How To Ensure Summer is the Season of Success for Your Mobile Store
If you’re like most online retailers, you’ve got high hopes for the summer season. Spirits are up, people are energized, and e-commerce spending is at its healthiest. But as a mobile retailer, how do you capture the attention of busy customers, who might otherwise not take the time to browse and buy from you? Check out these 5 steps to turning visitors into loyal customers.
1. Create an enticing experience
The first step to converting traffic at any time of year is to create an experience that stands apart. While consumers typically browse on mobile sites, they convert on mobile apps. A comprehensive solution encompassing quality iterations of both channels will help increase overall conversion rates.
A mobile app that marries seamless user interface with time-saving mobile checkout opportunities and intuitive features is the single most powerful tool you can offer to increase conversions. Even with promotional offers, strong marketing initiatives and everything else done right, without a competent mobile app solution, conversions won’t reach their full potential.
2. Offer worthwhile incentives
Although they’re eager buyers during the summer season, customers are still on the hunt for bargains all year round. Offering your customers purchase incentives is a powerful way to drive purchases that might otherwise end in cart abandonment. Consider promoting your offers via social media and other channels.
3. Speaking of promotion through social media, tap into the power of Instagram
With 800 million monthly active users, you can’t afford not to be present on Instagram. Because it’s used almost exclusively on mobile, it’s an ideal place to promote your app for download. Offer seasonally-driven incentives for downloads, and take advantage of videos and stories. With a heavily millennial user base – 59% are under 30 – brands targeting this lucrative age group can reach them with unprecented access and effectiveness. Sixty percent of Instagram users say they discover new products on the platform. Promoting your app and products on Instagram is a smart way to ensure you’re meeting your customers where they already are – on mobile.
4. Make it timely
Brands that offer products that lend themselves to seasonality – think clothing, travel and lifestyle brands – have the luxury of launching seasonal campaigns that promote the value of their products in an urgent manner.
For most other companies, however, timeliness is a challenge – and an opportunity. Get creative and work with your marketing team to establish original angle from which to promote your products for the season.
Selling household goods? Sounds like an opportunity to brand summer “the season of fresh looks.”
Selling automotive parts? It’s best to complete necessary auto repairs before the winter – shouldn’t your customers be aware?
There are countless ways you can pitch your products in a seasonal manner. It’s all about getting creative and inventive. A promotion that plays on seasonality is one that drives urgency, which is the key to converting visitors into buyers. Pushing these promotions on your mobile app, you can increase conversions both via app capabilities and summer-oriented products.
5. Don’t be afraid to reach out
One of the most powerful aspects of mobile apps for retailers is the direct line of communication they open to customers. Push notifications are an optimal channel of communication to app users, and have a significantly greater impact on conversions than traditional digital marketing outreach.
Use push notifications to educate your customers about offers, influencers, new app features and seasonal promotions. But don’t just send broadcast messages to every user who opts in – segmented messages are the true key to success.
One study found that of users who open broadcast push notifications, or those sent to every user who’s opted in, just 15% convert. Compare this to segmented push messages, where 54% of users ended up converting. Sending the right message to the right person, at an appropriate time, can make all the difference in its effectiveness.
At the end of the day, converting summer traffic into summer conversions isn’t so different from everyday app optimization. But with a little marketing savvy, a great app, and the know-how to understand what to say, when, you’re sure to have a successful season of selling.
