Sign in
Build an App

Month: January 2020

How to Build a Successful Employee Mobile App

Not all mobile apps are intended for mass consumption on the app store. Mobile apps can be used as powerful tools in the workplace as well. Small businesses and large enterprises alike can benefit from an employee mobile app.

An internal communications app is a great way to improve any inefficiencies in your HR department while simultaneously future-proofing your operation. 

Common tasks that can be solved with an internal business app include:

  • Corporate communication
  • Management self-service
  • Employee self-service

An app can improve the way information is sent to your employees, which is a major HR challenge for businesses. Mobile apps can also give your managers access to crucial information, such as company financials, while they’re on the go.

The employee self-service functionality gives your staff access to everything they would have from a company computer while they are working remotely. 

These are three broad types of tasks that can be solved with an employee mobile app for your business. As we continue through this guide, I’ll cover some more specific features that make these apps successful.

So for those you of you who are thinking about creating an app for your employees, use this resource to guide you through the process. 

Benefits of a Business App For Employees

An employee mobile app is not something you should create just for the sake of doing it. If you don’t understand the benefits of an internal business app, then it doesn’t have a chance of being successful.

You should keep these benefits in mind when you’re designing the app. This will ensure that all of the app features are implemented with a clear purpose. 

Increase Productivity and Engagement

Mobile apps can improve HR efficiencies, making it easier for your employees to complete basic tasks. Rather than having to visit the HR office or calling the HR department over the phone, your staff can access and make changes to their personal profiles directly from the app.

If someone wants to request vacation time or needs to call out sick, they won’t need to make a call or use their computer. All of this can be managed in an app.

Your staff is already using their mobile devices on the job. 

In fact, 60% of employees say they use apps for work-related tasks. An additional 71% of people spend at least two hours per week accessing company information from their phones and tablets. 

By giving them an employee mobile app, you’re making it easier for your staff to do the things that they’re already doing from these devices.

As a result, this will improve employee productivity and engagement on a day-to-day basis. 

Overall, this will improve the employee experience. According to the infographic above, happier employees are more creative, more productive, and generate more sales.

Once you recognize that your employees prefer to use their mobile devices for workflow-related tasks, you can build an app to improve those processes. 

Reduce Human Error

Mistakes happen. This is just part of running a business. While some mistakes are obviously more significant than others, you’ll obviously want to reduce faulty actions as much as possible.

Your business is more susceptible to making internal mistakes if the majority of your processes are handled manually by your staff. Here’s what I mean.

Let’s use your human resources department as an example, as it pertains to your employees.

What is your current process for staff requesting time off? Some company policies require staff to email the HR department. Others even accept hand-written requests dropped off at the office. 

These types of procedures leave too much room for human error. An email can be overlooked, misunderstood, or accidentally deleted. Paper requests are tough to keep track of and can easily get lost.

But an app can eliminate these types of mistakes. Your staff can request time off and add their vacation schedules directly from the app. This information will automatically sync up with your HR system. 

Instant Feedback

How often do you get to sit down with your employees and review how they’re doing? What’s your process for listening to employee feedback?

Your staff is the driving force behind your operation. They are on the front lines, so they know what’s working and what can be improved. If they have a suggestion to improve the process, it shouldn’t have to wait until their annual review meeting. 

Set up a function within the app specifically designed for employee feedback. The possibilities here are endless.

It can even be used for requests to fix a broken microwave in the break room or an oversized pothole in the parking lot. You can send out surveys to your employees on a regular basis to encourage their feedback as well. 

Overall, this will keep your employees happy knowing that you actually care about their input. 

Improve Employee Communication

Effective employee communication is the key to success in the digital workplace. 80% of employees say that proper communication actually helps improve the performance of their work. 

60% of people want their employers to keep them informed with company news.

However, roughly 30% of the entire workforce believes that their company’s existing methods for internal communication is not working. That’s a major problem for businesses today.

Here are some of the most common reasons why internal communication is failing.

Furthermore, 86% of business executives and employees say that ineffective communication is the number one reason for workplace failures. 

The majority of businesses use email to communicate with their staff. But the average office worker receives 120 to 150 emails per day. Sorting through those to find the vital internal announcements is ineffective. This relates back to employee productivity, which we discussed earlier.

