Introduction
The shopping apps are not the whim of the great companies for be up to date and to appear more accessible in the mobile devices. The use of mobile applications is becoming increasingly essential for e-commerce and retail businesses success depends of its optimization.
The Criteo Report Global Commerce Review highlights the maturity of the mobile web and the growth of the smartphone as a purchase device. Let’s see what conclusions draw this study and what we can do to optimize our apps.
Higher conversion rates
The conversion rate in a shopping app is 3 times higher than that of a mobile web.
How to improve the conversion of our shopping app?
1.- Facilitate the purchase process: auto-filled fields, shopping cart with saved products, minimize clicks until purchase process ends.
2.- Confidence to provide bank information and an appropriate privacy policy.
3.- Offer several payment options and even be able to save payment data to speed up the process in future purchases.
4.- An application for each operating system improves usability and facilitates the purchase process to the user.
5.- Periodically update the shopping app, to correct errors, update its appearance or add new features.
It is the mobile-first buyers’ choice
The Report already presents shopping apps as the main sales channel, ahead of the mobile web.
Mobile applications ensure to hook the user who spends the most on online purchases. We have to think about it when we conceptualize the purchase app so that it is attractive enough to arouse interest.
Ecommerce must take mobile applications seriously, only sales from shopping apps are two-thirds of global sales.
Increase the share of the transactions in-app
Comparing the first quarter of 2017 with that of 2018, the worldwide increase is a considerable 22 % to reach 44 % of transactions made from a purchase application.
This means that there is no more a free choice device, the leadership that is acquiring it will suppose that a retailer can´t expand his business without a shopping app.
Increase in mobile transactions
Purchases through a mobile device already exceed 50 % of online transactions. European mobile transactions account for 53 % on mobile web and 47 % in-app.
It is obvious therefore, that our online store has to be optimized for mobile. But why choose the app to the detriment of a mobile web? As we said earlier, the conversion rate. The shopping apps are the queens in this field, since their percentage is 13 % compared to 4 % of a mobile website or 9% of the desktop.
Importance of omnichannel
Marketing bets should be oriented in this regard. These omnichannel strategies accompany the consumer throughout the purchase process and favor the capture of the most desired customer profile. Omni-channel customers only account for 7% of the total, but they make up 27% of sales.
The growth of mobile transactions is taking ground to other devices. But we continue using the laptop and the tablet with greater preference at certain times.
