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As a D2C business, having an eCommerce storefront should be a no brainer; it is a must for your business to succeed. However, for those businesses that already have an eCommerce store, not having a mobile app when your competitors do, can cause you to fall behind. Put simply, extending your mobile storefront into an eCommerce app has emerged as the most fruitful way for a D2C business to carve out their space in the now, mobile-first, eCommerce world. Which begs the question…
Well, it’s actually a straightforward question to answer. Mobile apps provide business owners with many different options that, when implemented, can lead to higher conversion rates, increased customer loyalty, brand recognition, and, in turn, increased revenue overall.
These include
Obviously, these aren’t reasons to ignore optimising your mobile website in place of making an app, but the reasons why an app can offer customers a much improved experience over a website, and make it the natural choice for shopping on mobile. And research supports this too, with 85% of users preferring an app to a website when shopping on mobile.
To answer this, let’s look at one of the biggest pain points of shopping online, having to repeatedly enter login information. Whilst customers having an account on a website is a useful functionality to business owners, how many times have you forgotten the password or the email you used to initially create your account? It’s frustrating, and can slow down the whole shopping experience.
An app circumvents this problem by remembering user login info, but in doing so, can use owned data, such as browsing and purchase history, to make a more personalised shopping experience than a website can provide.
In fact, providing a personalised customer journey should be one of the main points of focus for any app build. Put simply, a more personalised experience increases the sense of loyalty between brand and customer, and in turn, increase the app’s engagement overall.
Equally, customers can leave app store reviews of their experience, which can significantly enhance an app’s visibility online. Additionally, they present another great metric for business owners to learn from, and can act as the final push another customer might need to download the app themselves.
Lastly, one of the most underrated benefits that an app provides, lies simply in it existing on a phone.
Visual real estate!
A customer repeatedly seeing an app’s icon goes a long way towards increasing brand recognition. Just as someone is more likely to eat something if they see it in their fridge, potential customers are more likely to browse your storefront in the first place if they see the app on their phone, which is the most important part of the customer journey. On top of this, it’s much quicker to open an app in a single click, than it is to find your way to a website on a browser.
It’s no secret that a brands’ ability to adapt their product offering to new trend cycles, and new eras of consumer behaviour, is an absolute requirement for their success. However, D2C brands should also be adapting to the constantly evolving purchasing behaviours of their customers. The development of an eCommerce mobile app is one example of how a brand can stay nimble, and adapt to constant change.
Extending your online store into the mobile environment, by means of an eCommerce app, could be the boost your brand needs to win out in today’s eCommerce world.
Learn about how we built P&Co’s mobile eCommerce app here.