But an app can provide the main hub for all important announcements. You can use an in-app news feed as a way to reach employees. Important notices can be sent to your staff via push notifications, so everyone will see it immediately. 

Real-Time Information

Another top benefit of an employee mobile app is access to real-time information. This is a major flaw in the workflow process for many businesses, especially ones with deskless employees.

Let’s say you have an employee who is on the road completing a job remotely. When the task is complete, they can update their progress directly in the app as opposed to waiting until they return to the office. This can drastically improve your scheduling procedures and workflow statuses. 

Here’s another example, from a completely different angle, to show you how versatile these apps can be. 

Your company might have a shuttle bus that takes your employees to a parking lot, public transportation, or central location in a nearby city. Your staff can access the shuttle schedule and track its actual location in real-time with GPS monitoring. 

Is your IT department running last-minute repairs that will impact technology in the office? Are you shutting down early today due to foul weather coming in? 

All of this can be communicated and seen in real-time with an employee mobile app. 

How to Make Your Employee App a Success

Now that you understand the benefits of an employee app, it’s time to learn how to make your app successful. I’ve identified some specific features and elements that should be taken into consideration when you’re going through the building process.

Solve a Problem

The first thing you need to do is identify a problem in your current operation. Otherwise, your app won’t have any purpose or sense of direction.

Don’t limit yourself. An app can solve more than one inefficiency in the workplace. So make a list of everything and then figure out which ones can be improved with a mobile app. Some examples include:

  • Poor internal communication
  • Low employee productivity
  • Limited resources for remote staff
  • Too many manual tasks in the HR department
  • No access to real-time workflow processes

Once you identify the problems, it will be much easier for you to implement specific features in your employee app to address those concerns. 

Define Your Company Culture

What is your company all about? You might have a mission statement or branding strategy, but that’s not the same as your company culture.

This is more important to your staff than you might think. Take a look at the most important aspects of a job description, according to a recent survey of employees. 

Aside from compensation and actual job requirements, company culture ranks high on this list.

An employee mobile app will allow you to set the standard for how your staff communicates, behaves, and works. If you can emulate the company culture through your use and engagement in the app, it increases the chances that your employees will follow that lead.

For example, let’s say you have an instant messaging feature for internal communication. You can’t expect your staff to use it if you never do.

A great employee app will be branded based on the company culture. If your app is dry, boring, colorless, and uses formal language, then that will be the perception of your company’s culture. 

Alternatively, if your app is bright, colorful, branded with your logos, includes company taglines, while communicating information in a way that’s both fun and engaging, your staff will behave the same way.

This relates back to employee engagement and happiness. Let’s look at something as simple as the phrasing between two statements.

Free beer in the break room! Help yourself. 

Or… 

There will be complimentary beverages and snacks for all faculty at 1:00 PM today

Each of these portrays a different type of company culture. Which one do you want to be? The choice is yours, but an app gives you the chance to emulate your vision. 

Establish a Central Information Hub

Your app should be full of useful employee resources. You can’t expect your staff to keep a physical copy of your employee handbook with them at all times. But with a mobile app, they’ll have access to this type of information from anywhere. 

Here’s a basic example of how you can set up the main dashboard for your employee app.

employee mobile app

From here, your staff will have access to everything and anything they could possibly need to know about your company.

Do they need a reminder about certain safety procedures? Review the rules within the app. 

Rather than sorting through the 100+ emails, they get each day to find company news and announcements, they can simply check the app on their own time for any updates about the company.

The app can include a company directory listing all employees’ names, phone numbers, email addresses, and other helpful information.

Your event calendar can be integrated into the app as well. This is much more effective than passing out physical flyers around the office for upcoming events. 

The best employee apps allow staff to access payroll information, health plans, and other benefits as well. If they have a question about any of these things, they can simply use the app as a resource instead of being forced to contact your HR department. 

Create Modules For Employee Learning

Employee mobile apps can also be used as an effective training tool. Depending on the type of business you have, it may require your staff to go through certain programs to remain eligible or advance their position. 

You can set up your app with learning materials, guides, and videos to train your staff on how to do things. This can be extremely helpful for new hires as well.

