App Can help Increase In-store Traffic

App Can help Increase In-store Traffic

Many retailers would see Apps or e-commerce websites as a threat to the in-store business. But the latest research by Ipsos MediaCT and Sterling Brands for Google proves otherwise.

The research suggests that smart phones help people research and lookout for the products they like, connect with the brand and make wise buying choices ultimately resulting in increased in-store sales. People look out for choices available on line but still like to go to the store, look and feel the product before buying it.

According to the research over 68% of people responded that they were more comfortable purchasing in-store when they did research online before actually buying the product. 71% people said that they expect sales and customer service people to know accurate and give out product information more quickly because of smartphones. 46% people visit the retail website of shopping app before purchasing the merchandise.

So clearly different customer channels do not compete but actually complement each other. Customers now look for holistic experiences rather than fragmented encounters.

Here’s how local retailers can benefit from the omni-channel strategy:

1. Create an app and promote it in local inventory ads. Design localized offers, recommend products and find reasons to get in touch with the customer.
2. Instead of using a toll free number and email id, use a local phone number, store open hours and the local location. It generates more trust.
3. Along with the app have a website that promotes your app.

Instead of being intimidated by big retail chains and their shopping apps, local retailers and businesses can actually encash on the mobile and app market and increase their sales, both online and in-store. Omni-channel is the future, the earlier you accept it, the easier your transition will be.

App User Testing Made Simple

App User Testing Made Simple

Launching your new app or a new version of your existing app takes a great deal of work, meeting deadlines, pre-launch publicity, marketing, coordination, communication and so more. Just before you launch your app it is essential to conduct App User Testing to ensure the app’s all ready to woo the user. Slightest lag in User Testing can actually induce app ‘uninstalls’ which can be more fatal than ‘fewer installations’.

App User Test is not the ‘quality check’ that your technical department does with programmers or staff testing out different functions of the app. Developers often see the app from a certain angle. The promptness of the design is assumed, functionality is assumed to be simple, and the whole UX is simulated. App User Test is when real users or a random group of common people get the real feel of usability, functionality, UX and design of your app. Here is where you get the actual answer of whether your app meets its purpose, raison d’etre. User App Testing helps the user get an objective view of the usability and functionality of the app at an early stage, which can help solve so many issues even before they crop up.

Even though App User Test is imperative, you don’t necessarily need to burn your budget to get high tech labs, testing agencies, paid user groups etc. Given below are some tips to get your App User Test done in an amazingly simple and budget friendly manner.

1. Use your contacts – Get in touch with your contacts, both personal and professional. Ask them to download the app and give their feedback. You can also design a feedback form. Provide an incentive for every feedback offered.
3. Test across devices – If your app is going to be launched across platforms, Android, iOS, Windows, make sure you get feedback on all platforms and devices like cell phone, tab, laptop etc.
4. Launch a Social Media campaign – Create a Facebook page where you could ask users to provide feedback on the app. Make the campaign so compelling that it goes viral, users actually share it on social media. This will also help marketing a great deal.
5. Ask random people on the streets – Ask people for quick opinions or feedback about the app. At the end of the exercise you’d be overwhelmed with the precise points and exact suggestions that come to you. And actually speaking a lot of the users would be forming their opinions in quick glances only.

There are many interesting ways you can get real feedback from the real users. Think of some? Share with us in the comments below.

App Marketing

App Marketing – Quick Tips For Quick Results

If we read expert advise for app marketing, most would strongly suggest that app marketing should be integrated with the holistic marketing plan and there should be a consolidated marketing strategy that should not alienate one customer touch point from the other. This is the ideal way it should be done too. But there are two problems here. First, with an app in place, CEOs start expecting fast results and second, an app per se is in itself a whole new product that needs to be sold to the user.

While tampering with the consolidated marketing strategy might not be the sensible option, here are some quick tips that would help you popularize your app without making any changes in the company’s marketing strategy.

Promote your app on the mobile website: Show the carrot. Tell users the benefits of installing the app. Give compelling reasons.

ASO: ASO is to apps what SEO is to websites. Google Play Store and Apple Store have specific criterion on the basis of which they feature apps in a certain order. Although this is a comprehensive study in itself, but you could quickly look up the criteria for your app category. It’s a combination of user ratings, tags, screen shots, app title, download data etc., find out what works best for your category.

