In an interview with Information Week, ViziApps CEO George Adams recommended 5 steps SMBs can take to ensure that their mobile apps will get used.

“You need to have an immediate value or hook to the app,” Adams said. In other words, what’s going to make this app stand out from the dozens or even hundreds of others you’ve downloaded?

It’s critical that you “show a compelling reason to have that other app.”

This advice holds for SMBs, as well as enterprise business groups developing their own mobile apps.

Providing the ability to make in-app payments and geo-location services were just two of the features Adams suggested for engaging app users. He also advocated ways to take advantage of the versatility of tablets like the iPad to reduce paperwork and enhance customer presentations.

This is the same advice Adams offers users of the ViziApps online tool, which enables anyone with minimal computing skills to create a data-rich mobile app. Without doing any coding, ViziApps lets you create a mobile business app online, providing the type of functionality users – whether they are customers, employees, or partners – require to work productively or engage with a business. ViziApps allows non-programmers to build apps that are not only visually engaging, but also allow apps to access data from backend sources such as Google Docs spreadsheets and SQL databases to enable users to make timely, informed business decisions. ViziApps can be used to build apps that run on iOS and Android devices.

As you plan your next mobile business app, make sure that it offers a compelling user experience. According to research by Localytics, 26% of mobile apps are used just once after they are downloaded. So if you’re planning to build a mobile app for your business, getting users to download it will be just the beginning.

The importance of engaging your target users cannot be overstated. Localytics found that users who are highly engaged with an app are more likely to make in-app purchases. In fact, 44% of the study sample who made an on-app purchase only did so after interacting with the app at least ten times.

If you’re looking for a low-cost way to enhance the service you provide your customers, consider a mobile business app. With ViziApps, it’s free to design, build and test a mobile app. Then, for modest fees for cloud-based services to maintain your app, your company can provide a branded mobile app that provides customers valuable information wherever they need it.

And because many companies don’t yet have mobile apps tailored to meet their customers’ data needs, you have the opportunity to clearly differentiate your business.

That’s right. Today you can still make your business stand apart from your competitors with a data-rich mobile app. But that climate is changing. Offering a mobile app for the iPhone, iPad, and/or Android devices is rapidly becoming more than a nice-to-have option for companies. Soon mobile apps will be mandatory for a successful business.

Forbes contributor and CRM consultant Gene Marks makes a strong argument for the value of mobile apps for businesses of all sizes in his recent post titled “Your Business Checklist: A Website, A Phone Number, A Mobile App.”

“It’s time to stop playing games,” Marks writes. “Smart, boring, conservative companies are getting serious about mobile applications. Slowly but surely, they’re waking up to the potential..no, the need…to utilize these applications to develop more business and keep their customers coming back.”

A cornerstone of his argument is the fact that businesses can provide mobile apps that provide access to the types of data needed to do business – and with minimal investment.

“Think about it: we can all save whatever files, music, videos and photos, for next to nothing on Amazon, Dropbox, or other such services… [People are asking] Why can’t I view product specs, safety information and environmental releases about the products I’ve purchased” on my choice of mobile device?

It’s a fair question. But not every mobile app development platform provides easy robust data access. ViziApps does. With ViziApps, you can easily create a mobile app that provides the data your customers need. And it won’t require an expensive, months-long engineering project.

ViziApps provides a drag-and-drop approach to building a data-rich mobile app for free. (Ongoing maintenance starts at $29 per month for web apps and $49 per month for native apps. See pricing details here.)

What makes ViziApps different from other app development platforms is the way it allows the integration of databases, web services and Google Docs spreadsheets for mobile apps. Without doing any coding, people with minimal computer skills can create mobile apps that make use of backend data resources to provide a rich user experience. The online ViziApps tool can be used to create mobile apps for the iPhone, iPads, and Android phones and tablets, and to build web apps for any device with a full browser.

Start thinking about building a mobile app for your business now. Because, as Gene Marks says, “every business should be thinking about building mobile applications today. It’s not a fad or a passing trend. It’s customer service.”

Have you considered creating a mobile business app that incorporates location-based services (LBS) as a way of gaining new customers? Results of a recent study provide some interesting insight into consumer views on LBS. They reveal that consumers worldwide are becoming increasingly amenable to sharing their location in return for a good, convenient deal.

