Category: Mcommerce

Shopping earlier was what you want to buy, and sellers show it to you but today, it is more like sellers already know what you are looking for and they display it and you simply have to pay for it. Got the point? It is nothing but eCommerce personalization that is taking over traditional commerce.

 

eCommerce has revolutionized the shopping experience so much that now, shopping offline feels like a challenging task with no fun. Although there are various features in eCommerce that are making it a preferred mode of shopping, personalization is something that is winning hearts and luring people more towards online shopping that we got to see more in the previous year not because it gained fame recently; but because of the deadly pandemic.

 

The year 2020 witnessed a major shift of everything offline to online from office meetings, social gathering, celebrations to the most important shopping. Hence, the adoption of digital commerce is not at all a new concept that sprouted in 2020. It simply accelerated due to COVID-19. Thus, in order to keep customers, continue with the online saga, retailers are now taking eCommerce personalization more seriously, and it seems that it will soon take over traditional commerce.

 

For a long period of time, eCommerce has been seeking the holy grail of personalization – a consistent, cross-channel experience that adapts to customer requirements and goals in real-time. To achieve this, retailers have started adding conversational commerce elements like messenger chatbots, artificial intelligence (AI), and customized information etc., to their online store. But, before we weave stories around it, let us understand what we mean by eCommerce personalization.

 

Also Read: 7 Steps to Prepare Your Ecommerce Business for Continuity and Unexpected Future Post-COVID-19

 

What is eCommerce Personalization?

eCommerce Personalization refers to the way of making customers feel special by creating personal interactions and experience on eCommerce sites and improving their shopping experience by showing them content, product recommendations, media etc., based on their previous actions, browsing behaviour, purchase history, demographics, and other personal data.

 

Personalization is becoming an important part of eCommerce as it is the best way to bring in more customers, achieve customer loyalty and repeat purchases, keep shoppers engaged, drive sales, increase conversion, and to boost growth and productivity.

 

eCommerce Personalization and Conversational Commerce

There are various ways to offer eCommerce personalization to the customers, and integrating top-notch technologies to the online platform is the first step towards it. Offering eCommerce personalization is becoming easier and attainable with conversational commerce that is nothing but an automated technology powered by rules and artificial intelligence (AI) that enables online shoppers and brands to interact through Messenger chatbots, RPA (Robotica ProcessAutomation) and voice interfaces like Alexa by creating an interactive environment that compensates for the missing human touch typical of a physical brick-and-mortar store.

 

In short, conversational commerce and eCommerce personalization are like two sides of the same coin but, their purpose is similar i.e, to provide a personalized shopping experience to the customers. In fact, conversational commerce act as a medium to provide a personalized experience to customers that is now slowly overtaking the traditional way of commercialization.

 

Thanks to the latest technologies, data collection, understanding customer behavior, providing them with what they need or are looking for, giving them an individualized shopping experience, all have been possible due to the duos.

 

Personalized Commerce Is the Next Frontier

Customers love personalization, and with online retailers competing with each other, they are implementing personalization strategies better from one another in order to please customers. Moreover, with personalized customer experience being something that customers do not get in any traditional commerce; it is quite natural for them to bend towards online shopping more than offline. After all, a salesperson asking you what you like and displaying products is better than a technology showcasing what’s on your mind based on the data collected and stored from your past interactions with the store.

 

So, what can be done to give a personalized shopping experience to the customers? Well, here are some of the strategies that you can implement on your online store and see the magic happen.

 

1. Create Personalized Homepages – Homepages are the first impression, and hence you got to do it right. Greet them in the way that you get to win a position in their heart. If gathering their information via cookies, make use of it in improving their shopping experience.

 

2. Offer Personalized Guides – Like, in traditional commerce where a salesperson assists you in shopping, you too can offer a personal shopping assistant for every customer on your online store. Take a quiz about their taste, style choices, size, and budget, and provide on-site assistance when they shop next time.

 

3. Display Recently Viewed Items – Not necessarily everyone visiting your store will shop, but while browsing, some may like a particular product of yours but forgets to wishlist. Hence, with the “Recently Viewed” section on the homepage, you can remind and urge them to make the purchase.

 

4. Personalize Product Pages Based on Location – Knowing where your customers are by asking them directly or via cookies, you can provide a more accurate shopping experience for customers that they will remember forever.

