How was our life without mobile apps? Hard to remember right? Mobile apps have today taken over our lives so much that it is almost unbelievable that we survived without them earlier. Today, it seems impossible to carry out our daily life without them, isn’t it? Why so?
Mobile phones which were only meant for communication before now have more to do than that. In fact, the mobile platform has not only changed the way humans communicate but also has redefined their buying patterns. According to the Pew Centre for Research, 96% of Americans own a smartphone and considering 69% have shopped on mobile at least once in their lives, which shows that the mobile technology is here to stay for a very long time.
Apps, mobile optimization, and portable commerce are evolving at a rapid pace, compelling many businesses to reflect the change in their daily operations. From food delivery (Zomato), clothing and apparel (ASOS), fintech (PayPal) to travel (Trivago), various industries across the globe are innovating and evolving keeping in mind today’s consumers’ needs and convenience. Naturally, it is giving a boom to the mobile app development industry with more and more businesses across domains racing to launch their mobile platforms.
Why is a mobile app so important for any business today?
With almost half of the population on mobile, having a mobile app for your business means:
- You can create more value for your customers
- Your customers don’t have to wait to launch a web browser, enter the URL and wait for your website to load
- Your customer engagement increases and pushes back on the cost
- You can offer great promotional options and advertise your new offerings, discounts, and deals
- You can increase the visibility of your brand
- You can allow your users to share on social sites means more reach and more discussions about you.
In short, from reaching and serving a wide customer base globally to bringing transformative improvement for various industry verticals, mobile apps are proving to be worth an investment. Although every industry has their mobile app today, there are six retail segments to watch out for in the app development industry which will experience a major spin-off in the year 2020 about which we are going to discuss in detail today.
1. Grocery
Did you know only around 3% of grocery shopping happens online? And 41%of consumers are neutral towards shopping for perishable items and beverages at grocery stores? The online grocery business model works because of zero warehouse/inventory management woes, guaranteed convenience, and centralized hubs with localized order fulfilment.
This, combined with the demand/supply gap, shows there is enormous scope for grocery shopping app development. Take retail giant Walmart as an example. It acquired last-mile delivery company Parcel in 2017 so that it could reduce the order fulfilment timeframe for groceries bought on its website.
2. Electronics
From smartphones and tablets to laptops and wearables, the market of electronics is ever-evolving. Even smartphone accessories such as earphones, wireless chargers, tempered glass, and phone cases made for a fantastic niche market whose app usage has also gone up to 54% in the past few years.
Given the rise of electronic purchases on online stores such as SnapDeal, Flipkart, and Amazon, it is clear that consumers love spending on next-level tech products. When from a microchip to a washing machine, electronic products of all nature and size are available online, people are preferring to shop via mobile apps of electronic items more than visiting a number of offline stores of them in search of getting discounts, reasonable prices, and other offers. Not just that, the delivery of heavy electronics at the doorstep via mobile ordering has made electronics mobile apps the favourite among customers.
As per Statista, the revenue in the Consumer Electronics segment amounts to US$8,335m in 2020 and is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2020-2024) of 11.7%, resulting in a market volume of US$12,959m by 2024.
3. Automotive
Ecommerce sales are set to contribute roughly $13 bn to the automotive industry in the year 2020. Considering 72% of consumers in the US have used their mobile phones at some point while purchasing a car, automotive companies can leverage it to improve their potential customers’ dealership experience, thus boosting service appointment bookings and sales.
An automotive mobile app enables consumers to find a car of their choice near the vicinity, conveniently. If you have a marketplace model, you can get retailers, auto parts manufacturers, and distributors on the mobile platform and offer your customers a wide assortment of vehicles, payment, and shipping options. With the ability to provide such A to Z service of the automobile via a mobile app can give automobile mobile app development a good surge in the growth chart which already is happening in the year 2020.
Certain car companies like Audi, Volkswagen, have already embraced the mobile app revolution and are enhancing the owner’s experience by providing them with app features like mileage tracker, latest news and events, Augmented Reality, car service reminders, etc.
4. Jewellery
Like many traditional businesses, the jewellery sector has also undergone a sea of change in the digital era. CaratLane, Madewell, and Kendra Scott are some of the popular brands that have successful mobile apps.
Etsy is another player in the market that has popularized handmade jewellery and transformed just about everyone to thriving entrepreneurs. Mobile has enabled businesses in this industry to sell jewellery at comparatively lower prices, offer an assortment of products on one platform, and let fast and secure shipment and delivery all without the need to go anywhere.
With the debut of the mobile app into the jewellery business, jewellers have reported a rise in sales by 30% after deploying promising technologies like Augmented Reality on mobile. Therefore, it can be said that a jewellery business mobile app with latest technologies can turn out to be a good bait for attracting customers as well as sales like never before.
5. Cosmetics
The global beauty industry is grooming and is currently valued at $532 billion. This is not a surprise given how vain the world has become and how everyone wants to look presentable.
The ecommerce platform shrinks the vast cosmetic world and brings all the popular brands on a single platform making it easier for customers to shop their favourites at one place. Moreover, consumers can avail of a series of discounts all-year-round and stay hooked to their favourite cosmetics brands on mobile anytime, anywhere.
Further, thanks to Virtual Reality technology, mobile apps can capture the image of the user and enable them to test different product shades and tones online, just how they ideally would in a brick-and-mortar beauty and makeup store. All of these have been possible via a mobile app which is making the cosmetic mobile app desirable among users and which is going to bubble up even more in the year 2020.
6. Pharmacy
Pharmaceutical companies have always been competitive with each other but, it was only in 2018 that the domain started to see real innovation through mobile. Pharmacy mobile apps have enhanced the prescription management experience for consumers and enabled them to stay reminded of the medications they have to shop and take on time.
Today, many pharma mobile apps also have doctors on demand, which can be contacted if consumers have any doubts regarding their medication. Apart from that, various features like drug search and info, order tracking, drug comparison, personal user account, feedback and admin features are making pharmacy mobile apps a hit in the market today.
In short, change is around the corner for the pharma mobile app development industry and by the end of 2020, the growth rate of it will be double than before for sure.
Summing it up
Consumers of today love their smartphones, which explains why 91% of them are always on them 24/7. Therefore, it should not be surprising for industries to understand why mobile app development is the need of the hour.
Mobile has changed the way consumers play, shop, and communicate but that is not the end of the road for sure. That is why industries that are ignoring going mobile today will have tough years to come. If you do not want to lose wide traffic of consumers, then mobile app development is something you must consider seriously for your business no matter what industry you are into.
Author Bio:
Rakesh Jain is CEO and Co-founder of MobiCommerce, a globally recognized leading eCommerce and Mobile app development company offers ready-to-go esteemed app development solution for on-demand services with excellent UI experience that makes businesses stand out from crowd. His team has successfully delivered hundreds’ of on-demand solution in stimulated time frame as per specific needs of clients. Be it grocery, electronics, automotive, cosmetics, jewellery, or pharma, whatever mobile app you are interested in getting designed and developed that enriched with multiple features such as bulk purchases, smart search, product reviews, and more; his expert team will help you.