A third (32%) of the UK’s top retailers don’t have a mobile shopping app, reveals the new State of Digital Commerce report launched today by Episerver, which examines the retail and ecommerce trends set to shape 2017.
The report analyses the mobile presence of 100 top UK retail brands and draws on research with 1,200 consumers and 100 marketing professionals. It highlights that nearly a third of top retailers fail to provide a mobile application across either iPhone or Android devices.
In addition, 66% of marketing professionals no longer include mobile apps within their mobile marketing campaigns. Instead, the majority (56%) are choosing a responsive mobile presence, with 80% of the top retail brands opting for a responsive ecommerce site.
Commenting on this finding David Bowen, Head of Product of Episerver, says: “In 2017 mobile is going to play a bigger role than ever before in both marketing and retail. Our research shows that smartphones have reached near-complete adoption in the UK, with ownership of tablet devices also now pushing 70%. Yet while mobile commerce is going to be hugely important for today’s retailers, mobile apps are going out of style.
“This switch from mobile apps to in-browser experiences is largely being driven by the surge of mobile search and traffic, consumers have grown accustomed to managing their lives through a web browser. As such, the idea of manually installing and launching a different app for each brand experience seems like an unnecessary hassle.”
This is backed up to some degree by a recent Google and PayPal study that finds that speed to get to what they are looking for is key to most shoppers. So long as they can easily find what they are looking for then they aren’t so bothered about how they get there.
What is interesting is that the Google-PayPal study encourages retailers in the UK to get on messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, as this is increasingly where their customers are to be found – especially if they have a problem and want to communicate with the retailer.
