Category: B2B Apps

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B2B Apps Mobile Apps

Navigating B2B Business When You Can’t Meet F2F

Without question, Covid-19 has impacted all aspects of our lives and B2B marketing is no exception. Historically, B2B relationships centered around in-person meetings and product demonstrations. But how do you sell products when you can’t sit in a conference room, present a PowerPoint, and shake hands on a deal? Today, companies are investing in technology – including mobile apps, webinars, videoconferencing, and eCommerce –  in order to maintain business flow. 

A recent article in The Drum – “B2B Marketing During Covid-19: 8 Transformations to Stay Ahead,” outlines the steps B2B companies are taking in order to navigate these rapidly changing times. The article provides helpful information to all B2B marketers, but also shares a study from eMarketer, which finds that while marketing budgets are being reduced, investment in all forms of technology have risen in importance.  In other words, providing customers with the tools to continue to purchase in a way that’s congruent with today’s situation.

This includes nearly two-thirds (62%) investing in eCommerce/online sales capabilities, while a similar percentage (61%) acknowledging they are making fewer face-to-face calls with customers.  The result is more than half (54%) are investing in more in delivering “last mile” infrastructure – or as we like to think of it, “last 12 inches”, i.e. mobile applications, that connect ordering and client service systems directly to customers.

Mobile apps have the ability to do a number of things that can bring your business closer to its business customers. That includes features like:

  • Catalogs – mobile catalogs can put your most up-to-date product information right into your customers’ hands.
  • Order forms – with your clients spending less time in a traditional office, making it easy for them to order your products at the moment they need them is crucial
  • Delivery logistics – Keep your customers up-to-date on where their order is in processing. This cuts down on service calls and anxious clients.
  • Notifications – Let them know about changes to hours, product offerings, pricing specials, etc. with notifications pushed right to their mobile device
  • Tap to call directories – Cut down on customer wait times and call center workload by directing calls to the precise extension the client needs with a simple tap inside your mobile application.

Times have changed and all businesses need to quickly develop different ways of structuring their relationships with customers.  Those that make the investment will be in much better position to maintain business flow.

Call us to discuss how mobile technology can make your business more efficient and profitable.

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B2B Apps

Ideal Features for Your Logistics App

Transportation and delivery companies build and maintain their reputation by delivering products on time to customers. When a company delivers a client’s products on time, they gain repeat business. Inventory management and movement of goods in a timely manner are vital to the company’s success.
In this vein, a logistics company should have an app designed for them to make business more efficient. Here are a few ideal features to include in a potential app, whether your business is a warehouse, shipping, delivery, or all three.
Appointment Booking and Route Information
Appointment booking capabilities make assigning appointments for delivery to your customers more efficient. Electronic bookings eliminate the need for physical paperwork for managers, and an app puts the delivery schedule on a mobile device instead of employees having to check a computer for each delivery.
Clients can choose the time and date of their delivery via the app. They are able to book times for appointments by choosing the free spots available.
Drivers get a full inventory count and exact details of what they are carrying in a smartphone app instead of in a file. Updating when each client receives their delivery is easier and less time consuming as it is done all within the app.
Drivers can also receive route information and estimated times of delivery on their device instead of on a delivery sheet.
Driver Tools
Driver tools, like built-in GPS tracking to find the customer’s location or gas stations that can handle large trucks, could be a priority. Finding the best gas and fuel prices at any given gas station should also be a must. And logbook capability makes the driver’s job easier without having paperwork or logbooks cluttering the cab.
Real-Time Tracking of Trucks on Deliveries
If you’re a delivery company, real-time tracking of your fleet of trucks helps you find the best routes with the least amount of traffic for your drivers. It helps to avoid accidents and construction zones. This adds efficiency to the delivery process. Shorter routes save money on fuel costs. It lowers the cost of maintaining your fleet due to less wear and tear.
Real-time tracking of trucks on the road also keeps you informed of where your fleet is at any given moment. It helps keeps clients informed of their delivery progress and when to expect it to arrive.
An app that tracks the trucking fleet allows managers to assign loads based on the closest driver to the location of the warehouse. This speeds up loading and delivery to customers should new or rush orders arrive during the day.
If you also have a chat function, it can help keep communication lines open with your drivers to arrange pickups or navigate through any problems that might arise.
Warehouse Optimization Tools
If your company uses your own warehouse, automating your company’s warehouse tools helps boost productivity. Tools that optimize your inventory management can reduce excessive stock by eliminating out-of-date or hardly moving stock. Inventory that is not moving can be highlighted so you can remove it efficiency to make room for stock that is selling.
Apps can show when stock needs to be replenished and in what amounts. Potential ordering through the app with manufacturers could be a functionality as well.
Features that include picking and packaging orders are a must. Shipping management tools keep the warehouse running smoothly with orders processed quicker and more accurately.
If you are a logistic company or a warehouse in need of an app that makes your company or drivers more efficient, then contact us at JACAPPS today. We can work with you to build you an app for your logistics company or warehouse.

