Modern customers are more demanding than ever, with customers now expecting a personalized experience as standard. To deliver, brands need to move away from their traditional product-centric approach to marketing, and instead put the customer at the heart of everything they do.
By being truly customer-centric, every decision and action you take is done with your customers in mind with the goal of driving repeat business, customer loyalty, and profits. While customer-centricity is something all brands should be striving for, regardless of channel, this is particularly important for mobile apps.
The mobile app market is incredibly saturated, with millions of apps fighting to gain their share of the marketplace. If you think of some of the most popular and successful apps, for example Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon, what do they all have in common? They all deliver customer-centric mobile app experiences, demonstrating that customer-centric mobile apps aren’t just the future of mobile commerce, they are the present.
What is a customer-centric app?
A customer-centric mobile app is designed to create a seamless experience for the customer, minimizing the effort needed to convert, for example, make a purchase. This is where most mobile app strategies fail as they are often created based on complicated functionality and not their users.
How can you deliver more customer-centric mobile app experiences?
Know your customers
To be truly customer-centric, you need to know who your customers are. This may be obvious, but you’d be surprised how many mobile app marketers ignore this crucial step.
Brands now have more data available to them and therefore, are better equipped to use this data to paint a more accurate picture of their customers and deliver personalized experiences. However, true customer-centric experiences require more than just using a customer’s first name in your communications. It’s about proactively serving your customers and delivering a unique experience to each user based on their interest and preferences. This is where predictive analytics are crucial.
Predictive analytics can help you identify the needs of a customer and take the guesswork out of your engagement strategy. Customer-centric mobile app experiences mean being one step ahead of the user, so rather than waiting for problems to arise before solving them, you are proactively working on them before they become issues. By using predictive analytics, you can identify users that are on the verge of converting, enabling you to engage them with targeted campaigns and encourage them to take the next step. Predictive analytics can also be used to minimize churn by targeting those on the verge of churning with relevant offers and content to bring them back from the brink.
Improve your User Experience (UX)
The success of your app will most likely depend on its UX over its features. After all, it’s likely that one of your competitors offers similar, if not the same features as you, so the deciding factor will come down to the user experience. If you’re UX and user interface (UI) are poor and users encounter numerous problems when trying to use your app, then it won’t matter how good your features are.
All apps will encounter hiccups along the way, however, it’s how you identify and deal with those hiccups that counts. In-app analytics helps you understand how a user is interacting with your brand, and more importantly, where they drop off, so that you can maintain an excellent user experience.
Upland Localytics’ funnels feature helps you understand how your users are moving through the app and completing, or not completing, certain actions. This can help identify bottle necks that are leading to a poor user experience and therefore, could increase churn rate. By identifying these sticking points, you can act quickly to fix the UI issue and help customers continue their journey, creating longer lasting, engaged customers. For example, if you notice that customers aren’t making a purchase, implementing new features such as a one-step checkout could improve their experience and increase conversion rate.
In addition to leveraging in-app analytics, user feedback is an effective way to improve the user experience. By asking your users what it is they like, dislike, and want to see from your app, you can identify issues, increase innovation, and show your users you value their feedback. However, if you ask users for feedback, you need to make sure you action it otherwise it’ll appear as though you don’t care.
When it comes to your app’s user interface, simplicity is key. Research shows that the average human’s attention span sits at just 8 seconds, down 4 seconds on recent years, so your UI needs to grab a user’s attention instantly. Think clean and organized designs with minimal effort to get from step A to step B. CTA placements are also important so make sure you consider the average ‘thumb reach’ – the area of the screen that a user’s thumb can naturally reach without stretching. This will vary according to device meaning you’ll need to identify the common area and ensure any key buttons are placed within this.
Integrate your app
Your customer’s experience with your brand isn’t just limited to your app. If you’re a retailer for example, it’s likely that they’ll engage with your brand across your app, website, social media platforms, email, and in-store so to be truly customer centric, you can’t think of your app in isolation.
Only 26.5% of customers feel like the brands they interact with provide a similar experience across all channels, all the time. This reflects the need for brands to integrate their app into their wider marketing strategy and deliver omnichannel experiences.
For instance, if a customer has added a product to their cart online, they’d expect to see the product in their cart on their mobile app, and at the same price. Or, if a customer is browsing in-store but their favorite item isn’t available in their size, an app feature such as a barcode scanner enabling them to check the sizes available online and complete the purchase through their app will enhance the overall shopping experience.
Upland Localytics’ makes delivering customer-centric mobile app experiences simple. Our software gives you the tools you need to improve your mobile app marketing and increase engagement while minimizing churn. We use your customer data to answer key questions including how users interact with your app and where they drop off, enabling you to deliver highly targeted and personalized app experiences. We also use digital intelligence to optimize your ability to drive the ‘next best action’ for every customer to keep them coming back for more.
To see how Upland Localytics can help you deliver more customer-centric app experiences, register for our monthly webinar demonstration. Or, if you’re an existing customer and would like to take your mobile app strategy to the next level, get in touch with your CSM today.