How Retailer Apps Could Transform Your Profit Margins

What is the ultimate goal of any retailer? To sell more products.

How do they achieve that goal? Well, that’s a tougher question to answer. Some might produce better goods or more of them, while others focus on marketing or brand awareness. The truth is there are many ways to increase sales for a retailer, some less obvious than others. A mobile app would be something you may consider to be a ‘less obvious’ method of customer acquisition and sales improvement.

Previously available almost exclusively to wealthy brands and large corporations — thanks to their large price tag of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds — apps are fast becoming more widely available to smaller brands, due to decreasing development costs.

The times, they are a-changin.

Now, many SMEs, including retailers, are getting involved in the app movement. Yet, while the demand for retailer apps has soared in recent years, one question still remains: why should you develop your own retailer app?

Easy. Increased profitability.

Establish Yourself in the eCommerce World

It is now a fact that more sales are made online than in brick-and-mortar stores. It is remarkable just how quickly the interest in online retail has grown, yet it has left some businesses scrambling to catch up.

If you fail to establish yourself as an online retailer, you miss out on the largest market you can hope to tap into. So how can a retailer app help you with that?

Apps can be developed with features that include eCommerce stores, marketplaces, ordering platforms and secure payment. By creating an app, you can access the eCommerce market and reap the rewards of online sales.

Provide a More Satisfying Customer Experience

When it comes to retail, consumers like easy-to-navigate interfaces, they like convenience, they like simplicity in their ordering and quick experiences. Being able to provide this means you’ll achieve better sales figures and encourage repeat business.

Coincidently, these are exactly the reasons why 85% of people prefer to use apps over mobile websites.

Apps are inherently good sales platforms. If an app is designed well, they are easy to navigate and simple to use. They are also incredibly convenient and quick to access, being preloaded onto the user’s phone.

Without even trying, you can tick all the boxes of a satisfying customer experience and boost your potential sales output, all by developing a retailer app for your brand.

Access a Unique Section of the Market

The majority of time the average person spends on a mobile phone — up to five hours per day — is spent within an app. That’s not surprising really, as we’ve already established over 8 in 10 people prefer them to using mobile websites.

If most of your potential customers prefer using apps while on their phone, and most of their time on their phone is spent within an app and you don’t have an app, what does that tell you?

It tells you that you are missing out.

Essentially, what these figures mean is that a retailer app allows you to access a proportion of the market that you simply couldn’t without one. So if you are looking to expand your consumer base and improve profitability, a move towards retailer app development would be a highly advisable one.

Mobile Retailer Apps Convert

So we’ve established plenty so far:

• That apps are a bridge into the eCommerce world
• That most sales are made online
• That apps provide a better customer experience
• That people prefer apps to mobile websites
• That most time on a mobile is spent on an app

But this means absolutely nothing if you aren’t making sales through your app. Happily, however, there is evidence to support the profitability potential for retailer apps.

Conversions have been shown to be between 100% to 300% higher on mobile apps than mobile websites. The reasoning behind this is thought to be that the convenience and simplicity of purchasing encourages customers to click that ‘buy now’ button more often.

All the benefits and statistics detailed above come together to create a converting machine — one that can see your profits rise to dizzying new heights.

Take Advantage of Advanced Marketing Tools

Retailer apps aren’t quite finished with their benefits just yet. We’ve still got to look at their ability to market your business.

The advantages of developing an app for your retail brand in terms of marketing are numerous, but when broken down, these are the three main reasons to get building right now:

• Brand Awareness — The average person checks their phone around 84 times per day. This means that if your brand has claimed a space on their mobile phone, they are constantly being exposed to it — both consciously and subconsciously. Brand exposure leads to increased awareness, loyalty and repeat business. You can buy no better ad spot than a space on somebody’s mobile phone.
• Push Notifications — Push notifications take advantage of native app features and allow businesses to notify mobile phone users of important information with alerts — similar to the buzz you get when someone texts you. This means you can directly send messages to customers about new products, deals and more. Unlike emails, they are also much harder to miss or ignore.
• Deals and Discounts — Customers love deals and discounts, but finding them can be difficult. If you make your app an exclusive platform for money-saving offers, you’ll draw more customers to it, as they know they may find deals if they visit. As a result, you bring in more business — and more repeat business, too.

By developing a retailer app, you are able to access these marketing tools and open yourself up to their benefits.