Tag: application development for retail

What can Artificial Intelligence do for your Retail Business? AI can boost your service and operational capabilities with intelligent data, effective processes, and smart analysis. Imagine having rich insights into customer behavior, future trends, and demand variations. You will never go out of stock! You can shoot targeted marketing emails, and your customers can always get what they want and how they want from your store! AI-powered smart shelves, voice assistants, fraud detection, and pricing strategies are paving the way for a huge revolution in the retail industry. This blog will walk you through some of the major transformations of AI in Retail and how to leverage them in your business for greater success. Read on!

How Can AI Benefit Retail Companies?

The effect of AI on the retail sector is significant and revolutionary. Here are key benefits for retail companies:

1. Total Visibility: One Truth for Retail Operations

Retailers can utilize predictive analytics to predict demand with high accuracy. They will be able to maintain accurate inventory levels, with no longer empty shelves or excess stock. This would mean that the right products will be available even with changing demand.

2. Customer Centricity: Enhance Shopping Experiences

Think of AI as a useful assistant that anticipates your customers’ needs before they realize them. AI tools include chatbots and recommendation engines. These tools greatly improve and customize the shopping experience. For example, a suggestion tool reviews a customer’s online activities and past purchases. It then uses this information to recommend products they may be interested in purchasing.

3. Bias for Action: Turning Data into Informed Decisions

AI transforms data into actionable insights. It empowers retailers to adapt swiftly to customer preferences and adjust prices in real-time. This ensures competitiveness and profitability without sacrificing satisfaction.

4. New Business Models: Innovate with AI

AI enables innovative business models beyond physical and online stores. Virtual stores offer immersive experiences. AI-driven automation uses drones and robots. This revolutionizes supply chains with faster and more reliable deliveries. Plus, AI changes data into useful insights. It enables retailers to adjust quickly to customer preferences and change prices instantly.

How Can AI Address Complex Challenges in the Retail Industry?

AI is revolutionizing the retail industry by tackling complex problems with creative answers. AI is transforming the industry by improving customer contentment and streamlining operations. Let’s examine how AI tackles some of the most pressing problems in the retail sector.

1. Contactless shopping experience

AI simplifies and enhances contactless shopping for increased convenience. AI-powered visual technology is employed in self-service checkout terminals. It equips intelligent shopping carts for automatic scanning and payment of items. Thus enhancing both convenience and safety.

2. Predictions regarding the need for products and changes in the market.

Retailers often find it hard to keep up with predicting demand. Such ignorance leads to either having too much merchandise or insufficient merchandise. AI utilizes predictive analytics to analyze past sales, market trends, and consumer behavior. AI helps retailers predict future demand to manage optimal inventory levels effectively. For example, artificial intelligence can predict increased demand during the holiday season. This prevents stock shortages and enhances customer satisfaction.

3. Tailored Customer Experiences

Customers anticipate customized engagements, and Artificial Intelligence provides them. AI collects data from browsing histories and purchase patterns.  Using this data, it now makes personalized recommendations. This customization improves the shopping journey, boosts sales, and cultivates customer loyalty.

Read more: Leading the Powerplay With Retail Business Intelligence

4. Automated Management of Inventory

Handling inventory is challenging, especially for big retailers. AI automates the procedures related to managing inventory. AI-powered systems constantly track inventory levels, forecast when restocking is required, and automatically place orders. Consequently, they help keep shelves stocked and reduce overstock.

5. Optimizing prices

Establishing the correct price increases revenue and helps maintain competitiveness. AI algorithms analyze competitor prices, demand changes, and market conditions. They suggest optimal pricing tactics. Dynamic pricing models adjust prices instantly. This attracts budget-conscious customers and maximizes revenue when demand is high.

6. Management of the supply chain

Effective supply chain management is crucial for retail success, and AI greatly improves this. AI systems analyze data from various supply chain points, identifying congestion. They also forecast potential interruptions. For example, AI predicts delivery delays due to weather conditions and recommends alternative routes. This proactive strategy reduces interruptions and guarantees efficient functioning.

7. Detection of fraudulent activities

Retailers are always vulnerable to potential fraud risks, leading to possible substantial financial losses. AI enhances fraud detection by examining transaction patterns and pinpointing irregularities. Machine learning algorithms can identify abnormal behavior. For instance, it can tag a sudden return increase or questionable purchasing tendencies. This enables retailers to take action and stop fraud quickly.

