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Choosing a Tutor in Preparation for Exams

Exam time can be a stressful period for everyone involved. If your child needs extra help in a particular subject, of course, you may be thinking of hiring a tutor to get them through or improve their grades. This is a good idea but choosing the right person can also...

Top Tips on Helping Your Child With Their Homework

Once children start school, parents have to consider the prospect of homework. While this can be an exciting time as your child begins to learn new things, it can also be pretty challenging. Children can be enthusiastic or resistant to homework depending on their...

School Communication Barriers

As a company that helps schools communicate better in this brilliant technological age, working to bring down barriers is one thing that we’re particularly focused on at Parentapps. Most teachers and heads of school understand that good communication and involvement...

Parent’s Evening: Questions to Ask Teachers

One of the most important times that mums and dads get to meet teachers is during a parent’s evening. While these can be useful to understand how your child is doing in specific subjects and whether there are any problems, they can be quite hectic. Going in prepared...

Help with Pupil Premium

Since the launch of the Universal Infant Free School Meal Policy, schools have struggled to get parents to register for Pupil Premium because there is no longer the same incentive for parents to do so. Whilst the increase in children receiving school meals is fantastic…

How Surveys Can Help Improve Parental Engagement

The Surveys feature of Parentapps Connect, provides schools and nurseries with an easy way to find out what is and isn’t working when it comes to parental engagement. And, because you can choose whether to send them to the whole school, particular year groups, or…

How your school’s app can help with phonics

Now that Spring has begun, it will soon be time to start preparing your pupils for the Phonics Key Stage 1 Screening Check. Many children could benefit from having extra phonics help at home. And, many parents would be more than happy to work with their children in…

How an app can help improve safeguarding

Safeguarding is one of the biggest areas of concern for any nursery or school today. And, as parental engagement specialists, it is something that we take into great consideration when building our communication apps. A secure parental communication app can help put…

The Benefits of Having a Nursery App

If you want to build better engagement and keep your current parents up to date with the latest developments, you should consider a dedicated communication app for your nursery.
Increasingly, organisations are choosing to create their own apps to complement their…

Why Should Your School Have a Dedicated App?

Apps are everywhere. Collectively we download billions of them to our mobile phones and tablets each year. We do our weekly food shops, book flights and bank all from apps on our mobile devices.
But is a dedicated app suitable for your school? Can it deliver better…

It’s official, we live in a mobile world. We access information at the touch of a button on our smartphones and tablets on a daily basis. Some of us spend hours every day gleaning information from these handheld devices, many installing favourite apps so that we can get to what we need instantaneously.

With greater connectivity the way we use the internet has changed over the last 5 years. Where we used to think of websites as the portal of choice for all our information needs, we now look at apps as the primary source of our online contact. Whether that’s downloading social media apps such as Facebook or Twitter or ones specifically designed for our business or favourite shop, check anyone’s mobile phone or tablet and you’ll probably find a bright array of different icons.

The simple reason for this is that we are now mobile. We don’t have to sit at a computer terminal and log on to get the stuff we need. We can sit in our car, wander down the street, go on holiday and laze by the pool and simply pull out our smartphone or tablet to connect to the world at large.

Apps are more focused

Downloading an icon onto your mobile phone is more focussed than having a web address bookmarked on your browser. An app can be developed to best represent your brand and is not governed by the vagaries of browser usability which means that all your customers get the same experience irrespective of the device they are using. You can make it as complex or as simple as you like, the decision is up to you and what your business or organisation needs, but the customer or user has easy access and your icon is always a visible reminder of your existence.

Add-ons that make a difference

You can add functionality to your app that you just don’t get with a website – for instance having push notifications that give your customers immediate access to important information without them having to tap on your icon. In short, you can engage with your customer more efficiently and quickly and that is extremely good for business.

Greater control

Businesses have greater control over the way their apps operate and can add and take away functions easily with a simple product update that reaches everyone at the same time. Security is also enhanced and can be linked to the user’s mobile device management software which means information remains protected.

Increasing productivity

Because they are more responsive, apps are better at providing communication for businesses that want to offer a service to their employees with options such as training programmes and access to company resources. This means staff can operate more efficiently without logging on to a website and that helps to increase productivity.

Instant support

Apps can provide a way for customers and staff to get an instant source of support, accessing important information at the touch of a button. Users don’t have to log in as they do on a website and the process is faster and more intuitive.

Offline Access

If the Wi-Fi connection is poor or has gone down, app users can normally access the information they need off-line compared to a website where you would not even be able to log on.

For most industry experts, the future certainly depends on better and effective app development that gives customers and businesses the chance to interact productively. We already use our mobiles more than technology such as desktop pcs and this trend is set to continue as further developments and innovations come through. If you want your business or organisation to be able to communicate better then it may be time to consider getting a dedicated app that puts you ahead of your competitors.