Better reach your customers with a browser extension
There’s no doubt that a website is the most basic way to interact with your customers. Doesn’t matter what is your business, missing from the online space is equivalent to not existing, and this is a lesson many learned the hard way with the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, building a small presentation site is a trivial task with all the website builders around the internet, so there should be no excuse for no online presence for your business.
Of course the path to a successful website is longer than just building one, everyone who did this at least once knows that you have to invest in search engine optimization, which further means investing in speed enhancement, mobile usability and more. Also, a website is mostly passive: your customers have to reach it by themselves if they want to see what’s new and, unless they subscribe for a newsletter or notifications, there’s no other means to keep them updated.
What if they could always run in their browsers a “pocket” version of your website? Well, this is possible with browser extensions, a feature that most modern desktop (and not only) browsers offers and which allows you to keep in touch with your visitors and to offer them relevant info without having them to access your website. With a browser extension you get the chance to be visible at the most relevant time for your customers, to get a better insight about their needs and to keep a closer relationship with them by being there, in their toolbar, every time they need you.
We also developed a browser extension for our main website, Cupoane Reducere, which gives our users a handy tool to access available coupons for the online shops they’re visiting without having them to open a new tab and browse to our website. Also, when going to the checkout page of one of our partner’s shop there’s a notification letting know that there are available promotions for that website, so our users get to know that even if they didn’t actively looked for this. This way we managed to keep a close connection with our users which helps us grow our brand’s presence and trust among them.
Should you also develop a browser extension for your website? What if you don’t feel like your product is not relevant enough for being in your user’s toolbar? Our answer to this would be: it’s never a bad idea to get this kind of connection with your customers. Just think of that: you’re always there, in that little corner, ready to make yourself visible when they need you more. Why would you miss that chance?
In the next article we’ll discuss what are your possibilities when developing a browser extension, what are the best practices and what technical challenges you may encounter.
How our mobile applications helped us grow our business
It’s no secret that one of our most successful projects is the cupoane-reducere.net website, a web portal with lot of great offers for the most popular stores in Romania. While it appears that a website is enough for this purpose and a mobile application would be a bit too much (that’s what we thought, anyway), we were surprised to discover that the impact our mobile applications had over our business was bigger than expected.
Do we really need a mobile app?
That was our first question when we decided to create a native alternative for our website. Because it’s something which you would only use occasionally (e.g. when shopping), we were in doubt that our users would want to permanently install an app on their phone. Yet, we decided to go on with this, with the purpose on strengthening our brand.
Some extra features
With the perks of running on native mobile platforms, we decided we could also add some extra features like notifications for new coupons and offers. We did some small changes to our backend service to integrate Firebase on our platform while keeping an eye on the user’s privacy and then, with all being set, we released the Android application, then the iOS one.
Reception
Contrary to our expectation, the number of active installations grew steadily after releasing the applications. Another big surprise was that the number of active user was bigger on iOS than on Android, given the fact that Android is way more widespread in Romania.
Conclusion
While being a really crowded environment, a presence in the mobile applications space is still a required step for a successful product, even if at a first glance this wouldn’t be needed. People prefer a quick way to access your services and a mobile app is the best way to achieve that. Having a mobile application associated with your product should be one of the very first priorities of your business decisions, and we, at Softadept, can help you to achieve that, so don’t hesitate to contact us for consultancy in making your business relevant in the mobile space.