Tech companies have made smartphones central to work, relationships, entertainment, and lately, shopping. According to eMarketer, mobile commerce is expected to almost double its share of annual US retail sales by 2025, to 10.4%—or $728+ billion. It makes sense retail players want in on something a person touches an average of 2,617 times per day.
In many cases, that means developing an app.
Platforms range from the wellness-focused Nike Run Club to Juicy Couture’s in-app product drops to Urban Outfitters’ scrollable marketplace. Regardless of the app’s function—to facilitate purchases or build loyalty—the point is to stay on the consumer’s mind by staying on their home screen.
“The reality is there’s a default behavior that happens when people open up their phones, and they tend to use what’s in front of them,” eMarketer analyst Andrew Lipsman told Retail Brew. “As a retailer, if your app is not downloaded onto somebody’s phone at a moment when they’re opening [it up] for a shopping occasion, you’re already out of the consideration set.”
Flashback: EBay and Amazon were the go-to shopping apps for years, but Lipsman pointed to Target’s introduction of its Cartwheel discounts program—which incorporated mobile coupons in a standalone app—as a “big moment” for the space. “All of a sudden, [the] app took off,” he said. Around the same time, Walmart rolled out its Savings Catcher tool to phones. Kohl’s and others followed in what Lipsman calls the “second era of retail apps” around the mid-2010s.
It provided key insight: “The expectation of use, of frequency, is a big determinant on whether or not people download an app in the first place,” Lipsman explained.
Still, it’s taken time for retailers to really invest in their apps—especially because many saw most of their mobile sales still coming from their websites early on. Lipsman said that thinking was a bit “short sighted” because “they weren’t doing a lot to give users a reason to download [an app], or to create an experience that would encourage that usage frequency.”
Well, times are a-changin’.
Fast-forward: A mobile-first world calls for a mobile-first brand, and that’s exactly what DTC intimates company Adore Me considers itself. “We’re a tech-heavy organization. Every single design is done for mobile first, and then gets translated to desktop after,” VP of strategy Ranjan Roy told us.
Why start with the phone? Probably because 92% of Adore Me’s traffic happens on a mobile device. Its app, which has 5 million downloads, accounts for 10% of total traffic and 45% of revenue. (Roy declined to share specific figures.)
Roy emphasized the importance of having control over the mobile shopping experience and responding to the “unpredictability of the user” with seamless checkout and a cart that doesn’t disappear if you leave it alone for an hour, for example.
- Adore Me has recently started experimenting with app-only discounts and offers to “add a little bit more of an incentive to download and use the app,” he noted.
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Still, the company’s main focus with its app remains functionality. Roy warned against “trying to get too creative with the app [or] create entirely new experiences and things outside of the realm of pure shopping.” Adore Me tried it, and experimented with gamification, but it didn’t catch on. Instead, Adore Me’s app just wants to make buying better.
“We’re still very conscious of the fact that getting someone to download an app, getting someone to use an app, is not an easy thing at all,” he said.
Social savvy: Meanwhile, Athleta is taking a more community-driven approach by highlighting AthletaWell, its new digital platform for rewards members, in its app.
- AthletaWell features user-generated content and forums—spanning topics from body positivity to style recommendations—as well as advice from wellness experts and workout classes from Obé.
“Fundamentally, we think about it as both a vehicle for e-commerce, but [also] the bigger role it plays in the ecosystem,” Athleta’s chief digital officer, Kim Waldmann, told us. “It’s really about the app as a go-to connection to the overall brand…Mobile is with [our customer] everywhere.”
For Athleta, its app is an opportunity to maintain loyalty, learn about its consumers, and build a new social arm of its business—and help the athleticwear company double sales to $2 billion by 2023. “We’re really focused on leveraging insight about the customer to drive a more relevant overall shopping experience,” Waldmann said.
- An Athleta customer who downloads the app spends 50% more time with the brand than a customer who doesn’t have it, she added.
- The app offers transactional benefits like points and free shipping, as well as “emotional drivers,” early access to styles and personalized product recommendations.
“It’s about blurring the lines between physical and digital,” Waldmann explained. “The future is one in which we think about the app as the bridge between e-commerce and stores and the physical world.”
+1: Her advice for brands thinking about their own app experiences mirrors Lipsman’s takeaways: “Customers have only a certain amount of space on their phone…and there’s obviously a number of apps in the ecosystem. So, what is the critical reason and the value proposition to have your app? And why do you need the app versus just being able to go to the website?”