Popular mobile app strategies for online retailers

Today’s era is of competition. More than 50% of web browsing accounts for mobile users. These numbers unequivocally speak about the importance of mobile applications in every field of your lives that you might encounter.

These apps have become more than just the means of a better lifestyle; rather, they are necessities nowadays.

E-commerce does not merely hold the tag of an emerging field now. Its roots are deeply grounded in the market. So, the prevailing demand is to let e-commerce be more vast.

This has widened up the advantages of mobile app strategies that have given a boost to all e-commerce brands.

Nowadays, almost every other e-commerce brand is launching its mobile app to accelerate the revenue by providing customers everything handy and within just one-click-away.

From fashion to food, mobile apps have covered it all. This has allowed e-commerce brands to reach maximum people.

What Strategies Have Made These E-Commerce Brand Hero from a Zero?

Let us have a brief tour of these strategies, along with some case studies.

1. Offers Do Matter

Which things do attract them?

The problem with many e-commerce businesses is the stagnation phase after a fair enough inaugural success.

The most common hurdle in their growth is the enlarging market and competition. If the option of promotional offers is handled and targeted correctly, this stagnation can be broken.

Burger King tried an eccentric way in which the team had the taste of success at the end.

Burger King has not just changed the marketing matrix of Quick Service Restaurants(QSR) but it has also set a milestone for its rivalry burger chains.

The reason behind this is Burger King’s eagerness of having a proper mobile app to ensure more customer engagement. Its Whopper Detour promotion boosted the number of app downloads rapidly. The approach was unique.

The exclusive mobile app-offers such as free promotional smartphones for the Burger King app users included geofencing of its competitor McDonald’s restaurants. This conditional offer strategy worked perfectly as it could target and locate its potential burger fans.

When it was the end of the promotion of its newly launched app, nearly 4.5 million downloads had been accounted including an initial 1.5 million downloads within 9 days of the launch.

Though being a bit late-comer in the mobile world,  Burger King tasted the success and remained at the top of the app store chart.

A well-thought and wisely played mobile app marketing idea increased product awareness and almost tripled the burger sales of this established burger chain.

2.  Mobile Design Optimization and Response Time

The quicker, the better!

The user experience with your mobile application matters a lot. No one wants to install or continue with an app that crashes very often or runs slow.

Mobile users are quite attentive towards speed and they cease to wait long. Better mobile design optimization simply means more conversion rates, and that is where the businesses keep their eyes on. Often it is termed as conversion rate optimization(CRO).

Let us have a look at what Walmart did to improve its mobile sales and improve customer service:

Walmart has a larger influence on the retail market and in people's day-to-day needs. But the retail chain was looking for more customer participation using mobile technology's wave.

One of the primary foci of Walmart's mobile app launch and marketing strategy was self- servicing tools. Touch- optimization helped Walmart to let its app users be more aware of the products, to see the description just on-one-click. Tap it and know it better.

This feature is currently enhancing their response time and customer satisfaction. Other new salient features are- the facility to add products into the cart using your voice instead of typing, see manufacturer's coupons, scan QR codes, and view what is available locally.

Another feature that is currently available only in a few stores but still driving the attention is, en routing the in-store or offline products.

Design optimization makes it possible to categorize products according to customer segmentation. It gives the answer to which features in the app should be added for which customer base.

Mobile Design optimization increased Walmart’s 98% mobile sales by its mobile-first approach over websites.

Customers nowadays depend a lot on their convenient mobile devices. Walmart's mobile app has encouraged its users to do more product research and grab the best out of it.

Appropriate call-on-actions, a simplified UI, and quicker navigation activities play a vital role in the user experience.

One more example here can be given about Guidecentral. It is an app to create and share a DIY project. The app made the perfect use of design optimization and included relevant keywords in the app descriptions.

Moreover, the team changed the logo, added “how to” keyword in their app name, and improved the call-on-action buttons. This design optimization strategy triggered a 700% increment in the app downloads.

3. Consumer Participation with Duplex Communication

What do your customers think?

To keep your app users actively engaged is the main problem with the conversion of your potential customers. There is a clear possibility that they uninstall your app after a considerable time. There can be several driving reasons for the same.