 

5. Create Special Campaigns Based on User Behavior – No two visitors are the same, and hence offering the same to everyone doesn’t make any sense. Personalizing your on-site messages will attract customers more than you can imagine.

 

6. Get Personal in Email Marketing – There’s no limit to the personalization you can do on emails. Starting from the subject lines, wishing your customers on birthdays and anniversaries, offering discounts up to reminding them about completing a purchase, you can personalize emails the way you want.

 

7. Make More Personal Recommendations – Personalized recommendations have emotional value. If done right, they can directly hit the customers at the right spot.

 

Now, let’s understand various benefits one can achieve with eCommerce personalization

 

1. Improve Customer Experience – Of course, a personalized shopping experience means a customer’s interest in your online store will double up, leading to more sales and conversions.

 

2. Save Time & Resources – Messenger chatbots are the real time saver. From providing a personalized shopping experience to pulling leads, as well as engaging customers with conversations, they can handle all freeing you for other important tasks.

 

3. Know Customers Better – With personalized interaction via chatbots, you will get to know your customers better to serve them the best.

 

4. Increment in Sales – The more personalized experience a customer receives from your end, the more it will keep coming back to you which means; a boost in sales.

 

5. Be Unique – The online competition is tough, and to stand out, you need to have some unique elements in your store that can be personalized for attracting customers. So, build an app using eCommerce mobile app builder that allows you to create a user-friendly environment with unique elements.

 

Summing Up

With incremental shift happening in customer’s behavior due to growing digitalization and the pandemic effect, an online presence with personalized experience is becoming a necessity more than just a trend. And, if you are in a notion that only big brands can afford classy technologies like AI, chatbots, messaging apps, PWAs, native mobile apps, voice assistants, etc., then guess what? They do not come at a fancy price that a small business cannot afford, in fact, one must gear it up all if one really wishes to survive the competition and the future ahead.

 

Need expert advice? Mobicommerce – an eCommerce solution provider in the Middle East and other countries is at your service!

Mobicommerce and mCommerce:

When we talk about mobile commerce app builders, there are three ‘E’s that are essential to ensure that they would deliver you a robust and flawless mobile solution. These three Es’ are Excellence, Expertise and Experience. In addition, when we talk about mobile commerce app solution providers of the Middle East, Mobicommerce has been a renowned name for delivering flawless and robust mCommerce solutions with their domain experience, technical expertise and excellence of IT infrastructure as well as customer-centric protocols.

With elite clientele in more than 35+ countries from different industries and business domains, Mobicommerce has been delivering benchmark e-commerce and mCommerce app solutions since its inception in the year of 2014. In the short span of 6 years, Mobicommerce has one of the rarest pools of expert and certified developers in Magento and also has an impeccable IT infrastructure in 6 countries that are Dubai, India, USA, Germany, UK and Canada! Founded by the visionary entrepreneurs of the renowned DesignNbuy, Mobicommerce has become a leading mCommerce App development Company not just in the Middle East, but across the globe.

With satisfactory clients in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, Mobicommerce has a proven track record in all across the Middle East and the reasons why it is one of the leading mCommerce App Development companies are as follows:

5 Reasons why Mobicommerce is a leading mcommerce app builder in the Middle East:

1. Culture Understanding (Personalization and Localization capabilities):

Although the trend of personalization and localization is recent as it is one of the biggest factors to boost lead conversion ratio and to ensure delightful digital experiences, we at Mobicommerce have been practicing it for a long time and that is why we have been able to successfully understand the Middle East market.

Personalization and localization are completely dependent upon the user persona and the market understanding of the UX designers and the mCommerce app developers. Our resources at Mobicommerce have a wide experience of working on different projects from numerous domains and because of such immense exposure to the Middle East market, they have developed a fair culture understanding and thus, have managed to deliver e-commerce and mCommerce solutions with optimum personalization and localization capabilities. All the clients that have collaborated with us have been successful in the market because of the lowest possible shopping cart abandonments and the highest number of satisfied and delighted customers.

Also Read : How to select top mCommerce App Development Company for the Middle East Market

2. Rare pool of expert and certified developers:

Experience and expertise are the two traits that are found in all the resources that work on your mCommerce app project at Mobicommerce. What makes our resources rare and experts is their technical expertise and domain understanding. Working under suitable and harmonious culture and environment, our resources get immense exposure to the Middle East market and thus, they have been able to understand the client requirements with optimum clarity and their market exposure helps them in predicting the project challenges well in advance. Thus, when you approach Mobicommerce for mCommerce app solutions, you get the most realistic deadlines and cost-effective solutions as there would be minimal reworks and change requests!