An app even gives you the opportunity to set up tests and quizzes directly on the platform. These can be used as practice examples before your staff needs to go through an actual certification program.

In addition to educating your staff, this type of feature can also provide you with valuable information about your employees.

You might be under the assumption that your staff is highly trained and fully knowledgeable about certain topics. But the results of these tests may tell you otherwise.

Furthermore, if you see analytics showing that a high percentage of your employees are constantly checking the same learning materials, you can potentially change your training process to make sure that people understand everything better the first time around. 

Encourage Friendly Competition

Do you offer prizes or rewards to employees with the top sales each month? You can set up a sales team leaderboard in your app to track everyone’s progress in real-time.

This type of feature will encourage your staff to work harder to make their way towards the top of the ranks.

Even if you’re not in sales, you can find other ways to re-create this type of competition using the mobile app. Maybe you reward employees based on their attendance or punctuality. Or maybe your staff has an in-house competition for who takes the most steps in a day.

These types of friendly competitions can boost morale around the office and create comradery in the workplace. Your employee mobile app is the perfect place to track and facilitate something like this. 

Enable Push Notifications

Earlier we talked about how inefficient email is when it comes to communicating with your staff. But how much time are they actually wasting searching through emails?

According to a recent study, your staff spends about 2 hours each day searching for and gathering information. That is not an effective use of their time, and it’s costing you tons of money.

Push notifications are a much more effective way to communicate with your staff. So make sure that you take full advantage of this feature for your employee mobile app.

Don’t get carried away and send them tons of useless notifications throughout the day. That defeats the purpose. 

Here’s something you need to keep in mind. Push notifications can be disabled by the user. So you don’t want to bombard your staff with too many messages. That will cause them to turn notifications off, and then you’re back to square one. 

Save the push notifications for messages that are urgent and of the utmost importance. Any high-priority memo could be sent as a push notification as opposed to a general email.

Other company announcements can be found within the app as well. 

Don’t Forget About Your Deskless Workforce

80% of the global workforce is considered to be deskless. While this group makes up the vast percentage of employees, just 1% of enterprise software funding goes towards them.

So when you’re designing an employee app, you need to keep your deskless employees in mind. These are people who work remotely, work on the road, on-site, or bounce around between multiple locations.

You can’t treat them the same way as your in-house staff who you see every single day from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Monday to Friday.

Depending on the type of business you have, it could be days or even weeks before your remote workforce needs to report to an office. 

Recently, BuildFire helped build a mobile app for Preferred Materials. The company has nearly 1,900 employees, but only 20% of them are office-based. By creating an app to target their deskless workforce, they were able to increase employee engagement by 300%.

You can check out the full Prefered Materials case study here. 

Set Up Instant Messaging

Communication has been a major theme throughout this guide. It’s one of the main benefits of building a successful employee mobile app.

But most of the communication that we’ve discussed so far has been between management and the staff. Human resources or the CEO sending out updates, memos, or other types of information. However, you’re not just limited to those examples.

You can set up instant messaging within your employee mobile app. This will allow your staff to communicate with each other, from anywhere, in real-time. 

Many companies might have some type of instant messaging software that they use for this. But in order to access it, your staff needs to be logged in to their computer. 

By adding this feature to your mobile app, it extends that communication outside of the office and doesn’t chain your staff to a desk. 

People are used to texting and sending quick messages from their smartphones all day as it is. So this will be easy for them to adapt to. They may even prefer it over email or phone calls.

It’s another great way for your remote staff to feel like they are still connected to the office when they are on the road. If they have a question, need some assistance, or want to provide an update, your employees can simply send an instant message within the app. 

Test the Usability

Building a successful employee mobile app goes far and beyond just adding the right features. You also need to make sure that the app is user-friendly. 

If your app doesn’t load quickly, crashes often, and can’t perform basic functions, then people aren’t going to use it. This is not a situation that you want to be in.

A mobile solution is supposed to improve your efficiencies, not make things more difficult. If your staff tries to use the app for something but is unable to do so, then they are forced to revert back to their old ways.

This essentially makes your process even less efficient than it was before. Here are some statistics to keep in mind when you’re testing the usability of your app. 

So don’t rush to get your app in the hands of your staff until it’s been thoroughly tested. Maybe release a beta version to a select few members of your team to get their feedback before you launch at scale. 

