Now that the shine is worn off of mobile e-commerce, we’re starting to see that some of the technology we got so excited about isn’t as useful as originally thought. If you’re considering a mobile app for your automotive aftermarket business, you may want to take a look at some of the latest statistics. Better to know whether your new app will make you money before you invest everything, right?

If you’re in business today and going through the next half decade with the confidence to build an incredible app that people will actually use, then yes. Absolutely, start building. But the truth of the matter is that the probability of you having those ‘chops’ is far and few between. Even Fortune 500 companies find great struggle in the high investment of a bespoke mobile app, let alone “Johnny’s Tire Shop”.

Look at hard core utilities like banking apps which are doing well but not nearly as well as you would think. The commitment and dollar amount, not to mention energy, that is required to deploy a consumer app which brings actual value to individuals is difficult.

Mobile Apps Aren’t Cheap

The costs for this can add up. There’s no such thing as a “typical” app, so it’s hard to give a meaningful average cost. But as a general working figure, we can say it costs at least $30,000 to design, implement and deploy a brand-quality iPhone app. At the end of the day, creating a set of mobile native apps that reach, say, 80% of smartphone users is going to be far more expensive than creating a responsive mobile website that reaches 90% of smartphone users. I don’t even mean twice the cost; I mean upwards of five to ten times the cost.

In many situations, that’s acceptable. Sometimes you want to do things that just aren’t possible with a mobile website. Or perhaps it is possible, but you know you can create something of better quality and/or more engaging with a native app. For enterprise-scale organizations like consumer banks and nationwide automotive manufacturers, they have the capital, and the ROI justifies it. But if your budget for mobile is under $100,000, it may not be a good approach.

What’s the ROI of mobile app

Given all this, how many prospects will a venture reach per dollar? At a conservative estimate of 234 million U.S. adults with mobile phones, here’s the breakdown:

In other words, you can reach nearly five times as many people per dollar invested with a mobile website rather than a native mobile app. And that’s conservative, assuming it costs just the same to create the BlackBerry app as it does to create the iPhone app (it doesn’t), or that a mobile website will cost the same as an equivalent iPhone app (generally, not even close).

There are some encouraging numbers here, even with the distinctly discouraging statistics. Quite a few consumers do actually download and use retail apps, even if only sporadically. The rest of your customers still interact by mobile device; they just do so by visiting your mobile site.

In Comparison To A Mobile Website

Studies show people are much more likely to visit your website for almost any online shopping activity, except for redeeming gift cards and loyalty program points. When checking store hours or locations, 66% will visit your website as compared to 45% using your app. To check reviews, 50% visit your website and 31% use your app. If they want to use their gift card or loyalty points, however, 19% will use their app, while only 12% visit your site. If you plan to use app-based loyalty programs and stored-value cards, then you could very well find that developing your app is worth the trouble and cost.

Conclusion

For the 97% of you reading this, I would not recommend building an app for your automotive aftermarket business. Ironic considering I own an agency that builds such mobile apps. Think of it this way. Custom mobile apps of today are like websites of the late 1990’s. A lot of brands spent $50,000 – $100,000 building their website but it didn’t bring them any value because they didn’t make a good enough website and there wasn’t enough demand for it. That exact same scenario is happening now, and getting worse, in the small to mid-size business world of building apps.