Applications have a lot to teach us, if we’d only open ourselves up to the lessons they provide every day. For both business growth and personal development, there are good reasons to pay more attention to what apps can do.

With that in mind, here are examples of insights afforded to us by different types of mobile apps, and why they matter.

Business-related apps can help companies save time and money, e.g. delivery route planners

Cutting costs and improving efficiency is possible with a number of different business-focused apps available today.

For example, software which lets you manage your routes more effectively means that deliveries can be completed in less time and with lower associated costs.

Understanding that there is always room to improve business processes, and that you’ll usually need the help of modern software to achieve this, is part of what makes delivery route planners and associated services so valuable to modern organizations.

Social media apps can help companies connect with customers directly

Apps like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok all give their own twist on audience engagement, and this can be applied to businesses and brands just as much as it can to individual personalities.

In order to grow a following, businesses have to look at the way that these apps keep their users entranced in the first place. It’s through a combination of community, as well as consistency of communication.

The best social media apps provide content that keeps people scrolling indefinitely, and businesses must endeavor to become an integral part of this never-ending feed.

From a developer’s perspective, the lesson to learn here is how to tweak the user experience in such a way that people are engaged and retained.

We’ve moved away from the cloistered, closed-off origins of mid-2000s social media to an ecosystem that better reflects the interconnected nature of the modern world. This can be applied to all sorts of other apps, services and solutions.

Gaming apps can help companies contend with the issue of monetization

Making money out of a product or service is tricky in any industry, and is especially troublesome in the world of software, where plenty of would-be customers are used to getting what you’re selling them for free elsewhere.

This is a conundrum which has been solved to a degree in the world of mobile gaming, where the top titles rake in vast sums each year, and manage to do so in a variety of ways.

Free-to-play games are the most interesting from a monetization perspective, since they show that luring players in with a basic product and then encouraging them to pay to enjoy the more premium features, or even just cosmetic add-ons, is a viable route to take.

There are also ad-supported mobile games, and a host of other models for making money from digital products which break new boundaries and shake up established practices. It’s evidence of how experimentation and innovation can often lead to great things, even if they are intimidating to consider at first.

Finance apps can help companies adopt responsible money management

The ebb and flow of money is easier to watch than ever thanks to the range of mobile apps which allow individuals to monitor their various accounts and keep tabs on every last penny.

These apps are doubly useful for businesses, as they make it a breeze to wrangle expenses, monitor budgets, and develop good habits for managing money.

So the mobile apps we use every day have something to offer us all, from solo users to large organizations.

Also Read: 7 Ideas to Enhance the User Onboarding Experience for Mobile Apps