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B2B Apps

4 Ways to Make Your Business App User Friendly

When a business goes to the time, effort, and investment of creating its own in-house app, it needs to ensure that the targeted users will actually use and enjoy that app. That means it needs to be user friendly. How can you accomplish that if you’re new to the app game? Here are four easy ways.
Keep It Clean
A clean and uncluttered look improves the customer experience on several levels. First, minimalist screens help users find the right steps and complete their transactions quickly and comfortably. Second, a simpler app loads faster and more successfully on any device and in any sort of connection circumstances. The longer your customers have to wait to move around in the app, the less likely they are to frequent it.
Decluttering the app also means keeping it focused to a certain set of goals and targets. An app that tries to do everything — from making orders to scheduling employees to troubleshooting products — gets confusing and slower very quickly. Focus on your core goal(s) for the app when it releases, adding new features only as they become organic.
Use Colors Wisely
The color schemes for any app or website are an important aspect of making a user-friendly experience. White text on a yellow background might be in line with your brand identity, but it can be terrible to read in the bright sunshine or when on the run.
Bolder text colors on a light background are a simple and proven way to help people find what they need without strain. No matter what your brand color scheme, you can find a way to blend it with easy-to-read choices.
Highlighting the correct next step in a different color than the text could also clue in people as to where to go next. Similarly, you might highlight navigation features in a way that keeps them consistently in the users’ view throughout the app’s pages
Think Mobile
A mobile app is designed to be used on the go and on different devices. That means you must think about how the users will interact with it while they walk, eat, wait in line, are in a busy store, stand on a street corner, or are in the car. They will use the app in daylight, at night, inside buildings, and in bed. How easily does the app work in less-than-ideal situations?
Complex instructions, small text, or undersized selection buttons, for instance, are hard to pay attention to and press when in motion. A simple fix might be to reduce the amount of text or steps, increase sizes, or spread out content on multiple pages.
Also, make sure your app can function even in changing connection situations. Does it require a good wireless connection to load a lot of graphics or different sections? If so, your customer may experience a problem as they physically move around.
Make It Intuitive
Move the user through your experience in logical manners. Consider an example. If you want a person to read instructions and then select one of three options, make sure the option buttons are logically placed directly underneath the text. Too much space will confuse users and an illogical placement will frustrate them. Even if you include instructions in the text to choose a button on the left, this is not an intuitive location to look.
What feels intuitive to one person may not feel so to another, of course. You achieve the best results by working with a group of people, testing the interface by third parties, and working with experienced developers.
These few tips are sure to enhance users’ interaction with your app. A professional app developer will be able to help you use them to create a great interface to reach your goals. At jācapps, our team knows what it takes to appeal to users of all sorts. Call today to make an appointment and get started.

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B2B Apps

4 Ways a Shift-Scheduling App Helps Your Business

Shift-Scheduling App Helps Your Business

Any manager who oversees shift workers knows the challenges that come with scheduling. You must account for individual employees’ availability, company needs, business cycles, and the payroll budget. For many managers, this process takes up much more time than it should.
Do you still attempt to do this job with a pen and paper? Then what you need is a scheduling app. How can this simple tool revolutionize shift management? Here are four distinct ways a scheduling app can help you and your business.

  1. Let Employees Schedule

What happens in your organization when one person has a change of availability? Do you end up having to spend hours remaking the whole schedule? Does the person email the whole team to find someone who can cover? Do supervisors bear the brunt of the responsibility? Do they sometimes not even know what is going on with their shift workers?
With a scheduling app, employees can connect with one another to make their own swaps or reliably notify supervisors of emergencies. You may have them input things like blackout dates, schedule preferences, and skills certifications.
Allowing employees to self-schedule their time as much as possible is more than a time saver. The more employees can control and manage their own schedules, the more empowered they feel. This simple and free benefit may help reduce turnover and boost morale.

  1. Use the Power of Data

The variety of elements in good scheduling are occasionally too much for one person to manage. What are everyone’s preferences? What does the upcoming business cycle look like? Who will run into overtime? How much payroll budget is left?
An app can do all these calculations much more easily and quickly than just about any human manager can. If you let it do the analysis based on data from prior shifts and pay periods, you can then focus on other matters.

  1. Automate Communications

Do you have a workforce that tends to show up late, forget their shifts, or fail to respond to attempts to reach them? You can partially overcome many of these challenges with an automated scheduling system. Set reminders through push notifications or text alerts about when employees are to be at work. Rather than someone calling or texting workers, your system can take care of the need automatically.
The advantage of a mobile-based scheduling system over traditional web-based ones is that most employees have their phones on them nearly all the time. Using a mobile app lets you harness this connectivity and get more immediate results.