Maintain High Performance

Your employee app won’t be perfect. Don’t worry; no app is perfect. 

Even the best apps out there have room for improvement. While it’s important to test the usability before launching it, understand that the process doesn’t end there. 

You’ll still need to come out with updates to ensure that the app is always performing at a high level. Since this is something that your staff will be using on a daily basis, you can’t cut corners when it comes to performance. 

Take feedback seriously. If your employees are experiencing problems or difficulty using the app, encourage them to share that information with you so you can make the necessary adjustments. 

Conclusion

Nearly any company can benefit from an employee mobile app. But before you start this project, it’s important to understand exactly what makes these apps so successful.

Don’t just build an app for the sake of doing it. There needs to be a reason and purpose behind your decisions, like building an app to streamline the employee onboarding experience. 

Every business is different, but there are certain common features that every employee app should include. So use this guide as a reference for building your app. 

Once you’ve decided that you’re ready to move forward, you need to figure out exactly how you’re going to build it. Here at BuildFire, we have the tools you need to build a workforce app. 

11 Reasons Why You Need an eCommerce Mobile App

The sky’s the limit for eCommerce businesses. People are shopping online, today, more than ever before. This statement holds true across all industries worldwide. The power of the Internet has made it possible for you to reach consumers anytime, anywhere, from any device. But the type of devices you’re targeting them on will have a major impact on your success.

It’s no secret that mobile consumption has taken over our lives. According to a recent study, 96% of adults in the United States own a mobile phone. 81% of the population owns a smartphone. Look around. Everyone has these devices glued to their hands nearly 24/7. 

As a business owner, you need to recognize this and adapt. How can you take this information and leverage it to increase eCommerce sales? The answer is simple—your eCommerce shop needs a mobile app.

Your eCommerce store will never reach its full potential with a website alone. If you review the most recent eCommerce trends, you’ll quickly realize that everything is heading in a mobile direction. 

But do you really need a mobile app? 100% YES!

All too often I consult with business owners who are content with the growth, sales, and revenue of their eCommerce site. So they don’t see a reason why a mobile app is necessary.

That was my inspiration for writing this guide. If you want your brand and website to be relevant in the coming years, you absolutely need to build a mobile eCommerce app. Here’s why:

1. Mobile Commerce is Trending Up

Sales from mobile devices have completely taken over the eCommerce industry. 

Take a look at your sales metrics and see what devices your customers are shopping from. There’s a good chance that a large chunk of those people are browsing and buying using smartphones and tablets. 

In fact, 67% of all eCommerce sales worldwide come from mobile devices. 

eCommerce mobile app

Within the next two years, mobile commerce will control 73% of all eCommerce sales across the globe. 

People are already used to shopping from mobile devices. It’s just so much more convenient than waiting to get on a computer. Our phones are always just an arm’s reach away, which isn’t always the case with a laptop or desktop computer.

Consumers are buying from everywhere. Mobile commerce makes it possible for people to buy on the bus, train, or Uber. They shop online during their lunch break or while they’re having a coffee walking down the street. It’s just too easy.

As mobile sales continue to trend upward in the coming years, the best way for your eCommerce site to get its share of the pie is with mobile app development. 

Why?

Well, shopping mobile apps are growing at a rate of 54% year-over-year. That’s the highest rate compared to any other app category.

Let me put that into perspective for you. The average year-over-year growth rate of mobile app usage across all industries is 6%. So shopping is a whopping 48% higher than the average.

Sometimes making a decision like this is as simple as reading in between the lines. 

Mobile sales are dominating the eCommerce world. The usage of shopping apps is growing faster than every other type of app on the market. So by default, you’ll know that eCommerce applications will contribute to mobile commerce sales. 

2. Consumers Prefer Mobile Applications

Are you currently generating eCommerce sales from mobile devices without a mobile app? I’m going to assume the answer is yes.

Some of you may look at that data and be satisfied knowing that you’re reaching a smartphone and tablet users with your mobile site. But you’re just barely scratching the surface. 

Don’t get me wrong. Whether you have an app or not, a mobile-friendly website is absolutely necessary. In fact, 85% of people say that a website should look as good or look even better than its desktop version. 

