With retailers being accused of failing to go ‘mobile first’ – despite the fact that their customers are now overwhelmingly mobile. The figures from Shopgate show that some 45% of retailers are failing to cater properly to app shoppers. But they aren’t just having a go – here they offer some top tips to help you become a mobile-first retailer to meet this growing demand.
1) Power up your app listing with app store optimisation
There are more than 2 million apps in the App Store, not to mention around 500 million weekly customer visits. With 63% of apps downloads still coming directly from App Store searches, it’s imperative to make sure an app’s listings stand out.
2) Smart banners
Users that enter an app directly from the banner show a 70% higher in-app purchase rate over the general app users – so get them clicking on the banners.
3) Tapping into your audience
Using Facebook retargeting, one-time visitors who are retargeted are up to 70% more likely to convert when they visit a retailer’s website again.
4) Smart design is essential
Ensuring that an app communicates what a retailer sells and each element is sized for mobile as well as helps steer users through the purchase funnel easily. Consistency is another element, which will help retailers’ apps relate to one another, using consistent spacing, text size and design components; carrying over styles and pieces of a retailer’s desktop site can help in this endeavour.
Retailers who will remember to put themselves in their user’s shoes and define the methods of communication with their customers, as the essential benefit of the app is the business-to-user connection they provide.
If a retailer’s app design isn’t interesting they’re falling behind. While their products likely speak for themselves, making them even more eye-catching by using product grids, image sliders, category images and promotional banners.
5) Quick Response (QR) codes
Thanks to Apple’s iOS 11 release, an estimated 1 billion smartphones are now how native QR code scanning functionality, which is used to take a piece of information from a transitory media and put into a smartphone. With this move, QR codes will become a must-have element of any mobile-first strategy. While Western markets have yet to fully catch the QR craze, it is estimated that more than $1.65tn (£1.19tn) of transactions in Asia used QR codes in 2016.
6) Maximising exposure
Shoppers will only download and engage with an app if they know about it. Leveraging existing channels like email lists to promote an app in the same way a retailer would promote sales or special promotions. Connecting in-store customers by offering rewards for app downloads, and placing links to the app in order confirmation email will more likely help customers remember to join an app. In addition, promoting an app heavily on social media channels is another marketing trick, as these customers are already interested in a retailer and digitally tuned it.
Photo credit: Tierney (Fotolia)