3. Entrepreneurial mindset and customer-centric approach:

Because of the immense market exposure and their technical expertise, our resources have not only been expert developers but also technical consultants to many of the enterprises from the Middle East. Because of their entrepreneurial mindset, our resources can easily understand the client and market requirements and can also contribute towards the project of the client with valuable suggestions. Apart from that, our resources are hardwired to keep complete transparency with the clients and are trained to perform with optimum productivity instead of cutting corners.

4. End-to-end mCommerce and e-Commerce services:

Whether you need a Progressive Web App (PWA) that would help, you better engage with your customers at minimal efforts and cost or you need a full-fledged e-commerce multivendor marketplace solution that works seamlessly on both web as well as smartphones, we can deliver it all! All you need to do is hire Mobicommerce as your Technology Partner and we will cater to all your e-commerce and mCommerce development, consultancy, updates, maintenance, migration, version upgrades and support requirements! To put it in a nutshell, Mobicommerce is your one-stop solution for all your digital commerce requirements!

5. Impeccable IT infrastructure:

Mobile Commerce applications are no longer a one-time project as the market, customer expectations keep evolving, and thus, these projects are long term if not continuous! Innovation is the key to progress in modern times and we at Mobicommerce are on the path of self-evolution right from the start! With top-notch equipment, periodic technical and cultural trainings and constant refinement of processes and protocols to make it more customer-centric and value adding, Mobicommerce has the best IT infrastructure that is essential for sustainable and successful long-term relationships.

Parting Words:

When clients collaborate with Mobicommerce, they get the complete package that goes beyond development and IT services! With the zeal to innovate and to provide optimum satisfaction to all our clients, we at Mobicommerce have an implied condition of walking the extra mile to ensure that we deliver flawless and robust solutions to all our clients without cutting any corners. To put it in a nutshell, if digital growth of your brand via Mobile Commerce Applications is your agenda, than Mobicommerce App builder is your ultimate growth hack!

If there is one thing that this pandemic has taught us than it would be the importance of digitalization. For all those businesses who had managed to continue their operations and grow during these dire times were the ones that had a strong online presence. Whether you talk about the USA or the Middle East, e-commerce saw unprecedented growth all across the globe. For instance, reports found that E-commerce expenditure of the Middle East exceeded the expected figures by approximately $52 billion from March to July!

Also read: COVID-19 Effects: E-commerce and the Change in Consumer Behaviour in the UAE

While many think that these changes are temporary, but studies show that these buying habits will change consumer behaviour completely and that they would rely on online buying platforms more even in the post-pandemic world. But if you are planning for digitalization of your business, there is one platform that you must have and that is a mobile commerce platform or a mobile application for your business! The reason for that is simple; people are literally living-off their phones and if you wish to become a trusted brand amongst your customers, you must be present on their home screens.

However, the Middle East has its own culture and its own set of expectations and if you wish to make a mobile application for the people of the Middle East, you must choose a mobile commerce app builder that understands the Middle East market and your business expectations. To help you make an informed decision, below are a few of the traits of an ideal m-commerce app builder for the Middle East:

Traits of an ideal mobile commerce app builder for the Middle East:

1. Market Understanding:

The Middle East has its own set of protocols and procedures as well as customer expectations. The rules and customer behavior also differ in various regions of the Middle East! For instance, Saudi Arabia and UAE had the highest mobile broadband levels in the year of 2016. At 114 % and 111 % mobile data usage respectively, these Gulf nations were more connected than any other country in the world. On the contrary, Egypt only had a 36 % mobile broadband level in the same year.

Similarly, each governing body of the Middle East has its own set of rules for their regions as well. Thus, when you choose a mobile commerce app builder for your business, they must know about the market and the rules and regulations that they must follow. When the mobile app developers working on your platform have such market understanding, they can save your application from unwanted troubles, banishments or fines and also help you make your mobile app relevant for your target customers.

2. Proven Track record:

To ensure that the Mobile Commerce app builder that you choose for your m-commerce platform has the required technical proficiency to accomplish your m-commerce platform, ask for their portfolio and analyze how the platforms are performing in their respective markets. Also, ask for client contacts and references and go through the company’s reviews on different review platforms. Apart from that, what you can do is personally interview the developers that are going to work on your project and ensure that they have the required market understanding and that they have the required domain knowledge as well.

