Considering mobile application development or Facebook application development for your business? Mobile is quickly on the rise and more and more people are turning away from their computers and towards their phones and tablets to surf the web. It is estimated that 10.01% of the world’s web traffic comes from mobile devices. With these impressive statistics, mobile is hard for businesses to ignore. You may be thinking about mobile application development to integrate mobile technologies into your business’ marketing strategy. But before you jump into spending valuable time and money on an app, you might want to think about whether or not a mobile application is necessary for your business, or if other less expensive and time consuming options would be more suitable for your business, such as Facebook application development.

A good mobile app either:
A) allows users to interact with your brand in a way they can’t anywhere else.
B) allows users to perform an action easily on the road, more quickly and efficiently than they would on your website.

What you don’t want is to get a mobile application developed and have it simply provide the same information that is available on your website and nothing more. If your website is simply an information hub, try to think of other ways you could execute a mobile app. Could you turn a part of your business into a game? Could you create a social community that revolves around your business? Remember your app should provide something unique for the user, not just the same activity they could get somewhere else.

So what if your business doesn’t need a mobile application developed? That doesn’t mean you should stick to just your website. You still want your business to stand out and be accessible from several different channels. You can still reach your customers without one. Optimizing your website for mobile is the first step. In many cases this is just as effective as creating a downloadable app, but will cost less money in mobile application development and maintenance fees and saves your customers from needing to take up space on their device with an app that provides the same information they could get online.

There is also the option to create a custom Facebook application. Create a contact form that lives on Facebook for easier communication, or create a game to keep your users engaged. The great thing about Facebook is that you are already connected to a massive social community.

So before you go ahead and jump on the app bandwagon, take a look at what your options are. Think about where you audience is, what your business does, and decide if an app is right for you!