Why Ecommerce Businesses Should Have Ecommerce Apps
The best ecommerce mobile apps, those who register the highest conversion rates, are the apps which focus on keeping the navigation and the checkout process simple and collect data from the users in order to target them in a more meaningful way.
A Google report published in 2015 highlights that we preferably use our smartphones to make our online searches, even when we are at home and we could easily have access to our desktop computers. What does this entail for the ecommerce sector? To what extent it’s important for ecommerce businesses to have ecommerce apps in order to increase sales and brand awareness? In this blog post we’ll analyse this topic and draw an answer to these questions.
Technological devices can shape our behaviour and the way we deal with the world around us. This is not a one-step process, though, and while the usage of a particular technology increases over time, we should focus our research and analysis on making it possible for that device to simplify the way we communicate to each other or find what we are searching for.
Mobile usage considerably grew in the last few years, as highlighted by more and more reports and by our everyday experience: we check our phones hundreds of times in a day (in most cases it’s the first action we take in the morning too) and we increasingly use our mobiles as our favourite research tools. That means the influence of mobile devices on our decisions, actions and behaviours is becoming bigger and bigger. Marketers are well aware that a big part of their job nowadays is to make sure the business they are promoting has a relevant presence on mobile devices and that constantly monitoring the business mobile performance in order to effectively target customers is the key to grow both the users base and the sales rate.
This is particularly true for businesses in the ecommerce sector. Data on past mobile performance and future mobile trends show that customers’ purchasing journey starts more often on mobiles than any other devices, people use their smartphones to search for the items they need. Therefore it's vital for ecommerce businesses to be there at relevant mobile moments. In order to be successful, though, ecommerce marketers should always remember that providing a great mobile user experience is not an isolated step. Instead, it’s part of a bigger omni-channels and omni-devices marketing strategy aimed at reaching the same customers at different moments and different touch points according to their needs and preferences. That means that the key to success for ecommerce businesses is to ensure the best user experience possible on all devices. How? By delivering a different and personalised layout and user interface on every single device. This is crucial to engage users in a meaningful way and make them feel in control of the purchase process no matter which device they are using or at what time of the day they are making the search.
Ecommerce apps compared to ecommerce websites
The best way for ecommerce businesses to be there at relevant mobile moments for their customers and increase the conversion rates is to provide an ecommerce app to their users. As highlithed by this report, 85 % of mobile users prefer to use mobile apps over mobile websites, but 79% of them will not tolerate a problematic mobile app, and will abandon it after only one or two failed attempts. These findings confirm the importance for ecommerce businesses to build ecommerce apps which deliver a great user experience and reduces the risks of users frustration and dropout.
Which are the best ecommerce apps?
First of all, it’s important to keep the loading times and the risk of crashes low. Moreover, the best ecommerce mobile apps, those who register the highest conversion rates, are the apps which focus on keeping the navigation and the checkout process simple and to collect data from the users in order to target them in a more meaningful way. Action buttons like ‘add to cart’ or ‘proceed to checkout’ should be always visible and easily accessible. The signup process should be straightforward and collect just a few relevant information. The subsequent analysis of these users data is crucial for a good ecommerce mobile marketing strategy. There are quite a few powerful tools you can integrate in your ecommerce app in order to make it more successful in terms of users engagement and retention. These tools enables you to send personalised push notifications to your users, grab their attention on discounts and special offers going on through your ecommerce app and therefore take them back to your application. When based on customers behaviours’ analysis, push notifications leading customers to ecommerce apps can really boost the growth of those ecommerce businesses in terms of sales and loyal users base, because they deliver the right content to the right users at the right time.
Personalisation of push messaging services is the future of Mobile Marketing. At Netmera we commit to follow this trend.
Original Article