Get your app reviewed on top app review sites: The app review sites not only command user attention but also get your app some useful ASO links.

Advertise/Broadcast your link on Social Media: Study suggests that users are more likely to respond to social media ads than to ads on the web. Make sure the social media ads are interesting, humorous and compelling. Such ads have a chance to go viral that can be perhaps the best publicity your app can get.

Get a video explaining the functionality of your app: A picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a thousand pictures. Get a video on the functionality of the app and post it across the web on video blogs, YouTube, social media, your company website and every where you can think of marketing your product.

This is just the hint of what you can do. There are a whole lot of interesting ways to market your app. If this blog has spurred some interesting ideas on app marketing, please do share them with us in the comments below.

Social Media Marketing

Getting It Right

Planned marketing campaigns are a passé. New dimensions are being added to the highly dynamic marketplace and marketing strategy needs to be equally dynamic. The best marketing campaigns are the ones that are formed real time in response to user’s digital behavior.

The market is user driven. Unlike the traditional market place users don’t just buy stuff, they recommend it or criticize it, to their friends, on the Internet, to thousands of them, and to the world on the social media. It like handing over a loud speaker to each person, such that they can express their views to the world and giving them the space where they can be heard too.

“Hey, try out this app, it’s great”, or “I was so turned down by their collection, all hype, not worth it”. People are sharing this stuff. It’s a lot more valuable than just an opinion. In the respective social circles this opinion would determine the fate of the company; these opinions influence thousands in one go. This is changing the sales volumes and marketing dynamics for companies, especially in the direct-to-consumer segment. Companies need to shift their focus from traditional marketing to social media marketing. Even more marketing strategies and promotion campaigns now need to be fluid; need to be formed real-time in response to customer behavior.

It’s a little more complex than what you might think. Social media marketing involves a whole lot of analysis of users’ digital behavior, their social circle, preferences, likes and any personal detail that digital media can make available. To make this simple, here are some quick tips to help you set up your social media campaign.

1. Chalk down the profile of potential customers. This might require creating a certain set of profiles, one or two would be like narrowing it too thin.
2. Study social media profiles (FB, Twitter, LinkedIn…) of the potential customers. What do they do? What are their interests, likings and preferences?
3. Design online and offline campaigns based on the findings of your study.
4. Create social media presence. Upload content that suits the likings of your potential customers.
5. Do acknowledge a comment, like, dislike or criticism put by a customer on the social media. Here is where most companies fail. Having a real person answer to all comments, likes, dislikes or criticisms put by a customer on social media adds credibility to the company, which works wonders in the Internet world.

Social media marketing needs to be handed delicately. Mistakes done on the Internet are never forgotten or forgiven. They are engraved on the digital screens and leave an impression every time someone looks for reviews.

Mobile Moment

Seize The ‘Mobile’ Moment

The term ‘mobile moment’ might be new but the concept isn’t. Google’s success story is a living lesson of seizing the mobile moment. And now, as the retail arena becomes more congested with marketers from across the globe struggling hard for much coveted customer attention, capturing the mobile moment becomes the name of the game.

What exactly is mobile moment?

Mobile moment is the moment when a user needs something, say information or a product, and at that very moment she takes out the mobile and immediately gets what she wants, in context.

Consider this scenario: you are in the train going home from work. You catch up with a friend who mentions he’s transferred to San Marino. Curious, you look up San Marino on your smart phone and in a bit you start looking up hotels and start checking fares to Italy. So a simple piece of information went on to a potential sale in a few seconds. This is mobile moment. What is the weather like in the other part of the country? Is this product cheaper elsewhere? How is the culture of a particular place different? Anything. Absolutely anything.

Seizing the mobile moment is giving the user what she wants, whenever she wants it and where ever she wants it from, and in immediate context.

