"Smartphone-ize" Your Business

Smartphones are ubiquitous. Each new generation of phones has more and better capabilities. Smartphones, the pinnacle of the cell phone pyramid, are almost infinitely expandable through the use of downloaded applications ("apps") which can do nearly anything that a full-sized computer can do.

All this capability has led, naturally enough, to people using their phones for more and more tasks. Some of those tasks include interacting in new ways with the businesses those users patronize.

What can you do to "smartphone-ize" your business?

A well designed smartphone app could take the place of some of the things currently done by paid staff. For example, you could allow customers to set their own appointments by showing a public calendar with unavailable times greyed out and allow customers to pick from remaining time slots.

If you have customers who have a revolving account or who regularly carry a credit balance, allow them to access their account information through the app interface.

Or your app may feature a calculator for customers to figure out how much of your product they need. This could work well for paint stores, fabric stores, garden centers, etc. It could also work for service providers such as financial planners and investment advisors.

A checklist could be handy for some types of businesses. For instance, if there are certain things your clients must do for themselves before you can effectively start providing services. Say you are a carpet cleaner, some things you need are for dogs to be locked up, clutter to be picked up, perhaps you even want breakable or very valuable items removed from the rooms to be cleaned.

Think of a smartphone app as a utilitarian marketing tool not much different from a calendar, calculator or ruler. Brainstorm features and functions pertaining to your business which can be automated, which help both you and your customers and especially which your customers are likely to find cool or useful. If necessary, enlist the help of a marketer who understands your business to help you come up with ideas.

How do you get the programming done?

A good app should have no more than a handful of features. Too many and it becomes both expensive for you to build and confusing for your customers to use. Even just one great feature can be enough to sustain an app.

You don't have to be a technical expert. Just write out in detail what you want done and how each function should work. Then you can hire freelance programmers to do the work of building the app.

Freelance coding can be surprisingly affordable. Check out online services like:

• Odesk
• Elance
• Rent-a-coder
• Guru.com
• Freelancer.com

Pricing will vary depending on the specifications you provide but even a fairly elaborate app should be well under $1,000. Most should be only a few hundred. With some of the sites mentioned above, you set the budget you are prepared to spend and the programmers will "bid" on the contract within the constraints you set.

There are several major smartphone platforms. You don't necessarily need to support all of them, but you should consider supporting at least the top two or three. Add more if your app proves popular and drives business your way. In approximate order of popularity, the major smartphone platforms are:

• iPhone (iOS) - which can also run on iPod and iPad
• Android - which also runs many tablet devices
• Blackberry and Blackberry enabled tablet devices
• Windows CE - and other mobile Windows versions
• HP/Palm (also known as WebOS)

Once the core functionality has been developed, porting it to additional platforms is only incremental work and should cost a mere fraction of the initial development cost.

How do you get customers to use your app?

If your customers see some clear benefit to using it, all you'll really need is to make them aware that your app is available. Try offering features or services via the app that they can't easily get even directly from you or someone in your office. For example I'd much rather spend 30 seconds looking up my account balance or setting an appointment than five or more minutes on the phone having someone else do it for me.

Should you charge for your app?

Unless your app has mass consumer appeal or the nature of your business is such that your customers would expect (and be willing) to pay for it, you are better off giving your app away for free. The cost to develop it is a one-time expense. After that, you can distribute an unlimited number of copies for no extra charge.

Think of it like an electronic marketing premium that gets your name in front of customers and prospects who will see your company's name every time they use the app.

What about updates and ongoing support?

The point of this project is to attract new customers and to make your existing customers more loyal. There is no need for your app to always be cutting edge. Once it's in a stable, releasable form it should go several years without needing to be updated if it was well designed in the first place.

If a flaw is found in the app, the original coder should agree to fix it for free or a substantially reduced cost. If that isn't possible or you do wish to add new functionality, you can either go back to the original coder or return to any of the sites listed earlier to find a new developer to work on it.