Today’s medical practices face competition and increased expectations from an informed and tech-savvy client pool. One of the best ways to meet those expectations as well as to drive more customer engagement is to focus on the patient journey.
What is the patient journey? And how can you use a simple app to improve it for everyone? Here are a few answers.
The Patient Journey
The key to designing an app that improves patient experience is to understand the journey that patient’s take through their medical care. This journey begins long before the customer calls for an appointment, continues as they have various interactions with you and your staff, and ends after they are back home. It generally has six key steps: awareness, help, care, treatment, changes in lifestyle, and ongoing care.
Ideally, this journey shouldn’t be a one-time event. Instead, the more your patients interact with staff and feel empowered throughout the steps, the more likely it is that the journey will circle around repeatedly.
The Steps of the Journey
A customer-facing app is a great way to manage the engagement journey at all the principle steps. How can this work? Here are a few ways it boosts each touchstone.
Awareness
Patients today seek information about their health in a variety of ways — some qualified and many unreliable. Can you use an app to help engage them in reputable sources for research about various health issues? Simple information about common health concerns or symptoms, for instance, keep the client informed but also keep them within your sphere of influence.
Help
This stage of the journey is when your practice first interacts with the patient in person, usually with a phone call and appointment request. An app means your patient can make an appointment whenever they want. They can choose from available times or providers without delay. If they need personal assistance, schedulers can offer to chat or even send a text.
Care
The care stage occurs when a person comes in for a visit with their provider. Use an app to help people complete forms though a customer portal, see wait times or delays, and even choose virtual visits for busy patients with common health challenges.
Treatment
Care, of course, extends beyond the office visit. You may prescribe medicine, therapy, or follow up visits. Patient portals allow providers and patients to all be informed as to the treatment plan. You may use an app to give push notifications that remind clients of home treatment needs, provide information before or after a procedure, and make follow-up inquiries.
Lifestyle Changes
The fifth step in the journey is all about preventing recurrences and further need for in-office care. Follow-up questions are an easy way to help people make positive changes, and an app is a simple way to offer assistance. You can also share documents, recommendations, and helpful information with the patient through the portal right on their phone.
Ongoing Care
Once a patient’s single engagement journey comes to an end, be proactive about continuing the relationship. Once a patient has downloaded your app, make it a primary source of medical information and assistance. Provide changing and informative content about common health issues in your area and during various seasons. Offer notifications about things like annual exams, vaccinations, or refills.
Designing an app that focuses on ways to interact and engage with clients throughout their medical care journey can be difficult. You need an experienced app developer on your team as early in the process as possible. At jacapps, we provide mobile solutions focused on the needs of the healthcare industry. Call today to make an appointment.
Category: App Everywhere
jācapps is excited to announce that we have been ranked by Clutch as one of the top app developers. We are also proud to say that we have been doing well in one of Clutch’s more competitive categories, their ranking of the best boutique app development companies.
We have over 1200 apps and 10 years in the industry, creating not just apps for mobile phones, but ones that go beyond common devices. While many developers focus on iOS and Android applications, we deliver your message through all of the most-used devices in the world. Our App Everywhere suite allows clients to utilize apps in unique ways, as mobile is put to work beyond the smartphone. In the Connected Car, Tablets, Smart Speakers, Smart TVs, Streaming Devices, Wearables, and whatever comes next. We also work to help companies use mobile outside of the consumer sphere, with business to business and internally-facing apps.
“Only the most versatile and knowledgeable developers can keep up with the abundance of new technologies created every year,” said Clutch Business Analyst Misty Lopez. “These developers stand out based on their ability to adapt to these new technologies and techniques and apply them to a variety of development projects for their clients. We are excited to feature them on our platform.”
Clutch is a B2B ratings and reviews firm that ranks businesses on a number of criteria, including carefully conducted interviews with past clients. This means that our success is largely a result of the kind words of our clients, who we would like to thank for taking the time to talk to Clutch about us.
Clutch also has two sister sites, Visual Objects, which showcases agencies that do outstanding creative or design work, such as web designers or mobile app developers, and The Manifest, which lets users view quick bios of B2B companies, ranked by service focus and location. We are listed on The Manifest as one of the leading mobile app developers in Detroit.
We are honored to receive this recognition. We are devoted to our clients, and we can’t wait to continue providing our clients with the highest quality service possible.