Furthermore, 88% of consumers are less likely to return to a mobile site after a bad experience. 47% of people expect a mobile site to load in 2 seconds or less.

So having a user-friendly mobile site is definitely the first step toward generating eCommerce sales from mobile users. But at the end of the day, the following statistic is what matters most:

78% of consumers would rather use an app to buy from an eCommerce shop than a mobile website. That’s right—78%.

Let that sink in. This means that if you’re currently getting 100 mobile transactions per week, roughly 80 of those people would rather buy from your native app. And those are your existing customers. Imagine how many people you’re neglecting because you don’t have an app. 

Here are the top reasons why people prefer mobile apps over mobile websites.

Convenience and speed are the top two reasons. Overall, mobile apps just offer a better shopping experience. 

Look at the habits in your own life. When you go to buy something for yourself online, would you rather buy from a website or from an app?

No matter how fast or responsive a mobile website might be, an app’s functionality will always provide a more optimized user experience. 

So if you’re eCommerce site doesn’t have a mobile app, you’re neglecting the majority of the market while providing a less than optimal experience for your existing customers. This holds true even if you’re using a reputable ecommerce platform like Shopify or Magento. An app builder will take your online store to the next level.

3. Gain a Competitive Advantage

This piggybacks off of my last point. Right now, without a mobile app, your eCommerce website is at a disadvantage. 

Customers would rather shop from mobile apps, so it’s only a matter of time before they stop buying from your mobile site altogether. The fact that you’re still getting any mobile sales right now is fortunate, but it won’t last forever. 

On the flip side, being an early mover and building an eCommerce mobile app will give you an advantage over other websites without one. 

If a consumer is torn between your site and a competitor site, the app will give them a reason to lean towards buying from you. 

I know what some of you are thinking because I’ve heard it before from other business owners. You don’t think that your biggest competitors have a mobile app, so there’s no reason for you to rush into getting one. You’ll just focus on making a better website than your competition for now.

Unfortunately, that’s the wrong mentality. 

I don’t mean to be blunt, but you’re crazy if you don’t think your competition has a mobile app. 

Right now, every eCommerce retailer on the planet is competing with Amazon. You can basically buy everything under the sun from them. In the United States alone, 95 million people have an Amazon Prime membership. 

Sure—Amazon might not carry your branded products. But how unique are you? Can a customer get something similar from another brand on Amazon’s app? Probably.

So anytime someone visits your site, they’ll always have the “Amazon experience” in mind. If you’re unable to meet those standards, then the customer won’t have a reason to buy from you.

The only way to truly replicate this shopping experience is with a mobile commerce app.

Here’s something else to keep in mind. A mobile app will give you a competitive advantage today, but that won’t be the case forever. In the coming years, everyone will have a mobile commerce app. So it’s in your best interest to create one now, that way you’ll have a head start on everyone else who was late to the party. 

4. Higher Conversion Rates

Let’s get back to the numbers. At the end of the day, everything you do needs to boost your KPIs, and ultimately benefit your bottom line.

Tracking conversions is a great place to start. Let’s take a look at the difference between mobile app conversions and mobile website conversions. 

When you look at these numbers side-by-side, the app is obviously the clear winner.

Consumers view 286% more products and add items to their shopping cart at an 85% higher rate when they’re shopping from an app as opposed to a mobile browser. 

This is great because it translates to better exposure for your brand and products. A customer may decide that they want more than they initially came for, but we’ll talk about that in greater detail later on.

Products viewed per session and add-to-cart rates are awesome, but the only thing that really matters is conversions.

Well, as you can see from the graphic, mobile apps convert at a 130% higher rate than mobile websites. 

Imagine how much more money you can make by instantly increasing conversion rates by 130%. That doesn’t even include how many more customers you’ll have once your app is live.

The bottom line is simple. More conversions translate to more dollars, and mobile apps drive higher conversion rates. 

5. Improve Marketing Communication

When you’re considering a big decision for your business, it’s easy to let the sales metrics get you excited. While a mobile app for your eCommerce shop definitely won’t disappoint when it comes to sales, this platform goes far and beyond that.

Mobile apps are a dream for marketers. By improving your marketing campaigns, you’ll ultimately be able to generate even more profits from your current and prospective customers.

