Key takeaways from #AppCommerce 2019
#AppCommerce 2019 was bigger and better than ever before. Whether you didn’t get a chance to attend or need a reminder of the sessions. Our key takeaways summarise some of the main insights from the day.
To kick off the day and with a sly entry into our social competition, Co-founder & President of Poq, Mike Hann, opened the event and set the tone for the day to follow.
The State of Mobile in Retail
Erekle Tokhosashvili, Ecommerce Leader, App Annie
In the first session of the day, Erekle set the scene for shopping apps in the wider app space. So many apps are downloaded globally, there are as many as 25 downloads for every individual on the planet!
- Time spent in shopping apps close to 18bn hours in 2018
- There was over $101bn app store spend worldwide in 2018
- Gen z are spending more time in other apps than games, unlike millennials
- Retailers should keep app listings up to date. For example, updating an app store listing to show holiday sales on the app and changing the app logo can prompt re-engagement. Shoppers seeing an updated logo on their homescreens informs change, ‘newness’ and therefore interest.
The Building Blocks to a Winning App Strategy
Oyvind Henriksen, Co-founder & CEO – Poq
Balint Szeplaki, Head of Product – Poq
Our very own Co-founder & CEO, Oyvind shared his learnings from almost 10 years of app commerce including;
- The progression of apps originating from mobile web, through to hybrid web wrappers to today’s best practice, native apps.
- The limitations of building an app with a web wrapper. Like, compromised shopping experiences, usability and the maintenance of the wrapper take the majority of time rather than a focus on the experience.
- Retailers need to look at the apps we use most, why we love them and use this to inform on the functionality and experiences consumers expect from shopping apps.
Head of Product, Balint explained the qualities that all shopping apps need to cover in order to be successful and the strengths and limitations of developing a white-labelled or custom built app.
- There is no one size fits all for retail apps. All brands need a fair amount of variation to differentiate themselves from their competitors and to motivate customers to download the app.
- Balint explained that the best solution to enable speed to launch, flexibility and to ensure retailer’s have control, is through a platform approach.
View the slides:
Building Blocks to a Winning App Commerce Strategy from Elliott Barton
Maximise your App: The Channel for Loyalty
Moderated by: Michael Langguth, Co-founder & COO, Poq
Panelists: Kristina Walcker-Mayer, Product Leader, Loyalty, Zalando
Simon Lilly, Head of Digital, Neal’s Yard Remedies
Mark Leach, Managing Director, User Conversion
Chloe Smith, Digital Development Manager, Quiz Clothing
Co-Founder & COO at Poq, Michael, moderated the discussion exploring how loyalty on app is a key driver for retailers to ensure their customers return to their brand and to build brand affinity. The panel came to the consensus that their apps were crucial tools in their digital toolboxes. Their apps empower the retailer’s to stay front of mind and service their great content and experiences to their shoppers conveniently and efficiently.
Optimising Payments for Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)
Adam Davies: Head of SCA Partnerships, Stripe
Jackie Karmel, Head of UK Retail, Stripe
With the Payments Service Directive 2 (PSD2) legislation taking effect on September 14th 2019 across Europe, Jackie and Adam explained the potential impact the introduction of Strong Customer Authentication could have on retailers and the influence this will have on checkout experiences.
Adam explained that similar legislation was introduced in India and overnight a 25% drop in conversion however, this doesn’t have to be the case for Europe, if retailers are prepared. He continued to explain how not all transactions will be impacted, there will be a variety of exemptions, for example, low-risk transactions, whitelisting and fixed-price subscriptions will all play a role.
Yours Clothing & Klarna: Winning in Retail by Delivering the Best Customer Experience
Neil Sansom, Multichannel Consultant, Yours Clothing
Victoria Watmough, Commercial Director, Klarna
Victoria, Commercial Director, Klarna, interviewed Neil, Multichannel Consultant for Yours Clothing on how their app efforts have driven their target audience to purchase more frequently, increase AOV and grow sales over 50% compared to their previous web wrapper app.
In combination with the previous web wrapper app, Yours Clothing was seeing 60% of revenue through mobile channels. However, Neil explained how their previous app, although at the time seemed sufficient, was in fact, slow and clunky and wasn’t giving their customers the experience they demanded. By launching a native app and marketing it to encourage downloads through the likes of app-exclusive free shipping, the app has exceeded their expectations as a revenue and engagement channel.
Neil went on to explain how the use of alternative payment methods, like Klarna’s pay later service, has enabled their budget conscious consumers to make purchases when they wouldn’t normally be able to.
How App Winners are Driving Engagement
Moderator: Michael Langguth
Panelists: Alex Timlin, VP Ecommerce & Retail, Emarsys
Sydney Smith, Product Owner, Mobile Apps, YOOX-NET-A-PORTER
Fintan Gillespie, Head of Client Partnerships, Snap Inc
Kicking off the afternoon was the panel discussion joined by the likes of Snap Inc., Yoox-Net-a-Porter and Emarsys. The panelists started by discussing how apps are the perfect channel for curating and servicing content to users and in doing so drive engagement with the brand. Sydney, Product Owner, Mobile Apps, explained how at Yoox-Net-a-Porter they use their editorial content to keep their brand top of mind and to develop a relationship with consumers until they are ready to make a purchase. She continued to discuss how their content doesn’t pressure readers to buy, but the majority of content is shoppable.
