Why Mobile Apps Drive More Sales than Mobile Websites
It isn’t news to anybody that businesses nowadays need to establish a mobile presence. 2020 brings with it nearly 5 billion mobile users.
Mobile accounts for approximately half of the web traffic worldwide. In the fourth quarter of 2019, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 53 percent of global website traffic.
A mobile website is a website optimized and scaled for mobile devices. With features including smaller fonts, fewer page elements, and less white space in comparison to desktop sites.
Whereas, a mobile app is a program accessed via the internet or stored locally. Mobile apps can use the device’s native features, which allows developers to create better, more intuitive, and faster user experiences for customers.
Websites that are not mobile-friendly essentially will not survive, but businesses should not make the mistake of assuming a mobile-friendly website is a final solution. It is just a scratch on the service of mobile optimisation.
The fact is businesses will benefit far more from there own mobile app to fully optimise their brand and mobile site for their customers.
User Preferences
Research shows that consumers prefer mobile apps over mobile sites due to user experience, speed, features, and special offers such as coupons, reward programs, etc. In comparison amongst businesses, apps in Retail and E-commerce use the most, after news apps.
Millennials are the largest demographic embracing in-app shopping and food ordering amongst other business apps. 61% said they prefer purchasing through apps, following millennials are moms and multicultural demographics.
The trend seems to be that users start to buy visiting a business website, then downloading there an app. Once the relationship is built, users will continue to engage with the business through the app. This will make it one of the most powerful tools for return business.
Comparing Conversions
Recent research done by Criteo indicates that mobile apps are what close the deals when it comes to online purchases. With consumers viewing products 4.2x more in sessions compared to mobile sites, and a 3 X higher conversion rate.
Additionally, shopping cart abandonment rates are higher on mobile websites than on mobile apps. One of the reasons is that customers are abandoning their shopping cart when they have to fill out their credentials during checkout. Mobile apps solve this problem, due to saving user data.
Mobile apps allow businesses to regularly keep in touch with past customers through features like push notifications which mobile sites cannot compete with.
Retention Rate
Business apps are a new form of loyalty cards. It gives them a huge potential for increasing repeat business. Apps have other several key features that mobile websites are not able to compete with.
- Push notifications & alerts
- Visible icons constantly viewed (keeping brand awareness high)
- Apps can retain the user’s data allowing them to do instant checkouts, lowing the chance of shopping cart abandonment.
For these reasons, it’s easy to see why mobile sites are barely retaining 40% of all visitors past the first few seconds. Users are becoming not only more reliant on mobile apps but expectant of there availability when interacting with businesses. Also, it is quickly becoming the ultimate tool in brand loyalty and customer retention.
