Przemysław Pala
Andrzej Puczyk
Knowing “why” is the advantage with the mobile app
Sometimes it results from the lack of a bright vision. Another reason may be failing to understand the market and customers’ needs. Some build their mobile apps without a clear strategy too. It turns out that only having the app is not enough. Without beforehand research and preparing a complete plan, creating an app for your company may fail.
We have created a list of frequent mistakes to help you avoid them in the future. There’s no way to present them all, but our research team compressed it to ten that seem to be most committed. Let’s take a closer look at the ecommerce mobile apps mistakes.
Problematic checkout process
No one would like a scenario where customers don’t complete all the stages during the checkout process and leave the app without buying anything. Losing clients at this phase is a widespread mistake of ecommerce mobile apps. A few reasons may cause problems here: too complicated process, the need to fill too many forms, asking for credit card details, sending customers to other websites, etc.
Making the checkout process straightforward, easy, and intuitive is vital, no matter the case. The less complicated it is at the end of the shopping process, the more purchases you may achieve as the company. Buying should be a pleasure, not a labyrinth. Have it constantly in mind!
Withholding updates of the mobile app
Updates are an essential factor in the app’s development. What’s more, that’s the only way to expand your business and go over time. The leading causes of such needs are changing customers’ needs or behaviors, the tempo of implementing innovations, and technological development wider than ever before.
To perform those updates smoothly, it is essential to understand the client’s profile and the demands he may have in relation to the mobile app. The more you understand your customer, the better optimizations and upgrades you can deliver.
Forcing particular behaviors
It is never a good idea to follow the strategy of pretending to know exactly what the customer may need. Like many people, there are many opinions and visions we can hear. That’s why e-commerce companies shouldn’t try to guess and propose products based just on search patterns. We consider such actions not the best strategy.
It’s like telling your friend he needs a raincoat when it’s not raining. Many companies tend to duplicate this way. User experience on mobile and website should be equal and synchronized because clients seek transparency.
Absence of mobile app strategy
There’s no doubt that nowadays, eCommerce managers will push mobile channel forward, sometimes to surpass the competitors and gain a much-needed advantage. Unfortunately, that might happen with the lack of a decent strategy. The will to become mobile commerce often meets problems in the early stages of the brand new solution.
That’s because creating a mobile commerce app is not all. You need to implement a straightforward method of synchronization and updates to avoid bugs or delays in your app’s performance. User experience, again, is what matters in the end.
Over usage of pop-ups and push notifications
That’s an aspect that needs to be carefully proceeded. First and foremost, pop-ups are a powerful tool in acquiring customers and making them more willing to make purchases. Push notifications, done wisely, are also a strategic way to catch clients’ attention and interest them. However, these methods can also be irritating and cause severe losses when not correctly estimated. It’s like searching for Aristotle’s golden mean.
Creating pop-ups and push notifications that will encourage your customers instead of deterring them from your app will be your significant victory.
Mimicking the competitor’s apps
Conducting market research is essential to building your own mobile commerce app in the future. The more you will discern, the better for your project. It is essential to state that patterning on others from your field is not a mistake. There’s nothing wrong with drawing on inspiration from other companies.
Nevertheless, mimicking the app might be a different case here. Implementing the same designs, displays, and features simply because someone shares your field of business might not be a good choice. Remember that your app needs to represent your brand and be unique in customers’ eyes.
Not performing market research
Imagine a situation opposite to the previous point. You’re developing the app without previous market research. You didn’t check the competition, looked at the variety of options, and didn’t care about how customers behave in your niche. You may think you already have a solid strategy and a clear vision. Nothing could be more wrong than that.
Without proper research, you won’t get the answers to many basic questions, like: What do my customers seek for? What keywords do they use? What’s their general online behavior? Following the market research will help you understand your client’s preferences and needs.
Outdated mobile app design
Moving over time is what enables ecommerce to grow and expand. Mobile commerce apps should be the perfect example of innovation and freshness. The general pattern of today’s customers is challenging. People want reliable brand new solutions with as few clicks as possible. That must go hand in hand with a relevant design and a clear eye path. To sum it up, you need to go with the flow and develop an app that will catch your client’s attention from the first scrolling.
Lack of omnichannel solutions
The moment you start losing is precisely when you will begin treating your mobile commerce app as a separate and individual channel of your business. Sounds scary, right? That’s exactly the impression we would you to have. A massive number of customers use their smartphones for purchases daily.
That means that your website’s experience should be transferred to mobile in the same way. The more coherent those channels experience, the better customers perceive it.
M-commerce strategy should take advantage of many individual options for a specific niche. Let’s take location-based services as an example. Adding features to your app could allow mobile clients to use it. That’s why you need to remember the omnichannel strategy.
Slow performance
No one wants to be slow, right? Being fast is winning. In sports, in the economy, but also in e-commerce. Retailers should have at the back of their heads that coding errors might pop up in the most minor expected moments. Updating features and overall app performance is crucial. No matter how good your products are. If your app will have some lags and downtimes in performance, that might drag many customers away.
What’s next?
Having presented mistakes commonly committed by e-commerce companies, we hope you will find them helpful in your future projects. The message of this article is not to divert ambitious managers from developing their own mobile commerce apps for their business but to take all form the above-mentioned cases into serious consideration.