While each project and business has its own set of requirements, when the developers are experienced and have the required technical proficiency as well as the domain knowledge, they can help you understand the challenges that you might face with your project and can provide you a realistic development timeline.

3. Localization capabilities:

Personalization of a platform is one of the biggest customer winning factors for any mobile commerce platform. Thus, the m commerce app builder that you choose for your platform must provide you with enough personalization and localization options. To deliver personalized experiences to your customers, it is essential that your developers understand the customer expectations well and has a clear picture of the user persona. This knowledge will help you with better customer segmentation and ultimately help you gain deeper customer insights that will help you make informed decisions. Apart from that, the platform must also represent the local culture of the region that you are targeting and thus, the mobile commerce app builder must provide your mobile platform with enough localization factors such as language, font, payment portals and others.

4. Scalability and App Support:

The development of the mobile application is not a one-time project anymore. With constantly changing customer expectations as well as market requirements, appreneurs have to keep evolving their platform with frequent innovations and software updates. While innovations will help you gain a competitive edge in the market, updates will help you align your mobile commerce platform with your customer expectations. Thus, when you choose an app builder for your m-commerce platform, ensure that they provide the required scalability and post-development app support.

Recommended: 10 Top-ten app development companies in the Middle East

Parting Words:

The cost of developing a mobile commerce platform is relatively high no matter what domain or region you belong to. With an ideal m commerce app builder at your corner, you can ensure that the money that you spend on your mobile commerce platform is an investment and not an expense. Make an informed decision and ensure that the eCommerce mobile app builder that you choose for your project contributes towards your application and establishes a value-based partnership that creates a win-win scenario for both.

Mobile phones are no longer limited to communicating, via them, we can shop an aeroplane today. Although it sounds exaggerated, looking at the way mCommerce is growing and with PWAs becoming dominant, that day may come soon.

Smartphones make the most of our day. From the moment we open our eyes to off we go to bed; we are scrolling our mobile screens jumping from one mobile app to another. The shopping-on-the-go has gotten us so much that now downloading mobile apps and browsing through them seems to be time-consuming as it happens, they take time to load or ask for an update while you are about to pay for the product you purchased. It kills the mood, isn’t it? Enter, PWA (Progressive Web Apps), the superhero of mCommerce.

Progressive Web Apps, what are they? 

The monopoly of mobile apps was challenged in 2015 when PWAs came into action. Due to its powerful combination of two technologies – native applications and web apps which results in its functioning as both an application as well as a website, PWAs started getting all the attention. With no downloads required, PWAs which can be run over any browser from desktop to mobile versions offering the same kind of experience just like any native app started making mobile shopping, even more, easier and convenient giving way for mCommerce.

mCommerce vs eCommerce

Without a doubt, mCommerce is leading the race. In fact, the graph of mobile shoppers is constantly rising with no pause or turning back and hence; a majority of retail e-commerce is expected to be generated via m-commerce in the future.

Due to the increased mobile engagement, businesses started to launch native apps of their website to attract more customers, provide easy and convenient shopping, give a personalized experience, and much more. But, unfortunately, customers started getting annoyed from native apps too due to the installation, high space and data usage, connectivity issue, frequent update requirement, and slow loading issues which are posing a risk for mCommerce, therefore, as an answer to which PWAs came into existence.

How Progressive Web Apps are shaping the future of mCommerce?

First of all, PWAs need not be installed on mobile devices. They can be simply launched on any internet browser without compromising in its speed. In fact, its reach is 3 times higher than you get from native apps. It gives native app-like experience with push notifications and user-friendly navigation allowing you to browse and shop products on the go.

Recommended Blog:  Why Progressive Web Apps Are Important for Businesses?

The best thing about PWAs is that they are offline ready. The customers won’t have to experience a break in their shopping routine even in a slow internet connection unlike in native apps where you have to wait for good network connectivity.

PWAs are super-responsive. They can fit into any device be it a desktop, a mobile, a tablet, or even something that hasn’t been created yet!

The need for updates which annoy the most gets eliminated in PWAs as they automatically update themselves.

PWAs work for both – Android and iOS and hence the extra effort that is required in coding for Android and iOS separately in native apps is null in PWAs, which means, you save time, money, and resources with progressive web app development.

Does it mean an end for native apps? 