  1. Link With Finance

Scheduling connects with payroll as well as other aspects of the company’s finance department. But if you schedule on paper, you do not get real-time information on how the week’s numbers look. And you still end up entering data into the payroll system separately.
Look for an app, instead, that tracks payroll expenses on a per-shift or per-day basis and offers reports to see how your schedule holds up against the payroll budget. Senior managers can keep an eye on payroll and performance data without investing too much time. The app’s data should also be downloadable into your payroll system or provider’s software so no one does redundant data entry.
Which of these features could make the biggest difference for your company’s scheduling challenges? Whether you need a time-saving device, the ability to empower shift workers, or stronger data analysis, a scheduling app could be the answer. At JACAPPS, we design customized apps for businesses of all types and sizes. Call today to make an appointment, and let us help your business help itself.

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B2B Apps news and press

4 Ways An Internal Company App Can Help You Grow

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An internal app provides a new method of communication and organization within your company. App development requires time, money, and attention, so what makes it worth the effort? Here are few ways it can provide tangible and intangible benefits to any growing business.
1. Communicate Easier
If all your employees don’t spend the majority of their time working within earshot at the company’s main office, you probably struggle with communication. As a company grows, it generally has  more people on the road, servicing customers, working in branches, working remotely, and using flexible schedules. All that translates to some difficulty reaching everyone and keeping them on the same page.
An internal app provides a singular way to reach everyone no matter where they are. Because an app is specific to your company and can often provide “push” notifications, you’ll have more confidence that everyone is up to speed. Even if staff is in the same office, you may find that retention and engagement is improved when everyone uses the same platform instead of a myriad of different methods to converse.
2. Get Things in One Place
Do your employees use a variety of software, apps, programs, and portals to do their particular jobs? Then wrangle most – or all – of these into a centralized system that everyone can access with just one login and one platform.
With a single app portal, you can customize the interactions based on your specific employees’ needs and learning style to make it more intuitive. And you can expand or contract the connections through your app to offer new work tools or to discontinue ones that are out-of-date.
3. Encourage Technology Use
If you have some employees who find it hard to embrace new technology, an app is the perfect way to encourage this adoption. Structure the app to be user-friendly and focus only on the most important functions that you need at the beginning – perhaps employee notices, scheduling, and payroll information. Have regular and personalized training sessions to help everyone learn how to use the app easily.
As employees learn to use the app and to see the benefit within their own lives, add more features. This may include group project organization, departmental communications, or software people can use in their jobs. Many employees will see that technological changes help them work more efficiently or become less frustrated with mundane tasks like getting approvals from management.
Once the app is something employees are accustomed to, use similar thought processes and platforms to introduce other modern technological tools like a customer-facing app, paperless offices, and remote work options.
4. Introduce Virtual Work
An app is an excellent way to start moving your company toward a more mobile and technology-friendly future. Mobile work options allow people to remain efficient even when they’re not in the office and they provide more ways to organize your business.
A sales team, for instance, can use the app to coordinate people on the road and those working behind the scenes And rather than maintain individual offices for sales staff who need to come in just to complete paperwork, you save the space and equipment by allowing them to do many of those functions from home or the road. It may even allow some employees to shift to an entirely remote schedule.
Internal apps are a new idea for many businesses and their employees. But they help you stay on top of the competition and move at the pace of modern business. At JACAPPS, we know that this can be a challenging transition time. We’re here to make it work both for you and your staff. Call today for an appointment.

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App Everywhere B2B Apps Mobile Apps

How to Build Customer Retention in Your App

Build Customer Retention in your APP

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?

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

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App Everywhere B2B Apps Mobile Apps Push Notifications

Push Messaging: Before you hit send

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Push messages can be one of the most beneficial elements to your mobile app, but you need to make sure you are creating and checking them correctly! Remember, you are interrupting someone with your message, so you need to make sure that you aren’t making any mistakes.
Here are a few common mistakes we have found in push messages that you should double check and avoid.

Sending too many messages

The main thing to remember, don’t get carried away and start sending too many messages – you don’t want to spam your users, this will push them away.

Messages with typos

Remember to proof read your messages! Make sure it is correct, the details are accurate and there aren’t any typos. It won’t enhance your user’s feelings about the brand or the message.

Vague call to action

Make sure your call to action is clear and compelling. A vague call to action is not going to get the click that you are hoping for.