Alex, VP Ecommerce & Retail, Emarsys, reiterated this point, explaining that they see an average of 18-60 touchpoints before someone makes a purchase across multiple channels. He emphasised that when shoppers are behaving in such a way, that having a single customer view couldn’t be more important.
Fintan, Head of Client Partnerships, Snap Inc, highlighted that content should be tailored specifically to an app. Fintan asked for a show of hands of retailers in the room who currently spend more on marketing for the web than their app. An overwhelming majority of the room said they did. Yet Fintan argued that apps are how shoppers are choosing to spend most of their time on mobile.
The panel came to the conclusion that an app is an engagement tool over time, and that not every interaction needs to lead to a sale. They agreed that the metrics used to traditionally measure store success, like conversion are not appropriate and that user-based metrics, like Customer Lifetime Value, monthly visits per user, revenue per user and the different levels of intent all need to be considered when measuring the performance of an app.
Reserve a copy of our upcoming App Engagement & Revenue Report to get the latest research and insights about the impact engagement plays in apps for retailers.
Our afternoon than broke out into 3 interactive workshop sessions:
An Intro to App Marketing
Rishan Weerakoon, Senior Growth Manager, Yodel Mobile
Rishan, Senior Growth Director, Yodel Mobile, covered the importance of reviews and ratings, curating store listings and how things like Apple Ad spend can influence the organic ranking of an app in the store listings and how best to carry out App Store Optimisation (ASO). He also drew special attention to how learnings from elsewhere, for example, from marketing campaigns, push notifications and A/B testing can provide valuable and impactful insights for an app’s app store listing.
Get a better understanding of Traditional Deep Links, iOS Universal links, Android Deep Links and Deferred Deep Links with our Guide to App Marketing Links
How to Create an Impact with App Design
Kate Glynn, UX/UI Designer, Poq
Maristella Agazzi, UX/UI Designer, Poq
UX/UI Designers, Kate and Mari from Poq talked us through how app design is crucial success and shouldn’t be an afterthought.
- The fundamentals of app design for shopping apps and the ingredients that you would expect to be present include; focused utility, simple design and crafted execution. Designing an app around an atomic design, whereby built with components compared to chemical elements.
- Best practices including; using user workflows and the key differences between app and web design, for example, side scrolling, how to utilise native device functionality.
- What the future of app design looks like including incorporating Augmented and Virtual Reality.
Preparing for Peak
Jay Johnston, CTO, Poq
Jay, CTO at Poq, gave a step by step guide to how to prepare for the upcoming peak trading season. He started by discussing how to measure the performance of an app and talked attendees through load testing, scaling, penetration testing, bottlenecks, SPOFs (Single points of failure) and alerting.
Jay’s interactive sessions saw retailers get practical insights into how to ensure their app has 100% uptime during arguably the most crucial week for retailers across the globe.
Discover the trends & predictions for peak trading 2019 with our comprehensive Guide to Consumer Behaviour during the Peak Trading Season:
Using an App to Drive the Omnichannel Experience
Moderator: Mike Hann
Fireside chat: Brendan Sweeney, Group General Manager, Ecommerce, Cotton On Group
Brendan, Group General Manager, Ecommerce, Cotton On Group, joined Mike, Co-founder & President at Poq, to discuss how Cotton On are tackling their omnichannel strategy.
Brendan explained that 65% online revenue (without an app) is generated from mobile, and wanting to develop and implement a better omnichannel strategy through their loyalty scheme, drove Cotton On’s decision to launch an app.
The Cotton On loyalty programme, Perks, which has been launched across all their brands and channels has seen great success with shoppers signing up in-store, by introducing their loyalty scheme to the app, Cotton On hope to connect communications across channels.
With thousands of new products it’s difficult to show the relevant ones to customers in-store, Brendan explained that the app and specifically the Swipe to Like feature, where shoppers can swipe left and right on products to add them to their wishlist, will empower the retailer to present relevant ‘newness’ to customers.
Brendan emphasised, echoing the discussions earlier in the day, that retailers need to and at Cotton On they do, take a customer-centric view of behaviours and spending rather than a channel-based view.
Closing Keynote: Taking Customer Centricity to the Next Level
Martin Newman, Author, The Customer Experience Champion and Founder, The Customer First Group
In Martin’s, Author of the The Customer Experience Champion, presentation, he discussed how retailer’s often talk about putting the customer first but he doesn’t see that many businesses successfully doing so. Martin went on to explain the importance of customer feedback in shaping business strategy but it pays off, just 5% increase in retention can lead to 25-95% increase in revenue.
Martin argued that retailers need to start putting more emphasis on measuring outputs (social media engagement, NPS scores, churn, retention and ratings) that are customer-centric and place less importance on inputs (e.g. revenue, transactions and footfall) in order to fulfill consumer demand for better shopping experiences.
Although it may seem like there is growing negativity towards being targeted with marketing on mobile, one point Martin made was that as long as retailers offer relevance, convenience and value exchange, customers will be open to receiving marketing, through the likes of mobile.
Want to find out more about the Poq platform, how an app can drive engagement for your customers or why you should be taking an engagement-focused stance to your app reporting?