Absolutely not. Native apps are not going to vanish all of a sudden. It is true that PWAs have the potential to make apps a thing of past, outstripping Google and Apple’s biggest app store operators but not so soon as PWAs are still in their infancy and Google or Apple will certainly not pull the plug on their stores this decade. Nevertheless, PWAs have the potential to change user behaviour of all smartphone users. The shopping behaviour of customers from classic mobile apps to a website that looks like an app is completely opposite and hence the difference in the results.

But it is possible that native apps may start experiencing slower death in the coming years because approximately 94% of apps used are devoted to social engagement, entertainment, and information causing less download and usage of them later, which means, only five apps account for 85% of the overall app activities. The real struggle for retailers lies in driving initial and repeat use of native apps because the majority of downloaded apps are accessed less than five times – and after 30 days, retention is, on average, below 10% even for constant mobile users, all of which is posing a risk for the future of native apps.

Need proof?

Impressed with the capabilities of PWAs, some of the famous merchants have started leveraging progressive web apps for mobile commerce and here’s what they have achieved so far:

• Alibaba’s PWA witnessed about a 76% higher conversion across browsers, 14% more monthly active users on iOS and 30% more on Android, and 4 times higher interaction due to the “Add to Homescreen” prompt.
• On the other hand, Flipkart – India’s biggest e-commerce platform, adapted PWA and experienced 3 times more user engagement, 40% higher re-engagement and 3 times lower data usage.
• While Jumia, Africa’s most renowned and the largest eCommerce site, witnessed a 33% higher conversion rate, a 50% lower bounce rate, 12 times more users and 5 times lower data consumption upon introducing PWA into their online business.
• Similarly, when Trivago, the world’s leading hotel search engine increased its user engagement by 150% with PWA, AliExpress turned their fortune wheel and reached 104% more users, a 74% increase in time spent and 84% increase in iOS conversion rate with their PWA.

In a nutshell,

The shopping experience for customers’ needs the most attention and is something to be taken very seriously by retailers if they really care about customers as the sales of the business depend on it. Progressive web apps with its app-like experience on the mobile web and amazing features are so far capable of winning customers more than native apps which must be taken into account by retailers and hence should think about moving from native mobile apps to PWAs by now.

If you are worried about where to find the best progressive web app builder then don’t worry, look for MobiCommerce and you will know for yourself.

When it comes to middle-east countries such as UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran, Qatar and so on, everything they need in mobile apps are local language and currency. People residing in such countries prefer shopping and browsing through apps which are in local languages as they find it easier, comfortable and are thorough with it. There are many RTL (Right to Left) languages but mainly customers ask support for Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian/Farsi.

Most of the mobile app solution providers are failing in integrating RTL languages correctly in their solution. Mobicommerce fully supports RTL. Our research and development team worked hard to make solution fully compatible for RTL languages.

Our solution is completely configurable with admin therefore the delivery team ensure accuracy; they configure all labels, messages, and banners in apps correctly.

Similarly, Mobicommerce also supports middle-east currencies i.e. AED (United Arab Emirates Dirham), BHD (Bahraini Dinar), JOD (Jordanian Dinar), QAR (Qatari Riyal), SAR (Saudi Riyal) etc. and also supports most of the payment gateways which support these currencies.

MobiCommerce fairly meets a Middle East ecommerce store owner’s expectations which they want to have in their mobile ecommerce app.

Our customers from Middle East are highly satisfied with our support as despite of language barriers, we deliver the apps as they desire.

Find below some of the Successful Apps developed for Middle East Clients.

Indian Mobile E-commerce is growing with increasing use of smartphones, tablets. Assocham is the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India. It is a regulatory body looking for trading, commerce and industrial development in India since 1920. As per Assocham, the e-commerce worth increased from $30 billion in 2016 to $120 billion in 2020. It is growing at an annual rate of 51% that is the highest growth rate in the world.

Interesting facts of Mobile E-commerce:

IJIRCCE is an international journal involving in computer science, IT and communication engineering. As per the report,

• In India, there are around 160 million internet users. In which 86 million people access the internet through mobile phones.
• 9% of all internet page views along with 40% of Google searches are from mobile devices.
• In past 17 years, our country accrued 15 million from broadband connections. Now it is easy to understand how in the past four years users of 3G connection have grown to 22 million.
• In India, the usage of Facebook on mobile phones accounts for 30% in social media.
• LinkedIn ranks India in 4th place among its growth markets for mobile users.