What Are Some of the Most Common Use Cases of AI in Retail?

In-Store Experience Enhancements with AI

AI-powered smart shelves can enable real-time inventory tracking. This not only allows you to keep track of stock but also provides insight into customer interactions with products. Of course, this empowers retail businesses to better forecast demands, strategize pricing, and improve product placements while improving the overall in-store customer experience. Cashless stores are another AI trend that is increasingly gaining traction in the retail industry. Automated payment systems eliminate long queues at exit counters, giving customers a hassle-free shopping journey.

AI Assistants for Smooth Customer Management

AI can be your customer’s new sales associate. AI-powered voice-activated assistants can help customers with queries, purchase support, and more. AI can also enable image search of items, making shopping in stores less hassle. Automated support, chatbots, and sentiment analysis give customer services a strong boost, paving way for improved customer retention rate.

Read More: Top AI Trends Shaping Enterprise Success

What Is the Future of AI in Retail?

AI transforms the retail industry through customized advertisements, chatbots, and dynamic pricing. As emphasized in McKinsey’s report, customers now anticipate personalized experiences. AI assists retailers by examining data within physical stores. It also provides flexible pricing and information on customer actions. Over 71% of retail customers expect personalization. 76% of customers seem frustrated when there is no personalization.

AI enables business executives to improve supply chain efficiency and upgrade inventory control. Retailers utilize ‘smart warehouses’ to monitor inventory in real-time, which improves effectiveness and efficiency.

• A Fresh Approach to Shopping: Combining AI and edge computing transforms self-checkout experiences. Many retailers use AI servers and high-resolution cameras to watch over customers at the checkout. 
• AI’s complete capacity in the retail sector: AI converts unused videos into useful information, increasing sales and revenue. It helps with omnichannel integration and improves customer service by using AI chatbots.
• Outside the manufacturing area: AI improves warehouse and supply chain operations by maximizing efficiency and minimizing waste. Shared data insights improve stock management and resource allocation. AI simplifies routing and cold chain management in warehousing and enhances inventory control in supply chain operations.

How Can Fingent Help Your Business Flourish With AI?

Fingent provides many AI solutions to advance your business to higher levels. If you aim to boost efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, or gain data insights, our specialists are here to help. With a proven track record, we excel in delivering tailored AI solutions. Our cutting-edge technology ensures seamless integration for your business needs. We strive for top results in every project we undertake. 

Fingent stands by you as your dedicated success partner, offering a wide range of services. Contact us now to find out more!

Harness the potential of AI with Fingent and transform your business! Our customized solutions enhance efficiency, increase productivity, and support growth. Lead the future with Fingent AI solutions instead of just adapting to it.

Over the years, digital evolution has transformed the way we shop!

The lockdowns and store closures due to the unprecedented events of 2020 has moreover accelerated this evolution and mainstreamed online shopping.

Today consumers don’t just make purchases online. They compare brands, shop for deals, join communities, and engage in immersive experiences. According to Forbes, roughly 21% of all retail purchases will be online in 2023.

There’s no denying that digital technologies are changing the retail industry as we know it. The only question that remains is whether your business is ready for the future of retail.

To help you prepare, we explore the state of the retail industry and shed light on some of the most significant challenges your business faces. Most importantly, we reveal some technology trends you can leverage to compete with major players in the retail space.

Read more: Custom Software Solutions for Retail: All You Need to Know!

The State of the Retail Industry

In a 2023 retail industry outlook report, Deloitte researchers examined how labor challenges, supply chain hurdles, and market volatility would impact retail businesses in the new year.

Of the various predictions made in the report, the most notable is that retail sales growth in the U.S. – barring a recession – will be minimal due to a meager GDP growth forecast of just 0.9%.

Additionally, researchers found that nominal average weekly earnings rose by 8.3% between December 2020 and December 2022. However, real earnings decreased by approximately 5% due to inflation. In other words, consumers have less purchasing power even though their weekly earnings have nominally increased.

In light of these predictions, retail businesses must remain fluid and agile. In 2021, many retailers increased inventory volume by 11% on average to contend with supply chain volatility.

