Many times websites are not optimized for mobile devices: here comes the Mobile App. Years ago a good strategy might have been to create e-commerce in order to be ahead of the competition and earn growing slices of the market, today it is no more possible.
The customer journey is now multi-channel, which means that the user would discover brands through different channels. Shopify gives us a concrete example: about 70% of active Shopify users come from mobile devices and about 60% of purchases are made from smartphones and tablets.
In this article we’re going to analyze which advantages you could benefit if you would create a mobile app for your e-commerce.
Just like a few years ago e-commerce made shopping easier for your customers, a mobile app could make your users’ mobile shopping experience a step forward. A study conducted by Skim reveals that 7 out of 10 users don’t make a purchase because of a difficult or frustrating mobile experience.
Why that? The main identified pain points are 3: speed, scroll fatigue, and no autofill. Fortunately these problems can be relieved or even removed thanks to an App. Let’s see how:
Integrating an app with the most famous and important social media is certainly more effective than web integration itself. This is because from a desktop it is much more difficult for someone to think of sharing a link on Instagram and also via mobile web, the time required to load each page could discourage the user. The app experience, on the other hand, being fast, smart, and fully user-friendly can increase user satisfaction, which will be more conducive to sharing a product, offer or news directly from the app to their friends. Just enter it and with a single click access your favorite articles, to send a product to your best friends and ask them for an opinion on it, through any instant messaging app. From the word of mouth that comes to create, your brand will begin to enjoy greater fame, getting to be more and more easily recognizable.
Your users don’t have time to waste! On average purchases decrease by 20% every second more passed while loading a page. [Source]
Apps are 1,5 times faster than mobile websites. This happens because apps can memorize data locally onto users’ devices, so when customers “ask” for data, those are obtained almost instantly. Great ain’t it?
This is the main impediment for users that buy from mobile.
Smartphone and tablet screens are way smaller than desktop ones. For this reason, users are lost among thousands of information, images, and features of a website, having to continuously scroll from one side to the other. This way the customer may have the impression to be wasting a lot of time and abandon the screen, not finalizing the purchase.
With a Mobile App, you can instead add better widgets to make screens more readable and fluid.
As we said before, users don’t want to waste time, this is not only related to page loading. The app can also be helpful in speeding up the checkout process facilitating auto-filling of:
With a Mobile App you can engage your community and create authentic relationships through ways not available with e-commerce: push notifications, in-app messages, and exclusive content.
Do you have any idea of the potential of push notifications? They are an amazing tool to communicate in real-time with your customers.
With Shoppy you can also make notifications more engaging with:
So, if you want to take advantage of these features, you really need to have a Mobile App.
If you want to explore this subject further, read this article.
What differentiate In-App Messages from Push Notifications? These last ones are sent to the user when they are not using the App, so it’s a way to draw their attention while In-App Messages are shown while the app is on. In-App Messages can highlight exclusive offers or entertain the user asking them for feedback or showing them discount codes.
Finally, two important actions that you can do with In-App Messages are:
We recommend reading this article to learn about how best to use In-App Messages.
To create meaningful connections with the fanbase one last essential element is the ability to offer exclusive contents. Thanks to a Mobile App you can propose new content, offers, and news only to subscribed users.
This is a great way to strengthen the bond with your users: they will feel more important and less distant from your brand. This closeness also promotes loyalty and consequentially encourages recurring purchases.
Every user who installs your App will have on their device its icon. The icon will be seen every time customers look at the screen, maintaining the awareness of your Brand high and increasing its credibility. The App defines the status quo of your brand, enhances it, and increases awareness and authority.
Should you encourage purchases from new customers or from your recurring ones?
Statistics differ from industry to industry but it is known that acquiring new customers is more costly than maintaining loyal ones: acquiring a new customer may cost up to 5 times more than maintaining one already obtained. Also, a Harvard Business Review reveals that a, 5% increase in customer loyalty can increase the company’s profitability by 25-95%.
If a business focuses only on acquiring, every month it would have obtained X new customers but without working on customer loyalty those ones will not return the next month. This way the business will not grow and will spend 5 times more every month.
Why such a difference? Basically, with the new customers, you’re starting from scratch: they probably don’t have any experience with your brand and don’t know if they can trust it. You need to spend time and money to interest new customers to your brand and make them do purchases. Your recurring customers instead are already educated and they need to face fewer barriers.
The Mobile App is, then, a powerful retention tool that can encourage recurring purchases. By building a solid relationship with your customers, earning their loyalty, and encouraging recurring purchases you will obtain a referral and foreseeable revenues.
Market researches reveal that 78% of users prefer to access their favorite shopping websites with an app instead of mobile browsers. Why? Apps make shopping experience way faster and safer, also users never need to remember to login every time they want to look for new stuff or make an order.
The first step to optimize sales for mobile customers is to provide a reactive website for mobile devices. This is more a necessity than a plus also considering that most web traffic comes from mobile devices instead of desktops.
However, if you don’t have a mobile app you are losing many potential customers and consequentially fewer revenues. This happens because abandoned cart ratings increase and you’re not able to create traffic on-demand with push notifications and in-app messages.
If you’re ready to optimize your mobile purchase flow for your customers, but you don’t know where to start to create your App, Shoppy is what fits to you:
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