Without a mobile app, you need to rely on your customers navigating directly to your website in order to have any chance of driving conversions. 

But how often does the same person really need to come back to your website? Even your best customers won’t need to buy something every day or even every week. 

So you spend marketing dollars on email communication and social media campaigns to try and reach your customer base on other channels. But with a mobile app, you’ll have a better way to communicate with your customers—push notifications.  

Take a look at the engagement rates of push notifications compared to traditional email marketing. 

60% of users open a push notification, compared to just 20% of emails. Once the message is opened, 40% of people click or have an interaction with a push notification compared to just 5.4% of emails.

Clearly, push notifications are a better way to connect with your customers. That’s because the user doesn’t have to do anything. 

To reach a customer via social media, you need to rely on them using that social platform, seeing your post or advertisement, navigating to your website, and then get them to convert from there. It’s just too many steps.

The same goes for email communication. A person must sign up to receive emails from you, then open your message, consume the content and click a link just to get to your website. 

With push notification, a message will appear directly on a user’s home screen, just like a text. When that message gets opened, the user will be directed straight to the app, so it’s much easier for them to buy. 

6. Increase Average Order Value

We’ve already established that a mobile app improves the user experience and increases conversion rates as well. But those aren’t the only monetary benefits of building an app for your eCommerce site.

A mobile app will also boost your average order value (AOV). 

Considering we’ve previously talked about how more products are viewed per session on mobile apps, this makes sense. 

It’s easier for people to browse when they are shopping from a mobile app. This gives them more of an opportunity to see what you’re offering. 

Mobile apps have a higher average order value than both mobile browsers and desktop screens.

Increasing your AOV by $10 is huge. To keep things simple, let’s just say you currently have 1,000 mobile transactions per month.

Increasing your AOV by $10 would translate to an additional $10,000 per month and $120,000 per year. That’s without factoring in the increased number of transactions you’ll get from a mobile app. So in reality, that number should be even higher. 

7. Create a Personalized Shopping Experience

Personalization is a crucial component of eCommerce success. Some of you might already be using personalized tactics to drive eCommerce sales. 

For example, when a customer signs up to receive emails from your business, you might segment them into a category based on factors like their age, gender, or location. Then you can send them targeted emails to improve their experience.

Or when a user visits your website, you can personalize the homepage based on their location. If you sell clothing, a customer shopping from New York City in December shouldn’t be seeing bathing suits, but a customer in Miami could.

These are some basic tactics that are used by the majority of eCommerce websites.

An eCommerce mobile app takes personalization to the next level. With an app, you’ll be able to track the user’s browsing and purchase history to offer custom recommendations. 

This is possible from a website as well, but it’s reliant on the customer always being logged in, so it’s much easier to accomplish from an app. 

63% of consumers want a personalized experience when they’re shopping online. This figure is up from 57% just two years ago. So overall, this is another upward trend. 

You can combine this personalization strategy with your push notification campaigns, which we talked about earlier. Rather than sending the same push notification to everyone with your mcommerce app, you can send targeted notifications based on a user’s preferences.

An app makes it easy for a customer to have access to their entire purchase history, which makes it possible for them to quickly reorder repeat purchases. These customer profiles can also be used to track customer rewards, which I’ll talk about in greater detail next.

9. Increase Customer Loyalty

A great way to get your customers to spend more money is by implementing a customer loyalty program. By having an eCommerce mobile app, it increases the chances that your customers will participate in this type of program. 

Furthermore, consumers are 82% more likely to shop from sites that offer loyalty programs.

This is something that you should definitely take advantage of. An app allows customers to see their status within a program in real-time, which relates back to our previous point about personalization. 

A loyalty program gives your customers an incentive to spend more money to reach their next reward. Here are a couple of examples to show you what I mean.

One way to set up your loyalty program is based on transactions. You can think of it as a virtual punch card. Order something from the app 5 times, and get a discount on your 6th purchase.

Another way to implement a loyalty program is to reward customers based on how much they spend in a given time period. Customers who spend $500 in a year will get some type of reward or benefit. Customers who spend $1,000 in a year will get even more rewards.

Psychologically, this encourages people to increase their average order value as well as their purchase frequency in order to reach the next spending tier. 

