If you’ve been in the coffee shop business for a long while, you’ll know first-hand just how much things have changed. In a relatively short period of time, our newfound dependence on mobile phones has led to a need for mobile marketing and innovative tools to encourage customer loyalty, even for businesses that have virtually no online presence.
Coffee shops can only exist in physical form, there’s no getting around it. Until someone develops a way to deliver fresh, hot coffee through a phone screen, customers will always have to visit a coffee shop in order to get their caffeine fix. But that’s not to say that using a mobile app for your coffee business won’t prove incredibly useful.
The value of an in-house app
Coffee shop apps are one of the latest trends of the past couple of years, thanks to their logical and effective means of use for both customers and staff. Perhaps your biggest all-time aim as a coffee shop owner is to increase your customer loyalty, and one of the simplest ways to do this is through using an in-house app for your business.
An app can help to build a sense of community for your frequent customers, making them feel like you value them and want to reward them for their custom (which you do!). You can keep clients coming back by speeding up your proceedings (for instance, by allowing customers to order from their tables rather than at the counter), and offering rewards, such as loyalty discounts and free items.
Having an app for your coffee shop also allows customers to keep up to date with the goings-on of your store, whether you’re celebrating a local event, selling a seasonal or limited product, offering one-time discounts, or introducing a range of new foods or drinks. Delivering this news through your app is a simple way to keep customers excited about your business and keen to return time and time again.
Making your own app
You don’t need to know code to make your own coffee shop app. Simply look for a coffee shop app creator and use its drag and drop features to produce an elegant, clear and concise app for your business.
Using an app creator is a great way to save money on hiring a professional app developer to do the job for you, and it means you have much more flexibility with the features and tabs that are included in your app, right down to the very last detail.
When building your app, you can focus on features that allow customers to order their food and drinks from their phones, without having to leave their tables. You can also use digital stamp cards, loyalty points and coupons, to encourage customer loyalty, offering a much more convenient way for your customer to benefit from repeat custom with your business. You can even choose to send notifications to your customers’ home screens to remind them about the offers and popular deals you’re currently pushing.