Continuing to maintain an extensive inventory with a potential recession just over the horizon would be unwise, as doing so would leave retailers with less liquidity and could hinder their ability to capitalize on emerging technology trends or shifts in consumer spending habits.

Retail Businesses Must Evolve or Fail

Like many others in the retail industry, you probably hoped 2023 would represent a continued progression toward “normalcy.” However, many of the changes affected by the global pandemic are here to stay. Modern consumers expect a more technology-centric retail experience, even if they choose to shop in-store.

In addition to adapting to the new consumer, you must also navigate the aforementioned economic challenges poised to persist throughout 2023 and beyond. To make matters worse, the quit rate of employees in the retail industry remains at about 4%, significantly higher than the national average.

While these interconnected issues seem to have created a perfect storm, it’s possible for your business not only to survive the future of retail but thrive in it. To do so, you must familiarize yourself with the latest tech trends and how they might affect your reimagined business model.

Key Tech Trends Shaping the Future of Retail

To stay relevant and competitive, we suggest you consider how adopting the following key tech trends can impact your business:

1. A Shift to Digital Goods and Services

Even if your company sells physical products, offering digital goods and services is an excellent way of differentiating your brand from retail businesses that aren’t so forward-thinking.

For instance, you might commission a development agency to create a custom mobile app for your business. You could then use this app to connect with customers, deliver digital goods (i.e., coupons or top customer badges), and nurture feelings of loyalty among your target audience.

You can take this concept further by creating a digital community that lets shoppers share how your products and goods make them feel or improve their daily lives.

2. Omnichannel Shopping Options

The shopping experience is no longer linear. Instead, customers typically interact with a brand along multiple touchpoints and channels before actually making a purchase. With this in mind, you must adopt interconnected technologies to seamlessly guide leads through each phase of the purchasing journey.

What does that look like, exactly? First and foremost, you should have a dynamic, user-friendly, mobile-optimized website in place.

You’ll also need to give consumers multiple ways of interacting with your brand, such as your website, mobile app, and brick-and-mortar store. The top brands are already doing this — your company should follow suit.

Read more: Leading the Powerplay With Retail Business Intelligence

3. Social Media-Centric Campaigns

While you already have social media pages for your company, you may not be using these channels to their full potential. The most successful brands have tapped into meme culture, hashtags, influencers, and other trends that are native to social media to reinvent the customer journey.

Putting social media at the center of your marketing campaigns allows you to fuel online shopping in new ways and connect with younger audiences.

There are many ways to up your social media marketing efforts, including hosting live events, holding Q&A sessions, and interacting with followers in the comment section.

4. Automated Pricing

Automated pricing involves using software to set prices according to variables of significance to the store. Automated pricing technologies have become a valuable resource for big-box retailers in recent years. Smaller businesses are catching on, using this convenient technology to ensure that product prices are set to optimize profitability for both online and in-store products.

Implementing pricing automation solutions will reduce the workload on your staff, as they’ll no longer have to set prices manually. This will help you overcome labor shortages and improve productivity. Automated pricing tools also allow you to deliver better value to customers by running short-term sales or discounts.

Read more: How To Power Your Retail Business with Augmented Reality?

Stay Ahead of the Curve with Fingent

A mixture of in-person shopping experiences and tech-centric journeys will shape the future of retail.

While many modern consumers still like to make purchases at brick-and-mortar shops, 63% of all buying journeys start online. As such, your organization must embrace the latest retail industry technology trends to provide consumers with an experience that seamlessly transitions between channels and mediums.

To achieve such fluidity, you need a technology partner like Fingent that understands the thoroughly modern challenges retail businesses face.

Fingent provides end-to-end custom application development services for retailers. Our dynamic team can create tailor-made field sales applications, inventory management tools, omnichannel fulfillment solutions, and other digital technology resources you need to maintain your edge.

Connect with us today or submit a request for a proposal to learn more.

The impact of the pandemic on consumers across the globe has dramatically changed their demands, needs, and behavior. Many of these changes have critical implications for businesses in most sectors. To succeed in the next normal, businesses must respond proactively.

COVID-19 jolted consumer demand in a way that sets it apart from past disruptions. As a result, customer loyalty took a hard hit. Executing the four Ps of marketing (optimization of product, price, place, and promotion) became more complex than ever. Businesses must redouble and broaden their efforts toward meeting ever-changing customer demands and behavior.

