a business a success, but to create quality campaigns, you need to understand what your target demographic is looking for from a company like yours. Market research is something you need to be regularly doing to keep your company relevant and stay on top of the latest trends, or even better, to get ahead and becoming a trendsetter yourself. Read publications both in print and online that are relevant to your industry daily, so you are always in the loop. Using other tools and resources such as Google Analytics and Living Facts are great examples of easy to use and free tools to find all the statistics you need for basic market research.

Review Your Marketing Strategy

Another area you should explore if you’re not seeing the results you want is your marketing strategies themselves. If you’re doing most of this in-house, consider hiring a marketing agency to see if they can help you improve your campaigns and give you a new perspective on how to promote your brand. Using social media and other digital strategies is a good place to start, but even TV advertisements could help you reach a wider audience if you have the budget to do this. You should also look at getting your company advertised in relevant business magazines and publications to directly target your customer base.

What Other Services Can You Offer?

While app development might be the main thing your company does, consider how you can expand your services to attract more clients. Businesses are more likely to work with developers that can offer them a range of services because it’s easier, rather than having to deal with various people. You might already offer website design and development, but if not, look at adding this to your list. Could your team develop new software that could improve your client’s digital operations? Again, the budget you’re working with will determine just how much you can add to your company’s repertoire, but if you can expand this, it will be beneficial.

Work with Educational Institutes

If you want to spread the word about your company and get some good press, working with local universities and other educational institutions could be a good way to do it. Whether you get involved with an event such as a job’s fair or offer students the chance to do work placements with your company over the summer or part-time, these are all things that are going to get your noticed. Internships are not only a great way to help you manage surplus work, but they can also give you early access to some new talent that you can welcome to the team full-time once they graduate. If all goes well, these institutions may even want to hire your company to help them with their web and app development needs and become new clients.

Review Your Spending

Looking at your budgets and reviewing your spending is another way to improve your business operations. You should be doing this every quarter, and your accountant might be able to highlight areas where you could be saving money. You may even want to hire a business management consultant to see if they can offer you further advice on where to invest your money for the best results. Exploring these options could increase your income and allow you to expand your company sooner.

Managing a business is always a challenge, and if you’re a small enterprise that is competing with larger companies, it can be even more overwhelming. However, it’s important to keep striving to improve the way your company operates so it can grow and be the success you want it to be. If you’re concerned that your app development business isn’t going as well as you’d like it to, use some or all of these suggestions to help it get back on track. It is a very competitive industry, but with the right plans in place, there is no reason why your business can’t become one of the industry leaders of the future.