Since the industry-altering impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, retailers have been working to empower their e-commerce offer and connect it more thoroughly to the in-store experience. 

Research from Data.ai found that consumers are, on average, spending four to five hours per day in apps. However, according to omnichannel tech firm New Store, only 33 per cent of retail businesses operate their own mobile app. 

However, some brands are successfully integrating dedicated mobile apps into their ecosystem. Australia’s Country Road Group is relatively early on in their journey, one of its brands, Witchery, is already seeing promising results. 

Mobile first

Witchery’s head of digital Jeremy Eaton told Inside Retail that Country Road launched its own dedicated app around seven months ago,  while the Witchery app launched around two weeks ago. 

“We’re still pretty nascent in the app space, but we’ve learned a lot [and]  so much demand there,” Eaton said. 

“In the first week of launching the Witchery app, it accounted for 40 per cent of our online revenue and we were near the top of the app store. That alone tells us that it should be a scenario we continue to invest in.”

The Witchery app’s main selling points for customers are largely quality-of-life improvements: allowing customers to have their wishlist on hand, a barcode scanner enabling  them to quickly save items they come across in store, and a loyalty hub where employees can quickly scan a customers’ loyalty card right from the app. 

And, according to Eaton, the app is something its most loyal customers have been asking for for some time. Through internal research, almost half of the business’ customers said they prefer to shop through a dedicated mobile app to a mobile-friendly website.

The launch has made a world of difference for the company’s staff as well. 

“We’re really seeing our retail team embrace the app. It’s made their life easier,” Eaton said. 

“For example, they can use the barcode scanner when they need to get more information about a product when helping a customer in a store.”

Further, the benefits of staggered app launches, from Country Road to Witchery (and to Mimco next), is that the team learns what works, what doesn’t, and what their customers ultimately want from the digital experience. 

This allows for some reuse of pre-built features, such as endless aisle shopping and in-app personalisation, to save time and resources.

“From a tech perspective, it’s allowed us to test out systems that we want to improve, and create a better experience for our customers,” Eaton said. 

Amplifying, not creating, behaviours

What works for Witchery won’t necessarily work for every brand out there. However,  Mal Chia, founder of Ecom Nation, noted that every business has to really analyse what works for its customers before jumping into the app-building process. 

“It’s all about amplifying current [customer] behaviour. It isn’t going to be a first-time customer downloading the app to make a purchase, it’ll be the most loyal customer,” Chia told Inside Retail. 

“But when it can deepen that relationship with the customer, that’s where I see it working really well.”

Chia pointed to LKSD as a local example of a brand using its app well. The brand utilises app notifications to remind its customers to exercise, rather than only communicating with them about matters relating to  sales. 

According to Chia, this strategy helps brands meaningfully connect with their customers in ways that aren’t related to commerce. 

“Just because you have an app, it isn’t necessarily going to convince someone to buy from you [or] help you to acquire customers,” Chia said.