How To Stay Ahead In Competition In Holiday Season By Building A Mobile App

Mobile applications provide immense opportunities to Boost Holiday Sales, and merchants can leverage all in the current holiday season 2017. The current post gives some statistics depicting the trends and behavior of mobile shoppers during the past seasons and, based on it, suggested some tips win the battle. Today the shape of the retail business has changed significantly. Some have brick-and-mortar stores while some exist as a solely online business (Ecommerce), and many have both types of entities. The customer acquisition routes are also multiple for Omnichannel businesses.

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We Are Living In Mobile Era

Earlier, we have only websites accessible through desktops and wired networks. Fortunately, the mobile revolution has changed the entire scenario. It brought a remarkable thing, and it is mobility. Thanks to handheld mobile devices, we can access the business from anywhere and at any time, even while on the go!

Advantages of Mobiles for the Businesses

Some more and sweet flavors were added by the mobile applications designed to keep users at the center.

Mobile apps provide excellent user experiences, primarily due to access to native features and hardware capabilities.
The mobile app has some storage capacities on the client devices that make performance excellent.
The mobile network has multiple channels to access the web services and business databases, such as native mobile networks (3G/4G) and Wi-Fi.
Mobile devices have excellent hardware capabilities like a camera, accelerometer, GPS, Bluetooth, and much more to smooth the integration of the latest technologies like IoT, Augmented Reality, LBS, and much more.
Mobile devices are more secure in many ways than their counterparts when enough measures have been taken.
Mobiles provide instant access to the most trendy social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube to connect businesses operating on Omnichannel.

These all have increased mobile usage, and the following figures of smartphones and tablet users in the USA indicate the popularity and increased usage of mobile devices.

The smartphones owner U.S. consumers – 125 Million
The tablet’s ownerS. Consumers – 50 million

However, before checking the role of mobiles in holiday sales, we should know what holiday sales and their significance for eCommerce are. Let’s take a glimpse of the prime holidays in 2017 year.

What Is Holiday Sale?

In the Western world, most of the holidays come at the end of the year, in November & December months. Just examine the dates of the major holidays in the following table.

*Date:*	*Day:*
October 9	Canadian
November 23	US Thanksgiving Day
November 24	Black Friday
November 25	Small Business Saturday
November 27	Cyber Monday
December 11	Green Monday
December 16	Free Shipping Day
December 25	Christmas
December 16-24	Hanukkah
December 26	Boxing Day
December 31	New Year’s Eve

Traditionally, people are spending more during these holidays and the shopping of billions of dollars taking place. Therefore, these two months are famously called as the ‘Great Holiday Sales’ period.

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Now, we are going to focus on only holidays in the November month, and those are Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. According to report published by Adobe for 2016 Holiday Sales in November,

Online Sales & Growth in Holiday Sales:

Online Sales	Thanksgiving Day	Black Friday	Cyber Monday
*Total sales on the day*	$1.93 billion	$3.34 billion	$3.39 billion
*Sales growth in %*	11.5%	21.6%	10.2%

The total online sales using various devices and the network was significantly high on the Black Friday out of all three prime days. It was $3.34 billion with 21.6% growth rate. Let’s check the role of different digital devices with the Internet access during the holiday sales period.

Shares of Different Devices in Holiday Sales:

Shares of/on:	Thanksgiving Day		Black Friday		Cyber Monday
Desktops	43% visits	60% sales	45% visits	64% sales	47% visits	65% sales
Mobiles	57% visits	40% sales	55% visits	36% sales	53% visits	35% sales

The data given in the table above, indicate that the share of the mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are higher during the peak week of Holiday Sales compared to desktop/laptop devices. Unfortunately, the conversion rate is not following the mobile trends in Holiday Sales. Check the figures given in the table.

Conversion Rate (%) for Different Devices in Holiday Sales:

Conversion in %	Thanksgiving Day	Black Friday	Cyber Monday
*iOS*	2.1	2.5	2.3
*Android*	1.9	2.2	1.8
*Desktops*	4.4	4.0	4.3
*Tablets*	3.8	3.7	3.7

According to predicted shopper’s journey, the shoppers use mobile devices to access the product and the business. They add the products of their choices in the cart and leave the mobile devices in favor of desktop devices. It is because the desktops have larger screens, faster network access, and capable of providing secure transactions compared to mobiles.

Mobile Order (%) on Holiday Sales

From the overall mobile order values, the share of smartphones was 78% during the Holiday Sales-2016. It is 11% higher than the figure of 2015.
From the overall mobile order values, the share of tablets was 22% during the Holiday Sales-2016. It is 26% lesser than the figure of 2015.

These statistic figures given in various tables above provided us some clues regarding the behavior of shoppers during the holiday season of 2016 and based on it, the eCommerce and Omnichannel businesses can prepare for the Holiday Sales 2017, which is already started with the onset of November 2017 month.

Takeaways:

If a business has a mobile application and a mobile-friendly website, the chances of winning the Holiday Sales battle are increasing exponentially. There are some valuable suggestions by ecommerce experts from the mobile application development niche. Let’s see those and try to implement them in the upcoming holiday season 2017.

Push Notifications through Mobile App

Push notification is indeed a blessing of mobiles that hardly comes through other channels. According to a survey in last Holiday Season, only 5% of customers have opened the email message and clicked on the given link. Against it, 30% to 60% of shoppers have read the push notification messages and responded. You can use coupons, vouchers, and other marketing techniques in push notifications to incentivize holiday shoppers more.

Gift Cards & Reward Program via Mobile App

The gift cards provide a great way to implement an effective loyalty program that can return a big long run. Gift card usage is increasing leaps and bounds with the pace of time thanks to advanced technologies. Smart merchants mingle the gift cards with other marketing incentives, including reward points, coupons, and vouchers to please the shoppers the most.

Enhancement of User Experiences by Mobile App

The mobile app considers as the best way to provide excellent user experiences, as we have seen at the beginning. Suppose you have an impeccable Team of Mobile App Developers like SysBunny. In that case, you can provide an intuitive and engaging app to your shoppers during the holiday season and grab more sales than you can do with a website alone.

About Post Author

Hemant Kumar

A zestful developer, always on his toes when it comes to technological advancements. He is an ardent researcher and an earnest consultant who loves interacting with people and solving client issues.

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How to Stay Ahead in Competition in Holiday Season by Building a Mobile App