Message isn’t relevant to the people you are sending it to

Make sure your message is relevant to your audience, this is very important in order to get the successful click rate. One thing we offer is creation of topics. We can create topics that your users can decide what type of messages they would like to opt-in to, therefore, you will be able to reach the right people for the right reasons. This is an important technique because when people get messages that are not relevant to them, your push messages will not be successful.
It is important to keep all four of these mistakes in mind when you are creating your push messages, in order to have that successful click rate! Check out our Push Messaging 101 Webinar for more information and contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin to learn more about our push messaging solution!

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Mobile App Development Process

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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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. Develop

After you’ve green lighted our specification document, our in-house development gets to work. This phase culminates with rigorous QA testing.

  1. 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!

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App Everywhere B2B Apps Mobile Apps Push Notifications

Push Messaging: 4 Ingredients of a Good Push Message

As we have covered before, push messages are one of the key elements to your mobile app to engage your listeners and users. However, there’s a technique behind push messages that help you create the most successful messages to send your listeners and users.

Here are the 4 ingredients of a good push notification:
  1. Relevance

Make it meaningful and personal. Make sure the message is import to your audience and not just to you. The topic must be relevant, actionable and timely to your listeners. Sending a lot of messages will reduce the impact, so you really got to nail down what your listeners what to know.

  1. Brevity

You have a very small space and people have very small attention spans, so this point cannot be over emphasized. Push messages are really consumed at a glance. The user probably only has a few moments when looking at this message, so you need to be quick and get straight to the point. Just because you have a total of 140 characters, doesn’t mean you have to use them. We have seen more successful push notifications with characters between 20 and 90!
Think more like a tweet than a Facebook post!

  1. Timeliness

When you schedule your message, it really matters! There is actually an optimal time to send your messages. It will be different from brand to brand, and station to station but you can look at your statistics of your push messaging and see when you get the most responses. It is important to keep track of this and overtime you can fine tune your strategy to get the most engagement possible with your audience.
As what we found so far, the most engaging time tends to be around lunchtime, between 12pm – 2pm!

  1. Call to Action

This really has to be an important element of how you use your messages. The whole point of sending these messages is getting your audience to do something. So, make sure you are clear on what you want them to do and make it easy for them to do it. Once your user does click on your message make sure your link has a clear connection to the message. In other words, don’t make your users click around your app trying to figure out where they need to go for that specific notification. Your message should flow naturally and clearly! Push messages are a strategy to make your listeners life easier and more engaged, don’t make it difficult!
By using those 4 ingredients you will create successful push messages to engage your audience. Check out our Push Messaging 101 Webinar and contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin for more information regarding push messages! sari@jacapps.com or 248-353-9030

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App Everywhere B2B Apps Mobile Apps Push Notifications

6 Key Signs Your Company Needs a Mobile App

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With the world becoming more mobile every day, it is important to stay ahead of your competition. With more and more of us spending most of our days glued to our smartphones, a mobile app may be the best way to reach your target market.
You may not know how to dive into a mobile app or may not know why a mobile app would be useful for their company, but there are unlimited problems that mobile apps can solve, and they can be created to be the perfect fit to your company’s needs. Also, companies can learn a thing or two on how they can step up their branding and customer relations.

Here are some signs your company needs a mobile app:
  • Your competitors have an app 

It is important that you stave above your competition and with technology today, most companies will be investing in and creating their very own mobile app to be able to reach their customers no matter where they are. Investing in designing your company’s application and you will know you have the app that perfectly reflects your brand and ideals.

  • Your site is not doing well on search

Ranking high on the Google index often equates to brand visibility. If your website has not been ranking well, you may be close to becoming obsolete. With your very own application, you can become more noticeable in the public eye, especially when you offer everything your customer could ever want.

  • You don’t have customer or public engagement 

With a user-friendly application, you can send out push notifications which provide customers developments in your business. By keeping your customers and the public in the loop, you are creating a variety of engagement among the community.

  • Build brand recognition

Companies are always looking for a way to expand their brands, you want to be able to create an effective program and solution that is up to date with today’s technology and generations. Aside that point, you want a program that can reflect the values of ideals of your organization. By putting out a mobile app, you can provide whatever features you decide that will certainly get your customers to know your brand.

  • Gain customer insight 

Mobile apps have the power to let business owners know the patterns, performance, and preferences. Through the features put forward in the program, developers can monitor and track the behaviors of the users. This knowledge allows your company to fine tune your services according to your consumer’s tastes.

  • Stand out from the crowd

Not only will having a mobile app create a competitive edge in the industry, but it will also have the public in aw about the way you approach your venture.
Working with a reliable and highly advanced local app developers and designers is well worth your investment. If you aren’t offering a mobile app to the public, seeing the wealth of advantages these companies bring might be worth considering.
We would love to talk to you about mobile strategy and help you take your company mobile. Contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin at sari@jacapps.com or 248-353-9030.