Why mobile apps are a key tool in modern e-commerce? NIX Solutions answers

E-commerce via mobile applications is one of the fastest growing areas of online commerce. The growth of purchases made through mobile devices is noted by all the world’s leading e-commerce analytic agencies. At the same time, many companies still doubt the creation of new formats and the use of new tools, which affects the slowdown in business growth. In a fast-growing and competitive industry such as e-commerce, keeping up with trends and changes is a vital necessity. Now, thanks to vc.ru, we all can find the answer why e-commerce should pay more attention to mobile applications.

The eMarketer analytics agency predicts that spending $232,34 billion worldwide on mobile advertising in 2019 in total. Moreover, according to statistics, global mobile data traffic will increase by almost 3 times in the period from 2018 to 2021. It is caused by the mobile phones use growth and the use of applications in particular (87 % of people spend the most of the time on apps).

The growing trend of “go mobile” is reflected in the world of e-commerce, where new technologies and ways to attract customers develop every month, where it is important to keep up with the trends. There is no place for retrogrades in online trading. If you do not adapt your technologies and attract users, your brand may be lost among active competitors. Therefore, the main questions for marketers around the world are: is it worth betting on mobile devices and how to use the full potential of mobile devices in sales?

But before predicting business growth, it is important to understand the idea for a mobile application. Today each brand, especially from the e-commerce industry, should consider applications as a new sales channel, as well as a new form of improving the quality of customer service and interaction with the brand.

Mobile application or adaptive version of the site?

According to TechCrunch, mobile applications have a much higher level of engagement than websites optimized for mobile devices and desktop versions. In mobile applications, there are also higher conversion rates – by 100-300 percent. A similar increase in sales is caused by an increase in frequency of visits. As Bain & Co’s analysis shows, mobile app users travel “the customer’s path” 3 times faster and see 4.2 times more products than other users from different channels.

These figures are specific actions and tools that cannot be used in adaptive versions of sites for mobile devices. First of all, applications launch and load faster than mobile sites. People often use mobile devices and applications and do it just a click away from your brand. According to an App Annie report, time spent in shopping apps grew to 18 billion hours in 2018 around the world. Such indicators are directly related to the possibilities of instant communication with users. It gives marketers many opportunities to attract them through the application and also with the help of push messages, email and notifications.

This brings us to the most important feature of mobile applications, the main reason for using which is personalization. In general, the application environment is an excellent area for testing various marketing approaches and tactics, which ultimately lead to higher conversion rates. In addition, there is one more thing worth knowing. Compuware analysis shows that 85 percent of consumers prefer embedded applications over mobile sites.

Mobile conversions: the way to quick sales

According to the App Annie report, in-app ads will boost their monetization by 60 percent.  However, many marketers are not aware of the possibilities of advertising in applications, which is surprising since the competition between brands is becoming more and more complex and demanding. The same applies to the behavior, needs and expectations of users. According to Adjust, which analyzed 8 billion app installations worldwide, apps are uninstalled within 5.8 days of their last use on average. Of course, there are many reasons for this, for example, a small amount of storage space, system crashes, a bad user interface, or just the user forgot about the application and stopped using it. All this brings us to the topic of retargeting.

Brands have long and successfully used retargeting to attract active buyers or lost users so that they can return and make a purchase in online stores. Why don’t companies use it for mobile shopping? According to RTB House, more than 80 percent of the inventory falls on mobile devices. Knowing all this, a simple conclusion can be made: a brand that develops retargeting for its online store should plan retargeting in mobile applications in the same way.

Do not be afraid of change – integrate

The second reason is the reluctance of brands to integrate retargeting tools with applications. They often assume that this is a complex process, similar to the integration of online stores. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Powerful and advanced retargeting companies have long been integrated with many vendors and platforms as partners. Therefore, when a brand has an application already configured using such a platform, all integration takes only a minute.

In addition, the application’s retargeting matches the same parameters as web retargeting. This helps maintain the interest of existing users and increases the likelihood of their return in the future, stimulates conversions and sales with personalized ads, as well as relevant offers at the right time, increases user convenience and shows them suitable products. Also, these campaigns can be personalized. There is no difference between them, except for the growing number of mobile clients. According to statistics, 67 percent of users claim that the experience of using mobile applications prompted them to buy a product. From this we, NIX  Solutions’ team, can conclude: the potential of the mobile application industry is quite real and buyers are waiting for your brand to appear on the screen of their mobile devices.