3 Tips to Improve Your Mobile Apps’ Shopping Experience

According to recent study by Flurry, mobile application usage saw significant growth over the past year, with application usage overall up by an astounding 76 percent in 2014. It should be noted that Flurry defines app usage as users opening and actively engaging with an application.

While every app store category saw growth, the top app growth categories where: Shopping, Utilities & Productivity and Messaging. Meanwhile on the other side of the coin, growth has slowed some for the categories that were the strongest in the early days of mobile applications: Games, Music, Media and Entertainment categories.

Shopping apps were clearly the star of the show in 2014. Growth within the shopping category was larger than in any other category. Looking at iOS and Android combined the number of sessions in the shopping apps category increased by a phenomenal 174 percent in 2014 (Flurry).

More and more, users are not only just getting more comfortable with shopping from mobile devices but they are demanding better tools and experiences from mobile shopping experiences. Consumers today are comparison shopping, checking out coupons and offers, reading and writing reviews, engaging in social shopping, buying & reselling and more, all from their mobile devices.

With shopping apps becoming increasingly more popular it is important that you are creating exceptional experiences for your users or risk losing ground to your competition.

These 3 tips can help you improve your shopping mobile applications.

Focus on Content

Showcase your content rather than hiding it behind unnecessary flourishes and overstated branding elements. Don’t focus so much on superfluous design elements that the content takes a secondary role. Reducing clutter can improve the shopping experience as well as focusing attention on relevant content. Mobile application developers are improving user experiences all the time and can suggest cutting edge methods for presenting navigation in a clean fashion that doesn’t distract from the user experience.

Personalize

Smart phones are personal devices, which lend themselves to applications that allow user to personalize the application and its activities. Users are comfortable interacting with brands about individual preferences in order to improve their user experience; with this data you can create a tailored experience that increases engagement.

Leverage Technology

Don’t be afraid to integrate new technology into your mobile shopping app. Mobile wallets and iBeacons are examples of technologies you can utilize to improve the experience your customers have while on your application.

Photo: John Karakatsanis (Flikr) http://bit.ly/1IzgB2m