E-commerce has grown a lot in the last few years. And the main reason behind its popularity is that online shopping provides a direct link between the sellers and buyers, eliminating the middlemen. However, as the new technological advents keep evolving, online stores also need a revamp. Hence, a mobile app is the perfect solution for providing a user-friendly and an even more interactive platform to the customers.
Today, most of the people prefer online shopping from mobile apps over e-commerce websites. The reason why customers prefer app purchases is simple; it’s convenient and offers a great user experience too. And if your e-commerce store is doing well, an app would make your business even better. On the other hand, if your business is facing some problems in generating leads from potential customers; an app can definitely provide better results.
Crucial Reasons to Develop a Mobile App for Your Ecommerce Store
A mobile app offers better accessibility, easier navigation, user interface, and transaction system, as compared to websites. Customers today need convenient ways of accessing a large amount of information in a short span. Moreover, an app makes your brand recognized, maintaining round-the-clock communication with your customers. In fact, a study revealed that 67% of m-commerce customers prefer buying from the apps made by their favourite brands.
Increased Online Presence
The year 2018 saw that the revenue generated from mobile apps equalled $117 billion. The numbers also tell that customers are more inclined towards spending money for an app than a desktop or even mobile sites. Having an app for your e-commerce store brings businesses closer to customers through communication. Apart from that, apps have a feature of integrating social plug-ins which prompt the customers to share their favourite product pages with their friends on social media.
Better Conversion and ROI
Cart abandonment is one of the most common problems faced by online stores. It means that for some reason, even after completing the steps to purchase customers have left the shopping cart, or simply didn’t make a purchase. This might be because of the sign-up forms between the transactions. Apps have shown that they have almost 20% less cart abandonment rate. Statistics also show that most customers i.e. almost 56% leave the cart because of unexpected costs. Product descriptions form a significant part of e-commerce stores and apps. Apps provide a better platform to showcase the products with video content providing information. Moreover, mobile applications have a better user-interface, hence creating clarity of navigation and lesser steps to complete a purchase.
Valuable Consumer Insights
Each action on the app can be analyzed which gives better customer insights. The bounce rate is one such indicator that provides insights into the users who have continued to the purchase section and who decided not to complete. Studies have shown that if a site page loads even 1 second later than 3 seconds, it can result in dropping the conversion rate by 7%. Moreover, it also tells that at which point the users opt to leave the cart. Other essential metrics like Churn Rate and Retention Rate are also invaluable to keep customers coming back. These are used to gain insights from push notifications, email marketing, etc. and analyze the customers who return to the page after abandoning the cart and who do not.
Enhanced Customer Engagement
Mobile apps also help in enhancing customer engagement by measuring and optimizing multiple channel funnels. MCF (Multi-Channel Funnels) is an analytical tool used to enhance engagement by understanding the journeys of customers. A customer journey usually starts from searching about a product on the website and finishing the purchase through the app, or vice versa. The channels used in the journey are called interaction paths through which a purchase is made. Statistics show that almost 65% start their search from mobile apps and that the apps are generally the most common starting channel as compared to desktops sites.
Increased SEO Rankings
Mobile apps have started playing a very big role in increasing the SEO rankings of a business on search engines. App Indexing is now used by various search engines that rank website content along with app content. App Indexing uses an algorithm called deep links which helps analyze the content and ranking is done accordingly. Hence, an app for your online store helps in doubling your SEO rankings apart from increasing the organic traffic. In fact, app content is given more priority than the site content. In fact, 21% of customers find new apps to install through search engines only. So, an e-commerce business definitely needs an app to gain the first page spots in SEO rankings.
Moreover, these apps also offer location-based services which can help in identifying the most successful demographics, regions, and segments. Geo-targeting helps businesses to send customers their location-specific offers when they enter a particular location. This helps in integrating the virtual and physical shopping experience where customers can find a store on their app and walk-in. A whopping 90% of customers use their smartphones in physical stores to influence their purchases.
Customer Loyalty and Brand Awareness
A consistent layout and design provide a better user experience which eventually increases customer loyalty. Consistency implies that the experience should be constantly amplified by offering relevant suggestions and personalized features. With new technological advances like a virtual assistant or chatbot also increases the level of interaction between customers and the brand. Some apps can also be accessed offline which saves the data for consumers. These apps also load faster and are not too much dependent on Internet speed.
Final Thoughts
As technology advances, customers increasingly are inclining towards personalization. And, mobile apps are the best way to provide personalized features that have a direct relation with the needs and wants of customers. In fact, customers themselves select their preferences when they create their profiles on apps. This gives valuable insights to the businesses to deliver the services which are relevant to them only. It also has a psychological angle to it; personalization creates better user experiences which eventually makes customers feel welcomed.