Mobile App Start Up South Africa
Many of our clients came to us with a new business idea. We then provide the technical scope to turn that idea into a mobile application ready to launch into the market. Testing a business idea in the form of a mobile app or website is much less expensive then testing a traditional brick and mortar type business. It is also much easier to make changes to the business model of a digital product like an app or website than it is to make changes to a traditional old school business. So we predict that mobile apps in South Africa as new businesses will see good growth over the next few years. More and more people are realising that apps are useful tools to people and if you give people value then they will support your business.
What remains to be a very good app start-up idea, is a local directory app. The same way the Yellow Pages became such a successful business, so too are mobile directory apps finding success in South Africa.
One of the very first directory apps developed by App Development Ninjas, was Factory Shops SA. The app fulfils a very important need, which is to help people save money by helping them know how to easily find the factory shops near them.
This Directory app was an immediate commercial success. Which of course is rare. So thus it speaks to the opportunity in South Africa for a mobile app as a start-up.
On Average the Factory Shops SA app received 7000 downloads per month. This type of statistic would normally be associated with an app that was advertised on Radio and TV.
Once a Directory app receives many users, the app becomes a very powerful platform to advertise your factory shop on. This forms the basis and the foundation of a directory app business model. Factory shops must pay R400 per month to be listed and found in the app.
From the app owner point of view, if they successfully sign up 500 factory shops, the app will yield a gross revenue of 200k per month.
To scale this is easy as it is a very simple digital product and overheads are at an absolute minimum, compared to traditional businesses.
The biggest challenge initially to get such a start-up OnTrack, is to find app usersand to find businesses willing to pay the monthly subscription.
In the case of Factory Shops SA, the majority of app downloads came from a cheap banner advert, placed on a highly relevant Facebook page, which had over 90000 fans. The app appealed to most of the fans and then most of them downloaded it and kept it on their phones.
The second part in getting businesses to subscribe at R400 per month, was more challenging, as most factory shops were unsure about the use of an app to get more feet through the door. To solve this problem time had to be spent with the factory shops and some education had to be done. In time the key factory shops realised that it was indeed a good idea to be listed and found in the directory app.
The biggest expenses to take such market is the initial app development, and then the expense to get downloads and to gain paying businesses. The cost to take an app to market is easily 10 times less than that of starting a small coffee shop. Also keep in mind that the coffee shop is highly dependent upon its geographic area for business, but the digital product works anywhere in the world. One of the key challenges in any business is to scale it. Scaling is much easier when digital product can work anywhere in the world.
Get in touch today if you have an idea for a mobile app start-up.