Mobile commerce figures have never stopped to amaze the industry. The use of mobile apps is increasing at an exponential rate, and so is its share in the eCommerce industry from 63.5% in 2018 to 67.2% in 2019 and 70.4% in 2020. This means that businesses have more opportunities in mobile eCommerce. But it is no more unexplored territory. Most businesses have dedicated mobile apps and others have at least a mobile-friendly website. So how can your business stand out in mobile commerce? Customer-centric mobile apps are the answer.
Customer-centric mobile apps are the present & future of the m-commerce industry. These are built keeping in mind customer preferences & behavior, with an aim to provide them a superior experience.
What are Customer-Centric Mobile Apps?
A customer-centric mobile app, as the name suggests, offers functionalities & UI/UX that create a pleasant shopping experience for customers. It helps them in taking the right route and making the purchase by building a personalized experience. Customer-centric apps part from the popular outbound marketing trend and meet individual needs by engaging with them and providing personalized services.
Why need Customer-Centric Mobile Apps?
Most businesses are in a hurry to enter the mobile world and grab the audience there. In doing so, the only focus they have is to code & create a functional mobile app. But where is your audience in this plan? Creating a functional app with a bunch of products and checkout, payment & other basic features is not enough. You need to make sure that each feature you throw in is centered on your customers.
This is where most businesses today fall short and end up creating mobile app development strategies that are centered around complex functionalities and not customers. Businesses often start their app development and see coding as the key to it. But developing a user-friendly strategy is equally important.
Customer-Centric Mobile App Basics
The first step to creating a customer-centric app is to understand your buyer’s persona.You must know where your customer is, what he/she wants & every other detail that impacts their buying decision. Subsequently, from banner placement & color scheme to content sections, contact us buttons, etc., everything should be meticulously structured to achieve favorable results.
You can also add functionalities like preference-based recommendations, one-step checkout, or social media login; all these features are some examples of what customer-centric mobile apps look like.
Let’s take you through some common features that are a must for customer-centric mobile apps.
Must-Have Customer-Centric Mobile App Features
Compatibility: Your users can be anywhere. To reach them, it is important to ensure compatibility with multiple platforms. Three major operating systems for mobile app compatibility are iOS, Windows & Android. With this, you can reach a global platform & boost your mobile sales
Search Option: The search option is a must for eCommerce Marketplaces like Amazon & eBay. They leverage powerful keyword search features to make customer browsing easy. They provide exact & the closest match products so that users are able to find what they are looking for without any trouble.
Good Image Resolution: Ignoring & compromising image resolution to increase mobile app speed can create a bad user experience. Thus, you should make sure to use meaningful & high-resolution images that engage your app visitors successfully. This is important especially in the case of modern-day users who expect hi-definition in every experience. Low-resolution images can drastically reduce your customer engagement and sales.
Push Notifications: The new kind of email to your customers, push notifications are a much more effective and less time-consuming way to reach out to your customers. These can be a combination of text, images & emojis that are less likely to land in customer’s spam. You can send out personalized & random push notifications based on customer interaction with your website. Businesses can use data to nurture leads and boost conversion via push notifications and gain impactful results.
User Feedback: Taking user feedback is a good way to show that you care. User feedback for mobile apps works as a survey (although less tedious & effort consuming) and can help you innovate & create better user experiences. Every business aims to provide value to customers but there are still chances of unsatisfied users. Taking feedback would be a good way to identify errors, understand what users want & implement them in your business. This will not only help you create personalized experiences but also gather appreciation for valuing user requests.
UI/UX: The UI/UX of a mobile app plays a great role in introducing customer-centricity. To understand this, here’s a quick test: think of any page from your app and now see how long you took to reach that from the home page? If it took you more than one click, then you need to reconsider your website UI/UX. If your app fails to provide what the customer is looking for quickly & easily, then there are high chances of them switching to another app. You need to make sure that all of your pages are easily accessible to your customers. Here are a few things that must be clear to customers through UI/UX:
What happens when they click a button? If the links & buttons are misleading, it can lead to miscommunication & build frustration amongst users.
Where are they in your mobile app? The UI/UX should be clear, and the customers should be able to understand where they are and what they can do at a particular place in your app.
Simplicity:You do not need to create a complex app that is filled with links, CTAs, complicated designs, and so on. This will only confuse your customers. Simplicity is the key to successful mobile apps and has the ability to grab the short-lived attention of modern-day users. Here’s how you can achieve it—create clear, uncluttered & focused screens that engage with your customers & provide them exactly what they want instead of everything.
So are you ready to embark upon your journey to an amazing mobile app? If yes, you know where to start now. These tips will help you create impactful & result-driven mobile app strategies so that you can boost your m-commerce ROI by many folds. Hope you enjoyed this read; stay tuned for more such insightful blog posts.
