Billions of shoppers all over the world use retail mobile apps nowadays and find it much easier than to shop in land-based stores or through the websites. According to Statista, almost 80% of consumers in the USA have minimum 1 retail application on their smartphones.
The mobile retail commerce revenue in America only is going to surpass 268 billion USD in 2020 already. It’s nearly two times up from 148 billion in 2018. More than that the share of mobile time spent in apps almost always exceeds 50 % and often reaches up to 85% compared to websites.
Obviously, to offer a good product is not nowadays enough to gain the attention of your potential customers. Hit the home screens of consumer smartphones with your retail solution, offering them a perfect customer experience, novelty, speed, and convenience and you’ll get a great competitive advantage over your rivals.
To prosper in any trade nowadays simply going online is also not enough anymore, you should go mobile. Still, to be successful you should realize the challenges and preferences of the users. Then it will help enhance your commerce in various ways.
Increased reach
The biggest advantage of any retail mobile app is that it can reach the buyer anywhere and anytime. Modern people are almost inseparable from their gadgets and do many things on the go. That’s why the demand for applications grows every day. As of the 1st quarter of 2019, there were 2.1 million Android applications offered on Google Play and nearly 1.8 million iOS solutions in the Apple store.
Clients’ better loyalty
A retail mobile app allows direct interaction between the client and the company. So through notifications and recommendations, you can keep the customers connected to your brand and constantly engaged. Besides, special offers, discount programs, and gamification can serve the same purpose. Every client can then decide for himself how to benefit from your solution.
Improved efficiency
Modern applications allow efficiently keep track of financial aspects and realize inventory management. Besides, through a mobile solution you can benefit from various scheduling tools, real-time inventory check-ups, CRMs, and other functions, which facilitate better customer service. A present-day mobile client expects end-to-end support, so as a retailer you should not only sell goods, support monetary transactions the orders out, but keep to all modern retail mobile app trends, provide an intuitive interface, engaging UX, and easy to use features in your solution.
To really enrich the in-store shopping experience and increase customer flow, your mobile solution should have certain features to facilitate the process through the cutting-edge technologies and tools. Below we’ve tried to figure out the 7 most important features to consider for your effective and successful product.
Easy and quick registration/authorization
Everybody now values time and convenience, so lengthy and complicated processes of registration and authorization may put the customers off your mobile app. In case your registration form requires too many details on part of the client, the interest may be lost. Reduce the trivial details as much as it’s possible.
Manifold payment methods
The more payment options you can offer to the consumers, the wider client base you will gain. Every person prefers the payment method he or she is used to. So it’s important to realize the preferences of the clients of different categories and localities.
Reviews and ratings
Today the reviews of real users are much more valued by the existing and potential customers than the official descriptions of various goods. You may integrate popular review platforms into your product or develop your own features for ratings and reviews. It’s important to remember here that negative reviews might be an advantage. They add trustworthiness to your app and business on the whole, so you should not be afraid of them.
Wish list option
Many of us find wish list a fascinating option when we are on the go. It allows to save, share and come back to a certain item when it’s convenient for us. Without such an option the chances to lose clients are high, so do not underestimate it. Moreover, this is actually a good remarketing campaign, since your customers come back to the bookmarked items either to purchase them or to review in more detail and choose something else.
One-step checkout
The easier the process, the more it enables users to complete the orders. Avoid asking for the details, which can be saved once and for multiple purchases, like card details or shipping address. This info can be securely saved in the client’s profile.
Push notifications
Notifications are a great feature to enhance engagement. They may work as a reminder for those users, who have just installed an app and forget about it. Besides, they can alert customers about the offers, promotions, and discounts you held, scaling the sales up and snowballing your profit.
Offline mode
Everybody nowadays values the uninterrupted experience with various solutions. Implementing the offline mode, you improve not only your app UX but performance on the whole. However, the task may be challenging, because the process requires pre-caching of big data scope.
A sophisticated retail mobile app can boost your sales in many ways. It’s important not only to mechanically implement the features, mentioned above but to study your target audience, their preferences and demands. Besides, it’s vital to entrust your digital solution creation to a professional team, like Axisbits. It’s a guarantee that you will not ruin your customers’ impression about your business through the mobile solution you offer.
