App developers should seek constant feedback from consumers while building their apps, says Brisbane-based start-up aradium, which has seen its Facebook app rapidly embraced around the world despite launching just a few months ago.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Founded by Ryan Mills, aradium helps SMEs grow and maintain customer service and engagement, and increase their online marketing reach through the creation of a Facebook store.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Since launching in late 2011, more than 650 Australian businesses and more than 1,100 international businesses have signed up to aradium.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In addition to being available in Australia, aradium has launched in New Zealand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and South Africa.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As of this month, aradium has more than 10,000 active monthly users. Mills says Facebook is an ideal sales channel because of its focus on relationships, unlike search engines.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe concept of creating an ad and having it ranked on a search engine, competing against all other similar ads, does nothing to encourage long-term client engagement or repeat business,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIn most cases, relationships have become meaningless as buyers search only for the cheapest products, and sellers pay handsomely to outrank each other.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOn search engines, you\u2019re only as good as your last SEO ranking and advertising bid. By comparison, Facebook drives real engagement and connection through the social web.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhen a repeat customer makes a purchase, the chances are they will be purchasing from a brand they \u2018Like\u2019 as opposed to a brand they have no meaningful, long-term relationship with.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mills says aradium provides the tools for sellers to develop and maintain genuine engagement with clients, providing a level of customer service not available on any other online platform.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe plan on developing deeper integration with [Facebook\u2019s] social graph, open graph and Facebook Timeline features to enhance the social shopping experience,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to aradium\u2019s communication manager Paul Sobczak, the start-up hasn\u2019t received any outside funding, but isn\u2019t ruling it out in the future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe started developing it in August last year and had three months of beta testing to work out backend functionality and technical aspects, and features consumers were after,\u201d Sobczak says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe ultimate goal is to keep developing features that clients are asking for to help them with their business.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest lesson we\u2019ve learned is the value of customer feedback and engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re only based on Facebook, so we\u2019re using people\u2019s Facebook walls to ask them what features they like and how they\u2019re going.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really important to have that approach when you start a business, especially when you\u2019re developing an app. Success comes down to listening to your customer feedback and adapting to suit their needs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" App developers should seek constant feedback from consumers while building their apps, says Brisbane-based start-up aradium, which has seen its<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41600"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}