Then how to read their minds and attain more customer participation? How to assure that you don’t lose your mobile customers? One established way is to network your customers in two-way communication. Their feedbacks and needs are important to your business growth.  

Here is the scenario of what Lenskart did to attract customers when not many people trusted this brand:

Cit's base stronger in the digital world. The prominent e-commerce brand adopted a distinct way to communicate with customers but not just limited to giving product details and purchase information.

Its mobile app marketing ran ahead and gave away to share users their opinions about products as well. The app includes features to try their products virtually.

With offers like free eye check-up, free first frame, and 14 days replacement cashback policy, Lenskart gained more consumer participation. Lifelong downloads of Lenskart has crossed 5.5 Lakhs. Moreover, they witnessed the customer cycle repetition.

4.  Customized and Paid Search Optimization

Target right, get right!

While sometimes it becomes hasty, if put and used right, in-app purchases and paid advertisements can convert a large group of users into your potential customers.

Analytics helps here for deciding where to set the target point and whom to attract. But cautions have to be made while using such ads so that the user does not get irritated by constant block out or performance hindering.

Choose your ads wisely, and you can drive more attention. Customizing your users’ product purchase options with your mobile app can increase their interest.

Nike tried to fit into the shoes of paid search optimization. But how?

When Nike observed more traffic on its mobile apps, this eminent sportswear brand saw a robust opportunity to compete with its rivals. E-commerce with mobile apps seemed more productive than websites.

Nike’s app facilitates its users the ability to customize their shoes and colors and to get their shoes inked with quotes or sayings. This exhibited a hike in their product demand and mobile sales showed a positive graph.

Third-party fitness or gaming apps worked as magnetism for this leading brand, providing a roadmap to paid ads.

Activewear brands-keywords result in paid ads in the third- party retailer apps. The study shows this number is almost 46%. These paid ads gained Nike more traffic and hence improved its ranking in the app store.

5.  App Store Optimization (ASO)

The basics which run from behind

There are over 2.1 million mobile applications present in the app store. Looking at this huge number, you cannot expect to secure many visitors.  

Thousands of more e-commerce brands, serving the same purpose you do, subtract your success possibilities. Mere online presence in the app store is not sufficient. To improve your chances of being found in the top search results, ASO works like a backbone.

Relevant keywords, a proper title of your app, an informative description, logo, and many more aspects should be taken care of.

Omvana knew this very basic factor in mobile app marketing and that earned this app more organic search in the app store.

Omvana is a meditation app that struggled to gain enough visibility rate initially.  Hardly anyone would have heard its name, and hence most of its potential customer base was dormant.

With a better understanding of ASO, the team of Omvana could draw awareness of targeted and interested mobile users. They came to know that keywords such as sleep, meditation, relaxation, mental health, etc. are being searched the most.

They changed the name of the app to “Omvana – Meditate, Sleep, Focus, Relax, Rest & Nap Better with 1000s of Mindfulness, Hypnosis, Meditation and Binaural Sounds” just from Omvana. The outcome of this was the increment of their downloads by 125%.

For sure, even a simple looking strategy holds importance. 

6. Analytics

How far have you come and where did you go wrong?

Launching a mobile application is not enough for mobile e-commerce or to say m-commerce. It should run with consistency.

Analytics and KPIs give you insight into your success. Analytics tools give you the chance to improve your brand value and correct your faultlines.

Note down answers to a few questions:

• Whether you have approached through the right indicators?
• What does make them hesitate to use an app for the same product?
• Which feature does buy you more customers?

Location and requirement based tracking further shapes the analytics metric. This metric gives a better scope of targeting more people and the right users through mobile apps.

Analytics is a behind-the-scenes tool, which analyzes your strategies and controls them. It is more about improvisations than achievements.

Conclusion

There are many successful stories written in the history of e-commerce brands.

Well-nourished methodologies of mobile app marketing have been a central vertex in these stories. It is up to you which ones should you go for and which ones suit your conditions.

Be it a well-rehearsed or an out-of-the-box idea, if lead appropriately, you can win the e-commerce market and customers with your app.