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The impact of a mobile-first strategy: It’s time to invest in your app
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Mobile users worldwide are spending almost 16 billion hours using mobile apps annually, up by 24.5% year on year. With global mobile app market growth projected to continue, a “mobile-first” strategy—centered on prioritizing mobile users—pays real dividends for your business. Not only are users overwhelmingly embracing the optimized navigation that an app offers when compared to a mobile website, they’re increasingly choosing to make purchases via apps, in branded environments that improve the browsing experience and encourage trust.
Gen Z is leading the charge here, with 71% of shoppers aged 18 to 24 going mobile-first to make purchases of any size, and many making mobile payments rather than transcribing details from a physical debit or credit card. In contrast—and to the amusement of Gen Z!—Millennials tend to move from phone to laptop to make big-ticket purchases.
Whether or not your business has an app already, dedicating focus and resources to this area is a surefire way to improve customer satisfaction—and therefore retention—leading to increased lifetime value (LTV) and ultimately greater revenue. Consider the customer experience if a potential app user was to search for a business’s app and either couldn’t locate it or considered it a poor reflection of the brand—a likely outcome is the loss of this customer and their valuable loyalty.
The importance of thoughtful app design and functionality
With over half (52%) of adults worldwide having bought something through a mobile app, it’s clear that thoughtful design and development to optimize the user experience is a worthwhile investment that will reflect positively on your brand, and boost revenue.
It’s important that your app offers a unique experience compared to what’s on offer via your mobile site or desktop site. This unique experience could be as simple as a streamlined shopping environment with app-exclusive offers or a loyalty program, or as advanced as artificial intelligence or augmented reality.
If you choose to go down the path of advanced next-generation technology, think of real-world applications of these approaches that make sense for your brand and your industry. Perhaps your homeware app places products in a user’s home using augmented reality, your clothing app enables virtual “trying on”, or your finance app quickly addresses customer pain points via an AI-powered chatbot.
Ten key benefits of optimized mobile apps
Realize the benefits of creating a new and optimized mobile app, or committing resources to improve your app’s current offering. Let’s dive into a few key reasons to prioritize your business’s mobile app in 2024 and beyond.
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- Nurture your brand’s customer relationships: If a mobile user seeks your mobile app, consider them a captive audience prime to be converted. Their interest in your brand will only be heightened by their discovery of an intuitively developed and designed app that meets their needs. A happy customer is more likely to make a purchase—and, better still, return to make more.
- Present a more streamlined user experience: Getting a customer into your app environment means you’re entirely in control of their experience. Keep in mind that navigating through app screens is usually faster than mobile sites and less prone to the technical hitches that can impact web browsing.
- Open new avenues for customer targeting: Consider app-powered communication channels such as push notifications. If a user hasn’t actively disabled push notifications, they are contactable when they’re not actively using your app. As part of a carefully considered communication strategy, this is an extremely impactful way to connect with customers to share updates, discount events, etc.—all via a strong visual reminder of your brand.
- Leverage in-app notifications: Push notifications can be disabled by users, but in-app notifications (alerts appearing to users when they’re in the app) can’t. Strategically crafted and timed in-app notifications can encourage users to complete desired actions—such as signing up to your newsletter or making a purchase—while they’re already interacting with your brand and less easily distracted.
- Learn more about your users: The strongest and most effective customer targeting involves segmenting your customer base into groups with shared characteristics. Use app usage and in-app behavior to glean more important information relating to your users, and leverage this to improve the relevance and success of your personalized communications.
- An app is an ambassador for your brand, 24/7: A tile on a mobile device homescreen serves as a constant reminder of your brand. Is it possible to find a better way to remain front and center in the consciousness of your customers?
- Give your customers greater control: Why not include the ability to create favorites lists or wish lists within your app? This makes your app an individualized experience, encouraging users to return and make purchases. If you display your users’ previous payment information at the checkout or allow checkout via Apple Pay, Google Pay, or similar methods, consider the journey to purchasing even quicker, more convenient, and more satisfying.
