The way retail businesses have been operating has changed a lot over the last 5 years. Retail businesses went from shops to create websites of their own. From websites, they then shifted to mobile websites. Few retail websites have now made it mandatory for their customers to use their mobile apps in order to shop from their online store. This is because a majority of the audience has shifted from desktop to mobile. This shift from desktop to mobile urged the retail businesses to go from a mobile website to a mobile app.
This shift from web to mobile is taken as a positive challenge. It is also a great way to find your target audience and reach your potential customers. It makes it easy to follow who is opening the app and when and looking at what. It is also easier for the customers as they can simply buy something by just tapping a few times on their phone screen. Brands should hire mobile app developers to specifically focus on building their own app. But these are just some of the basic benefits of going mobile. We will take a look at a few more points in this article.
1. Personalized shopping experience
When a customer uses a mobile app, retailers can check out the user’s buying history, personal preferences, demographics, browsing patterns etc. These are known as identifiers. This will allow the retailer to offer their customers what they want or need, based on their search patterns. This will, in turn, improve the purchasing behavior. Also, the real-time responses will help in improving the result through personalization. This is not easy to do on a website. Adding identifiers on a mobile app is a much better and easier option, than following it on a website.
2. Increased Customer Engagement
It has been noticed that customers tend to use and visit mobile apps more compared to websites. This is because mobile apps are handy and easily accessible. This is one major reason why a lot of retail businesses have invested so much in developing their own mobile app. The communication between the customers and retailers also improves. Customers can give feedback or complaints directly on the app. It will also be easy for retailers to respond using push notifications.
3. Improves brand visibility
Market research numbers prove that more than 4 million people use mobile apps. Maybe they are not using the app for the same reason, but there is definitely a large number of the audience using those apps. This proves that the market for mobile apps is pretty big due to its customized service. Using a mobile app, you can get your customer’s attention in a way that no other traditional marketing technique can do.
4. Social Media integration
With the mobile apps, it is extremely easy to integrate social media accounts of the users. The same can be done with websites as well, but doing it through an app will definitely be easier. This way your brand gets more exposure. Users can also login to the app using their existing social media accounts. This way they can also eliminate the tedious login process.
Wrap Up
Digital presence of a brand or a retail business has such an impact, on both the retailers and the users, that it cannot be ignored. A user would be reluctant if the brand has no digital presence. So having a mobile app is important as it will not only help you build an online presence, but it will also be convenient for the customers.