The most difficult challenge for radio stations is to be able to reach their listeners’ whenever and wherever they are. It can be even more difficult when stations are in smaller communities where signals can be tricky. But, no need to worry, we have the solution that can help your radio station achieve its optimal coverage.
A mobile app is the ultimate tool to put your station in the palm of your listeners’ hands on their smartphone. Cell signals can reach where your broadcast doesn’t reach. Having a mobile app for your radio station will allow you to engage with your listeners wherever they are.
With the world becoming mobile obsessed, mobile apps allow you to connect with your community.
Here’s how:
- Local news alerts
- Local sport score alerts
- Weather alerts
- Contests
- Program alerts
- Coupons and discounts
Push notifications functionality to reach your audience directly anytime.
Our V4 and custom mobile app solutions will create the best possible solution for your radio station, no matter what your location is. From big city to country roads – we can create a successful mobile app that your listeners can tune in whenever and wherever they are!
Contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin to learn more about how to take your radio station mobile! sari@jacapps.com or 248-353-9030
For modern businesses, an app is one of their most important sales and retention tools. Customers are just as likely — if not more — to judge you on your digital presence as they are to judge you for your retail space.
Because of this, your business is smart to focus on four keys to retaining customers through your mobile platform. What are these four keys?
- App Functionality
First of all, make sure that your app works consistently. A problematic app or one that is too slow will not only fail to contribute toward customer retention, but it will also turn off potential customers before they even get started.
Start with a simpler app experience as you begin. This allows you to focus on getting the core process right without a lot of distraction. As you create an app that works well for everyone on a regular basis, add features and functions to boost the experience.
Be sure to base additional features on thorough testing as well as customer feedback to avoid creating any functional issues.
- First-Time Experiences
Think about the app from the perspective of a first-time user. Many customers today won’t give your app more than one chance to impress them, so don’t waste it.
The process of signing up and making an account should be intuitive and easy to navigate. Create a short walk-through for new customers, emphasizing only the most important functions but making it clear how to use them. And avoid wasting users’ precious time and attention with obnoxious ads or unnecessary side trips.
- Habit-Forming Activities
Using the app needs to become habit for your customers. You build this habit in a variety of ways. Push notifications are an excellent and effective tool, as long as you don’t overwhelm users with too many notifications. Tailor reminders for the individual user based on their interests or choices. Make notifications fun and gentle rather than aggressive or repetitive.
Help customers in your brick-and-mortar locations see the benefits of the app as well. Make it useful for the most common of your transactions, such as refilling goods they’ve already bought or scheduling appointments in less than a minute. And offer helpful tips, special discounts, or new products to appeal to (or intrigue) customers between visits.
In short, make the app into the go-to place for repeat and low-level activity with your business.
- Innovation
Be always on the lookout for new ways to make the app work better for you and for your customers. If you’re a medical provider, you may add a patient portal where clients can view their medical information or interact with providers when they have questions. A hair salon, on the other hand, might add a virtual queue or offer ways to save styles or nail ideas into a portfolio for use in their next visit.
Keep your app on the forefront of your business promotion as well as social media plans. It should be an integral part of your overall marketing and customer service strategy, leading the way with promotions, services, and new ways to help your customer. No matter whether a customer visits a social media site, your app, or your store, they should recognize the experience and feel like they’ve been here before.
Focusing on these four key elements in your app will help you retain more customers and make a more enjoyable experience for everyone. At jācapps, our team of experts will help you build an easy and efficient app that works well to keep customers engaged. Call us today to make an appointment to learn more.
Many companies choose can offer both native apps and web apps to their customs, but how do you know what one to choose?
Native Apps: Pros & Cons
A native app is stored on the device itself, and while most people are more familiar with browsing and downloading native apps, with there being so many different versions out there the developer can’t guarantee that every user is using the same version of the app at all times.
Pros:
- They open and perform faster than web apps
- Since native apps work with the device’s built-in features – like the camera, microphone, location services, etc. they can offer richer functionality.
- App stores and marketplaces give native apps full support. This allows users to easily find and download apps of their choice from these stores.
- The user can be assured that the app is secure and fully compatible with their device, since the apps have to get approval from the app stores.
Cons:
- The cost of app maintenance and app updating is higher for native apps, especially since there are two mobile platforms to support sometimes.
- The approval process in the app stores for native apps can sometimes be challenging for the developer.
- When users all use different versions of the app, makes it challenging for the developer to maintain updates and offer support.