Some of you might already have a loyalty program on your website. But running the same promotion through a mobile app will be even more effective. 

8. Reduce Cart Abandonment Rates

Shopping cart abandonment is a major problem for eCommerce businesses. It’s one of the most important KPIs that you should be tracking. 

The reason why cart abandonment is so frustrating is because the customer is usually just one or two clicks away from finalizing the purchase. So what went wrong?

These are some of the top reasons for shopping cart abandonment.

  • Extra costs like shipping and taxes — 60%
  • Being forced to create an account — 37%
  • Long and complicated checkout process — 28%
  • Couldn’t see or calculate the total cost — 23%
  • Website crashed or had errors — 20%
  • Didn’t trust site with credit card information — 19%

Aside from money, the most common reasons for cart abandonment are related to user experience. But mobile apps eliminate those problems. 

As you can see, mobile apps have the lowest cart abandonment rate compared to mobile websites and desktop sites.

Ecommerce mobile apps reduce friction in the checkout process. Once a customer buys something, all of their preferences are saved in the settings of the app.

So when it comes time to buy something again, they won’t have to manually type in their name, shipping address, and billing information. The entire purchase process can be completed in just a couple of clicks. 

Mobile apps make it easier for you to accept alternative payment methods as well. Examples of popular mobile payment options include Apple Pay, Google Pay, or PayPal. If you integrate these methods into your checkout page, a user can buy something just by scanning their fingerprint. 

Each additional step in the checkout process gives the customer a chance to abandon their cart. By reducing the number of steps with a mobile app, you’ll keep abandonment rates low.

This payment gateway technology is available in iOS and Android apps alike, so people can access your app from both app stores. 

10. Offer Enhanced Customer Service

People will spend more money on better customer service. In fact, 73% of retail consumers say they are encouraged to shop longer and spend more money after a good customer service experience.

So this is something that you should address when you’re designing your mcommerce mobile app.

Make it easy for customers to find your contact information. Rather than forcing them to navigate to your website or search for you on Google, offer a simple “call us” button directly in the app. 

You can even implement live chat support directly through the app as well. 

Allow your customers to track their orders, from the moment something is purchased until the second it’s delivered to their front door. 

While this is also possible from a mobile website, the UX will be significantly better if it’s facilitated in an app. A mobile site won’t be as responsive to something this resource-intensive. 

11. Increase Retention Rates

Any time you’re able to generate eCommerce sales you should be very happy. But with that said, sales don’t tell the whole story.

How many of your sales come from repeat customers? 

Studies show that attracting new customers can be up to 25 times more expensive than selling to an existing one. But increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%. 

Take a look at the average eCommerce mobile app retention rates. 

38% of users return to an eCommerce app 11 times or more after they download it. There’s a good chance that they’ll be buying on multiple occasions during those 11+ visits. 

Mobile users return to the app frequently as well.

In fact, there is a 50% chance that a mobile user will return to an eCommerce mobile app within 30 days of buying something. 

Even if a user isn’t coming back to the app as much as you’d like to see, you can always use push notifications to bring them back. Offer a flash sale or exclusive deal to encourage users to buy from your app. You won’t have these same opportunities from a desktop site or mobile site. 

Conclusion

Your eCommerce store needs a mobile app. 

The numbers speak for themselves. I’ve given you 11 data-driven reasons why this needs to be a priority for all eCommerce shops. Here’s a recap of some of the most important KPIs.

  • Increased conversions
  • Higher average order value
  • Reduced abandonment rates
  • Higher retention rates

I don’t know one eCommerce store owner that doesn’t want to improve these metrics. 

Furthermore, consumers prefer mobile apps. This is a reality that can no longer be ignored. 

Now that you understand why an app is so important for your eCommerce business, it’s time to take action. If you’ve never built an app before, this might sound a little intimidating.

But building an app is easier than you think. You can create an eCommerce mobile app using BuildFire without writing any code. Our platform makes it easy for anyone to build an app, regardless of their technical skill level. 

If you need some help or want us to build it for you, just reach out and let us know. We’ll be happy to offer you as much assistance as you need. 

App builder icon

Powerful app builder

Ios & Android icon

iOS, Android & PWA

Unlimited customization icon

Unlimited customization