What’s Working - And Not - In Mobile Commerce (Part 2 Of 2)

There’s a strong argument to be made for why brands should create native mobile apps, but Matt Hudson, Co-founder and CEO of BILDIT, an app development firm, allows that progressive web apps are a viable alternative. When evaluating the cost and risks, many brands opt to improve their web performance with a progressive web app, which is an improvement over web and therefore provides a superior experience relative to standard responsive web sites.

Even so, Hudson recommends native mobile apps and suggests brands consider new tools like React Native and Flutter, which he says have significantly decreased the costs associated with building native apps as discussed last month.

First, they combine iOS and Android development. Second, they utilize languages that are very similar in order to achieve feature parity with web. Tools like BILDIT exist to make it as easy to build an app as to develop for web by providing brands. It works the same way Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and Adobe Commerce do by providing a fully completed solution that’s easy to maintain — but for mobile apps.

Hudson has observed that BILDIT and other tools have large communities of web developers who have shifted to work in mobile because these tools make that transition easier, in part due to communities that provide open source libraries to accelerate development.

In reinforcing the importance of building an app, Hudson points out more and more people are turning to mobile apps to buy online and that they create stronger user relationships. “I often ask, ‘Do you open your phone, go to Safari and type in Amazon.com or do you open the mobile app?’ and, ‘Did you know Instagram has a web site?’ Most people don’t even know that Instagram has a web version,” says Hudson.

While Hudson says it’s more important than ever that companies be in the Apple App Store or Google Play store, he admits companies that sell a small number of products, or one-off products, may not need an app. “Though it may feel like every retailer has one, only the top 5 percent of the world’s retail companies have native e-commerce mobile apps,” he added.

BILDIT put together a guide to help companies determine whether they should build an app, including questions such as:

1. Do you have a customer who returns to make more purchases? If your customers return to buy things from you on any cadence, make it easy for them with an app that lives on their phone.

2. Do you have a loyalty program? Customers love mobile apps for loyalty. App users are brand fans so, if you have a loyalty program, you should have an app.

3. Do you have a physical location or a store? If you do, it is likely the user will come into your store and will want to open your app to compare prices. 49 percent of Americans have used a shopping app to compare prices. If they aren’t looking at your prices, they’re going to be comparing at Amazon or Walmart.

3. Do you have more than 10,000 products? If you do, it’s likely you have recurring customers. You should have an app.

4. Do you have a younger customer? It’s not a preference for them, it’s a demand. (Older customers also like apps, explains Hudson. It’s just taken them longer to adopt them.)

And the metrics to be considering when you do build that app:

• Incremental lift revenue. The goal should be to create relationships with large numbers of your customers and improve the conversion so that you see real incremental lift in revenue per user.

• Engagement. Monthly Active Users is a very important metrics for most mobile apps. It tells brands if customers are coming back, if the app is growing, and if customers are interested in the product.

• Conversion. The crown jewel metric. Are your customers buying? Are they browsing? Mobile apps should convert significantly better than mobile web. If not, there is something wrong. Checkout should be nearly one step.

• Performance. Performance is key to mobile app success. Users come to your app to save time. Don’t make them login more than once. Make it easy to buy. Make it fast. Mobile moments last about 2 minutes, while customers are in line at Starbucks or pickup line at school. It must be easy, it must be fast. A classic is “milliseconds mean millions” from Deloitte: “Over a 4 week period, we analysed mobile site data from 37 retail, travel, luxury and lead generation brands across Europe and the US. Results showed that a mere 0.1s change in load time can influence every step of the user journey, ultimately increasing conversion rates. Conversions grew by 8% for retail sites on average.”

This article was originally published by Forbes on 5/9/23.