Why retail companies need a mobile app

Ecommerce on your mobile phone is becoming much easier and before long you will use your phone to pay for your coffee, to buy clothes at your favourite store, to get your groceries and much more. It is vital that retail companies keep up with the app revolution and build apps now that can be developed to keep up with the times. Here are our top 5 reasons why retail companies need a mobile app development company.

Geolocation: Imagine a world where you receive a notification from a shop you are driving past to tell you that shirt you looked at online last week is in stock and in your size. Maybe there is a coffee machine you have been umming and ahhing over and they offer you 20% off if you go into the shop and buy it within the next hour. This type of direct marketing that plays on the impulsive nature of humans could be an incredible strategy.

Push notifications: Push notifications took off in 2013 and will be even more prominent for retail in 2014. You could tailor personalised notifications based each consumers buying history. Do you like this Michael Kors purse? What about this Tag Heuer watch? Even if they don’t buy every time, you will be the company in mind later when they begin looking for certain items.

Frequent updates: Apps allow you to update your infantry daily, instead of monthly like you may do on your website. It also allows you to do 24 sales on certain items easily or throw giveaways on special days of the year. You can have a constantly changing and ever dynamic marketing channel.

Loyalty programs: You can offer those who download your app loyalty rewards points, additional offers and so on. You must make your app easy to browse and you must make your website responsive. Most of these elements are essential.

Retail apps to learn from

• 7 Eleven: The 7 Eleven app has a top navigation bar that gives you the date, time and weather conditions. It helps you find the closest 7Eleven to your location and gives you in-store offers tailored to you.

• Best Buy: The Best Buy app make it easy to browse products and has a handy barcode scanner for when you are in store. It allows you to check your gift card credit and create a ‘Wishlist’ that makes future promotions very easy to personalise. It also has the RewardsZone where you can preview all your recent transactions and view coupons available to you. You can’t redeem offers here though which is the slightly disappointing element to this app.

• H&M: You can browse through the entire H&M collections with ease on their app and you don’t get lost. You can receive push notifications and offers at your local store. They also offer a lot of pictures and inspiration for current fashion trends.​

Get a quote from Prototype, an ecommerce application development company.

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