Marketers

3 Ways to Amp Up Your Retail App with iOS 8

Becky Doles

Apple unleashed new features that make it easier to create high-performing apps. Here are three iOS 8 tips for retail apps to drive greater performance.

Ported Post: This entry was originally published in the Artisan Mobile blog. Artisan was rebranded as In-App Marketing after being acquired by TUNE in July of 2015. 

With the recent launch of iOS 8, Apple has unleashed several new features that make it easier to create compelling and high-performing retail apps. From highlighting new sharing options to increasing interactivity, here are three iOS 8 tips for retail apps to drive greater performance.

1. Add a Widget to Apple’s Notification Center

iOS 8 integrates widget functionality with the Apple Notification Center. For example, retailers can introduce daily product highlights – with images – that are viewable even without the app open. Without interrupting other activity, all a user has to do is glance at the Notification Center to see what’s new in your app. The app can then be opened fully, or the user can go back to a previous screen. You can also keep track of how users interact with these widgets by using a Mobile Experience Management (MEM) platform to collect analytics from the moment someone views your update until he or she dismisses it in the Notification Center or clicks through and continues browsing in your app.

2. Make Push Notifications More Interactive

The new “actionable notifications” functionality allows consumers to interact with push messages beyond just tapping to open the app. For example, if you send a notification about a new product, a user could favorite that item directly from the message without switching over to the full app experience. Like widgets in the Notification Center, interactive alerts make it possible for consumers to engage with your brand without always opening your app. Test out different versions of interactive alerts using the A/B testing feature in an MEM platform to determine which ones perform best.

3. Create a Path from Mobile to Desktop and Back

The Handoff feature allows developers to build a mechanism into their apps that saves a user’s status and lets users move back and forth between the web and an app without losing their place. For retailers, Handoff should make it easier to mirror a user’s shopping experience across multiple devices. If a user gets home after browsing an item in your smartphone app, for example, you can bring up that exact same item on the user’s iPad. With a robust MEM platform, you can also monitor how a user moves between devices in the path to a purchase.

Author
Becky Doles

Becky is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at TUNE. Before TUNE, she led a variety of marketing and communications projects at San Francisco startups. Becky received her bachelor's degree in English from Wake Forest University. After living nearly a decade in San Francisco and Seattle, she has returned to her home of Charleston, SC, where you can find her enjoying the sun and salt water with her family.

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