Is it worth it to create an iPhone app for my flower shop?

answered Feb 24

Duane McLennan
21 ● 2

No, it's not a good idea to have an app for a local flower shop, unless you are a national brand, or you have 5000 raving fans of your business who will add the app to their phone and use it all the time.

Mobile eCommerce ready websites do the trick just fine and the added expense of a mobile app is not something that most florists ($300k in sales) should add to their expenses.

An app may generate some orders, but many of those orders will be pulled from what could have been mobile website orders in the first place.

I have nothing against Floral App or any others, but I don't like to see good small business owners wasting their money on technology for the sake of technology.

answered Feb 20

revans
31 ● 2 ● 3 ● 6

Here's my $.02. You should have a website that is smartphone compatible (works with iphone, android, etc.). Most websites do these days. People don't generally buy flowers directly from their phone, but they do browse and will contact you.

Building an app is really a lot of work and probably doesn't make sense unless you're a big brand with cash to burn. The question is: who wants to download and app to buy flowers? Are the big guys building apps? Not that I can can see. Customers won't download an app because they just don't buy flowers enough for it to make sense to have an app.

answered Feb 23

Arthur Conforti
1

The truth is more people are transitioning to using smartphones as computers along with tablets than ever before. There is a shift in retailing today. The latest report released in Nov was that 2 out of every 3 smartphone users made a purchase using smartphone this past September. You can see more stats at http://www.floralapp.com Apps are very challenging to develop and costly. Then once you decide to build, you really need to build 2. one for iPhone and one for Android. Having my smartphone for a year now, we have over 1,000 downloads and 100 orders.

If your smartphone doesn't make shopping with you faster and/or easier, don't bother. Floralapp allows the user to use their address book in their phone to look up an address and once clicked, it auto fills out the recipient information. From unique discounting and will-call features and considering people who download your app are a captive audience. Almost everyone has a mobile version of websites. getting your customer to download your app is capturing a customer that will be "linked' directly to you and not easily leave. 1800 Flowers does have an app. Talk to successful users. You do have to make the effort but companies like Ashland Addison, McShan's, Trias, Vogue and many more are doing very well capturing orders and their audience. It's up to you. It is like having an 800 number to your shop. If a customer wants to shop this way, i believe we need to have that option. Hope this was helpful. Art Conforti