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When you think of creating a mobile app, one of the first things on your mind should be what parents would want to do from their smartphones. This must be top of mind because if you don’t design to their needs, demands and desires, you’re going to have a tough time getting parental buy-in and making your app a successful part of your communications network.One of the main things that parents are looking for in your app is convenience. Think of what you can offer them to provide it.
The key question becomes “How can you make the business end of your relationship with parents easier for them to manage?”
By doing a little research, we’ve found the most popular app features offered across a sampling of our clients’ apps. Regardless of the type of organization – gym, dance studio or swim school – the most popular app features are consistent.The features we’ve found to be the most popular are so because they do answer that key question by offering convenience, speed and simplicity in the administrative tasks associated with your facility. In fact, most parents note that doing these things on a mobile app is much simpler than doing them in the parent portal provided in class management software.Enough suspense. The mobile app features used most by parents are:
Class Listings
This feature offers the information that is most important to parents and its critical that it is offered through your mobile app. With this information parents can see what classes are open, plan schedules and budgets or simply get a good idea of what the next class their child will take is all about. They can register or enroll their kids and pay for the classes from Class Listings so it’s pretty much a one and done feature.
Push Notifications
This feature is wildly popular and adored by both parents and facility staff. This is an opt-in feature – meaning your parents ask you to push information to them. This feature gives you greater confidence in the delivery of your messages because you can push your information to all parents’ smartphones in one simple process. Parents are thrilled with the convenience of knowing all important information about your facility at the moment it’s available.
Make-ups
This feature greatly simplifies requesting and scheduling make-ups for parents and frees front office staff from one of the most chaotic services your facility offers. Not all facilities offer this service, but those who do find this to be one of the most popular things that parents can do using their app.
Calendars
This feature is widely used by parents – especially ones with children on teams. This is their one tap way to stay organized and up to date with what is coming up for their children. It often saves them from missing special events and makes it easy to enroll and pay in one action.
When you make sure that these features are included in your mobile app, your potential for the quick adoption of it by your facility’s parents is incredibly high.
Other features offered on mobile apps: social media links, skills tracking, videos and photos, custom interactive forms, newsletters, party bookings, multiple location access, waivers and releases and tutorials.
Read this related blog post: 12 Best Practices for Making Your Mobile App a Success
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