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What Is A Mobile Shopping App, And How Can It Impact Your Business?

14 min read

Take a look at your phone; you will find countless apps for different businesses. Why do we have so many apps on phones? Because they are the best way for businesses to interact with customers. They are also more convenient to use, among other things.

There are several reasons why customers prefer to shop within apps. For one, mobile apps often provide a more convenient and user-friendly experience than websites. Shopping apps are also typically faster and more responsive than mobile websites, which can be important for customers looking to make quick purchases. Additionally, many shopping apps offer exclusive deals and discounts not available on the retailer’s website.

Keep reading to learn more about how apps are a must for any business.

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What Is A Mobile Shopping App?

A mobile shopping app is an application that allows customers to browse and buy products or services from a retailer or service provider. Shopping apps can significantly impact businesses as mobile traffic continues to grow at an alarming rate. In fact, the majority of transactions now take place within shopping apps rather than on traditional websites.

Why Are Mobile Shoppers Going To Mobile Apps Rather Than Mobile Sites?

There are several reasons why customers prefer to shop within mobile apps. For one, mobile shopping apps often provide a more convenient and user-friendly experience than mobile websites. Shopping apps are also typically faster and more responsive than mobile websites, which can be important for customers looking to make a quick purchase.

Additionally, many mobile shopping apps offer exclusive deals and discounts not available on the retailer’s website.

In What Ways Mobile Shopping Apps Can Impact Your Business?

Mobile shopping apps have come a long way. They offer many more features than a traditional website can offer.

Here are just a few of the ways a mobile app can change your business:

  • Quick and Convenient shopping for customers
  • More responsive and easy to navigate than website
  • Discounts and app exclusive deals
  • Social media
  • Marketing channel
  • Better customer service
  • Customer insights
  • New customers

Quick and convenient shopping for customers

One of the main reasons customers prefer shopping apps is because they are quick and convenient. Shopping apps are designed to make it easy for customers to find and buy the products they need. They also allow you to purchase items faster by allowing customers to save payment info and make in-app payments by logging into an account.

More responsive and easy to navigate than website

Shopping apps are also typically more responsive and easy to navigate than mobile websites. This can be important for customers who have trouble with websites. Mobile apps can allow you to organize and redirect customers to precisely what they need without any distractions that could take them away from your website. This will provide higher customer satisfaction and can lead to more sales.

An example of how mobile shopping app looks on mobile device

Discounts and app exclusive deals

In addition to being more responsive and easy to navigate, mobile shopping apps often offer exclusive deals and discounts that are not available on the retailer’s website. This can be a major draw for customers, as they can save money by using the app. As mobile traffic continues to grow, businesses need to take advantage of mobile shopping apps to attract new customers.

Social media

The internet’s driving force is engagement. The more time people spend using your app, the better it is for your company.

When it comes to increasing engagement, there’s no better option than social media. Still, if you want to make your app work with major social networking sites, you should consider advertising on them as a first step.

To generate a large following on social media, you’ll need a strong social media campaign. Running popular platforms such as Facebook and YouTube for your app’s launch is an excellent method to get all of the attention it deserves right away.

Once you’ve obtained all of the downloads, encourage new users to join up with their social media profiles. This will make future social media sharing a breeze. Similarly, you should include social media buttons and other shareable call-to-actions in your app. To get people to utilize them, you may need to offer them enticing incentives.

For certain users, challenges and other enjoyable methods are the most effective incentive for sharing in-app material. You may also increase user engagement by linking the app with social media feeds beyond share buttons. This is a standard extra offered by most development firms.

Marketing channel

Another area of your company that could benefit significantly from a bespoke mobile application is the marketing department. When businesses switch to mobile, digital marketers get direct access to user data, one of the first obvious benefits.

User sessions and entry points can be extremely beneficial for marketing efforts. An app may deliver content to your users more effectively than other traditional marketing methods because it gives you access to all of the data your marketers need.

Whether you’re marketing to consumers or businesses, going mobile allows you to give the greatest deals at the customer’s fingertips.

Here are some ways mobile features make this direct approach to marketing possible:

  • Response time: Users want to get to their intended action as quickly as possible, so they usually immediately interact with your offers or prompts. You may need to wait up to six hours on average for emails.
  • Push notifications: Push notifications have a lot of power when it comes to mobile. On average, push alerts have almost 70% opt-in rate. The difference between 5% and 70% is obvious compared to email marketing’s 5%.
  • In-app clickthrough rates: Ads, calls to action (CTA), and other business-related elements will always have a higher clickthrough rate within applications. This is equally true for push notifications.
  • Location data: Knowing the customer’s current location is a valuable piece of information for mobile marketers. With it, they can send hyper-local offers and notifications to users.
  • Integrated solutions: When you connect different mobile marketing channels (banner ads, video ads, etc.), response rates increase by an average of 73%.

Combining mobile with other digital marketing channels provides a more holistic view of customer behavior, which helps direct future mobile marketing efforts.

Customer service

Customer service is a new field with some old rules. Customers expect quick answers, which require the use of mobile devices for interaction. Customer support via mobile has several advantages for both business owners and consumers.

Customers are allowed to serve themselves. Embedding a helpful, easy-to-use help center into your app might be an acceptable method to assist your consumers in getting answers to their questions as quickly as possible.

