“An App Is Not Enough” Raising the bar on mobile apps for retail
Rising expectations from digitally sophisticated consumers are putting significant new demands on retailers.
Mobile apps are no longer really optional for leading retailers, having a mobile app is now virtually a necessity. But a new study shows that it’s not enough to have just any sort of app – today a consumer’s overall view of a retailer is determined by their app experience.
AppDynamics is an application performance management company that recently survedy 4,000 smartphone and tablet users in US, UK, Germany, and France to understand more about the linkage between mobile apps, brand credibility, customer satisfaction, and loyalty.
The group of consumers who participated in this study are strong supporters of e-commerce. In fact, just over a third said that they make more than half their purchases online. So clearly this channel is critical to their overall spending pattern.
The survey found a strong connection between the app and brand credibility, with almost three fourths saying that the performance of an app would impact their perception of the retailer.
More importantly, over two thirds of the respondents said that a negative experience with an app or website would deter them from engaging with the retailer in the future.
But what makes an app good? These days it has to be more than just a mirror of the existing online site or a simple product catalog. Today’s consumers expect a variety of advanced features to increase convenience and improve the shopping experience.
And increasingly thishat involves features that bridge the gap between multiple shopping channels. Some examples of this include:,
- Many user like to browse online the buy in-store, so features like “click and collect” can be popular and are a good way to integrate the online and brick and mortar stores.
- Three quarters of the respondents wanted the mobile app to help them by pass checkout queues in-store.
- Over half said they would like the mobile app to communicate previous shopping history to sales assistants so that a more personalize shopping experience could be provided by the retailer.
- Almost seventy percent said they would be encouraged to visit physical stores if the app gave them personalized offers when they were close by.
As Marco Blankenzee, Manager of Mobiquity Europe puts it: “Digital technologies have empowered consumers. They are sharing their retail
experiences with peers and comparing prices, products and delivery options more than ever before. Consumer expectations of retailers are set sky-high by innovative, digitally native brands. Everyone else in the market is expected to keep pace. This is widely known as the ‘expectation economy‘ whereby consumers know what the best-of-the-best looks like and want all retailers to deliver on this, now.”
