Mobile has established itself as an integral part of e-commerce, and drives e-commerce growth directly. The current market size of mobile commerce is about $40 billion. Mobile visits are responsible for about one-third of traffic inflow to the most popular e-commerce sites.
Nowadays, more and more people do research through their mobile prior to visiting retail outlets or at the time of shopping.
E-commerce is showing a great growth throughout the globe, and it’s perhaps the fastest growing sector. One of the major factors fueling its growth is MOBILE.
When given a choice, a mobile app is preferred over a mobile site by about 33% of consumers. Forbes outlined recently, “Shopping Apps Are Now The Fastest Growing Thing in Mobile,”. This shows that mobile apps are highly beneficial for e-commerce businesses. Mobile commerce is a big deal today.
Study by comScore:
A study done by comScore says, “Retailers who do not (at a minimum) optimize their mobile browsing experience or introduce mobile apps are effectively turning away a third of their potential customers.”
A responsive website is the only thing most e-commerce business owners rely on, to cater to the needs of mobile visitors. Although it’s important to have a responsive website in your mobile commerce strategy, it doesn’t make a complete solution. A mobile strategy that’s complete, would have apps as a significant element of it. For e-commerce merchants, mobile apps no more make a “good to have” option, they have become a must!
Why Create a Mobile App?
If you are an e-commerce business owner, creating a mobile app for your business can prove to be a rewarding step. Why? What benefits would you get by having one? The answers appear below:
1. Your Customers are Using Mobile
As per Criteo, about 50% of the traffic in e-commerce sites and 30% of the total sales are driven by mobile! Forrester indicates that by 2019, more than 60% of the total sales would be made through mobile. This proves that mobile makes a strong channel for e-commerce businesses.
2. Mobile Apps Allow Push Notifications
By using push notifications allowed by mobile apps, you can communicate with customers at a personal level. Mobile apps are also an effective tool for boosting repeat purchases and customer loyalty. Updates can be sent to the mobile phones of customers like, “check out the new arrivals”, or messages that are more personalized like, “the item ordered by you is in stock now”. You can recover and convert to purchase about 70% of abandoned shopping carts by simply sending customers push notifications.
3. More Speed:
Speed plays an important role when it comes to retaining visitors in your mobile website. Mobile apps that are created using Mobixed technologies, load far faster as compared to mobile sites. The dependency on speed of the network is lower in case of mobile apps. Shoppers can instantly view a loaded screen, instead of staring at the blank screen, since most content is available offline already. According to research, every delay of 1 second in page loading time leads to a 7% drop in the conversion rate.
4. Mobile Payments:
Mobile payments have become quite popular now. Google Wallet and Apple Pay are a few simple payment mechanisms, with which shoppers can check out with a single click. The chances of impulse buys are increased with one-click shopping, and hesitation about security concerns are removed from the mind of the shoppers. This lowers friction in the process of shopping, which in turn boosts the rates of conversion significantly.
5. Social Sharing:
Social networking sites like Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and others are now accessed mostly through mobile devices. With mobile apps, shoppers can easily share products they like, which would expose the SKU of a merchant to many of the contacts of shoppers. Research shows that about 66% of customers go to social media networks to know about a product before purchasing it.
6. High User Engagement:
A mobile app that is built well and is aimed at the right audience, has the potential to drive a high level of engagement. If users download apps they are interested in, they would use the apps for longer and more often as compared to their equivalent mobile sites. The favorite mobile apps are saved by users via shortcuts or to the home screen of their mobile. This boosts the visibility of the apps, and users are reminded of the apps more often. So, create a strong impression on a mobile user once, and the user may become a loyal customer of yours.
Considering the benefits you can get with mobile apps, building one for your e-commerce business should be on your list of priorities. Publishing your mobile app on your e-store, can begin a relationship between you and the visitors of your store. You can monitor behavior of users and optimize your mobile app with the help of analytics from the app. Your goal is offering a personalized and seamless experience to customers, irrespective of the device they use. So, go ahead, sit with an expert mobile app development team and come up with a mobile app for your e-store that is set to win hearts!
Jose Lopez
Jose Lopez is a Software Engineer, currently working as a Product Manager at Mobixed, the leading mobile application development company of California. In his 20+ years of experience, he has built robust apps that are simply loved by mobile users. Jose is well-versed with the art and science of creating mobile apps that successfully market businesses.