As with everything else, it is important for an organization to know and understand its customers. If your company is at crossroads with today’s Ecommerce customers’ needs, this article will help you understand how technology can help satisfy these uprising demands quickly and effectively. So then, let’s first understand how customer behavior, needs, and demands change.

Read more: What are 3D Web Configurators? How do they Boost Ecommerce Sales and Drive Customer Satisfaction?

Ecommerce Customers’ Behavior, Demands, and Needs

Customers are like the moving targets. The key to success is to understand their behavior trends and use technology to help satisfy these uprising needs and demands. Linnworks research pointed to five such trends:

• Convenience is the need of the hour: 76% of consumers feel that convenience is the top priority in choosing a retailer. 90% of shoppers focus on using a trouble-free online store.

• The frictionless shopping experience is most valued: It was noted that 58% of consumers abandoned an online store altogether because they were difficult to use.

• Omnichannel shopping is gaining traction: One in three consumers has purchased an item while on social media. 71% of consumers prefer to complete a purchase on a social site without having to exit to the retailer’s site.

• Consumers demand flexible payment options: Four in five shoppers expect the “buy now, pay later” payment option.

• Delivery convenience: 95% of consumers say that fast and reliable delivery methods play a crucial role in their decision-making.

How Can Technology Help Satisfy these Uprising Needs and Demands of Today’s Consumers?

1. Allow your consumers to experience products before they buy

The biggest roadblock facing Ecommerce businesses has been the inability of consumers to experience products before they buy. Everyone likes to try on clothes they like to buy or see how is their new couch looks in their living room.

This is where AR (Augmented Reality) can help your business. AR can help your consumers try on clothes or closely inspect the components of a mobile device. AR market is expected to reach 2.54 billion by 2023.  Online retailers who fail to take full advantage of this technology may likely experience business disruption.

2. Bring your product to life with virtual shopping

Virtual reality shopping can bring your products to life. It helps your customers to have an in-store-like experience, without actually being there. VR technology allows you to tag products so your customers can purchase on the spot. It can instantly connect buyers with customer service executives.

VR can make product recommendations based on customer metrics. It can also cater to both desktop and mobile users. Thus, it provides a better customer experience attracting more customers to your online store.

3. Be omnichannel ready

Todays’ Ecommerce customers like to cross-channel research and purchase. So, they expect smooth interactions across these channels and devices. Technology can help you to provide your customers with what they want, when they want it, and where they want it to. Some of these technologies include video chat, screen sharing, document interaction, e-signature, and more.

Co-browsing is an effective visual engagement system. It can bring your sales executives and customers together on the same page, at the same time. This allows your executive to guide your customers through the complex procedures making their customer journey as smooth as it can be.

Read more: Custom Retail Software Solutions: Everything You Need to Know!

4. Enhance customer communication with chatbots and AI

Artificial Intelligence has a major impact on how we live and work. Voice shopping is expected to jump to $40 billion by 2022, rising from $2 billion today. And 45% of millennials have already been shopping using voice assistants.

Chatbots and AI improve customer experience and boost brand image. These chatbots can be personalized to order food, get recommendations for almost anything, receive details regarding payment or order status, and more.

5. Hassle-free checkout process

Inefficient checkout processes can raise the chances of cart abandonment. However, this problem can be avoided by embracing technology that provides quick and efficient checkout solutions.

Technology enables speedy mobile payment solutions, allows your customers to save card details for repeat purchases. Above all, it proves one-page hassle-free checkouts and offers a range of payment options. All these can alleviate any potential difficulties your customers may face at checkout.

6. Enable m-commerce to enhance Ecommerce

Today many shoppers shop on the go. Hence, mobile platforms have gained greater importance. So much so that m-commerce is emerging as a concept. Given that, providing a mobile-oriented shopping experience will certainly help you win potential customers, maximizing your chances of future success.

Ecommerce mobile apps offer continuous engagement with your brand. It can help them familiarize with new and relevant purchasing opportunities. These apps also allow you to market products relevant to the specific geographical location of your customers.

Read more: 5 Reasons to Integrate Your E-commerce Application with Odoo ERP

How Can Fingent Help Deploy These Evolving Technologies For Ecommerce Businesses?