Web Apps: Pros and Cons
Web apps are easier to access because anyone is able to access them online at any time, and they’re always up to date. However, web apps aren’t as easy to find because there isn’t a centralized store of web apps for all mobile devices.
Pros:
- Web apps are easier to maintain because they use one code base across multiple mobile platforms.
- Web apps can be made compatible with older mobile devices and more versions.
- You do not have to submit your app for approval to the app stores. This is because Apple App Stores do not list web apps.
Cons:
- Mobile web apps have only limited scope as far as accessing a device’s internal features.
- Web apps can be expensive when they need to support multiple platforms
- It is difficult for the developer to maintain and track the usage patterns and provide support for all the different platforms.
- Web apps are hard to find because they are not listed in any app stores.
- There is no quality control system for web apps, therefore users are not guaranteed safety and security of the app.
Overall, we can see that there are both positive and negative aspects to both native apps and web apps. One thing to always remember is that they world is becoming more mobile each and every day and having a mobile app will allow you to engage more with your audiences.
If you are interested in learning more about our mobile app solutions, contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin today!
Many companies choose can offer both native apps and web apps to their customs, but how do you know what one to choose?
Native Apps: Pros & Cons
A native app is stored on the device itself, and while most people are more familiar with browsing and downloading native apps, with there being so many different versions out there the developer can’t guarantee that every user is using the same version of the app at all times.
Pros:
- They open and perform faster than web apps
- Since native apps work with the device’s built-in features – like the camera, microphone, location services, etc. they can offer richer functionality.
- App stores and marketplaces give native apps full support. This allows users to easily find and download apps of their choice from these stores.
- The user can be assured that the app is secure and fully compatible with their device, since the apps have to get approval from the app stores.
Cons:
- The cost of app maintenance and app updating is higher for native apps, especially since there are two mobile platforms to support sometimes.
- The approval process in the app stores for native apps can sometimes be challenging for the developer.
- When users all use different versions of the app, makes it challenging for the developer to maintain updates and offer support.
Web Apps: Pros and Cons
Web apps are easier to access because anyone is able to access them online at any time, and they’re always up to date. However, web apps aren’t as easy to find because there isn’t a centralized store of web apps for all mobile devices.
Pros:
- Web apps are easier to maintain because they use one code base across multiple mobile platforms.
- Web apps can be made compatible with older mobile devices and more versions.
- You do not have to submit your app for approval to the app stores. This is because Apple App Stores do not list web apps.
Cons:
- Mobile web apps have only limited scope as far as accessing a device’s internal features.
- Web apps can be expensive when they need to support multiple platforms
- It is difficult for the developer to maintain and track the usage patterns and provide support for all the different platforms.
- Web apps are hard to find because they are not listed in any app stores.
- There is no quality control system for web apps, therefore users are not guaranteed safety and security of the app.
Overall, we can see that there are both positive and negative aspects to both native apps and web apps. One thing to always remember is that they world is becoming more mobile each and every day and having a mobile app will allow you to engage more with your audiences.
If you are interested in learning more about our mobile app solutions, contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin today!
Investing in a mobile app is a significant commitment and you want to be confident in the mobile app development company who develops your company’s app. Another concern for companies is not knowing how the complete mobile app development process really works.
Our team of developers, marketers, and strategists will guide your company through a four-step process that takes your project from conception to completion.
- Discover
This is where you’re apps take root. We draw inspiration from our conversations with you to brainstorm ideas and discuss the requirements needed to develop them. This part can be a lot of fun for companies – we get to sit down with you and truly craft what you want your app to do, look like, and how you want it to engage your audience. This discover point is where we like to emphasize that we truly create your company’s app different from any other app we’ve done.
- Design
Once a concept has been approved, we combine skills and strategy to make sure your apps look great and are easy to use. Our progress will be presented to you in the form of a specification document. This is where we get to sit down together again and make sure your app looks the way you pictured. Once this step is approved, we move into the actual development of the app.
- Develop
After you’ve green lighted our specification document, our in-house development gets to work. This phase culminates with rigorous QA testing.
- Deploy
We submit your apps to their respective stores and watch the numbers skyrocket! But we don’t stop there… we keep a look out for rate potential problems and help you navigate new devices and OS versions as they become available.
This simple four-step process keeps your app development process stress free and organized in order to create the best possible mobile solution for your company. If you are interested in our mobile app process, contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin to being your mobile app development process today!