It really wasn’t that big of a surprise to anyone working in or around Internet marketing, but when DigitalPlaceMarketing.com announced in a recent survey that half of all the adults in the United States owned a smartphone and another survey from ABI noted that 45% of that number were influenced by mobile apps to make a purchase, marketing ears everywhere perked up.

It was confirmation of what we’d all really suspected for some time—that mobile app marketing was the wave of the future. Now that’s not to say this isn’t just another one of the fads the Internet is so fond of—remember how video was going to replace text?—but there’s even more evidence mobile apps are going to take a big chuck of advertising dollars.

Consider some of the bigger firms that have found recent success with this technique. Domino’s Pizza has been on board since 2011, when they capitalized on the fact that most of their target market has smartphones and loves to play games with them. Domino’s Pizza Hero walks the players through all the steps of making one of the tasty treats and then offers the option of having the finished product delivered directly to their homes.

Zippo, the famous makers of lighters, should be seeing a decline in sales but in effect the opposite is true. The reason? While no one can put their finger on the real cause with any degree of certainty, a new app the company uses that allow people to order a lighter with a modern and/or vintage design is attracting a good buzz. The association with this mobile app is thought to be partially responsible for the surge in sales.

The majority of people who use these mobile phones are also app users and the smartest companies have found ways to engage their interest so that they can sell more units. Even though this is still a new industry, there are some ground rules already being laid out and first and foremost seems to be a movement toward keeping things simple.

Users need to be able to sort through all the products that are available on the parent site quickly and easily. Designing mobile apps that lead to mobile sites means incorporating good product filters.

Remember, these apps need to go somewhere as well and that means you need to make it clear what the call to action is and where you need users to go so that you can close the deal.