It is one thing to understand your consumer behavior but another thing entirely to implement technology to satisfy their demands and needs. Fingent is here to help you implement these technologies efficiently. We can help you move the needle and dominate your niche in the Ecommerce industry.

Fingent top software development company, can help you implement those that make sense and put the rest on the back burner. We can aid in the success of your Ecommerce venture by implementing cutting-edge technologies. Our development experts will help you promote your products in new and innovative ways.

Choosing Fingent can help you save a lot of time and money and avoid unnecessary complexity as we can provide all the needed components. Our platforms are easy to manage yet robust enough to house thousands of products. We can handle unique order processes and payment terms for your Ecommerce sales. Let’s get talking.

Being an Official Partner of Odoo, Fingent has always catered to the needs of various customers and streamlined their operations, thus saving their costs, time, and resources. In this post, you will see how Odoo ERP implementation helps retail management.

Odoo ERP: A Highly Customizable Cloud-based Platform for Retailers!

The retail industry is one of the primary beneficiaries of digital transformation. In 2010, eCommerce accounted for only 5-6% of the aggregate retail sales in the US. The industry has witnessed phenomenal growth over the past decade with the development and adoption of retail technology, ERPs, eCommerce applications, custom retail solutions, and stiff market competition. At present, online retail sales in the US account for 21% of the total retail purchases. Isn’t that mind-blowing?

The paradigm shift from the traditional operating landscape to a digital world presents both opportunities and challenges. Many people look for products online, make buying decisions based on social media reviews, and order products to be delivered home. They even use the internet to search local shops, order online and collect from nearby stores (click & collect) or find retailers that offer discounts in their area. The message is clear: physical/ in-store retailing also needs to pace up with the change.  

To overcome the challenges in managing physical and digital selling, retailers need to adopt a modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Read more: 5 Reasons to Integrate Your E-commerce Application with Odoo ERP

Today, ERP is extensively used to simplify and automate customer relationship management, project management, accounting, compliance, inventory, and supply chain operations. ERP is a reliable investment for business owners as they can control and monitor their operations, get reports, and gain insights on consumer behavior and market situations.  

Odoo ERP for Retail Management

ERP software allows integrating the core processes to run a company in one place, such as finance, manufacturing, HR, supply chain, inventory, procurement, tracking, transactions, etc. It also integrates all the data and related business processes of an organization. 

Odoo ERP is a popular, open-source, cloud-based business management software that helps manage various business needs such as manufacturing, finance, inventory, point of sale (POS), eCommerce, purchase, logistics, etc. Odoo is an intelligent ERP system that allows retailers to integrate their whole data and all the processes associated with the retail industry. For retailers, Odoo is a perfect choice that increases profit and enhances productivity as it provides comprehensive solutions that can seamlessly integrate with eCommerce.

Read more: 5 signs which imply that your business needs Odoo ERP

How Odoo ERP Benefits Retail Management

Following are the significant benefits of using Odoo ERP in retail:

1. One-step checkout 

In online shopping apps, the checkout stage tends to have several processes spread across different web pages. This can put off some customers who don’t want to spend their time navigating through each. Odoo eliminates these multiple processes by offering a one-step checkout that is fast, convenient, and intuitive. It has the potential to reduce checkout abandonment and thereby increase sales.

2. Craft stunning product pages

For eCommerce websites, high-quality product pages are crucial to gain maximum traction. Long descriptions with dull-looking pages are outdated. Odoo ERP lets you build beautiful and stunning product pages with a simple drag and drop feature. You can also customize your online store’s look, layout, color, and theme with Odoo and make last-minute changes to meet the demands and expectations of your clients. You can also make changes and enhancements at regular intervals to add more features to your store. Make sure that your digital store is mobile responsive to be compatible with the changes and new features.

3. Payment module integration

Having different payment options can enhance the customer experience. With Odoo’s plugins and extensions, retailers can integrate and customize various modules like wallets, cryptocurrencies, credit and debit cards, and UPI. It also supports PayPal, PayUMoney, Buckaroo, Sips, Stripe, Ingenico, Adyen, and Authorize.net.

4. Sales, purchase, and finance management

Odoo offers non-retail and retail companies different sales management processes. Odoo has a Point of Sale (POS) module, which is integrated with the sales and inventory module. This module helps retailers track stock and commodities in real-time. The module also allows for the use of biometric devices to log in and out. It’s compatible with any hardware and doesn’t require installation. What’s more, the POS remains operational even when offline.