Track this mobile e-commerce by following the below 6 strategies:

#1. Mobile friendly website

According to Hosting Facts, over 50% of traffic comes from the mobiles. If your site is not responsive then you are losing a lot of money from your pocket. Hence, it is recommended to redesign your website with a responsive theme which helps to boost conversion rates and sales.

Here we are talking about user experience. Page loading time plays a vital role in increasing user interaction. It would be 7% loss in conversions if there is a one second delay in loading time of your website. When website loading time is over 3 seconds, it is observed that 40% consumers likely to leave the page. Moreover, it also plays a significant role in increasing the search engine rankings. You can find out page speed of your website via Google PageSpeed Tool, GTmetrix or other such tools. To shorten the load times try to reduce the file size without compromising the quality of images or the site at all. You can also optimize images, minimizing java scripts and much more to improve the page speed. That will turn into more conversions in e-commerce.

#2. Mobile App review, ratings & ranking

The below figure depicts the average time spent per day on mobile internet as well as a mobile app. To be on the top ranking of the marketplace, the app rating and review strategy have found to be helpful.

One of the important strategies to boost your mCommerce by leading to a maximum downloads ratio of your app. The reviews and ratings can be achieved by App Store Optimization which increases your app visibility, the higher the rank, more the visibility. The ranking of the app can be increased via numerous factors such as Positive ratings from current users can be encouraged by giving them some benefits, retention of the app by current users, maximum downloads can be encouraged by giving the users monetary benefits, incentives or either and discounts, etc. Also, downloads can be done providing the other benefits such as App icon, the attractive and meaningful the icon would be, the more users will download it to check, screenshots, images, etc are the other external factors to increase download ratio as well as improve ranking.

#3. Digital Wallet feature

The decision of demonetization of Rs. 500 and 1000 bank notes initiated by the government of India from 9 November 2016. The demonetization has created hype in our country. As you all know that cash transaction is becoming a major problem, people are looking for other ways to do so. Such methods are e-wallets i.e. Paytm & Oxigen, online transactions like e-banking etc.

Mobile Wallets are becoming hot these days and for retailers to sustain their business and be in the market, it is mandatory to have their mobile app with updated payment methods inclusive of a digital wallet. This digital wallet should be having extra features such as Loyalty Program, Digital Coupons, and Location Based Services unlike traditional wallet.

#4. Experience like in-store shopping

Retailers choose mobile as their top priority, and they are placing it at the top of their list. MCommerce apps are providing great shopping experiences with low caching time, price comparison facility, cart, checkout etc. That further suits the needs of the consumer as all they demand is speed and ease in functionality. Personalize your brand the way customers like and try to strike a chord with your target audience.

#5. Buying options

India is one of the youngest demography globally which is using smartphones. According to Assocham, about 75% of online users are in the age group of 15-34 years. To hit the mark, retailers have to create a variety of age-targeted products. They also need to improve their sales graph. They should offer great discounts categorizing to ages. Like kiddo offers school and stationery stuff. For young boys and girls, it should be the latest trends of garments, stylish products and much more.

#6. Safe and secure online payment systems

Amazon, Alibaba, Flipkart and Snapdeal are playing an important role in Indian E-commerce. As per the report of Newswire, India will reach $75 billion mobile E-commerce Market by the year 2021. People are afraid of online transactions because of the security of online payment systems. As per Dazeinfo, out of the total transaction, online payment was 14% only in February 2015.

Conclusion

Without any doubt, we can say that this is the time for the expansion of the mobile e-commerce industry. The fact is an average online user issuing mobile for browsing. It gives mobile e-commerce an opportunity to draw more users to their sites.

Try to focus on implementing mobile responsive themes for your websites. That allows easy access to browse the products or services. Apply innovative marketing strategies to attract more customers.

The world today wants things to be precise and handy. Start-ups are surfacing faster than ever, all thanks to the magnified power of the digital world. Cell phones are now the business platforms and Skype calls have become meeting rooms. When mobile phones are becoming backbones of the professions, the booming eCommerce market is looking up to them as well. Desktop versions of e-commerce websites are customized to be user-friendly, bug-free and light. When a person can’t carry a desktop, laptop or an iPad wherever he goes, the mobile phone serves the purpose. As a result, every good e-commerce website would like to have a handy mobile application.

Do People use ‘all’ the Applications they download?

