The global proliferation of smartphones across various demographics has created new marketing and revenue earning opportunities for businesses. And the e-commerce industry is no exception to the trend. This is because besides consuming more and more content from their handheld devices, people are also using them to make shopping a more convenient and personalised experience.
What’s more, the trend of online shopping has picked up in the COVID impacted world as buyers now prefer to stay safe at homes and complete most of their shopping virtually. This is therefore the right time for e-commerce brands to optimize their digital marketing platform and make it easier for customers to connect with them. And that’s where e-commerce mobile apps help.
If you are an e-commerce business owner and want to increase the number of daily sales, here are some reasons to go beyond the website and adopt the tool that will help you reach and exceed your goals:
1- Brand Visibility
Mobile apps forge stronger connections between businesses and their customers. They are powerful tools to build a brand’s reputation and advertise its offerings to catch the attention of prospective buyers.
If a customer installs your mobile app on her phone/tablet, it implies that every time she unlocks the device, your logo will show up on the screen. This is therefore an effective way to boost your brand’s visibility, broaden your customer base and enable more people to interact with your brand.
2- Better customer experience
Buyers today expect consistent and multi-device experience from brands. This should give you a compelling reason to go beyond the ‘desktop only’ version of your online store.
Also, because more browsing happens on personal mobile phones today, you can gather more insights about buyers’ product preferences and at what times of a day they make purchase decisions, through your e-commerce app. Besides, evolving technologies – such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and IoT – integrated into mobile apps help to understand consumers better.
3- In depth analytics
It is easier to gather and track data through a mobile app. By leveraging special functionalities of an app including built-in analytics, you can monitor user behaviour – these may include reactions to particular content, features and widgets, session length, feedback and audience demographics.
Such data analytics enable you to make consistent improvements and updates on content. They can also be used to strategise marketing campaigns and share more relevant posts on social media.
4- Lower response time
A major concern for people who frequently buy online is the performance of the website or app they use. The time a mobile app needs to complete an action is much less than a website’s response for the same – this is because when mobile apps are downloaded, they store some of their data partially on the device.
Even if an app connects to your server just like your website does, data transfer between a server and a mobile app is significantly less than between a server and a browser. As a result, data retrieval through an app is much quicker.
What’s more, your customers can set their default preferences in the app on their device. This in turn allows the app to load only the content that they prefer. As an example, if a customer saves herfood preferences in a food delivery online app as ‘vegetarian’, the app will show her only vegetarian menu items by default. This builds a personalised experience and helps the user to shop faster.
5- Improved efficiency and higher revenues
Even though getting a mobile app developed for your e-commerce business sounds like an additional expense, the returns from this investment make it worthwhile.
Because mobile apps, with their smart functions, can fulfil a regular online buyer’s needs quickly and more effectively, they help to bring more sales and revenue.
It is also simple to add more features in an app to increase the number of successful checkouts. One of these is ‘Push Notifications’ that help your brand to deliver tailored information – such as new discounts, coupons and things back in stock – to customers instantly and motivate them to place an order. Promoting loyalty programmes is also easier with apps.
With increasing competition in the e-commerce industry, it feels challenging to win the attention of customers, and owners of online stores must not miss any opportunity that helps them to gain a bigger market share. A custom ecommerce brings that support.
Do not hesitate to contact me to know more about the customisation of a mobile app for your specific needs.