In its Mobile Life study, global consultancy TNS found that more than 60 percent of respondents who do not yet use location-based services want to begin taking advantage of them.

A summary of the study results makes a strong case for targeting consumers with an LBS mobile app:

“Almost one fifth (19 per cent) of the world’s six billion mobile users are already using LBS, with more than three times this number (62 per cent) aspiring to do so in the future… Savvy LBS users have realized that there is something to be gained from sharing their locations with brands and retailers – with one in eight (12.5 per cent) sharing their location in exchange for a deal or special offer…Beyond current users of LBS, a third of people globally (33 per cent) who already or would like to use mobile voucher coupons, highly rate receiving deals when they are nearby a store that they like. One in five mobile users (21 per cent) stated that they find mobile advertising interesting if it is offering them a deal near their current location.”

James Fergusson, Global Head, Digital & Technology Practice at TNS, believes that mobile users are beginning to appreciate the rewards of disclosing their location. “We are really starting to see location based services ‘come of age’. People are realizing that sharing their location often offers some kind of reward in terms of a discount or deal. It is the combination of time and context – directing people towards a deal when they can easily redeem it – that unlocks a powerful tool for marketers to develop precise targeting approaches.” sexedate

Building a mobile app that uses LBS does not have to be a complex project. The ViziApps drag-and-drop visual approach allows business managers, IT professional and anyone with basic computer skills to create a custom locator mobile app for iOS and Android devices. It’s just one category of mobile apps ViziApps users are building with the online based do-it-yourself mobile app development tool.

Neil Perlin, Hyper/Word Services

Many mobile apps let users add material to the app’s database. Think notes apps, reminder apps, or photo albums, for example. Can you do this with ViziApps? Yes.

I took advantage of this capability for an app that listed BBQ restaurants around Austin, TX, which I created for a conference in the Texas capital. I started with a list of restaurants in the database, in a Google Docs spreadsheet. Conference attendees could list the restaurants by name or city by tapping the appropriate button on the app page. Then, assuming that no Texan would trust a Yankee’s assessment of BBQ restaurants, I added a social media element that let attendees add their own listings. How did it work?

Tapping an “Add Your Own” button opened a page where users could insert a restaurant’s name, city, and web page. (I could have added additional entry fields like address or rating but wanted to keep the app simple.) Users could fill out some or all of the fields and tap a Submit button to send the entry to a “restaurants” worksheet in the Google Docs spreadsheet and get a “thanks for your entry” response in return.

Any user could then tap one of the “list…” buttons to see the new entry, and all the entries, in the list – a two-column table. Tapping any entry in the table opened a Details page listing all the information for the restaurant. (For your mobile app, you could narrow the choices by requiring users to log in and then only show their specific listings, but that could losethe social media benefit.)

Several thoughts about designing an app this way…

• This social media component is generalizable to almost any category of thing – BBQ restaurants, museums, golf courses, etc.
• Social media lets you tap into the “wisdom of the crowd.” For example, residents of Austin knew more about the local BBQ scene than I did. I took advantage of that knowledge by letting them add to the database.
• The social media capability lets contributors show off by adding a “Referred by” field that includes the contributor’s name on the details page. It may seem silly but it can be very appealing to contributors.

Some thoughts about design…

• Typing on a virtual keyboard isn’t easy. Try to offer alternatives to text entry, like a tappable table, picker, or wheel (for mobile business apps for iPhone or Android smartphones).
• Using a table, picker/wheel also has the benefit of “bounding” user entries. For example, ask users to type a city name and you may get the right name, the wrong name, a misspelled name, or no name. But giving users a preset list in a picker, for example, helps focus their entries.
• On the downside, these features use a lot of screen space that you may not want to spare. You could split data entry across several pages, but users might view the app as more complex than it really is and not use it. You’ll need to strike a balance among ease of use, comprehensiveness of data, and screen space.
• The app’s owner will have to periodically remove junk entries like “xxx” or MyTest” from the database, but this is pretty simple.

In summary, think about adding a social media component to your app. You’ll get user participation and engagement, and, with ViziApps, it’s pretty easy to do.

Neil Perlin is the president of Hyper/Word Services, a mobile and online help development, consulting, and training company. You can reach him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.hyperword.com, @NeilEric.