Tag: smartphone app

Mobile commerce app from Aeropostale steps it up

| April 11, 2013

Mobile Commerce iPhone appA new marketing promotion has been released and is geared toward smartphone carrying teens.

Aeropostale, an apparel retailer geared toward teen shoppers is working to overhaul its mobile commerce channel in order to boost the business it is achieving directly with the consumer.

The retailer has identified this channel as vital to its target market, which uses these devices heavily.

The adolescent consumer market is one that has experienced massive penetration of smartphones, tablets, and other similar devices. This makes mobile commerce potentially very important to retailers that have teens as their primary shoppers.

Aeropostale has been offering a mobile commerce experience since June 2010, but has recognized the need for change.

The company has now made alterations to the mobile commerce app for iPhones, with the goal of making it more interactive and convenient to use. The company has revealed its hopes that these efforts will start to shift purchasing away from physical stores and into the online environment through these devices.

Aeropostale is not alone in this effort to gear shopping toward a more mobile commerce experience than one that is in-store. Other retailers who target smartphone using demographics have also been introducing and updating apps through which product research and purchases can be made.

This particular apparel retailer has seen some successes along this line. When its mobile commerce website was first launched in 2010, for example, purchases made over that channel made up only 2 percent of its total web sales. However, by March of 2013, this had grown to 13 percent of total online sales. At the same time, 36 percent of the traffic to the merchant’s website has been reported to come from smartphones and tablets.

It is in the pursuit of this level of growth that this company, and others like it, have continued to grow their mobile commerce efforts and try to apply more creative and appealing strategies that will encourage consumers to choose them over the competition. It has now come to the point that marketing experts are cautioning businesses that have not yet stepped into this channel, that they could begin to lose their competitiveness, as they will no longer be offering the type of experience that consumers will expect from them.

Social media marketing is going well for Facebook on iPhones

| January 9, 2013

social media marketing iphone appThe app for the biggest network in the world is now installed on 70 percent of these Apple smartphones.

A newly released report is underscoring the fact that social media marketing is an ideal fit in the mobile environment, as it discussed the considerable role played by Facebook on one of the top smartphones worldwide, the iPhone from Apple.

The report looked into the importance of the network on this popular mobile device.

This publication was created with data that was gleaned from Benedict Evans, an analyst from Enders Analysis. It helps to provide a more thorough understanding of the influence that social media marketing has on mobile commerce and consumer behaviors. Specifically, it looks at the relationship between the use of the Facebook app and the iPhone smartphone.

The social media marketing app is easily among the most commonly used on a worldwide scale.

Back in September 2012, Evans had released the social media marketing news that Facebook’s smartphone app had achieved 470 million users. That said, it was its use on the iPhone that was especially important, as it was those users who were especially likely to download the application.

At that point, there were already more than one billion people registered with Facebook. The install base on iPhones in that month was an estimated 200 million. The recent social media marketing report has been able to extrapolate from this information that there is, therefore, a tremendous 70 percent market penetration among the users of that device.

This also means that the social media marketing app penetration of Facebook within iPhone devices is considerably higher than that among Android smartphone users. The report suggested that this could be an issue of geography, as many users of Android devices live in emerging markets where the use of the social network is considerably lower.

However, the authors also indicated that even among those on Android who do have the app, the engagement level is notably lower. It was speculated that this could reflect a quality issue with the social media marketing application on that operating system. Equally, Evans stated that there is another trend that this data has clearly identified, which is that the “Use of smartphone apps is surging as a share of Facebook, up from 240 million in September 2011 (30% of the total) to 470 million (44%) in September 2012.”