6 Reasons Why Your Online Store Needs an eCommerce App

Covid-19 pushed a lot of brands to establish an online presence. This also created a huge trend of online retail shopping among consumers. According to statistics, 70% of Americans shop online, this makes 230 million shoppers in the States alone. 51% of these online shoppers use mobile devices for shopping which means catering to these customers isn’t optional anymore for a business to grow. As a business owner, you need to understand the user journeys of the major chunk of your customer base and cater to their needs. Due to the stated facts, the eCommerce trend is seeing a quick shift to mobile. 

This trend is also giving businesses that own a mobile application a competitive advantage in the early moves. Not only does this give them a chance to retain their customer base, but the sales are also dramatically increased due to the easier communication channel between the business and the consumers. 

To understand the reasons for this shift and why you should consider an eCommerce mobile application, let’s take a look at the reasons below.

1) Higher Conversion Rates

A mobile app psychologically gives the user a sense of purpose. This translates to better product exposure and better conversion. Generally, a mobile application converts 130% more customers than websites.

The push notifications feature usually helps boost conversion and give an additional marketing channel that can help increase conversion for a product or give better visibility to the store. 

An essential advantage of an application is that it is typically faster due to the data stored locally on mobile devices. Speed also translates to lower bounce rates making it the better alternative to a web store.

2) Better UX

Mobile applications now use the devices to their fullest to create the best user experience for customers. Artificial Intelligence, AR, and VR can be used to better understand the customer’s needs to give them a personalized experience.

Mobile websites require users to sign in at a certain point in the buying experience, making many consumers lose interest. Mobile applications offer a single sign-in option that makes the buying experience much easier. There is also a clear difference between speed as most mobile applications store the data locally on the mobile device, reducing load times as compared to web applications, which take a longer time to process. 

3) Customer Retention

An application creates direct communication between a business and a user. Customers can be offered discounts based on their activity of purchases and visits. Most applications offer discount vouchers to customers who make frequent purchases hence encouraging them to use the application again in the future. 

The application can also be designed with chatbots and clear customer service options for the users to have clarity regarding the application in addition to the solutions to their problems.

The push notifications also play a vital role as they can be used as reminders for sales, discounts, and for encouragement to visit the application to view new products. Furthermore, an application boosts brand loyalty. If the user gets the best experience from the products as well as the application, it is highly likely that the same customer would make a repeat purchase.

4) Increased Value of Average Order

A customer who uses your eCommerce application comes for a dedicated shopping experience. This shopping experience can be enhanced through the use of Machine Learning and AI. Each customer can be displayed similar items, which makes the customer decide that they want more than what they came for. The products viewed per shopping session also increase in the case of a mobile application.

A customer also tends to shop more if the payments are easier to make. If the application takes the payment methods once and uses it for all future purchases, it can amplify the number of visits and purchases made per customer due to the ease of use and payment.

With the conversion rates coupled with more products viewed per session, the sales automatically go high as the Average Order Value (AOV) increases. Even a simple $5 increase in AOV can significantly increase the sales of a business which adds to the reasons why a mobile application is necessary.

5) Reduced cart abandonment rates

Checkouts are the most tricky parts of an online eCommerce store since this is where most buyers abandon the store. This can be due to one of the following reasons:

Customers should be viewed as lazy beings due to which the checkout process should have minimal distractions and steps involved. A mobile application makes the process much easier by saving sign-in and payment information.  

6) Branding

A mobile application turns your store into a brand. If the right marketing and design strategy is in place, the customers get a clear image of what your brand is about and what you aim to achieve. 

The application becomes a one-stop shop where he can engage, buy, and look at the products you have to offer in addition to retaining information regarding your brand as a whole. This gives a competitive advantage to your store over other businesses. 

Conclusion

The eCommerce trend is shifting towards mobile commerce stores. Consumers have started preferring mobile applications over web shopping. These applications are growing at a rate of 54% per year helping e-commerce brands dominate. Currently, businesses that don’t own applications are at a competitive disadvantage. Even if we rule out the disadvantage, having an application can help businesses by giving them an edge due to the early move.

With the right strategy, an application can help build a better brand, market better, retain customers, and increase the average value of an order. So investing in an application that is user-friendly, design customized, feature-loaded, and SEO optimized has become increasingly necessary. Although making an application or getting one made sounds intimidating, there are a lot of service providers and third-party applications that make the process a lot easier!