Mobile App Development in 2022: Best for Retail

There are billions of retailers and customers throughout the world. The retail business is considered to have the most enormous growth in the future.

As a result, retailers must consider how to drive sales and boost revenue in the new normal. So what mobile application development could play an essential role in the retail industry?

Let's learn with MLTech Soft.

Retail challenges nowadays

The influence of the social distancing policy has significantly affected the e-commerce trend.

Many retailers have adopted new strategies and technologies to get more out of this growing market, with the most common being starting with an e-commerce site or expanding an existing channel.

However, some retailers failed because of the initial set-up cost of an e-commerce operation. Even if your business has moved online, you may still fall behind because not all retailer websites are available.

With new customer acquisition or growth strategies, the lack of interactive features can limit retailers' ability to keep up with the greater competition.

Besides, the trend of e-commerce apps is also growing, with the majority of online purchases mainly made on mobile devices, according to a report by Broadband Search.

Digitize customer expectations

Consistent shopping expectations don't just start and end with their physical and online stores. Wherever customers interact—in person, online, over the phone, or through social media—retailers need to be aware of who they are and what they want.
Even so, only a handful of sellers offer the right touchpoints (direct or indirect) for customers. This negatively affects the ability to stay connected with customers, which in turn can lead to brand damage.

Retailers need to be able to offer a unified look, and this can be helped by investing in digital management and sales systems. However, not every merchant is capable of creating one.

Poor customer data

To deliver outstanding shopping experiences, retailers must have a clear view of users’ behavior. However, even if many retailers already have customer data but don't know how to analyze it or the data is out of date, creating effective customer experiences will be challenging.

In fact, according to a study by Deloitte, 71% of consumer data is inaccurate. By not having the right data or data segmentation to understand their customers, retailers run the risk of losing customers to competitors. To address this, retailers need to ensure data cleanliness through a standardized solution.

With the rise of online shopping, 24% of consumers today are concerned about how their data is being used. Even as the number decreases, data protection remains the main expectation for retailers. They must ensure that people accessing their e-commerce websites are authentic.

Supply chain issues

Ultimately, the COVID-19 pandemic will still have lasting effects on supply chain management through restrictions are lifted and a return to the new normal is achieved
Due to delays, retailers are still struggling with supply shortages. For merchants offering omnichannel experiences, this is exacerbated, resulting in unmet customer needs.

Why is a mobile app useful for retail businesses?

According to a recent DataReportal in October 2022, the great majority of the world's internet users use a mobile phone to get online at least some of the time, and mobile phones now account for more than 55.7 percent of our online time as well as almost 60 percent of global web traffic. On average, consumers spend 3 hours and 40 minutes every day on their mobile devices; 90% of mobile time is spent on applications (according to Flurry research).

The mobile revolution has altered businesses' capacity to engage and modify customers’ shopping habits. With smartphones, they easily master all product information and make price comparisons as well. Datarepotrtal reports that almost 56 percent of working-age internet users worldwide have used an online shopping, auction, or classified site in the last 30 days, putting shopping ahead of email, music, and even news and weather services.

Based on data.ai report over the last three months, smartphone users spent a total of $32.4 billion on mobile apps. Consequently, the average smartphone user spent $4.86 on applications and in-app purchases.

So, the mobile app is getting more and more useful in the retail industry. You’d better consider creating a custom mobile app for your business, or you’ll be out of date. Some industry stakeholders are unsure whether to engage in retail mobile app development. These shilly-shallyings are comparable to the pattern of website adoption in the early 2000s. However, you always need it right away.

How do I put mobile apps in a retail store?

There are two approaches to implementing various in-app functionalities. You can use third-party solutions or engage in bespoke development. When it comes to customizing, you’re extremely adaptable, but it’s going to consume time and cost.

Using a third-party solution, you will be able to test several hypotheses, see how the solutions perform in practice and determine if you need a feature or whether it is irrelevant to your business. You won't need to spend a lot of money or time doing this.

Let’s figure out what benefits are given when implementing mobile apps for your business!

Geolocation technology

Geolocation is a useful tool for navigating new and existing clients. Android location services provide several options to developers, just as iOS does. We use Google Maps services to display certain data on Google Maps.

The app provides a request and implements it using its techniques. As a result, your application is not engaged in creating all the maps. It does it by utilizing a third-party service. The advantages of Maps’ service have a variety of features, including:

• Standard, street, 3D views
• Programmatically pan
• Zoom in /out feature
• Pitch the map option

Brand loyalty

Creating a retail mobile app might help you execute your loyalty rewards program. No longer are discount cards easily forgotten or misplaced at home. Customers that download your app will have access to unique deals, discounts, early-bird specials, and other benefits. You may also use the history of your client's transactions to offer them special discounts on their preferred items or services.

At MLTech Soft, we have used it to build reward-based apps for our client, IDP, with their brands: KUN and LOF. It is an app that allows consumers to:

• Choose the form of redemption.
• Convert the codes obtained into the corresponding gifts.
• Admins can easily manage the number of gifts in inventory at the wholesaler.

Mobile payments

Mobile payments provide maximum convenience for shoppers. Stripe features native iOS and Android libraries, enabling a seamless payment service. Furthermore, the solution provides ready-made payment forms with no further coding necessary. The only negative is that there are transaction costs on each order, but it's not a big deal, and the time you'll save will more than make up for it.

Insights Analytics

In today’s consumer-driven world, insights have become the new currency.

Data analysis enables business decisions to be made based on strong analytics rather than mere hypotheses. This technique provides a lot of leeway for improving the purchasing experience. As a consequence, merchants may increase in-store and out-of-store sales.

The basic panel displays the number of users, session length, and active devices.

Custom metrics should be used to obtain more sophisticated data. Event-based analytics systems include parameters such as bounce rate, retention rate, sharing, and transactions. For your program, the developers must specify events and their attributes.

Sale support

One of the big things we have to admit is that the social media culture has made mobile texting a strong habit for many people. No matter what sort of things you offer, receive and answer queries via the app, and be available to your consumers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Remember that your customers need to be able to contact you at any time and from any location.

Responding quickly to customer requests allows you to stay ahead of rising customer demands.

Most used shopping apps in Q3/2022

Let's see top 3 mobile apps in the shopping category ranked by Data.ai

Amazon: the most famous shopping app in the world. Amazon offers a full range of thousands of items of all kinds. Amazon charges high fees for sales - from 10% to 25% per sale.

Shopee: An easy-to-use e-commerce application with a wide range of items. At this online retail store, users can organize items into favorites, create and manage sales lists, update, track daily and chat instantly with Shopee sellers.

FlipKart: is a simple, easy-to-see commerce interface application, for product search, and purchase. FlipKart acts as an intermediary in the online buying and selling process and does not have much control over product quality and supplier reputation.

Conclusion

When the shopping needs of consumers change, businesses need to grasp the trend and stay ahead of the market quickly. It is an indispensable requirement for sustainable development. A well-designed mobile app is more than just a simple shopping platform. A successful project should create a personalized customer experience and provide the finest service.

However, developing a retail app is not as straightforward as it appears. It is fully dependent on the retail mobile app development firm.

MLTech Soft provides a wide range of mobile app development services. Our app development team is highly skilled and has extensive expertise in native programming.

We have extensive experience in retail mobile app development. We are aware of all the potential hazards that a retail firm may encounter. However, we are always willing to work hard to provide our clients with the best market solutions.