Does Your Ecommerce Site Need A Mobile App?

Yes is the short answer. But like any responsible, inquiring ecommerce business owner, you want to know why. We’re going to tell you. As Shopify experts and ecommerce website specialists, we not only build mobile apps, we know they’re a critical tool for driving sales.

m-Commerce Is The New e-Commerce

Anytime you’re considering changing direction in your business, adding a new tool or technique, or making any type of adaptation to your existing enterprise, you want to revisit your business goals.

If you’re like most ecommerce owners, you have some general goals:

You want to appeal to your target market, build brand personality and popularity, increase sales, and ultimately, earn more revenue. 

Each of those goals may have its own action plan. Or,  you may have one overarching business strategy that accounts for every one of them. While the goals may shift infrequently, the actions you take to measure and meet those goals should change regularly. We are bombarded with new tech all the time, updated approaches to business operations, and under the whip of analytics that spit pertinent info into the digital ether like a printing press spits out newspapers. Indeed, it is a brave new world out there in the land of digital enterprise almost daily.

Whatever your approach is, an ecommerce mobile application, also known as m-commerce, accomplishes what your entire shop does, but better. How is that possible? 

Well, for starters, let’s look at some very telling stats:

• Mobile accounts for over 67.2% of all e-commerce (1).
• 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile devices (1).
• m-commerce sales in 2021 have multiplied by more than 3.5 times what it was in 2016 (2).
• Almost 75% of money spent on online purchases is accomplished through a mobile device (2).
• By the end of 2021, m-commerce sales are projected to reach $3.56 trillion (3).
• 87% of merchants use the Shopify App Store (1 of 6 installed, on average), and the App Store has generated over $100 million in revenue (4).

Why Do Consumers Use Mobile Apps?

We’re all consumers of mobile apps, so it doesn’t take heavy research to discover why they’re as popular as they are. We use them because, ideally, they save us time, they're consistent, and they’re easier to use than desktop versions on a mobile device. 

What are your reasons for using certain ecommerce apps?

However, as with most novel inventions, there are aspects that can be improved. 

According to Oberlo, many mobile app users want tighter security, access to product reviews, and visibly larger links and pages that are easier to click on (2).

As a consumer and app developer, I may also add that I’m a stickler for not just a user-friendly layout, but an attractive one too. And there’s basic Psych 101 underpinning this: the prettier something is, the more we want to look at it. A fetching design can actually increase more frequent engagement. There is a lot of room for improvement here––keep that in mind.

Benefits Of m-Commerce

You can hit most of your business goals simply by making m-commerce development a priority in your ecommerce business. 

Many online retailers have gone the route of investing more in developing a sharp and effective mobile app for their ecommerce enterprise than on any other tool. In particular, a mobile commerce app:

• Boosts product sales
• Reaches more consumers
• Acts as a competitive marketing tool
• Increases visibility of your brand & product
• Gathers critical analytics on customers’ activities & preferences
• Creates greater convenience for your customers, which helps build loyalty
• Establishes a consistent interface so customers see the same arrangement & presentation of information no matter what page they’re on
  

While the stats show us that mobile apps do, in fact, boost product sales and reach more consumers, they don’t explain how mobile apps function as a marketing tool. This is an insight worthy of further exploration, given that marketing is the bedrock of your business.

Push notifications are a primary reason why m-commerce is such an effective marketing tool. They enable business owners to alert users about current offers, new launches, discounts, coupons, and updates to the newsfeed. Without that “push,” many consumers may not go looking for this information. Those alerts get users back to the app again and again, encouraging more sales and generating higher revenue. 

How To Build An Outstanding Mobile App

Our goal here is not to provide technical details for developing a mobile app. Rather, we want to point out what a good designer and programmer would focus on.

An effective mobile app designer and developer will integrate analytic tools that give you vital information about a customer’s behaviours and preferences during in-app use. From there you can tailor your business strategy. You can also use that information to develop a more effective email marketing campaign to boost your sales and promote your brand.

They’ll know how to integrate product reviews and price comparisons. They’ll design an interface that’s highly responsive, intuitive, and easy to update. There’s a lot more to cover, and we’d love to chat with you about it. If you have a Shopify or other ecommerce store and you’re looking to develop a mobile app, give us a call. 

We’re ecommerce website specialists that offer mobile app development, email marketing, and Shopify-related services. We offer a free, no-catch strategy session. Contact us today.

References

1. 63 M-Commerce Statistics To Show How Big It Is in 2021
2. Mobile Commerce Sales in 2021 [Feb 2021 Update]
3. Mobile Commerce Sales in 2021 [Feb 2021 Update]
4. 57+ Shopify Statistics about the Ultimate Ecommerce Solution

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