Combating the notion that mobile retail is bound to fail, I’d like to counter argue. We’ve reached a MAJOR turning point for mobile retail and I’ll tell you exactly why. Mobile earned 44% of retailers’ online traffic, totaling 31% of sales in 2016 according to a mobile market research firm, App Annie. And there’s plenty more to mention. So to inspire my fellow retailers out there, here are some awesome things that are happening right now in mobile retail.
1. Top Retail Apps Are Driving Majority of Mobile Transactions
Great news, right? I want to stress that the retailers who accomplished these high figures of 47-54% respectively offered specialized app capabilities. Some of those capabilities listed: home screen presence, instant loading, offline content, personalization and native functionality. These are a few of the many contributors that increase mobile commerce conversions. Another thing to keep in mind is that the top retail apps come in many sizes, shapes, interfaces and compatibilities such as web apps, hybrid or native. Unlike mobile browser users, apps offer more versatile forms of capabilities through communication and mobile engagement.
Nonetheless, there are plenty of other best practices that increase mobile transactions. A few to list, understanding your customers via actionable data, customer insights or deploying location proximity and setting up contextualized workflows that nurture app users.
2. All Mobile Retail Verticals Are Improving
Image source: Criteo
Another thing worth mentioning with mobile retail is that all sub-verticals within retail are improving. Looks like fashion apps are taking the lead. 17% YoY growth and about 40% average share in Q2 2016. Personally, I have a couple of fashion retail apps on my phone. I use them for loyalty rewards mainly for gathering points in the stores. Also, these fashion retailers send me push messages about sales. However, the push messages aren’t always personalized to me or my preferences. Here’s an article on 5 myths about push messages you need to know.
3. Apps Convert Better than ALL Marketing Funnel Stages
So conversion rates are high. Time spent on shopping apps too. According to App Annie, we reaching over 125 million hours for November in the US. Good news, right? Of course. However, keep in mind the caveat here. Once your mobile customers begin to invest time in your app, be consistent, personable, and available. Complementing the graphic image pulled from the Criteo report, I’d like to highlight the 3 points mentioned.
#1 point is that apps bring 4.6X more product views than mobile browser. That’s a plus. My tip for you is to make sure you’re constantly updating your app’s content with new arrivals, promotional merchandise and other previews of the products through in-app messages, photo galleries and videos and product descriptions.
#2 point is that apps contribute to 2.5X more add-to-basket rates than mobile browser. Nice! My tip for you is to make sure to clearly show the mobile basket and test the functionality periodically!
#3 finally is that apps are 1.2X more likely to check out/buy products than mobile browsing websites do. My tip for you is to always send friendly reminders of pending items in the mobile carts.
If you don’t know where to start with becoming a top retail app, I suggest to download the brief below on m-commerce.