However, it is a common observation that most of the people don’t use frequently the apps they download. Latest stats say that 23% users used apps only once after installation.

Facts reveal that only 4% of the iOS downloaded applications survived after 90 days.

Moreover, 62% of the smartphone application users use an application less than 11 times. However, mobile app push notifications seem to make a difference.

Changing the Scenario

Mobile app push notifications are the ones that you get on your lock screen from e-commerce and other websites, viewing the latest sales, product availability, etc. They notify the customer even when an app is not even launched, which helps in increasing engagement. As a customer, it’s good to receive push notifications since one gets latest updates on the lock screen without even scrolling through the app or website. It saves time and effort. A mix of email notifications, desktop notifications, and mobile app notifications keeps the user updated about the brand and latest products, offers or discounts.

The Power of Push Notifications: A Survey

As per the Kahuna mobile marketing report, the app retention rate after 30, 60 and 90 days more than doubled when push notifications were introduced for app.

It was observed that after 90 days, 27.6% of the apps that supported push notifications were retained, while only 10.1% of the other apps were able to sustain. After a 30 day period, apps that had push app notifications incurred a positive retention rate of 125%. This should be enough to speak about the power of push notifications. It is fairly understandable; when you get notifications about something, you don’t forget it.

Master the Technique of In App Push Notifications

However, a set of guidelines needs to be in place to make full use of push notifications. How would you as a user respond when you get the same notification repeatedly? What if the notifications you get are not of your interest? What if the notification talks about a discount, but when you follow the link you realize that it is just ‘click and bait?’ Well, these instances irritate any user and he or she ends up opting out of notifications or uninstalls your app! The beginning signs can be higher app exit rate and lower response rate.

To override these factors, one needs to become a loyal brand that cares about its customers. A good e-commerce website or any other business, in general, should partition its users based on their preferences and then send notifications that interest them. It must limit the number of notifications and make them crispy and promising. Some apps provide notifications when a user launches an app to do a task. Instead, the in-app notifications should appear when the user is about to exit the app after he has used it. Also, the app must have easy to opt out of notification feature. From the DMA survey report of 1000 consumers, 69% people agreed to receive push notifications, however, 78% of the people revealed that they would immediately delete the application if the in app notifications were redundant.

The Epilogue

To put in a nutshell, in-app notifications can do wonders in the world of e-commerce. Apps can gain e-commerce websites up to 3 times more profit. If a person opts in to receive notifications from an e-commerce site, chances are that they are already interested in your products; that’s why they opted for reminders! 54% of these ‘prospective’ buyers actually shop from your website. Overall, you get a 300% enhanced chance to boost up your sales. Mobile push notifications are a great source of conversion unless one does some homework and uses them wisely.

Smart phones are the shortest route for any company to reach its customers. And nothing works better than having a dedicated mobile app for your eCommerce business. It is predicted that the sales initiated through mobiles would increase considerably in the next few years. Unless you want to miss out on some significant audience and revenue, it is important that you strengthen and diversify your mobile app strategy.

So, you might have come up with that eye catching and user friendly mobile app for your business but are you making the most out of it? What are some out-of-the-box ways to derive maximum benefits from your mobile commerce app?

1. Offer Offers

Discounts and Offers never go out of style! It doesn’t matter if you are running an online business or a brick and mortar store, discounts would always do the trick. The ‘off’ word could turn way more heads than having Angelina Jolie as your Brand Ambassador does. Give your users offers like Special Day Sales, Deals of the Day and the like through your mobile app. One thing I am sure users do hate is the regret they would have for passing up on a great offer. Apps could also alert users about such offers through push notifications.

2. Operation Interaction

I am sure you know that most MNCs spend millions of bucks on their market research. But did you know that your mobile app could get it for you free of cost? Use your mobile app to crowd-source answers and to conduct polls and surveys about your brand and its products. The benefits of this idea would be two-fold. While it helps you understand the pulse of the users and what they are expecting from the products, it also helps keep them engaged on your app.

3. Reward Loyalty with Offers and other Value Added Benefits

In a time when customers are spoiled for choice with too many options, rewarding your loyal customers does make very good sense. Reward customers who make regular purchases through the app with user-specific offers. This could be cash-backs, promotional gift coupons or even free downloads of apps and music. The deals should be good enough to entice them to stick with your app for future purchases too. Having a referral program that is rewarding is another good idea you should consider. Your users would be doing all the marketing for you.

