Article: Even Small Players Can Seize the Day with an App Strategy

As apps become more prevalent and more powerful, entrepreneurs and small business owners are relying on these savvy tools to help their businesses grow and run more smoothly. In this article the topic is about a small business called Magic Beans which is founded by Sheri Gurock. It's a retail business that's specialized in toys and baby gear. Her business was one of the first to be a example of using a Mobile app for checking and scanning barcode information. The app was called AisleBuyer, if customers would use this through Magic Beans they would receive discounts and coupons automatically. In the beginning when the app was first first introduced to the company in the company would receive a eight percent increase in sales but hte only problem was only 5 percent of customers were actually particpating in using it. After not seeing a different Magic Beans decided to opt out of using the app, but later tried it one last time to see if two years different would change with all the craze of people constantly using apps now which turned out to be a good growth in revenue. "By the end of this year, according to the digital markerting firm emarketer, there will be 116 million smartphone users in the United States." Cisco reports the number of mobile-connected devices globally will exceed the number of people. That is a large and expanding canvas for apps when consumers have come to expect one for almost everything. Magic Beans is very-customer focused and sees the value in offering AisleBuyer as a convenient self-checkout choice for their customers,” Consumers can download Magic Bean’s iPhone application for free in Apple’s App Store. In fact recent surveys from Microsoft and Dell sugget that 46% of small businesses in the US are already web-based