Why We Don’t Recommend Business Improvement Districts Building Standalone Apps

Over the last few years, we’ve had conversations with multiple Business Improvement Districts across both Northern Ireland and mainland UK about digital engagement, communication, and technology.

In fact, just last month, a Business Improvement District in mainland UK contacted us to discuss the possibility of building a standalone mobile app for businesses, levy payers, and even the wider public.

Ironically, it is a conversation we understand extremely well because when we were involved with Coleraine Business Improvement District, we explored the exact same route ourselves.

And not just casually.

We went very deep into the concept.

At one stage, we were even exploring integrating the town centre radio system directly into the app itself, allowing businesses and visitors to listen live, receive announcements, hear event updates, and create more of a connected “digital town centre” experience overall.

We also looked at how the public could potentially use the app for:

• events and entertainment listings,
• tourism information,
• local offers and promotions,
• parking updates,
• seasonal campaigns,
• business directories,
• and town centre announcements.

On paper, it sounded brilliant.

A modern, all-in-one digital platform for the town centre.

But the more we explored the reality behind it, the more we realised something important:

Most Business Improvement Districts do not actually need standalone apps.

They need smarter digital ecosystems.

And there is a major difference between the two.

The Size of the BID Area Matters More Than People Think

One of the biggest realisations for us came from looking at the actual size of the BID area itself.

In Coleraine, the BID area is relatively small geographically. That matters far more than people initially think when discussing apps.

Because the moment you launch a standalone app, you are asking people to:
download it, keep it installed, enable notifications, remember it exists, and continually return to it.

That is difficult enough for major cities with massive daily footfall and constant activity.

It becomes significantly harder when the area being represented is relatively compact.

The reality is that people do not behave according to BID boundaries.

Someone shopping in Coleraine may also be travelling to Portrush later that afternoon. A visitor staying in Portstewart might head to Ballycastle the next day. Residents and visitors naturally move throughout the wider Borough rather than staying inside one small commercial zone.

And that was one of the biggest flaws we eventually identified with the standalone BID app concept.

The more we discussed it internally, the more we felt that if a major public-facing app was ever going to exist locally, it would have made far more sense for the local council to create something at Borough level instead.

Because suddenly the value proposition becomes much stronger.

Instead of trying to sustain engagement around one relatively small BID area, you create a platform capable of serving the entire Borough:
tourism, hospitality, events, retail, community information, local services, public updates, coastal attractions, and town centre activity all inside one connected ecosystem.

That changes everything.

A Borough-wide platform would naturally create:

• a much larger audience,
• more daily usage,
• more reasons for people to return,
• better tourism integration,
• greater economies of scale,
• stronger long-term sustainability,
• and more meaningful public value.

For example, someone visiting the Borough may want restaurant recommendations in Portstewart, events in Coleraine, attractions in Ballycastle, parking information in Portrush, walking trails near Benone, or entertainment listings happening across the coast.

That creates genuine recurring usefulness.

A small standalone BID app often struggles to generate that same level of ongoing relevance long term.

The AI Search Shift Changes Everything

Another major reason we eventually moved away from the standalone app idea was the rapid shift happening in search itself because of AI.

This is something many organisations still are not fully thinking about yet.

Search behaviour is changing dramatically.

Google’s AI Overviews, AI-powered search experiences, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and other AI-driven systems are increasingly becoming the layer between users and websites themselves.  

That completely changes how discoverability works online.

Historically, if someone searched:
“Things to do in Coleraine”
or
“Restaurants near Portrush”
or
“What’s happening on the Causeway Coast this weekend”

Google would traditionally return a list of websites for users to browse through manually.

Now increasingly, AI systems are summarising that information directly inside search experiences themselves. Google has confirmed that AI Overviews and AI Mode are designed to surface and summarise website content directly within Search.  

That means discoverability is becoming far more dependent on searchable web content rather than isolated closed ecosystems.

And this is where standalone apps become a major problem.

Because apps are largely invisible to search engines and AI systems in the same way traditional websites are not.

An app cannot rank in Google the same way:

• an event page can,
• a tourism guide can,
• a business listing can,
• a restaurant article can,
• or a searchable local news update can.

If all your:

• events,
• announcements,
• tourism information,
• local guides,
• public updates,
• campaigns,
• offers,
• and business content

sit primarily inside an app, then AI systems have far less information to discover, index, summarise, and recommend.

That becomes a serious visibility issue.

Especially now that AI-generated summaries are increasingly appearing before traditional website links in search experiences.  

Even Google itself says that the same SEO fundamentals still matter for AI-powered search visibility.  

In simple terms:

If you want to appear in AI-powered search experiences, your content still needs to exist publicly on the web.

And that was one of the biggest turning points in our thinking.

Because the more we looked at it, the less sense it made to maintain:

• a website,
• a standalone app,
• duplicated event systems,
• duplicated announcements,
• duplicated business directories,
• duplicated tourism content,
• and duplicated updates,

all saying essentially the same thing.

At that point, the app starts becoming more of a second content management problem than an actual solution.

You end up managing two ecosystems instead of one.

And in most cases, the website still has to do the heavy lifting anyway because that is what:

• Google indexes,
• AI systems reference,
• tourists discover,
• visitors search,
• and the wider public can actually access instantly.

The Only Real Advantage Apps Still Hold

Honestly, the only area where standalone apps still genuinely hold a strong advantage is push notifications.

That is probably the single biggest reason an app might still make sense in certain situations.

Push notifications can be extremely powerful for:

• urgent updates,
• weather disruptions,
• road closures,
• emergency announcements,
• event reminders,
• live event changes,
• or town centre alerts.

But outside of notifications, most of the actual content still needs to live on the website regardless.

Because if the website already contains:

• the events,
• the announcements,
• the business listings,
• the tourism guides,
• the campaigns,
• the public updates,
• and the searchable content,

then the app often becomes little more than another interface displaying the exact same information.

And once you reach that stage, organisations need to ask themselves an important question:

Does it really make sense to maintain a completely separate standalone app ecosystem purely for notifications?

Especially when modern community platforms, progressive web apps, WhatsApp channels, email systems, SMS tools, and browser notifications can increasingly deliver similar experiences without requiring users to download another app entirely.

The Future Is Ecosystems, Not Isolated Apps

This is ultimately where our thinking shifted completely.

Instead of building isolated standalone apps, we increasingly started looking towards integrated ecosystems instead.

Because the future is not really about apps anymore.

It is about discoverability, communication, integration, and accessibility across multiple channels simultaneously.

Websites.
Communities.
Search.
AI discoverability.
Messaging.
Notifications.
Content.
Events.
Directories.

All working together as one connected digital ecosystem.

Because ultimately, visibility now matters far beyond the app store.

AI systems are increasingly choosing what content gets surfaced to users.

And if your organisation’s information only exists inside a closed app environment, there is a very real risk that large parts of your town, events, businesses, and initiatives become invisible to the very systems now shaping online discovery itself.