So the new market is the mobile moment, reaching out to the customer with the exact answer she is seeking in the instant in which she is seeking it. This might sound like the conventional marketing mantra ‘being at the right place at the right time’, but it is a little more complicated. Getting to your customers in their mobile moments would broadly involve:

• Knowing your set of customers – who are they? What do they do? What is their social circle like? All these questions can be answered by tracing digital footprints of your customers from across channels
• Tracking their mobile moments – Again, this is about tracing digital footprints but more focused. What are their likings, interests? Where do they spend? Which information is more likely to convert to sale?
• Serving the user’s mobile moments with real-time, rapid response to mobile behavior
• Designing apt yet concise experiences for shorter moments – do not overwhelm users with too much information, keep it long enough to appease them and short enough to tease them
• Wherever the customer reaches you, be there – this calls for a well-networked omni-channel approach
• Proactively creating mobile moments rather than waiting for the customer to come

Trending Hot

Mobile Marketing Trends to Watch out for in 2016

Mobile continues to be marketing’s blue-eyed-boy; a trend that carries forward from 2015 and before that. Mobile shopping has caught up fast but nevertheless it’s steady. Taking a cue from how mobile commerce has evolved over the years and the latest technology innovations that are coming up every day, here are a few mobile marketing trends that will dominate the market in 2016.

Really Mobile

So, while the trend remains to be “mobile-centric”, shopping would not be restricted to smart phones or tabs only. Mobile commerce will include a whole gamut of mobile devices or personal devices that are with us, on the go. Some gadgets that would contribute significantly to mobile commerce are: smart watches, iBeacons or any other wearables.

Payment Gateways

Payment gateway is the latest trend most retailers are trying to catch on. So if a person surfs some merchandise on her smart phone and then has to go to the desktop computer just to make payment, as a retailer you have most likely lost them.

iBeacons

iBeacon make a great marketing tool when combined with mobile apps. Geofencing, instant notifications of customized offers and discounts, new stocks added intimation and so much more.

Omnicahnnel

As customers find new ways to communicate about their products, they need to understand that this isn’t about just-communication they are talking about. A person might look for a product through one medium and but it on the other. From surfing to purchasing, there are important touch points that connect. This chain of touch points mustn’t be broken. Because much before you loose your customer, competition has her.

Customer Engagement

Whether its mobile retail, information website or social media platform, brands would be required to engage and interact with their customers rather than just do one-way marketing. Brands that engage customers also enjoy a rather loyal customer base as compared to customers that do not connect with the brand.

Busy Moms

Some great apps that cater to the focus group

There're so many roles and tasks a mom has to handle simultaneously that it's only fair to bring in some tools that might help. From shopping to managing finances to doctor's advice, there's an app for everything, and the best part, help is there right in your hands. Here's a list of some great apps that can come in real handy for a busy mom and yes, can bring in some inspiration to app makers who are planning to launch apps in the segment.

WebMD Baby

This free app on Apple store comes in as a breather for new moms. The app helps anxious parents with quick advice from a trusted panel of doctors. It also includes daily tips that come in real handy for mothers of newborns. So if it's the change of weather or some general health advice you seek, the app can really help. But remember to see the doctor if you feel the condition requires a doctor's examination.

Shopping List

Although it's a paid app on Apple Store ($2.99), but is worth every penny. Add items to your shopping list as and when they are finished. The app organizes your shopping list by store isles making your shopping convenient and fast. You can also add notes to your shopping list and share the list with others. Send your husband grocery shopping once in a while!

GoodBudget Planner

Another free app on Apple store. Yes you guessed it right it helps you stay in track with your finances. This app syncs with your GoogleBudget and helps not just you, but also your family to stay in track within the planned budget.

White Noise Lite

This free app on Apple store is a must have for sleep deprived new parents. The app features more than 20 relaxing sounds that can calm your cranky newborn. The best part, the app blocks distractions that cause human brain to stay awake. About time you catch-up on your sleep.

NetNanny

Available for $4.99 on Apple Store, the app is a savior if your children are surfing the internet for their study or entertainment. NetNanny allows parents to keep a check on the content that children access on the internet. Delete the other browsers and NetNanny will take care of your internet settings.

FitBit

FitBit is a free app on Apple store. If you are a fitness enthusiast, the app is perfect for you. FitBit keeps track of day-to-day activities, workout schedules and calories. You can keep track of your fitness for your records or compete with your friends.

How to Cook Everything

There's perhaps nothing more taxing than planning a meal for your kids after a busy day. Get access to 2000 recipes that'll help you find a quick dish with whatever you have in your fridge.

There are hundreds of apps that will ease workload, provide time and bring in more life into your living. We obviously haven't put all of them here. Feel there's something that needs a mention; please share with us in the comments below!