Retail App Development - 5 Features That Consumers Want Most!

Speed, customer experience, 24/7 access – these are the main elements that are driving the retail industry today.

But what is it that offers all three elements in one place?

Answer: mobile apps!

Right now, the worldwide retail industry is laser-focused on mobile platforms. And retailers who identified & invested early in mobile application development are now enjoying the fruitful benefits of it.

For instance, there were 150+ million US shopping app downloads in 2018, according to eMarketer.

Statista also revealed that after shopping online, 42% of consumers use a social network or shopping app, which suggests that these users either keep the shopping momentum going or tell their friends about their recent purchase.

All these data clearly prove that mobile app development is the way forward for the retailers and that the mobile apps will become the preferred choice for shopping in the coming years.

And in today’s blog, we’re going to share the 5 main features that consumers want the most in every retail app.

Retail App Development Features That Consumers Want The Most!

1 – Personalized User Experience

Online shopping experience has evolved a lot in the past recent years.

From desktop websites & mobile websites to mobile apps and now AI-powered applications, consumers today no longer have to deal with browsing through dozens of products to find what they want.

Today, retail apps are equipped with Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning that help retailers to learn their customers’ buying preferences.

These preferences later help retailers to understand what exactly each customer wants and what is the best way to give it to them.

2 – Discounts through Push Notifications

Push Notifications are considered to be the most powerful tool to retain app users. And when they’re used right, it can sky-rocket your sales.

Today, most retail apps are leverage push notifications to keep their customers informed about their new products and about the exclusive discounts.

So, if you’re planning to build a retail app, implement a carefully planned push notification strategy to convert maximum users into paying customers.

For instance, you can leverage the customers’ behavior insights, preferences, and previous purchase history and notify them about the new discount offers on the items that they checked out recently.

3 – Loyalty Program

In today’s competitive world, a product differentiation strategy just simply doesn’t work.

And retailers have already realized it. Therefore, today most retailers offer some kind of loyalty program either through their website or mobile app.

A loyalty program, for those who don’t know, is a powerful strategy to retain the maximum number of customers by rewarding them on their repeat purchase.

And since today’s consumers spend 5+ hours on their smartphones, embedding a loyalty program in your retail app makes perfect sense.

In fact, according to Annex Cloud’s study, retailers who have implemented a customer loyalty program have witnessed the following results:

Increase in revenue by 5-10%.
Increase in the Customer purchase frequency by 5-20%.
Customers spending 5-20% more.

These data clearly prove that loyalty programs can successfully motivate the customers to buy more products and more frequently from a retailer.

4 – Fast Checkout

The checkout process in your retail app must be fast and easy.

And the reason is simple: Impulse buys.

Impulse buy is the most important advantage for retailers and the best way to capitalize on it is by making sure that the purchase process is done in the shortest number of steps possible.

In fact, if your customers face even the smallest glitch while shopping, they will most certainly abandon their shopping cart.

So, in order to combat this, implementing a fast checkout process is recommended. In other words, you can consider allowing your mobile app customers to save their addresses, card and other details to save their time and effort to make a purchase.

Apart from this, you can also implement fast return options so that customers don’t hesitate in making an impulse purchase, knowing that they can always easily return it.

5 – Wish Lists

Wish lists are among the customers’ top favorite features in shopping apps. Wish lists basically allow consumers to save, share, and shop products on the go.

In other words, the wish list feature helps consumers save their favorite items that they desire to buy or plan to buy in the near future.

Mobile buyers find the wishlist feature very helpful because it saves them a lot of time browsing the product catalog to find the one that they liked. Apart from this, the wishlist feature provides an immense amount of value to the retailers as well.

For instance, the wishlist feature helps online retailers improve the shopping experience of their customers, in addition to increasing the overall mobile app sales.

The bottom line is, wishlists feature offer so many benefits to both retailers as well as their customers that not implementing the feature could really affect the customers’ experience as well as revenue.

Concluding Thoughts…

So these are the 5 most important features to include in your retail mobile app. Besides these features, there are many other features that could add competitive value to your retail brand.

We, at Credencys, can help you implement these 5 most important features in the most cost-effective manner, while also suggesting the other relevant features for your retail brand.

So, if you’re interested in mobile application development for your retail business, contact us right away!

General FAQs for Retail App Development

Q:1 – What are retail apps?

Ans: Retail apps are basically mobile apps mostly developed by retail brands, businesses, and entrepreneurs to target smartphone users and convert them into customers.

Q:2 – Which are the best online shopping apps?

Ans: There are many best online shopping apps such as Amazon, AliExpress, Flipkart, and a lot of others. The basically depends on the product or item that you’re looking to buy.

Q:3 – How can I build my own app?

Ans: You can either use App Maker services such as AppyPie or outsource your retail app project to a mobile app development company, which is often recommended as they can help you build a retail app around your custom requirements.

Q:4 – Is there an app to find clothes from a picture?

Ans: Yes, there are many mobile apps that allows to find clothes and in fact any product from a picture. Here are the top 5 apps to find clothes from a picture:

• Google Lens
• CamFind
• Amazon StyleSnap
• Pinterest Lens
• Screenshop