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How to make your shopping app more than just a selling app

Shopping is about having a choice, exploring each product, making a wish list, shortlisting final products, making the purchase, and finally receiving the shiny new products handed over to you.

Businesses selling online have certainly made this experience convenient and full of choices, but one must also look at other factors that make shopping such a desirable activity.

As more and more customers are shopping through online platforms and mobile phones, businesses are moving their online commerce base to Apps.

Apps give a lot of opportunities to businesses and customers to make shopping and content consumption engaging and valuable.

If you already have a Woocommerce website, then you can convert WooCommerce website to mobile app to make online shopping a wholesome experience for your customers.

While you make your app using an app builder online, you can pay attention to the following points, so that your shopping app is not just a plain old selling up, but it gives a chance to customers to engage with the products and content and make satisfactory shopping decisions.

1. Seasonal look books and influencer recommendations

You can add seasonal look books and influencer recommendations to your app, so that your customers return to your app again and again to see what’s in season. Look books help businesses introduce new products or products in fashion to customers.

Businesses can engage with influencers to create product categories carrying their recommendations. This attracts users who follow those influencers. This increases your chances of selling and also engages customers and gives them a reason to return to your app more often.

2. Blog

Write a blog that is valuable and relevant for your users. This blog can keep your customers coming back for more tips, knowledge or entertainment. The users who return to your app to read your blog will also often visit your mobile store, increasing your chances to sell to such customers.

Data from you app will show you how well your content is able to engage your customers and how many customers visit your shopping pages after reading your blogs. You can also write reviews about your products and show how some customers use them in daily life to generate interest among other users to purchase them.

3. Product choice

It is really important to offer product choices to customers, so that they find it meaningful to download your app to purchase with you again and again. If you are selling a frequently consumed products, then you can offer ample choice in products and also choices in payment modes.

As many shoppers like to see all available options before they make a purchase decision, you must ensure that your app is not limiting your customers’ choice. You can even introduce third-party products to make your app more useful to your users. A customer will always prefer shopping where they can select what to purchase.

4. Product descriptions, images and videos

To ensure that your customers are able to understand the product well before purchasing, you can add meaningful and useful product descriptions for your customers. To make the product page more descriptive, you can add images of the products and their videos, too.

As customers are not able to feel or try on the products they are purchasing, a description, image or video that helps them understand what it would mean to actually hold or see the product can be really helpful. Most brands add multiple images and videos showing products in use, so that customers are able to relate better to them before purchasing.

5. Product categories

You need to plan your product categories well, so that customers can have a structured shopping experience on your app. Product categories are like aisles in a retail store. They help merchandisers place products in an organized manner, so that they are able to sell more.

In apps, product categories also help merchandisers organize products well. They also help users quickly find relevant products in an app. Therefore, structure your categories and sub-categories well, so that your customers are able to quickly find the products they are looking for and make suitable purchase decisions.

6. Well-planned UI

Your app should have a well-planned UI. How visual merchandisers study customer behaviour to arrange their products in a way that customers purchase more, your app designers need to analyze user browsing behaviour to plan your app’s design in a way that your customers find it easy to find products and interact with your offerings.

You can also plan your UI to make it interesting enough for customers to explore all content and product pages you have. Your UI should direct your customers to your products pages in an intuitive manner. Make the design attractive and contemporary to keep your customers interested.

7. Feedback and sharing

One valuable activity your business apps can help you undertake is collect feedback from customers. This will give a platform to your customers to voice their likings and dislikings about your products. This not only helps make customers feel heard, but also gives them a reason to feel more connected to your business.

You can also provide social sharing options to your customers. This will enable your satisfied users  to share their experience on their social media profiles or with their friends and family. A reference from peers can encourage new users to visit your website or apps to purchase with you.

8. Data collection

Your app does another very important activity—collecting user data. This will help you profile different customers. Customer data will also help you understand how your customers behave in terms of use of your app or purchase of products. This information can be very valuable in taking sound business decisions.

You can optimize your app with the help of customer data. Other uses of such data will be planning marketing activities that will work for your customers. You can create offers that your customers will value and will help you generate revenue.

9. Effective marketing and re-marketing

Business apps also provide a lot of opportunities to market products and events in a cost-effective manner. You can use native app features to send notifications and messages to users about new products, discounts, sales, etc. Marketing managers get direct access to customers through business shopping apps.

You can also collect browsing and cart data of customers to re-market products in which customers showed interest. You can also offer complementary products to customers when they have selected or purchased certain products through your app.

10. Customer loyalty and retention

Another activity that you can undertake with your app is to offer a loyalty program. This will enable you to reward your customers with points, freebies or discounts every time they return to you to purchase more items. This helps you increase customer’s lifetime value. You can also reward customers to increase their basket size.

Such programs help you retain customers over time and even attract new customers. You can integrate a loyalty program in your app, so that customers can keep track of their loyalty rewards and plan how to use them to get maximum benefits.

In the above ways, you can make your shopping app more than just about selling. Your business apps help you accomplish important objectives like customer retention, cost-effective marketing, community building, customer engagement, and streamlining of operations.

If you already have a Woocommerce website, then you can use an app builder online to create a shopping app​ that will offer you all the above business opportunities.

When you convert websites to mobile apps, then you are able to sync your website data seamlessly with your app. AppMySite is a great website that help you create Woocommerce apps based on your existing websites in two easy steps and in a very cost-effective manner.

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