What could your mobile app performance be costing you?
"The Significance of Unique, Engaging, and User-Friendly Mobile Applications" In today's market, consumers demand high-quality and top-performing business applications. The consequences of a poor mobile app experience can be detrimental, with even a 100-millisecond latency costing retail giant Amazon a whopping $5.4 billion in lost sales. Not only does this impact brand reputation, but it also affects customer relationships. These trends, however, aren't limited to global enterprises like Amazon. With over seven million apps available on iOS and Android platforms, even small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) must prioritize delivering unique, engaging, and user-friendly mobile applications in order to compete, grow their user base, and boost revenue. The negative impact of subpar mobile application quality on SMEs can directly affect their bottom line. In fact, a staggering 96% of global SMEs estimate losses of up to $2.49 million due to poor mobile app quality. Users face various challenges, including lack of device or platform support, absence of native applications, and buggy or slow experiences. SME leaders understand the value of a well-designed mobile app in building brand value, enhancing user experience, increasing competitiveness, and driving customer retention, acquisition, and sales. Given this understanding, senior IT professionals and application developers at SMEs now consider mobile app quality as critical to their business. They recognize the importance of thoroughly testing app quality and ensuring the success of their organization's mobile app development process. In today's digital landscape, swift delivery of high-quality software has become a prerequisite for winning and retaining customers and achieving digital success. However, the surge in demand has also exposed challenges in mobile app development and testing. This has led SMEs to make crucial decisions on how to minimize the impact of poor app quality. Ultimately, the customer lies at the heart of mobile app development. Security, high performance, excellent user experience, and accessibility are key factors that determine success for SMEs. The challenge lies in the fact that mobile app users do not differentiate between businesses of different sizes or budgets when it comes to user experience – they simply want an app that is fast and easy to use. Delivering a quality user experience goes beyond creating functional apps; it involves creating an end-to-end experience that enables users to operate mobile applications intuitively. However, SMEs often struggle with limited resources to effectively support mobile app development and testing and ensure the desired level of quality. Many IT leaders in these companies recognize the need for improvement in their mobile app development and testing strategies but struggle to find the necessary personnel with the right skills and expertise to achieve better results. Additionally, competing priorities and cost further complicate SME mobile app development and testing, making the process complex and resource-intensive. Unfortunately, many SMEs still rely on manual testing methods, which are slow and laborious. Fortunately, automation supported by artificial intelligence (AI) tools and low-code/no-code platforms offers a solution to these challenges. A YouGov survey commissioned by The Times and Lloyds Bank revealed that 10% of SMEs had already used AI to improve their business processes and systems, while 16% reported increased productivity through automation. This indicates that SMEs can benefit significantly from these technologies, with potential time savings of up to 75 hours per month. Apart from productivity gains, improving user experience is a major driving factor for SMEs adopting automation and AI in mobile app development and testing. Automated testing enables teams to identify opportunities for streamlined app delivery while maintaining quality and performance, allowing them to bring better apps to market faster. AI tools can also provide quick answers to developers' queries, reducing the time spent on manual information search. This frees up developers to focus on enhancing the end-user experience and fixing any bugs discovered during testing. Despite the anticipated benefits, only a small number of SMEs are currently reaping these rewards. However, with further education on the best practices for utilizing AI tools, SMEs can significantly reduce the financial losses caused by poor mobile app quality. Clearly, SMEs cannot afford to continue losing money due to underperforming mobile apps. It is crucial for them to devise long-term strategies and invest in technologies that can positively impact both user experience and revenue opportunities, while also addressing skills and productivity gaps. Mobile app quality has never been more critical, and the industry is at a pivotal point where AI and automation offer a unique opportunity for those who embrace them. Our research indicates that all stakeholders in SMEs, from the C-suite to the developers themselves, are focused on improving mobile app quality and testing processes, with significant benefits to gain. To help you navigate the mobile app development landscape, we have compiled a list of the best mobile app development software available.