Read more: How Odoo ERP Simplifies Sales Management in Your Organization

5. Inventory management

It’s a known fact that inventory management in a volatile and dynamic consumer goods market is an arduous task for many retailers. With several issues such as excess inventory or out-of-stock scenarios, inefficient inventory management processes result in financial loss and lead many retailers to bankruptcy. 

Odoo ERP offers inventory management as its integral feature, where it stores details of an organization’s entire inventory, including the individual product details. Odoo enables retail managers to keep track of crucial information such as:

• The present status of the inventory
• Items that will run out of stock
• Shelf life details of each product
• Notifications related to product expiry
• Ability to make demand forecasts based on past trends and customers’ online behavior and buying habits

Odoo ERP enables retailers to gain a competitive edge by modifying inventory to meet the fluctuating customer demands.

Read more: Fingent’s new plugin facilitates the scheduling of Zoom meetings from Odoo! 

6. Manufacturing and production

Retailers who are also engaged in manufacturing and production can use Odoo’s module to help run functions. The Manufacturing module can assist in creating bills of materials (BoMs), managing semi-finished products, subcontracting manufacturing, etc. It can also help in configuring work centers and managing and configuring kits.

7. The Cloud Advantage

• Odoo solutions are cloud-based, allowing retailers to access their e-commerce stores from anywhere in the world. 
• Odoo is flexible, customizable, and scalable, making it especially ideal for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). 
• Odoo is an affordable ERP solution with the maintenance fees included in the license fee.

In a nutshell, Odoo ERP serves as a high-performance retail management system where retailers can manage everything on a single system. It can bring tremendous benefits to the retailing industry. They can integrate Odoo’s various business apps such as Sales, Accounting, Customer relationship management (CRM), Inventory, etc., with Odoo e-commerce. 

The Odoo App Store features nearly 10,000 apps that connect to the same database on Odoo’s own servers. A testament to Odoo’s popularity is in the numbers: it has more than 5 million users worldwide, from start-ups to large enterprises. 

With a simple checkout process, robust customer portal (order tracking, advanced shipping rules, and return management), order review, and wish lists, Odoo ERP provides real-time information to users.

Read more: Why Choose Fingent as Your Odoo ERP Partner

Fingent has an ace team of Odoo developers that offers consulting, development, and implementation services. Whether you want to integrate Odoo ERP with your existing e-commerce store or build an online store from scratch powered by Odoo integration, give us a call right away.       

As the business environment becomes hyper-competitive, more businesses are finding value in mobile and web apps to boost customer engagement. Apps enable the marketer to deliver a solid mobile presence, with customized interfaces geared specifically to provide customers with the best possible experience. Apps streamline the customer’s buying process, automate many routine tasks, and enable new possibilities, to drive engagement better.

Catering to the Growing Customer Preferences

More and more marketers now roll out customer facing apps, to remain engaged with their customers always, enabling customers to buy from anywhere, and at any time.

Any debate on whether today’s businesses require customer facing apps is settled by the fact 2.6 billion people across the globe now have high-powered mobile devices within their arm’s reach, at all times. Black Friday sales through mobile devices crossed the One billion dollar mark in 2016, indicating the preference of online shoppers to use their mobile devices for the buying process.

A good success story exemplifying the growing customer preference is Domino’s Pizza. The pizza giant’s new mobile app for customers to order delivery or in-store pickup of their food in the UK resulted in increase of e-commerce sales by 24.4%, and 52% of online coming in through mobile devices. The app has been downloaded more than 10 million times. Many customers prefer using the app rather than go through the painstaking process of calling up the store.

Leveraging the Power of Push and Pull Notification

As the adage goes, “out of sight, out of mind.” When a customer downloads an app, it remains on the phone, strengthening brand recognition. Regular visibility and interactions between the brand and the customer boost trust, so essential for transactions to take place.

A big advantage of the app is the ability to send push and in-app notifications to users. Such notifications, served virtually on a captive audience, influence the customer and deliver high success rates, as long as the notifications result in relevant and valuable content. The more the audience listens to the brand, the more they are likely to respond to marketing offers and chose the brand offerings when in need.

