Retail Apps: Success Stories

Despite the enormous popularity of commercial applications created by established app development companies, many retailers still do not take full advantage of their benefits. This is probably due to the fears of “unnecessary” spending or absence of a complete understanding of the modern market. Indeed, today the consumer wants to have a full range of services at their disposal: both physical and digital. The use of modern technologies can open up a host of new approaches both to interaction with the client and to their preferences.

However, some companies decided to introduce mobile software into their business processes and benefited greatly, as a result. Today we are going to discuss notable cases of application introduction in retail.

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Most marketers agree that mobile products can significantly improve retail sales. There are several explanations for this:

  • Applications can aid in solving some of the most difficult tasks such as stimulating retail sales, improving customer loyalty, managing deliveries, providing online consultation, collecting information about consumer behavior in the store, etc.
  • Most online retail tools have been around for more than a decade, so companies have already learned how to analyze the needs to implement certain features.
  • Mobile applications are one of the fastest channels for obtaining information in the retail business, and this is of great importance for the industry.
  • Unlike adapted websites, applications have direct access to a device’s functionality and can become a good guide to the study of customer behavior and prioritization of sales.

Examples of Successful App Development Companies’ Retail Products

Due to the above mentioned benefits and capabilities of mobile apps, retail companies that employ them correctly, often succeed in reaching business goals of such introductions. Let us review some of the most notable examples.

Starbucks: Customer Loyalty App

Forrester Research states that customer loyalty is one of the most important metrics for retail business development nowadays.

Starbucks has been a good example to follow in all things attributed to inspiring customer loyalty for years. Their software solution combines a loyalty program and capabilities to pay for an order in advance.

The opportunity to “order in advance” was a real discovery in this field and received a lot of positive reviews. The company claims that its development follows three basic principles:

  • Focus to the target audience and its needs;
  • Keen understanding of the purchase process;
  • Thumb action plan.

The study of consumer behavior and habits of the target audience of the business plays a crucial role and the application helps to build the right chain of interactions between customers and the brand.

Carrefour: iBeacon tags

It is worth noting the great popularity of the iBeacon-based systems in the last few years. Carrefour introduced a network of beacons to all of their 28 hypermarkets in Romania. The mobile application that interacts with on-site iBeacon networks, worthy of the work of the best game development companies, turned out to be very easy to use and intuitive, it helps visitors to quickly navigate inside the store and keep abreast of all events and current promotions.

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Tags help the program to collect data on customer behavior and generate the necessary responses. The client can get comprehensive advice about the products of the store, services, promotions and special offers of each department. Also, with their help, the most advantageous arrangement of products on the shelves is calculated, which plays an important role in store development.

According to Carrefour, the implementation of iBeacon technology improved the level of trading contacts significantly. The usage of mobile applications quadrupled and the number of regular app users increased six times in the trial seven-month period.

These considerable figures only confirm the correctness of the chosen strategy, which was focused on improving loyalty and increasing the number of regular purchases. And this is exactly what the modern retail giant needs.

Neiman Marcus: SoLoMo app

When planning to introduce a mobile app, Neiman Marcus set a difficult task for app development companies: to create an application that would combine social networking, targeted mobile experience, and navigation over offline retail locations. This was a completely new approach to joint purchases.

Neiman Marcus has outfitted its offline stores with sensors designed to track customer behavior, as well as to relay information from trading partners. Thus, visitors receive extensive data about current special offers from partners available in the store. The client always has access to relevant information about various events, promotions, and advertising campaigns conveniently.

Also, the mobile application provides the opportunity to make an appointment with a certain supplier, receive data about product lines using QR codes, and create an individual list of needed goods.

Trading partners also get several advantages from the app. For example, a program can provide access to customer data, their social network profiles, purchase histories, and lists of wanted products. Using such data, trade partners can offer interested customers with personalized cooperation experience by focusing on their specific needs.

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Conclusion

Mobile technologies have firmly entered our daily lives. We use them for personal communication, work, and housekeeping. Why not streamline the buying process with mobile apps? This greatly simplifies the life of the customer and helps the seller to improve their services by choosing the most advantageous scenarios for interaction with each specific buyer. Clients are satisfied while businesses thrive, which means such innovations are worth the time, effort, and money. Many retailers already were able to appreciate the clear benefits of cooperating with app developers.

Admin

Admin works in Technology development and regularly contributes to blogs around the web with advice, tips, and strategies for business marketing and promotion. Even when he’s not in the office Jake is thinking about new marketing tactics and techniques. He just can’t get enough!

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