Everyone loves to get a clue to the riddle and hate to be surprised. Talking with authority about the future can either make you a pundit or fall flat. Here is our list of things that we feel is a clue to the riddle and will avoid you being surprised.
Everyone loves to get a clue to the riddle and hate to be surprised. Talking with authority about future can either make you a pundit or fall flat. Here is our list of things which we feel is a clue to the riddle and will avoid you being surprised.
1.Mobile Apps
It has been raining apps for quite some time and there is no sign of this trend slowing down. We are sure records are being broken on a daily basis if not hourly basis. Be it the number apps available in stores, the number of downloads, the money being made by kids, etc. From a business perspective it’s easy to be disillusioned and burn a few thousands of dollars by developing apps. Disillusioned take a look at the chart and we will tell you why?
From a business perspective it sure sound sensible to invest in a native app for the android market – be it for engaging customers or for providing a shopping experience, as it’ has the most number of users. But the danger is, it’s only 38.5% for the time being and close to 50% in another 4 years. The user base for your native app may be fraction of this pie and can be skewed. What if your customers are more of the apple type than the droid type. Hence it pays to study your customer base before jumping on the native app wagon.
Smart phones are just one type of the mobile devices; we are currently seeing a proliferation of tablets and other mobile devices. Moreover in technology terms 2015 may even be a light-year away. If an OS (read Symbian) with 46% share can drop down to 0% in just 2 years (we need not wait till 2015 as Symbian is already dead).
History may repeat itself (read Android).
Hence the clue to the riddle is optimize your website for mobile device compatibility as the trend of using mobile devices for accessing online content and portal is going to grow in leaps and bounds and we are going to see more segmentation and turf war in the smart phone OS arena. In facts Google backs web apps over native apps in the long run, learn from the leader.
2.Proliferation of Platforms
The advancement in technology and the ability to build modules and wrap things on the go is consolidating and giving small players the option of having an online presence at throw away prices – be it interspire, magento, zendesk or those innumerable entrepreneurial minds working on providing such platforms.
Irrespective of the size of the operation everyone is feeling importance of having an online presence and leveraging technology to either have a competitive advantage or level the playing field. The cost of building a website or owning a software or application used to be high, not anymore. The trend of providing Software as a Service (SaaS) and the proliferation of the cloud concept has dramatically changed the way people consume technology.
www.cleanersedge.com is one such platform which will help all the small laundry business owners to have their own website and collect orders online and you can do all this in less than 15 minutes. www.deskaway.com is a new project management application which helps you manage your projects up to 100 for unlimited users for as low as $ 25 / month.
What is it in for you as an entrepreneur?
If you have a technology inclination and have the financial power to build a platform, the time is ripe to take up an industry and build a SaaS service for the industry. If you are a small and medium business who does not have the time to spend months to get an online presence, then scan the market someone might be having something ready for you and this might be just a credit card swipe away.
3. It’s going to rain deals
Yes deals is no longer a seasonal thing or at the whim and fancy of the stores and they are not one size fits all either. It can be a one of thing or a group thing. It’s not only about groupon and a host of other websites. But the concept which groupon started is bursting at the seams and changing everything it touches. The mob is going niche too, meaning you are about to see lots of groupon clones which are going to be specific to a geography, life style, a category of product or service etc. you are also about to see a host of deal aggregator sites coming up. These sites consolidate deals across various outlets and categorize them and present it to you in a single platform. No more searching multiple sites for deals.
Even the bigger organizations are trying out this concept of giving targeted deals. The concept of giving what the customer wants is in vogue. For example walmart has launched a “crowdsaver” concept which uses facebook to spread the news of potential great offers and if there are enough likes, then the offer goes on the floor and everyone gets the discount.
What is it in for you as an entrepreneur?
As always you can either build a niche, localized and targeted deals promotion portal or you can aggregate deals for a specific region, category, service etc. As a business owner it always pays to get the word out about offers and your business. Everyone loves a deal.
