It is clear that mobile will continue to grow throughout 2015 and beyond. Study after study details a bright future for mobile, such as when research firm eMarketer anticipated mobile to surpass desktop in search ad dollars this year.
We are seeing smartphones transform several aspects of our life that you may not have considered. From how we access information to how we shop, mobile is transforming the modern world.
We are well past the point of mobile being just for early adopters. Mobile is a fantastic medium for all businesses due to the broad demographic of users it reaches. While many think of millennials when it comes to mobile, fact of the matter is that a quarter of the mobile shoppers are in fact over 55 (comScore).
Mobile devices are where your consumers are at, but how do you get the most from you companies mobile offerings?
Personalization
Making your mobile application or web site more personal to your users can pay huge dividends. Customers have come to expect offers to be tailored to their preferences. Data-driven, personalized marketing is the future and there is no reason your business isn’t taking advantage of it now given the power of mobile devices.
The modern consumer has learned to personalize their device and their mobile experience. Brands that allow for personalization build brand loyalty and reap the rewards of catering to the needs of modern consumers. Personalization helps create user experiences that are more impactful, which translates into sales. With mobile, businesses are able to deliver offers and information based on a user’s location, interests and preferences. Additionally, as users are able to personalize their experience on your mobile offerings it creates a “buy-in” that invests them more into the experience and helps continue use.
Data enables retailers to personalize experiences and drive sales and should be planned for in the early stages of your mobile application development project. An iPhone application developer or Android application developer can discuss information architecture with you and plan ahead for your needs.
User Experience
Modern application design is all about a focus on the user and their needs. No longer are consumers willing to accept difficult to use sites and apps and instead they will opt for retailers that create the experiences they are looking for. Applications will be abandoned quickly if they are not intuitive to users
Key to understanding user experiences is understanding trends in the industry and commonly accepted ways of doing things. Fight against the generally accepted way to accomplish simple tasks and risk your apps being abandoned due to being confusing. Mobile users are picky and won’t waste time figuring out complicated operations.
Seamless Experiences
Consumers are more sophisticated than ever and expect businesses to create the seamless digital experiences that are consistent with a brand’s in-store experience and equally engaging. Studies indicate that 86 percent of senior level marketers say it’s important to create a cohesive journey across all touch points for consumers. This is for good reason as many consumers will check out a product in store and buy it later via mobile app or website.
Businesses can’t rely on a single touch point any more as customers may not go into a location or to a business’s web site to make a purchase. You need to make sure you put the tools consumers need in their hands.
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Smartphone use has become an important part of our modern lives and has become “the way we do things”. According to a recent study by GlobalWebIndex, 80% of all online adults now own a smartphone. Additionally their research discovered that “75% percent of smartphone users are accessing mobile internet services on their smartphones.”
Clearly if your business isn’t presenting a mobile friendly face right now it is missing out on a sizable opportunity to interact with your target consumers and increase sales. Mobile isn’t something you need to think about in the future, mobile is right now.
Moving forward, how do you get the most of your mobile web site and or mobile applications?
1. Start with Strategy
Start with an understanding of your objectives. Any good strategy begins with objectives, but be careful not to only consider your business’s objectives. Any good mobile strategy will be sure to consider who the end users are and what their objectives are going to be as well. In fact, placing a priority on a customer based focus will pay dividends.
You will also want to analyze technical issues as well such as whether you should hire in house talent or look for a mobile application developer to help you with your project. Other technical considerations such as choice of platform should be part of your strategy as well. Are you going to be building mobile applications or a mobile web site? Or both? Your choice can depend on your business and the goals of its mobile program.
If you are looking to deliver data such as locations or reviews to help customers and potential customers while they are on the go, then mobile web sites are a terrific way to deliver that information due to the proliferation of mobile searches. On the other hand, if you want to stay connected to loyal customers and increase engagement with them, then mobile apps are definitely the way to go. Ideally modern businesses would make make both options available.
2. UX is a Priority
Regardless of which strategic choices you make above you will want to make sure you prioritize user experiences as part of your project. Your mobile web site and mobile application will need to provide information to users in a clean, easy to understand format. The smaller size of mobile devices, along with the fact that they are often used on the go, make ease of use a priority that cannot be ignored. You must make information easy to access and easy to consume.
3. Personalize the Experience
Never before have marketers and businesses had access to provide personalized experiences they way they can with mobile. Mobile devices allow consumers to access information instantly creating a great deal of change in consumer expectations towards retailers. Today’s consumers want to be able to choose whether or not they receive notifications and if they opt-in, require that a business is delivering relevant personalized content. One-size-fits-all is not how consumers think and businesses should not try to paint them into that box with their mobile offerings.
4. Alerts and Notifications
Modern consumers are regularly checking their mobile devices (often whether they get an alert or not). We have become somewhat tethered to our devices. Since people are regularly checking their mobile devices, it would be silly not to send out alerts and notifications to increase engagement with your mobile application or business. But please be careful that you do not annoy your customers by sending out too many notifications, sending out notifications about trivial items that will make customers feel like you are wasting their time or sending out notifications at inappropriate times. You will also want to make sure you provide an easy way to opt out or refine the delivery to personal tastes.
5. Leverage Location
By using geo-location, you can generate location-based ads, alerts and notifications that can send out targeted messages to specific customers. Beyond personalizing a user’s experience and content you can also make it contextually relevant by delivering it based on location as well. It is estimated that fewer than one quarter of the offline businesses are making effective use of location based marketing so there is ample opportunity to gain advantage over your slower to adopt competitors.
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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.
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