The number of queries handled by customer support staff drops. With growing client service expectations, a mobile app may substantially decrease the burden on your workers.

The most effective approach to providing outstanding client service is ensuring that few or no problems develop. Before the consumer encounters a problem, data from your application may assist you in monitoring possible concerns or questions. However, while you think about it, a well-designed mobile app is always good news for customer service.

Loyalty Programs

So far, we’ve looked at how mobile marketing can be extremely useful for businesses that want to reach their customers through mobile devices. But there are also ways in which mobile marketing can help your business cultivate relationships with its customers—especially when using loyalty programs.

Loyalty programs have been around for decades. However, mobile loyalty apps are on the rise—a mobile trend that’s likely to stick around for at least a few more years.

What are mobile loyalty apps?

A mobile loyalty app is an application on your customer’s mobile device which allows them to earn rewards or discounts by making purchases or taking specific actions within the mobile shopping app. They can do this while they’re outside of your store, sometimes even while they’re in another one! This means customers have more opportunities to promote your brand and products.

Mobile loyalty programs have increased in popularity because they leave users with positive experiences that encourage them to come back again and again.

According to a study completed by IDC Research, we’ve seen that:

  • Loyalty mobile app users are 2.5 times more likely to be “satisfied” with a retailer’s mobile app.
  • Loyalty mobile app users are 2.8 times more likely to recommend the retailer’s mobile app to their friends.
  • Loyalty mobile app users spend almost four times more on average than those who don’t use the retailer’s loyalty mobile app.
  • Satisfaction with loyalty mobile apps is highest among millennials (83%)

The stats show that, if done correctly, implementing a mobile loyalty app can yield amazing results for your business. So, what makes these apps so successful? What do customers like about them?

There are a few key reasons:

  • Convenience: Customers appreciate not having to carry physical cards around.
  • Acceleration: Businesses can see how mobile loyalty apps immediately impact their bottom line.
  • Personalization: When customers use mobile loyalty apps, they feel like your brand recognizes them.
  • Rewards: Customers are motivated to continue using mobile loyalty apps when they know they’ll be rewarded for doing so.

Getting in on the mobile movement now allows you to cash in before these numbers skyrocket even higher. Mobile also allows you to engage with users wherever and whenever they are most likely engaging at a high level with brands, which is great for customer loyalty. So make sure to consider how mobile marketing can benefit your business and customers.

Customer insights

Customer insights are required to do business profitably in the 21st century. Furthermore, customer insights are necessary if you want to have a successful marketing plan.

Your mobile app may be a dependable and valuable source of consumer insights. If you provide value in return, consumers will usually be willing to share some critical information with you.

There are several entry points for these insights to be tracked.

A survey or questionnaire on a landing page is usually the best option. You can provide incentives or rewards when you wish users to complete a survey or fill out a form. Once you’ve analyzed the data at your disposal, your marketing’s weak and strong spots will become obvious.

New customers

You can also use mobile shopping apps to attract new customers. For example, you can entice potential customers with a one-time offer or reward for signing up for your mobile loyalty app.

When someone signs up for your mobile app, they’re essentially providing you with their contact information.

You can then use this information to send them targeted marketing messages.

You can also use mobile loyalty apps to keep track of customer purchase histories. This information can help you determine which products are most popular among your customers.

You can also use this information to create special offers and discounts for your most loyal customers.

Why Don’t You Have a Mobile App?

If you’re not mobile-friendly, you’re going to lose out on a lot of potential sales in the near future. Luckily, implementing mobile marketing is easier than ever before, and there are plenty of great mobile marketing agencies that can help get you started.

Just remember that mobile is about more than having a mobile-optimized website. It’s also about having a mobile shopping app, push notifications, location data, and integrating mobile with other digital marketing channels. If you can do all that, you’ll be well on your way to reaping the benefits of mobile marketing.

Ecwid can help you keep all of your sales and info in one place. Ecwid allows you to connect all your sales avenues together so you can keep tabs on stock, announce sales, and change inventory, all in one place.

Do you want to learn more about selling on mobile?

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About the author

Max has been working in the ecommerce industry for the last six years helping brands to establish and level-up content marketing and SEO. Despite that, he has experience with entrepreneurship. He is a fiction writer in his free time.

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So simple to use – even my most technophobic clients can manage. Easy to install, quick to set up. Light years ahead of other shop plugins.
I’m so impressed I’ve recommended it to my website clients and am now using it for my own store along with four others for which I webmaster. Beautiful coding, excellent top-notch support, great documentation, fantastic how-to videos. Thank you so much Ecwid, you rock!
I’ve used Ecwid and I love the platform itself. Everything is so simplified it’s insane. I love how you have different options to choose shipping carriers, to be able to put in so many different variants. It’s a pretty open e-commerce gateway.
Easy to use, affordable (and a free option if starting off). Looks professional, many templates to select from. The App is my favorite feature as I can manage my store right from my phone. Highly recommended 👌👍
I like that Ecwid was easy to start and to use. Even for a person like me, without any technical background. Very well written help articles. And the support team is the best for my opinion.
For everything it has to offer, ECWID is incredibly easy to set up. Highly recommend! I did a lot of research and tried about 3 other competitors. Just try ECWID and you'll be online in no time.

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