4. Make it as Easy and Simple as Possible

It is a lazy world full of lazy people! Make sure that your mobile commerce app is designed keeping that in mind. Your app should allow customers to place orders very easily. The steps involved should be least complicated and should help them place orders conveniently and quickly from any place they are in and at any time they want to. Design it in a way that it helps them do comparison shopping too.

Read more: How to Combat Abandoned Shopping Carts on Mobile

5. Push, Push and Push

One unbeatable superpower a mobile app gives you is the power of push notifications. Alert users about new arrivals, deals and offers using your app’s push notifications. Give out one liner ads about your brand from time to time. The benefits are again multi-fold. There is more chance for your app to be opened and for your users to be engaged ultimately leading to a better conversion rate in the end. The brand constantly remains in your user’s mind too.

Read more: Why Push Notifications must be part of your integral mobile commerce development and marketing plan?

6. It isn’t just about Sales

There is no strict rule that your mobile app should just be used to boost up your sales and revenue. It could in fact help you provide a better service for your customers and user-base. Wondering how? Try and develop your mobile app into an efficient mobile customer service and install a responsive complaint management system. The app could be used to collect user feedback about your products and services and to keep track of usage patterns of your customers.

DON’T MISS THE BUS

With the increased usage of phones for multiple purposes, it is very important for eCommerce brands to start making the most out of its mobile apps. It is a bus they would surely hate to miss as once you fall behind, catching up won’t be easy at all!

Push Notifications are one major way to get customers occupied on your apps at regular intervals. They have proved it also with numbers. Thousands of infographics and statistics mention that push notification open rates range between 47-80%. These open rates lead to customer engagement and finally to sales. Still, there are some brands who are yet to recognize power behind these small messages.

So, here’s a sum up of ABC of push notifications, their reaction rates across different industry verticals and what tips one should keep in mind while opting for push notifications strategy. Have a look below

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Mobile Commerce, once believed to be a part of eCommerce is a different and upcoming stream in online world. Just from being responsive to only mobile is a new and catching up trend. Have you wondered what are the reasons behind it and how this evolution started and now where is it heading. With this evolution, businesses are also taking leap forward to keep their pace with trends and technologies.

View today’s scenario of Mobile Commerce as well as the future of it. Read how mCommerce can help your business to get bigger. Share this powerpoint presentation to spread the word.

Investing in right technology and choosing a technology partner is crucial and time-taking job. Choosing a right mobile app development partner is the same case.

When technologies is directly able to pull-up or pull-down your bottom line, it’s definitely a big game. MobiCommerce has definitely helped more than 100 brands with onset of mobile app journey for their customers as well as for them.

Though these renowned brands worked hard to set other ingredients like customer service, products, marketing strategy in place, mobile app development is tackled by MobiCommerce. As a result these clients got excellent app reviews on playstore and good installations within few days and months of getting live.

Let’s introduce few of these apps developed by MobiCommerce

My Pet Shop – This app is meant for all of the shopping needs of a pet owner. Right from their food, toys, chewies to even pet-friendly hotels, this has it all. A different kind of eCommerce store chose MobiCommerce for handling their app development and team did it really well. Our team delivered the app after configuring all the must-have ecommerce features like payment options, shipping estimator, guest checkout, changeable product grid, enabled google analytics and other requirements. In less than a month of going live, My Pet Shop has more than 5000 installs and reviews for functionality and UI of their app too.

Julicci – Julicci is one of the largest fashion ecommerce brand of middle east and chose MobiCommerce to take their mobile journey ahead. With over 450 brands and 40,000 products on their website, moving to mobile app was a crucial decision for them and requires someone with robust features and success legacy with such huge brands before. MobiCommerce delivered their app to support their large product portfolio, making their way easy.

Chinaonline – China online claims themselves to be one of the largest portal for shopping categories like: Fashion, electronics and mobiles, tablets and iPad, laptops, original perfumes, digital camera, original watches, sporting goods, shoes, makeup, health and beauty, kitchen and dining in Pakistan. They have product assortment of over 600,000 products and got good deals and discounts for online shopping. Mobile app is obviously their choice of taking the business forward and MobiCommerce did the expected.

MobiCommerce has more than 100 clients across the world in different segments with one need of going on mobile. Though mobile app success is also dependent on the proper marketing, client engagement and retention but the foundation is laid by proper product and technology in place. We welcome all our customers this month for on-boarding with us for their mobile app journey.