The Role of Mobile Experience in Customer Retention

More often than not, people tend to check their smartphones before even getting out of bed. For e-retailers, this means optimisation for handheld devices isn’t merely a technical requirement, but your proverbial best foot in your relationship with potential customers. Let’s go over how and why mobile experience, enhanced by incentives like mobile loyalty programs and mobile loyalty apps, is essentially the new digital storefront in the internet age.

Non-Negotiables at a Glance

What Makes (and Breaks) Retention Engines

Almost any accomplished web development company in Sydney will tell you that retention is built on two things: high value and low friction. Because of its 24/7 availability via phones and other smart devices, mobile is uniquely positioned — and expected — to deliver on both counts.

How friction plays into engagement

The typical smartphone user isn’t just doing one thing at any given time. Typically, they’re juggling social media with communication as well as browsing or shopping the web. If pages are cluttered, poorly laid out, or take more than a couple seconds to load, a multitasking brain will interpret the extra effort as a bad experience. What you want to do is to make it so easy to interact with you, it becomes a habit rather than a chore.

Retention incentives

A welcome evolution of the punch cards of yesteryear, a mobile loyalty program seamlessly blends into apps. These enable customers to see reward progress, track points, and redeem with a simple tap or swipe. This not only incentivises retention; it gives your shoppers a reason not to switch over to your competitors.

In-app personalisation

Apps also grant targeted abilities like push notifications and tailored messaging. Location-based promos, “an item on your wishlist is on sale,” or “back in stock” memos can be relayed in real time, unlike email newsletters which tend to go straight to spam or sit unread for days.

Things to Avoid

Finally, it’s very important to remember that the mobile experience can’t just be a visually scaled down version of your website. Lazily squeezing a desktop optimised layout into a phone’s display will be apparent to the user via fragmented elements and broken forms. Forcing traditional login screens before users can so much as browse will be seen as tedious and more hassle than it’s worth. Instead, use magic links or biometric logins to streamline the process.

By sticking to and investing in the non-negotiables around mobile experience, you’ll drive interest and traffic into your business online. Once they’re in the digital door, sound use of retention fundamentals will keep them and your brand in business for years to come.