Push and in-app notifications are invaluable to inform users, especially younger demographics, of new products and offers. Most marketers use these options to reach out to customers proactively, with personalized offers. The best practice is to serve personalized recommendations based on factors such as most recent purchase, or the location of the user, offering direct value to users and warming them to the app experience. Generic push notifications are widely regarded as the junk mail of the mobile world, and may just push the user to uninstall the app.

Push notifications are also a great tool to counter cart abandonment. Sending instant push and in-app messaging, when the customer abandons the cart, enticing them with added offers, may be instrumental in changing their mind, and increase the likelihood of immediate conversion.

In-app messaging is proven to increase engagement by 26%. About 65% of users return to the app within a month, if push notifications are enabled.

Leverage Location-based Content

Beacon-based location marketing is now increasingly becoming attractive as a great way to boost customer engagement on mobile devices.

Smart marketers leverage beacon and geofencing technology to send location specific, contextual, and timely data-driven content to customers. They use beacons to push location-based offers and promotions, promote loyalty programs, and facilitate mobile-based proximity payments. Customers prefer such engagement, as evident from a survey by Aimia and Columbia Business School, where 69% of them agreed to share location data to receive location-based discounts.

The 2016 Coachella music and arts festival was path-breaking in the sense it sends out location-based notifications about artists and vendors to attendees. It also introduced a “Surprise and Delight” rewards program, rewarding attendees who synced their American Express Cards to the event’s iOS app. The event also provided beacon enabled mobile payments to attendees, doing away with the need for a physical wallet.

Pew Research Center estimates nine out of ten users in the United States enabling location services on their mobile phones.

Gamifying and Incentivizing the Experience

Promoting mobile-based loyalty programs increase customer engagement and bridge the gap between a brand’s online and physical presence. People love incentives, and rewards offer a good reason for them to come back to the app.

Apps make it easier to administer loyalty programs and deliver the associated rewards. The core of any loyalty program is customers getting reward points for every interaction with the brand. When customers see, their points adding up, they come to shop again. When such rewards are combined with gamification or points for any action done through the app, engagement is sure to increase manifold.

Starbucks is probably the most well-known brand having perfected the art of offering big rewards exclusively to app customers. The ‘My Starbucks’ rewards program allows customers to use the app to make pre-orders, custom orders, receive free upgrades and special discounts, based on their loyalty status. Enabling in-app payment speeds up the transaction, and increase convenience.

Leveraging the Power of Analytics

The spin off benefit of customers using apps is gaining valuable data for analytics. Structuring the app engagement, the right way delivers a ton of analytics on how users interact with the app.

App based engagement and transactions emit data, which subject to analytics, shed invaluable light on understanding the customer better. Such data can also be the basis for business and strategic decisions, as in how to position the product, adopt marketing pitches with greater success rate, and more.

However, analytics is still underestimated and underutilized to enrich the customer experience. Smart brands now leverage real time analytics to enrich the customer’s buying experience. One possibility in this front is helping customers get additional live information about the products they browse or short list for purchase. An associated possibility is gathering interesting and offbeat information associated with the project, such as a list of celebrities using the same product, showing some fun facts associated with the project, and more. Mobile and web apps make it considerably easier to deliver such information to the customer, in a seamless and non-intrusive way.

Another underestimated potential is leveraging the big data generated by apps to collaborate with other popular platforms. A good trendsetter in this front is Shazam, the leading music discovery app. Shazam for Brands’ leverages accumulated user data and brand advertisements to identify the best artist and musical genres for brands and create specific and customized ad units to drive customer engagement.

Deep Linking to In-App Content

The ever-prevalent social networks allow marketers to share their content and gain an even larger audience. Apps offer an additional and more robust option in this direction. Allowing users share their experiences inside the app increases the popularity of the app, and lead to more users downloading it, delivering multiplier effects.

Deep linking, to content within an app, makes it possible to share in-app content easily. The spin off benefit is keeping existing customers engaged within the app, improving retention rates and enhancing the user experience.

A good benchmark to emulate is the Nike+ Run Club app, which allows sharing the in-app content to social media platforms.

With marketing now a high-stakes game, intuitively designed mobile and web apps become a valuable source of competitive advantage. Marketers who identify their customer’s path to engagement and purchasing, and use the app to optimize the journey comes out on top.