Why Kent Businesses Are Building Their Own Apps in 2026

For most of the last decade, a Kent business that wanted to be "online" needed a website and maybe an Instagram account. That advice is now out of date. The way people use their phones has shifted so completely that a website alone leaves money on the table — and the businesses that have noticed are quietly building something their competitors don't have: their own app.

Here's the data behind that shift, why it matters whether you run a restaurant in Canterbury, a studio in Tunbridge Wells or a multi-site brand across the county, and what a custom app actually changes for your bottom line.

The world didn't just go mobile. It went into apps.

It's easy to assume "mobile-friendly website" is enough. The numbers say otherwise. According to Sensor Tower's State of Mobile 2026 report, people now spend less than 6% of their smartphone time in browsers and search apps — over 90% of it goes to apps instead. The average person spends around 3.6 hours a day inside apps, adding up to 5.3 trillion hours globally in 2025.

Meanwhile, the phone has become the default way people buy. Mobile devices now account for roughly 62–64% of all web traffic, and mobile commerce makes up close to 60% of online sales. For online stores specifically, around 75% of ecommerce traffic comes from mobile.

So your customers are on their phones, and when they're on their phones, they're in apps — not browsers. A website meets them in the 6% of their time they spend in a browser. An app meets them in the 90% they spend everywhere else.

Apps don't just get more time. They convert better.

This is where it gets interesting for revenue. Across industries, apps consistently outperform mobile websites on the metrics that actually matter. Apps convert at roughly 3x the rate of mobile websites, app users view 286% more products per session, and apps average 157% higher conversion rates overall. When people do buy, they spend more doing it: average order value in apps sits around $95 versus roughly $73 on mobile web.

The reason is simple. A website is somewhere a customer visits. An app is something they keep — sitting on their home screen, logged in, one tap away, with their details and preferences already saved. That removes friction at every step, and friction is what kills mobile sales.

Restaurants and food brands: the clearest case of all

If you run a food business, the case for an app is no longer subtle. Over 60% of restaurant orders now come through apps, and 85% of diners expect online ordering, payments and loyalty programs as standard. Mobile ordering has gone from a nice extra to a baseline expectation.

The engagement difference is striking. According to DoorDash, customers who download a restaurant's branded app order 30% more frequently than other customers. Loyalty built into an app compounds that effect — restaurants with mobile-friendly loyalty programs have seen a 60% jump in customer transactions, and most loyalty programs lift visits and spend by 18–30%.

There's also a margin argument that owners feel every month. Many restaurants lose £18,000 or more a year to third-party delivery apps, whose commissions run 15% to 30%. Every order through your own app is an order you keep the full value of — and a customer relationship you own rather than rent from a marketplace.

And loyalty is more fragile than ever. 45% of diners say their favourite restaurant changed in the past year — up sharply from 33% the year before. When customers are this quick to switch, the businesses that stay top-of-mind win. An app — sitting on the home screen, sending the right nudge at the right time — is how you stay in the frame.

Local and service businesses: being in your customer's pocket

Even if you're not taking orders, the logic holds. Around 95% of mobile internet users look up local information specifically to call or visit a business — your customers are using their phones to decide where to go and who to spend with. An app makes you the default choice instead of one of ten browser tabs.

The real engine, though, is retention — and the numbers here are the ones every business owner should sit with. A 5% increase in customer retention can boost a business's value by up to 50%. Apps are uniquely good at retention because of one feature a website simply cannot match: push notifications.

The data on push is hard to argue with. Users who opt in to push notifications are twice as likely to be retained and four times more engaged than those who don't. Around 65% of users return to an app when push is enabled. Compare that to the alternative: users who don't enable push notifications lose nearly half their audience after just two sessions. A push notification lands directly on the lock screen, free, instantly — a direct line to your customer that no email or social post can replicate. It's no surprise that 85% of US mobile shoppers say they prefer using apps over mobile websites.

An app is an asset you own — not a platform you rent

This is the part most businesses miss. When you build your presence on someone else's platform — a delivery marketplace, a booking aggregator, a social network — you're renting access to your own customers. They take a cut, they own the data, and they can change the rules whenever they like.

A custom app flips that. You own the customer relationship outright. You get first-party data on who your customers are and what they buy. There's no revenue share and no lock-in. The app becomes a genuine business asset — something that builds value over time and works entirely for you, not a landlord taking a percentage of every transaction.

That's the difference between being on an app and having one.

Why Kent businesses, and why now

The businesses winning locally are the ones moving first. Right now, most Kent businesses still treat "an app" as something only national chains do — which is exactly the gap. The perception that apps are out of reach for independent and regional brands is outdated; the tools and approach have changed, and a focused, well-built app is now well within reach for a serious local business.

Being first into your customer's pocket is a position your competitors can't easily take back. The café down the road, the studio across town, the brand competing for the same audience — once your customers have your app on their home screen and their loyalty tied to it, you've moved from "one option among many" to the default.

The shift to apps isn't coming. It's already happened — your customers made it years ago. The only open question is whether your business meets them where they actually are.