Why Small Businesses Must Keep Up to Date with Mobile Technology.

You name your requirements and there’s most likely an app that can match them, and it’s all at your fingertips. It’s why small business needs to embrace mobile technology and keep up to date with it. You don’t need to be in love with it, but it helps if you are as mobile technology is essential for small business to stay in the game.

You can organise on the go (and so can others)

Connectivity and effective communication are crucial in business. The use of apps for communication platforms like Slack cuts out the need for – and the cost of – email. You can enhance collaboration and track and participate in the discussions and developments surrounding different projects and issues in the business. Then there are platforms like Dropbox, which are designed for sharing documents and, again, minimise the need to send a volley of emails and documents back and forth.

A mobile app can also help you organise your own schedule and, if your business supplies a service rather than a product, an app enables them to confirm appointments, dates, times, etc., and generally helps you to stay ahead of the game since you can communicate with your customers through the app.

However, it’s not just about being able to interact with your customers; it’s also being able to target customers by location and generate potential extra sales for your business, by sending them special offers through the mobile app. If you’ve gone old school with your marketing and are still sending out flyers or leaflets advertising your business, you can cut costs by using an app.

Almost everyone who is anyone is using mobile

If you’re just designing your website for desktop users, you’re going to get left behind (if you haven’t been so already). Recent research has found that desktop browsing is decreasing, as more and more people resort to their mobile phones and tablets to do their browsing. Mobile browsing overtook traditional desktop browsing for the first time this year, with 51.3% preferring the comfort and convenience of browsing on their mobile while 48.7% were still firing up the computer to do their searches.

This has important ramifications for the visibility of your business, as it’s not just internet users who are fond of a bit of mobile searching. Google picked up on the trend as far back as 2009 and since then has started to display a preference for mobile-friendly websites. If your competitors are making their sites more mobile-responsive but yours is still trudging around in desktop land, your rivals are going to steal the march on you in search results. But don’t panic: all is not lost. You can submit your site to Google and measure the friendliness of your site, make a few changes in line with the analysis and then regain your competitive edge.

What kind of phone should you have for your business?

Keeping up with the latest in mobile technology means having a phone that allows you to run your business in the most efficient, most profitable manner out there. Which is the best phone for achieving this? Well, the days of the humble Blackberry ruling the roost in this division are long gone, although it still packs a punch. Today, there are several smartphones all gunning for the title and looking to shoot each other down.

These include the Samsung Galaxy Edge S7, with its superb design and reliable security; the OnePlus 3, which has a premium design, reasonable price tag and a battery of 3,000 aMh and a RAM of 6 GB; or the highly secure Blackberry DTEK50, to name but a few.

However, you might want to think about the iPhone 7, which has a truckload of storage, offering up to a monstrous 256 GB, and of which the battery is better than previous iPhones. To boot, it’s water resistant, so a phone call outdoors can still go without you having to duck into a shop doorway if it starts to rain. The phone runs faster but maintains the same simple user interface, and there are plenty of business apps you can install to keep things ticking along. The phone also features a fine quality low-light camera so that those marketing snaps will still turn out well if the lighting isn’t so great.

Ultimately, investing in mobile technology will help your business to compete with rivals in your sector, and you won’t be chained to the desktop to lead the charge. Mobile technology isn’t just the future: it’s already here.