How to Build a Strong Consumer Mobile Strategy in the Post-Pandemic Era?
COVID -19 has turned the world upside down. Businesses are wrestling to navigate sustainably through the crippling economy, let alone working on milestones for the year 2021. It isn’t about just recovery now, it is about recovery while protecting the lives of customers amidst the profound unpredictability of the world economy. Notwithstanding the dubious government policies and regulations to control the spread of the virus, the only thing holding the economy together is the digital connectivity and commerce capabilities.
According to data by Forbes, the COVID-19 pandemic soared the mobile app investments in the initial quarter to the highest ever seen and has tremendously matured now with the changing consumer behavior. In this blog, we will talk about how enterprises can build a robust and resilient mobile strategy that will cater to this transformed consumer behavior and aid the recovery process, helping enterprises make a stronger comeback. So, let us begin:
Understanding the Novel Customer Behaviour
Customers have become much more aware and cautious of the chores that once used to be routine. They are consistently trying to mitigate physical contact while surviving on their smartphones for every single thing. According to a recent data report, consumers spent over $23.4B via app stores, in the first quarter of 2020 making it the largest consumer spending quarter ever.
The data indicates that users have become much more inclined to interact with organizations and brands via digital channels such as apps, websites together with personalized recommendations driven by AI, and ML than they were ever before. Henceforth, all they might want is a seamless user experience that fuels authentic buying just as physical stores do. The mobile strategy must therefore shift towards building unique and behavior centric experiences for such dramatically changing needs.
Building a Stronger Engagement Strategy
Customers of today make use of digital engagement touchpoints to do almost everything in a day. This makes them hyper-aware of the overall mobile customer experience they receive while interacting with brands. Having become customary to premium online services, the customer anticipates every novel experience to exceed the one they received in the pre-pandemic world.
Hyper-personalization, innovation, evolving with the change, safety, and trust are projected to be the primary focus of enterprises to retain users’ attention and convince them to make a valuable decision through their app.
Augmenting Service Offerings
Businesses need to augment their mobile offerings across numerous use cases and verticals to capture the divided attention of this new age of connected customers. For instance, a grocery store must inculcate technologies like beacons that will allow customers in-store, practice social distancing. The businesses operating online must assure customers of the hygiene and safety precautions that will persuade them to confidently buy from a brand.
Incorporate Efficient Scaling Capabilities
As more customers turn to digital platforms to purchase products, brands might face difficulty scaling their applications to handle a sudden surge in the volume of customers. Older applications built for a pre-specified set of users may crash or cause performance issues due to their incapability to handle simultaneous requests when their users rapidly increase. Hence, recasting application architecture to become resilient, shock-proof, and scalable will save businesses time and money.
Rethinking Customer Experience
Preventing customer attrition is a universal goal of the enterprises. In case an enterprise is unable to prove the compatibility of its pre-pandemic value with the changing consumer needs, sustainability would seem unattainable. Companies must focus on retaining their existing customers, by improving CX through aspects like minimizing the time taken by the users to perform actions in the app, driving engagement via multi-channel messaging, and growing the experience value through convenient features. This would also lower the reliance on expensive, and complex methods for customer acquisition.
Being Omnichannel
A modern consumer remains on a multi-channel user side. Hence, they strive for quick, consistent, and immediate, brand communication that makes their days easier. This is the reason why direct messages invite a higher engagement level, regardless of the context. According to recent research data, customer interaction grows by 166% when contacted through a multiple channel format relative to the percentage of single-channel interaction. These multiple channels can turn an individual active user using the app weekly, into a faithful buyer who will return back to your app for his every new need. This rate of conversion has become extremely critical in the modern dynamic marketplace.
Being Proactive and Adaptable to Change
Quick testing of new features and messaging campaigns always has been and always will be a huge competitive advantage. Moreover, adopting an agile methodology and incorporating early and frequent testing, will enable enterprises to fail, recover, and scale quickly without hindering the business.
Leveraging the consistent customer feedback through prototyping to either turn on/off certain features will be critical to an effective mobile experience.
Conclusion
The experimentation of ideas in mobile app development is complex. The pandemic has just amplified the effort and intelligence required. It has forced enterprises to imagine their potential in unexpected areas and become farsighted on what their actions might lead to. Therefore, given the inevitable nature of the situation, end-to-end technology, and business strategy support is essential for small, medium, and once self-sufficient large enterprises today. We recommend getting in touch with technology consultants with wide industry experience or an enterprise app development company with deeply rooted expertise in technology consulting to begin your journey to recovery and opportunistic growth from the aftermath of the pandemic.
