Holiday Season By The Numbers & Ways To Bring Your App More Revenue

A glorious season is on the door. It creates profitable moments for any brand, but especially for mobile apps. It is because mobile revenue because mobile sales dominated Black Friday last year. There are many examples showing that Black Friday, Christmas or Thanksgiving Day is the goose that lays the golden egg. So, you should prepare your app for the holiday season to get your piece of the pie.

Important Metrics Related To The Holiday Shopping Season

There are other significant metrics that prove the holiday season is the stellar performance of online shopping. Before discussing what you should do to prepare your app for the holiday season, let’s dig the important data that brighten us how these days are a pot of gold for every brand.

• Two broader peak periods throughout Black Friday are one between 8 am and 10 am and a second from 5 pm to 10 pm. The reason is that shoppers use most of their spare time outside of the work for shopping.
• According to comScore, app users spend 18x more time in-app than on mobile sites in 2015.
• 55% of Black Friday shoppers prefer email promotions, 25% prefer in-app messages and 23% prefer push notifications.
• This rise is not limited with Black Friday. Major retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, and Target reported that mobile traffic and sales were on the rise in Thanksgiving. For example, 60% of Target’s Thanksgiving sales were achieved through mobile devices.
• According to Adobe, Cyber Monday was the largest online shopping day of 2017, accounting for $6.59 billion in sales.
• Similarly, PayPal also saw a 43% increase in PayPal mobile shoppers on Thanksgiving and a 51% increase on Black Friday.
• The highest sales of MasterCard, the second largest weekly growth rate in US retail e-commerce occurred the week of December 17, when sales increased 23.7%. And December 23, a Saturday, was the second highest shopping day of the year. The reason behind this is that digital shoppers are postponing purchases until the eve of Christmas Eve.
• According to Apple, iOS customers spent more than $300 million in apps and games purchases from the App Store on their iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices only on New Year’s Day, January 1, 2018, and that they spent over $890 million in App Store purchases during the last week of December 2017 starting Christmas Eve.

What Mobile Apps Should Do?

As you know, the shopping season is very close. And there is no question mobile continues to break records this peak season! If you don’t have any strategy, be quick! The major thing you should do is to ramp up the mobile ad campaigns during Black Friday to see record-breaking app downloads!

Offer Incentives

You need to attract new people to download your app. It is a perfect idea to offer special discounts for first-time downloaders. eMarketer suggests offering 10% off the first purchase or free shipping.

Offer Specific In-App Deals

Actually, it is a must during Black Friday. According to the survey conducted by eMarketer, 68% of the people use apps to receive deals and special offers. It is a huge ratio, right! If you offer incentives available in-app only, you can catch holiday shoppers. Moreover, you can use in-app deals to invite shoppers who abandoned shopping cards to reactivate their abandoned carts and benefit from savings.

Offer Free Of Error Checkout Process

Mobile values more than purchases. 63% of shoppers prefer mobile in order not to wait long lines in-store while 58% prefer mobile to compare prices. As 63% of people run away from long lines, it is important to make the in-app shopping experience easy and short to attract them.

Differentiate Your App

As you know, each day, the number of mobile apps is increasing. It makes necessary to differentiate yourself. In terms of the holiday season, it would be a perfect idea to apply holiday theme or icons, use colors associated with holidays, decorate your screenshots with festive symbols like snowflakes or Santa, add a new Holiday feature.

Incorporating festive attributes to your icon can give up to 47% conversion uplift.

Details are important, too. For example, ‘Action Mouth’ is attributable to Christmas optimization as well. It could give you up to 9% conversion uplift.

I want to remind that new applications and app updates won’t be accepted from 23 to 27 of December. If you are planning to update your app, make it before December 23.

Use Push Notifications

As I said before, 23% of shoppers prefer to push notifications. So, use them! Deliver your special offer, special pricing or an exclusive sale through push notifications.

Show Relevant Ads

88% of the holiday shoppers who start shopping on Black Friday say they want to see ads. Why not you give them what they want. It is a good idea to work with your ad partner to come up with a succeeding advertising strategy when planning the holiday season strategy.

Also, if you have an app different from e-commerce, don’t worry. Because gamers were more engaged on this season last year. Let me explain! What do you prefer to do while you are at home with your family, making a small talk with Grandma, dodging political conversations with Uncle Pet? Also, news apps and fitness apps experienced a lift on Black Friday according to the Leanplum report.
The other additional note is don’t worry if Black Friday or Cyber Monday touch you slightly. And remember MasterCard example!
The last “and” is don’t forget shoppers are most likely to use mobile apps, especially during the Holiday Season if special in-app deals are offered to them.

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