Retail apps finding favour with shoppers new report finds

It’s a good time to be an app builder creating retail apps according to new research – as a report by a financial services company has found that retail app downloads have hit an all time high. What’s more, shoppers are increasingly buying directly from the apps of their favourite retailers – all of which means app-based commerce looks set to be a hot trend in the not too distant future.

The study found that as an average, shoppers are now downloading and using double the number of retail apps this year, than last year. The typical shopper will now have a total of four retail apps installed on their smartphone, up from two just 12 months ago.

The research showed that one of the reasons that shoppers are increasingly buying directly from their app is that they are happy with the experience being offered. In total, 83% said they were pleased with the mobile app experience offered by retailers overall.

The number of shoppers disappointed with retail app efforts has also fallen this year, with 21% deleting an app because they felt it was poor, compared with 35% who said the same thing in last year’s survey.

What are retail app designers doing right?

A larger number of retail apps are beginning to integrate payment functionality, such as Apple Pay, into the app itself. So rather than having a shopper browse on the app and then being funnelled to the mobile site to actually complete a purchase, they can transact directly in the app.

The higher positive experience ratings also suggest that retail app developers (and the retailers themselves) are starting to consider apps a core part of their relationship building and customer retention efforts.

More personalised experienced, tailored to the app user are being introduced, and that means the shopper finds it much easier to shop what they love and find the pieces that suit their own personal style, much more easily than was the case just 12 months ago.

Another interesting take away from the survey is that shoppers are begin to expect and get excited about retail apps, with some 67% of shoppers saying they’ve downloaded a favourite retailers all and significantly – around half of that number saying they did so as soon as the app came out.

During Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, we saw mobile take a huge leap forward in terms of sales and amount of sales originating from mobile devices. With Black Friday 2018 not that far away, could the growth in app commerce be the shopping holiday’s biggest surprise yet?