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Seeing as mobile commerce is the hot nowadays, it’s unsurprising to see businesses jumping on the bandwagon and developing their own mobile channel. But driving growth in mobile takes a lot of work, and the end-result might not always be what you expected.
Understanding where you are and where you need to go helps you set more meaningful goals and targets. If you are looking for ways to keep track of your mobile business, here are some ideas on where to start:
1. Push notification opt-ins
Push notification is the most powerful messaging channel for your brand to reach customers on their devices. But the ability to use this channel to communicate with them and strengthen customer relationships is limited by its opt-ins: Users need to opt in to receive push messages and they can turn them off if they don’t like them.
Push notification opt-ins show the number of customers sign up to receive alerts or notifications from your branded app. By looking at your app’s notification opt-ins , you can get an idea of what your actual reach is. With the fact that over half of iOS users opt out of push notifications, your push channel may not be performing at its fullest potential—but there’s always room to grow.
Encourage users who haven’t enabled push messages
Don’t ask for push permission too early, find the right time to do it. When asking users to enable push notifications, let them know why they should opt in. By helping customers understand the benefits, you are giving them more incentives to enable push. And even if they say no the first time, make sure you leave them some time before asking again.
Keep customers opted in for your push notifications
Instead of pushing the same generic message to the whole audience at the same time, start sending more relevant and timely messages to customers.
- Make use of customer data like profile, location, purchase history, app interactions to craft personalized messages and boost relevance
- Discover the ideal send time, set a limit on your sending frequency and carefully segmented users to send push campaigns that fit their preferences
- Optimize push content and focus on the value for customers
Re-engage users who has opted out of push messages
Other messaging channels like emails, in-app notification or automated live chat allow you to re-target these opted-out customers. You can convince them to opt back in for push notification by showing what they have missed, or by offering signification rewards to complete the action.
2. Cost per Acquisition
This metric measures the average cost to acquire a new customer for your mobile commerce app. Due to app discovery problems, there is a significant cost to acquire new app users. While mobile acquisition cost keeps rising, the majority of your app users are likely to churn within 3 months, which makes acquiring a loyal customer even more costly. It’s tricky how you spend time and money on acquisition efforts only to lose them so quickly. But not paying attention to the cost per acquisition will cost you more in the long run. It’s critical to keep a close eye on this acquisition cost and monitor it strategically. Fortunately, there are great ways you can use to minimize this cost and make acquisition works for your app:
Generate higher quality downloads by optimizing app store and acquisition channels
- Optimize your app listings to maximize its visibility in app stores to draw a free source of high-quality users to your app
- Find out the acquisition channels that bring in the best customers – app store, social channels, referrals, app ads,.. Focus your marketing efforts and budget on the right places to ensure quality users for your app
Start converting better
- Make sure your app is not a battery drainer AND a data drainer as it’s the fastest way to lose your hard-earned customers
- Perfecting onboarding experience or welcome campaigns for new app users. If you can show your customers the unique features and benefits of your app from their very first session, they are much more likely to stick around and become loyal users
- Create an engaging shopping experience: Today’s customers expect to have more personalized experience with brands on mobile. To be successful, your brand needs to interact with customers on a deeper level. With the data you have on your customers, address their needs and offer the product or solution that is useful in the moment, deliver relevant messages to nudge them through the shopping journey.
Identify the maximum acquisition cost for your mobile app
Make sure you don’t exceed it, or else your money may go to waste in the effort to bring in new customers.
3. App Retention Rate
Once customers have your app installed on their devices, you can look at its retention rate to measure how engaged customers are within your app. Retention rate is the percentage of users who return to your app after their first visit. Tracking this mobile commerce metric over time helps you identify trends. A growing retention rate means an increasingly engaged user base finding more reasons to come back to your app.
As the cost to acquire a new customer continues to rise, a returning customer is far more profitable one. Little as 5% lift in retention rate can increase your profit by 25%-125%. When your app retention rate is not performing well, maybe it’s time to improve your app user experience and interface, start pushing better notifications, or integrate powerful loyalty programs to re-engage lapsed users and keep customers returning.
4. Cart Abandonment Rate
Cart abandonment remains a distressing problem for retailers. It happens when customers add products to cart but never complete the transaction.
Source: barilliance
This can be the first problem to look at before improving anything else in your mobile commerce app. Keeping an eye on this metric helps uncover opportunities to maximize your mobile revenue. Among the most common reasons for in-app cart abandonment can be a lengthy checkout process, complicated login, lack of information or support, lack of preferred payment method. To address these problems:
- Simplify the login process: allow customers to login with their social accounts, offer fingerprint touch login.
- Reduce friction in the checkout process: Minimize the steps to complete checkout, create an user-friendly checkout form, save and pre-fill checkout details, offer a wide range of payment options to choose from.
- Provide support available at their finger tips: Allow customers to contact your support team in the way they prefer: live chat, call or email.
- Or just simply remind customers of what they left in their shopping bag by sending a push notification. You can motivate them to come back and complete checkout by offering limited-time discount code, free shipping,.. for the items in their cart.
5. Average Order Value
More users don’t necessarily mean more revenue for your app. Another cost-effective way to boost your mobile revenue is to get your customers to spend more each time, and this means increasing your average order value.
Average order value = Total Revenue / Number of Orders Taken
Knowing your app’s average order value helps you set better goals and measure the performance of on-going campaigns. An increased order value indicates better profitability and continuing success for your business. To do that, you’ll need to use some of the following tactics:
- Motivate customers to spend more in order to receive free shipping, get a free gift or apply discount code. You can set a minimum order value that works for buyers to get one of these rewards.
- Offer bigger product bundles. Combine multiple products in one single bundle that saves customer’s time and money while increasing order value.
- Cross-selling your products is an effective way to increase cart size. You can show related products on each product detail page. Or give customers a recommendation on additional products they might need – based on what they have added to cart.
- Set up a loyalty program that allows your customers to save reward points for their orders. The more they spend in your app, the more they save for later purchases. This tactic helps you increase both average order value and purchase frequency, which generates more in-app revenue
For a more successful time
It’s critical to know what mobile commerce metrics matter to your business success. The right metrics show you the overall picture of your app performance and unlock valuable insights to change the game. Aligning business goals with these mobile commerce metrics helps you set and achieve your goals. By paying close attention to these performance indicators, you can address potential problems and optimize the mobile strategy that gives your business growth a real boost.
