Do you need an mcommerce app?

How useful are mobile apps for retail? If you’ve already got a mobile website, is there any point to getting an app as well?

We keep hearing this query from our customers and contacts, so we’ve put together a short report on the topic to help retailers. And in the process, we came up with the one key question ecommerce brands need to ask themselves.

That question is:

Do your customers want to shop from you using a mobile app?

That’s it! That’s all you need to know. It’s not exactly ground-breaking or new, but we think it’s worth repeating.

Do your customers use apps from other brands? Are they shopping and browsing on their mobiles already? What do they actually want?

How to find out what your customers want

So how can you answer this question?

The first step is to find out what customers are doing on your website already. You need to look at your mobile traffic, your mobile conversion rates, the devices your mobile visitors are using, and whether they behave differently from desktop browsers.

You can find all this out on your web stats. If you use Google Analytics, we wrote a short how-to here. If you want to get more in depth, there’s a really great GA mobile dashboard linked from this Econsultancy post. Just plug it into your existing analytics set-up for a comprehensive overview of what mobile shoppers are doing on your site.

Using demographics to find the answer

Another good tactic is to look for stats on your target demographic. If they’re aged over 55, it’s pretty unlikely that a mobile app will increase your sales. But if they’re in the mobile sweet spot of 25-40, it’s a whole different story.

The Drapers 2013 Etail report is a good source of fashion-specific info about online shoppers. You can download it here, or read our blog post on the key points about mobile here.

What’s next? Download our report to find out

Want to find out more about whether a mobile commerce app would benefit your business? Our free report is a short, useful overview of the essentials of mobile websites and apps for fashion retailers.

Download it now to get:

• A handy checklist to see work out if an app is a good strategy for your business
• The three key signs that you shouldn’t get an app
• A rundown of the pros and cons of apps and mobile websites