- Use deep links to keep users coming back: A deep link brings users from mobile web to a mobile app in one click, and not just the homepage of a mobile app—the in-app destination the link is guiding them to. Consider this—a user spots an ad offering your product at a discount price in their social media feed. One click will bring them straight to this product page within your app. If they don’t have your app installed, they’ll be routed to the app store and then directly to the product page upon opening the app.
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- Stand out in your industry: Competitor research can help you to focus on a niche angle for your app that isn’t offered by your competitors. It can also help you to ensure that in terms of navigation and useability, you’re right up there with the most successful apps in your market—making your business a serious competitor with an increasing market share.
- Embrace in-app social media to grow your user community: Each generation has a different relationship with social media. Whether it’s something they’ll naturally seek in an app environment or not, it’s beneficial for users to have the ability to post about your brand, share products, refer friends, etc.—through social media APIs you can easily incorporate. Such social sharing will strengthen your brand’s reach, augment your brand’s community, and boost brand awareness—think of it as free advertising!
Monetizing your app
The above benefits are the results of investing resources and time, organically improving key marketing metrics such as conversion rate, lifetime value (LTV) and return on investment (ROI).
To focus directly on revenue streams that you can more easily control and measure, consider the various forms of app monetization that are commonly used by app marketers across all verticals. From in-app advertising to subscription models, there is a monetization model that is the right fit for your business and can add another angle to the profitability of your app.
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Between 2016 and 2023, the number of mobile app downloads worldwide jumped from 140.68 billion to a staggering 257 billion, underlining the fact that the app is fast becoming the number one environment for capturing the attention, imagination, and spending power of your customer base.
Introducing one or more monetization models means reliable and regular revenue streams that will underscore the strategic importance of your app to your business, and contribute to efforts to continually develop and improve your app’s offerings.
Read our app monetization guide to effectively incorporate monetization in your app’s roadmap today.
What about your mobile website?
It’s important to note that in parallel with investing in your mobile app, it’s crucial to maintain your brand’s mobile website, optimizing it for mobile and keeping it current and intuitive. Mobile websites are often the jumping-off point for new users to discover apps—for example by searching the internet on mobile and landing on your site. It’s key that your mobile site is presented as professional and trustworthy, giving no reason for users to hesitate before following a link to download your app and continue their experience with your business.
The mechanics of users getting from your mobile site to your mobile app in a seamless way are made simple by solutions such as smart banners—pop-ups that launch a call to action (CTA) banner as app users browse your mobile website, encouraging them to download your app to continue browsing there.
Learn more about how smart banners, ideally with incorporated deep links, successfully bring browser users to your app, and more specifically the part of your app that you’re directing them to.
Allow data-driven insights to guide your app’s scalability
When a user downloads your app and starts their journey, every action they take is measurable using the solutions offered by an advanced mobile measurement partner (MMP) like Adjust. The data points that you gain from in-app behavior are invaluable in guiding the development of your app—not only recognizing where users are having positive experiences but also any sticking points where you notice usage dropping off as a result of a less-than-perfect navigation experience or similar.
Adjust’s Datascape solution enables measurement of your marketing efforts across devices, channels, and campaigns—all in one place. Stay ahead of the curve by responding in real-time to trends and patterns in user behavior, maximizing the ability of your app to respond to the needs and wants of your users in meaningful ways.
Gaining an appreciation of user behavior over time is critical in making data-driven decisions that will drive your business towards ambitious targets and profitable scalability.
Creating an app—or making the decision to optimize an existing app—can be daunting. Adjust is here to help every step of the way, from tips on creating the perfect app icon to building successful app onboarding, and more.
Request your demo to speak to the team about getting your app off the ground and successfully measuring, optimizing, and scaling its growth across platforms.
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