Chat Feature for small businesses

If customer has any question, they have to call to the business, but today customer feel more comfortable to connect without calling, like chatting in real-time and get required details. Be it some question, feedback or for that matter anything business can help them with.

With App created using 123 Apps Studio, business can include “Chat” feature and start connecting with their customer directly at their fingertips. Customer will have better way to connect with business and chat with them in realtime. It’s like Facebook messenger but designed for small business. In short replacement for customer phone calls.

Here are some benefits of Chat feature for small business and their customers:

• Connect with customer through today’s most preferred channel – Real time messaging
• Chat keeps track of previous conversations and helps to remind if anything required
• Replace phone calls with chat and avoids spending time on phone during busy schedule

Customer Connects with Business

Business Get the list of users contacting them

Business respond to the messages in real-time

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Hybrid vs Native Mobile Apps

Before developing mobiles apps one question always comes up is whether to go with Native app or hybrid app? There are pros and cons for both and depending on the requirement, you need to decide which way to go. Here is what’s Native and hybrid apps in nutshell.

Hybrid App: Developer build app using HTML5 and wrap it with native SDK and can be deployed across multiple platforms.

Native apps: This is platform (e.g. iOS, Android, Windows, etc) specific, so there would be separate app for each platform and that needs to be developed separately for each platform. Requires expertise in that platform to build an app.

Here are the few things to consider while deciding which way to go:

1. Features: What features you want in the app. With native app, you have complete access to phone features like camera, contact list, SMS etc. With hybrid you can get some of the features from phone but not all. Hybrid app can be good for content driven app verses feature specific. If you want to access phone features / sensors, you need native apps. E.g. You can’t use Touch ID in hybrid app
2. User Experience: It’s mobile first world when it comes to online users, that means when user visit the app, it should be user friendly and easy to use. It should look neat and slick. At anytime native app would look much awesome compared to best hybrid app. With Hybrid app, user interface improvement has it’s own limit. For best user experience native app are best
3. Cost & Time: This is where hybrid app comes into picture. As you need to develop app only once for hybrid, automatically cost and time required are much lower compared to platform specific expertise and time required to build an app. As there would be only one codebase for hybrid app, future modification will also cost less.
4. Performance:  As OS for mobiles are developed specifically for native apps and it supports it’s libraries much better, native app will beat the performance and better throughput anytime.

In overall, If you want to build best in class app, native is your best bet. If you want to have less cost and moderate performance, you can go with hybrid app.

123 Apps Studio is platform where restaurants and grocery stores / Mom & Pop shops can create their app and launch it on their own with just drag and drop. Schedule a demo today to see if this is for you.

App for Small business – Benefits

Average consumer are spending more time on the mobile than web, that means it’s time for businesses also to look beyond the just website. When we talk about moving from web to mobile, it’s just not replicating the website in the form of app. With App there are great features businesses have access compared to website. Here are some benefits.

Small Business – The young girl buys bread in shop

24 X 7 Consumer access to your App: As everyone carries their mobile with them, they have access to your app all the time. They can access your app anytime and would be able to request for service or book appointment at their convenience.

Push Notification: This is major. You would be able send customized notification to your customers for any offers, updates. For consumer they would know about the special events or offers and take advantage of it. It’s win-win for both.

User friendly: Now almost everyone is used to (or for that matter prefer) abstract, to the point information on small screen instead of long stories on website. Having interactive, simple, easy to access User interface is key and beneficial for app.

Special offers: With Push notification you would be able to send offers and also have them available on your app for certain time period as required.

Having fun: As your customers are able to interact directly with your business it’s good for everyone to build relationship and provide better service. You can have contest or polls through your app.

Basically having app for small business and taking advantages of its benefit adds value to your business from branding as well as revenue perspective.