A great mobile app experience is imperative for retailers: Your most loyal customers use your app, customers abandon brands with bad experiences, and customer expectations are rising as new features used by competitors improve the in-app experience.

To help retailers benchmark their mobile apps and prioritize improvements in a feature minefield, we evaluated 15 retailer mobile apps in the US and Europe to find the best features, functionality, and user experiences.

The results were mixed; some retailers don’t deliver on app design basics, while others are testing emerging features and functions with success. To help all retailers raise the bar, we have written a series of best-practices reports full of examples for how retailers can:

Provide Easy-To-Use Digital Tools In-Store

By 2023, smartphone shopping will comprise 6% of retail and influence another 33% of offline sales. Leading retailers’ apps facilitate confident in-store purchases with scanning functionality, digital comparison tools, aisle navigators, and more. But if launching these, be careful that the experience doesn’t fail shoppers. We caught several instances of outdated inventory counts, confusing new feature interactions, and missed opportunities for location-data-based shortcuts.

Find best-in-class in-store app experiences here: “Retail Mobile App In-Store Best Practices For 2019”

Match Robust Content To The Shopper’s Criteria

More than one-third of US online adults choose to shop in stores rather than buy online to touch, see, feel, or smell products. Leading app experiences deliver on shoppers’ consideration with robust product information and interactive content — showing fabric movement in videos, guiding shoppers through products with conversational prompts, and augmenting digital decisions with AR to see the pillow on the couch they own.

Find the right mix of feature, functionality, and content here: “Retail Mobile App Browsing And Merchandising Best Practices For 2019“

Streamline Your Checkout Process And Upgrade Options

 To reduce high checkout abandonment, we found several (but not all) retailers that have mastered design best practices and clearly label checkout steps, optimize error handing, and use intelligent form-filling to reduce shopper effort. What are more advanced experiences offering? Biometrics, shipping transparency, and extended payment options to address growing customer expectations; 51% of US online adults agree that digital payment systems make online shopping more convenient.

Find best practices for checkout design and new technologies to explore here: “Retail Mobile App Checkout And Payments Best Practices For 2019“

Let Customers Find The Products They Want

The coolest feature or fastest checkout doesn’t matter if the shopper can’t find the product they want in the first place. Leading retailers ace the basics with intelligent search capabilities and filters that include key (and often overlooked) shopper criteria like pick-up preference. Beyond the basics, we found personalization examples and experimentation with technologies like voice and image recognition that enhanced the digital product discovery experience.

Find examples of search best practices and applications of new technologies here: “Retail Mobile App In-Store Best Practices For 2019”

Want to learn more about best practices, how your company stacks up, or what to prioritize next in your digital experience strategy? Check out these four best-practice reports, or set up an inquiry with us.