By Satya Ganni, MartMobi
If you are sitting at Starbucks, have a look around. You will probably see a man in a suit pouring over his smartphone and booking his evening flight. The girl at the next table is excitedly sharing the new dress she just bought. And the serious gentleman near the counter is checking the number of calories in the coffee he just ordered. If you look around, you’ll probably see nearly everyone using their smartphone or tablet to do a multitude of things like browsing web, chatting with a friend or buying on an e-Commerce store from their mobile phones.
E-Commerce is growing at a rapid rate across the world, and it won’t be going too far to say that it is probably the fastest growing sector and fueling this growth, at the heart is mobile. According to SmartInsights, about 89% of mobile browsing is through apps rather than sites.
In fact, 33% of consumers prefer a mobile app to a mobile site when they have a choice. Forbes recently headlined that “Shopping Apps Are The Fastest Growing Thing in Mobile,” putting to rest any debate over how e-Commerce merchants can benefit from mobile apps. In such a mobile obsessed world, it is of little wonder that mobile commerce is the new order. Mobile and e-Commerce together are redefining the way customers shop every day.
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Here are some reasons why your e-Commerce business needs a mobile app:
1. Your customers are on mobile: According to Criteo, mobile drives about 30% of total sales and more than 50% of your traffic! With Forrester indicating that over 60% of total retail sales will be made via mobile by 2019, mobile is the most important channel for any e-Commerce business.
2. Push notifications: Mobile commerce apps allow you to interact with your customers at a more personal level if you use push notifications. It is also one of the most critical tools to increase customer loyalty and repeat purchases. You can send updates to your customers’ mobile phones such as “check out our new arrivals” or more personalized messages such as “the item you ordered is now in stock.” Nearly 70% of abandoned carts can be recovered and converted to purchases by just sending push notifications to customers.
3. Speed: Speed is one of the most important variables for retaining a customer on your mobile site. Mobile commerce apps are built on technology that helps them load a lot faster than a mobile site. With lower dependency on network speed, shoppers are instantly gratified with a loaded screen rather than having to stare at a blank screen as most of the content is already available offline. Research shows that for every one-second delay in page load time, the conversion rate drops by about 7%.
4. Payments: Lately everyone’s talking about mobile payments. Apple Pay and Google Wallet are easy payment mechanisms that allow shoppers to check out with just one click. One-click shopping increases the likelihood of impulse buys and removes any hesitation in the shopper’s mind about security concerns. This reduces any remaining friction in the shopping process thereby increasing conversion rates tremendously.
5. Social sharing: Mobile devices are now the de facto access device for social networks such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and other emerging networks. Mobile apps make it tremendously easy for shoppers to share any product they like which, in turn, would expose a merchant’s SKU to thousands of the shopper’s contacts recursively. Did you know 66% of the customers visit social media web sites before buying a product to learn more about the said product?
6. Unprecedented user engagement: A well-built mobile app targeted towards the right audience can achieve outstanding levels of engagement. Typically, if users have downloaded an app they really like, they will use it more frequently and for longer than its equivalent mobile web site. Customers save their favorite apps to their home screens or via shortcuts. This increases their visibility, which means they are likely to be reminded of them more frequently, so impress them once and you will have a loyal customer for a long time.
According to mobile analytics firm Flurry, shopping apps usage grew faster than any other category of apps. For online retailers, mobile apps are quickly overtaking mobile optimized sites as the must-have feature to increase their sales and conversions. Customers are getting more and more comfortable shopping on their smartphones and tablets.
With mobile set to dominate the e-Commerce landscape, business owners need to provide their customers with tools that will allow them to shop and engage more seamlessly. Now, a mobile app is the most powerful tool in retailers’ arsenals. With different mobile commerce platforms like MartMobi, getting a mobile app for an e-Commerce store is very simple. Merchants can go live with their app across all platforms in less than a day.
To top it all, merchants don’t have to stick to one standard design; they customize their store to be one of a kind.
Satya Ganni is CEO of MartMobi, is an authority in mobile commerce and has written extensively in this domain. The MartMobi mobile commerce platform helps online retailers go mobile in less than a day and dramatically increase their sales, merchants from 24+countries trust MartMobi to power their mobile storefronts.
