In today’s ever changing market, it can be pretty easy to fall behind the curve if you don’t pay pretty close attention to trends in the marketplace. For small business owners, it can be especially easy to lose sight of trends simply because they are forced to wear so many different hats any given day. Here are a few popular assumptions about mobile shopping that don’t necessarily pan out when you look at actual worldwide trends:

“My customers don’t use smartphones.”

Regardless of the market you are in, or the type of business you run, every metric being collected right now debunks this one pretty easily. Smartphones sales continue to spike and there really isn’t an end in sight. Last year, smartphone sales were up 46% over the year before. At this rate, it’s pretty clear that the days of the “dumb phone” are on the way out, and it won’t be long before all phones are smartphones.

“I have a website, so I don’t need a mobile app.”

It’s great that you have a website. Every single business, large or small, should have some kind of online presence. The same is becoming true in the mobile world. With smartphone sales skyrocketing, customers are searching for businesses on the go. They aren’t waiting until they get home to check your business out. Mobile shopping is booming. Customers are not only comfortable with it, more and more they are demanding it. Having a standard website that they can see from their phone is great, but without a mobile optimized presence, their experience is going to be limited. An app in the marketplace does wonders for that experience, and it will give you the opportunity to target and convert them with specials and deals just for customers that have your app.

“I can’t afford to build a mobile app.”

This one is tricky. Design and development of a mobile app can be extremely time consuming and expensive. I’d imagine that this hurdle is the one that trips most small businesses up when considering whether or not to make the leap into the mobile marketplace. Building a custom app from the ground up can cost as much as $40,000. Even an extremely basic table based app will end up running you $3,000 or more, and you still won’t end up with many features. So how is this one a myth? A personalized mobile app from App Express costs just $65 a month, and includes lots of great features that your business can use to engage your best customers and bring in new ones. Check out all of the features here, and if you have any questions, let us know.