Do you ever want or plan to hand all your customers on a silver platter to your competitors? If your answer is strict “No”, and you want your customers to remain yours, go ahead and read this small post.
Probably it`s not going to be a surprise for you, that m-commerce is growing very fast and is about to overtake web commerce (if you need some proves, just check the stats here), so taking the advantage of m-commerce can really result in a significant profit increase for your business. For someone who already manage an existing e-commerce business, the first step towards using the advantage of mobile commerce is having their website look and run like clockwork on the diversity of mobile devices available in the market today and used by your potential and existing customers. The best way to make it come true is to create a responsive website and a mobile app.
The number of smartphones users keeps going up and up year by year all over the world:
More and more people access the internet from their mobile devices to do what they got used to do on their laptops - talk to friends, have fun, watch movies, listen to music, study, find places they want... and buy stuff.
Imagine, that this specific moment, when you read this post, someone is looking for your store from their smartphone, and hopefully they will find a pretty good looking mobile version of your website. If so, they will probably spend a lot of time surfing your products, choosing what they want. Some of them may even buy a thing on your web store, but they will leave once they are done with it. And this is a very sad story, because once they leave, you have no longer the way to stay connected and engage with your customers to notify of the news they may be very interested in - discounts, sale, new arrivals and so on.
You simply let them go, allowing them to meet your competition face to face next time when they search for the new stuff on the internet.
That’s why it is so important for you to stay in their mind and in their pockets - on their smartphones. Obviously, this is possible only when you have a mobile app they can install on their mobile devices.
Just imagine the situation, when users visit your store on a mobile device, and they are offered to install your mobile app and get an instant access to your store and products right on the go, even when they are offline. Such customers will be the first to find out about your discounts. They will stay up to date with your news and get all your push notifications, so they never miss your special offers. They will definitely thank you for this chance by being your loyal customers who is getting back to you every time they need something that is among your product range.
Moreover, they won’t need to surf the internet to find you any longer - they will simply have your store on their smartphones and will have an instant access to the products they need.
On top of that, with a mobile app you will also benefit from the push notification feature, which connects you with the customers when you need it to notify them of any news you want (special offers, news, discounts, etc.). Such notifications always catch customers’ minds. According to the survey of marketing agencies, each push notification may increase visits to your store by up to 20%. However, know the limits and do not spam your customers, otherwise they can turn the push notifications off or even uninstall your app. So use it wise and keep the balance, so that your customers are happy and stay with you.
With a mobile app you can build the target audience of the customers, who “subscribed” to your business, by installing your application on their smartphones. This customer base will be reachable whenever you want to engage to offer something they may be interested in to encourage them to take an action. Unlike with the email subscription, with the push notifications your message will be delivered directly into their hands so that they do not miss it out.
The mobile apps are built not only to perfectly fit the diversity of mobile screens, but to also deliver the excellent user experience - interfaces and navigation the users got used to with their mobile devices.
If you’re still thinking whether to build a mobile app for your web store or not, keep in mind one thing - though the conversion rate on mobile devices isn’t as high as it is on desktops and tablets, there are a lot more visits from mobile devices that in the end results in greater sales volumes.
So do your best to attract your customers, give them a comfortable way to shop with you on their mobile devices via your mobile app, deliver an excellent service and the success will not be long in coming.
