Blog skyhook logo How Retail Apps Can Leverage Context to Increase User Engagement

Apr 9, 2014 8:30:00 AM

How Retail Apps Can Leverage Context to Increase User Engagement

Posted by Skyhook

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blog_usecase_onlineretailMobile users are just as attached to their apps as they are to their actual devices. Apps have colored their lives with on the go entertainment, easy navigation, reminders, and constant social connection. You can find them on any given day spending a majority of their time attached to their phones and engaged with their apps. This is a great opportunity to reach them with relevant deals that will drive foot traffic to local stores that are relevant to them.

To enhance the user experience for mobile retail and brand apps, apps first have to learn about who their users are, what they are interested in, and how they want to engage with the app:

1) Learn who your users are in order to deliver content that aligns with their interests and lifestyles.

Retail apps can build contextual personas to learn about their users based on their real-world activities and interests. Skyhook’s solution builds these personas by combining census demographic data--like income level, education, gender, age and ethnicity--with behavioral patterns based on where users go and when. These personas provide powerful insights into affinities and intents, enabling apps to deliver relevant coupons that pertain to their users’ interests and lifestyles. Brand and retail apps can use geofencing to send out reminders, relevant coupons, and items users might like based on their last purchase in the store. Every time a user walks into the store, their brand app can optimize their users’ shopping experiences.

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For example, an Internet retailer can deliver different coupons to their app users based on their persona. Amazon mobile app users with a “College Student” persona are ages 18-23 who often visit a college campus and spend time in college related venues. App users with a “Traveler” persona visit airports, hotels and train stations. Amazon can feature products based on users’ personas. “College Students” see highlighted text book products and “Travelers” see highlighted travel book products.

A home goods and furnishing app can use personas to guide tactical and strategic decisions.  If the app has many users who are “college students”, Ikea can run a back to school promotion during the month of June to furnish college dorm rooms.  

2) Use Geofencing To Enhance App User Engagement

Retail and brand apps are now embracing geofence targeting in order to entice customers with optimized deals and reminders. This geofence targeting allows apps to market to customers in contextual, personal, and relevant ways through their mobile devices. With geofence capabilities your app can deliver a more frictionless user experience that improves your key metrics: customer satisfaction, retention, and engagement.   

3) Conquest Competitors

Internet retailers can challenge brick and mortar competitors with geo-conquesting. Wayfair can geofence competitor’s stores to notify them when their audiences are entering or leaving competitor stores. Upon their entrance into the competitors store, Wayfair can push their own promotions and direct users to their website or app to make the same purchase for a better deal.  Geo-conquesting can grab the attention of users away from competitors and encourage them to engage with your app instead.  

Bottom Line

Context can dynamically change your user experience, open new revenue streams and boost your advertising capabilities with triggered content and experiences based on your user’s location and mindset. Skyhook enables app developers to build, measure, and optimize an infinite amount of geofences and deploy contextual user experiences at any brand’s location or category of venues with custom polygon geofences.