As mobile devices are becoming more accessible to a wider demographic of consumers and as mobile shoppers are becoming more confident, we’re seeing steady growth in the amount of people making purchases on their smartphones and tablets.
However, conversion rates lag behind those on other devices, and the checkout can be one of the biggest barriers to mobile commerce.
Mobile apps help to attract new customers, increase engagement and drive conversions, but this often requires the user to keep coming back.
Some in-app offerings will be enough to keep the user returning, but other times the users might need a little reminder to send them back to the mobile apps they may not have opened in a while.
According to data from Localytics, 22% of people who download an app only use it once. This means that marketers really need to be thinking about how they can attract their customers back to their mobile apps.
This thinking should go beyond just app downloads and focus more on value and engagement. This can be done in a number of ways, in terms of marketing, these can include push notifications, location-based services, in-app messaging and SMS.
By combining the use of mobile apps and location-based services, marketers are able to reach out to their customers in the right place and at the right time to help increase engagement and drive conversions.
With GPS technologies becoming more advanced and 4G connections now available across many parts of the UK, location-based services are becoming more precise than ever. This is opening up a huge opportunity for marketers to send their customers targeted and relevant marketing campaigns.
Currently, marketers are using GPS technology, as well as cellular and wifi connections, to locate people and their devices in order to push out relevant information to them.
For marketers who want to target specific areas, like an aisle in a supermarket or a display in a shop for example, these satellite signals not only drain the device’s battery life but also aren’t always as accurate as you might want them to be. This is where iBeacons and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) comes in.
As the number of devices with NFC (near field communication) technology continues to grow, we are seeing a handful of UK brands using NFC in their marketing campaigns to help drive sales and raise brand awareness, all through the use of mobile.
Is this something marketers should be considering for their campaigns?
Mobile apps help to attract new customers, increase engagement and drive conversions, but this often requires the user to keep coming back.
By combining the use of mobile apps and also location-based services, marketers are able to reach out to their customers to send them more targeted content.
Having developed over 160 mobile apps across across a number of different industries, we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t when it comes to mobile apps.
Here are a few of our top tips to help you on your way to creating a successful mobile app.
With so much competition across the app stores, it’s essential for businesses to consider their marketing strategy long before the planning and build of their app, not just as an afterthought.
There are a huge number of apps out there. The market leaders, Apple and Android, have nearly 800,000 in their individual app stores.
The Windows Phone Store now has over 150,000 and BlackBerry announced 70,000 apps at the Blackberry 10 launch in January.
With so many apps to contend with, it’s essential for businesses to be conducting target audience analysis and competitor analysis right from the beginning in order to stay ahead of the competition.
With over 60% of the UK owning a smartphone and just under a fifth of the population owning tablets, it’s vital that businesses and brands are thinking about the different types of device their websites are being viewed on, and also what situations the users are in when viewing websites.
A recent report from Econsultancy found that four out of five organisations in the UK are still not designing their websites for smartphones or tablets.
As the use of mobile devices continues to increase, businesses need to be thinking about how their websites are appearing across the huge range of mobile and desktop devices available.
The average person has around 41 apps on their phone; these range from social and gaming apps, to daily deals, retail and media apps.
As mobile traffic continues to gain traction on web traffic, and as apps continue to be a vital channel for keeping the consumer engaged, it has never been more important for brands to monitor how their apps are performing to ensure they are delivering the experience users expect.